So the remembered faces and forms of our absent friends, faithful though a part of the likeness may be, are associated with the grossest absurdity.
“Velut ægri somnia, vanæ Fingentur species, ut nec pes nec caput uni Reddatur formæ.”
“Dreams are but interludes which Fancy makes: When monarch Reason sleeps, this mimic wakes; Compounds a medley of disjointed things, A mob of cobblers, and a court of kings. Light fumes are merry, grosser fumes are sad, Both are the reasonable soul run mad; And many monstrous forms in sleep we see, That neither were, nor are, nor e’er can be.”
The little variations in the tissue of a dream are not _rectified_ by judgment. So the vision may have led us to the very consummation of the highest hopes with love and beauty, and then, if an object even of degradation or deformity shall cross the dream, an association shall be formed imparting a feeling of loathing and horror.
You may take Hobbes’ illustration, Astrophel, which you will probably prefer to mine. Hobbes says of the compositions of phantoms, “Water when moved at once by divers movements, receiveth one motion compounded of them all; so it is in the brain, or spirits stirred by divers objects; there is composed an imagination of divers conceptions that appeared single to the sense; as sense at one time showeth the figure of a mountain, at another of gold, and the imagination afterwards composes them into a golden mountain.”
I believe Parkhurst also will tell you, that the Hebrew word for dream, refers to things _erroneously viewed_ by the senses; for each may assume, individually, an intimate accordance with another, although the first and last appear perfectly incongruous, as the Chinese puzzle will be a chaos, if its pieces be wrongly placed; a _faulty rejoining_, in fact, of scenes and objects reduced to their constituent elements.
“I dreamed once,” said Professor Maass, of Halle, “that the pope visited me. He commanded me to open my desk, and he carefully examined all the papers it contained. While he was thus employed, a very sparkling diamond fell out of his triple crown into my desk, of which, however, neither of us took any notice. As soon as the pope had withdrawn, I retired to bed, but was soon obliged to rise on account of a thick smoke, the cause of which I had yet to learn. Upon examination, I discovered that the diamond had set fire to the papers in my desk, and burnt them to ashes.”