possibility of the truth in the story "Clarimonde," of how those from Shadowland Gliding beneath the coverings of our couches They share our rest, And with their dead lips sign their loving visit On arm and breast. We may prate about scientific analysis, dream fancies and unrealities, but all the world nevertheless enjoys dreaming or the full play of imagination, and, one of the modern leaders in scientific thought has himself emphasized the need of imagination in scientific research. Tyndall's famous "Belfast Address" is the denial of materialism and the reassertion of Thought. Thought, be it dream-like or rational logic, is wholly unique and thaumaturgic, wonder working, as Hr. Teufelsdröckh called it. Huxley's admission that "our volition counts for something as a condition of the course of events" is another death blow to rationalistic treatment of dreams. With these two out of the way we may well consider Thought as a world by itself, as without parallel and without precedent, and it matters not for the present whether Thought comes to us involuntarily in dreams or consciously while wide awake. The questions For Nature is full of plan, yet she plans not. what? and For whom? do not concern us at present. when it is asserted that there is a supporting spirit in all things, a living power, which is their formative cause. To deny this is to deny It is this living power, the formative cause of our lives, of which I want to speak. Its forms are the subject of our dreams. We must class dreams with the highest phenomena of spiritual life: Mind. Strange state of being! For 'tis still to be; "We are somewhat more than ourselves in our sleeps, and the slumber *Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici. waking states we are constantly engaged in "transmitting sentiments into ideas" and these we again often translate into actions. But in sleep and dreams we leave intellectual work, definitions and limitaWe fall back into Night, mother of Destiny; viz., our original dynamic nature. We fall back into the first form of Being, the Becoming-the Universal Soul. In this deeper life we do not lose our identity, as some false theorists assert, we, on the contrary reëstablish it; we rebuild that which was lost during the illusions which daylight held up before our eyes. In the light of day we work, viz., we evolve by giving a "local habitation and a name" to that which the same daylight calls " airy nothings," and only too often we are caught under the overpowering impulse of the movement. But in the Night we are set free again, because the senses are bound. In the Night dreams become the language and the art of the soul and through them we commune. Dreams are the subjective forms of Feeling,* a consciousness of the Whole, and they tell us that our soul is as great in itself as the world. It has been declared to be a factor against the spiritual value of dreams, that under their influence we become completely unaware of the incongruity of combinations; that we lose all volitional control over our thoughts and that we have no moral judgments while dreaming. But it is overlooked that logic, volition and moral judgment are secondary forms of our life, that they are means not ends; hence the charge is not very grave. It is true that we need philosophy with its notion of the ego and the ultimate meaning of life thence derived; it is also true that poetry and its symbols are indispensable lookingglasses in which we see the eternal beauty, and, of course, the moral expressions which life calls forth are proofs of righteousness and keys to the Sublime. But the soul's freedom and "at-one-ment with the Whole is far more than reflective thought, the sublimest imagery, or victorious self-assertion in a moral world. To feel oneself as a piece of reality is more than to see one's picture in a looking-glass. The *The reader must not confound sensations and feelings. All sensations are feelings, but all feelings are not sensations; they are more far-reaching and more profound. Feeling is, in the widest sense, all passive experience. Many philosophers recommend the use of the word sentiment instead of feeling. However, I use Feeling as they use Sentiment, as an expression signifying the echo of reason. realization that I am at once the supreme reality, the logical form, the picture and the ethical act is Divinity. None of the manifestations of the wide-awake life can compare to the Night-existence of the soul as mediator. The mysterious sensibility of the soul in dreams allows it to review its whole past career in the earth-sphere, and often to forecast its future. O, wondrous dreamland! who hath not In its dim retreats, and lived again In the light of other days? Το In dreams we may descend through all the strata of personality and thus see all our past incarnations, as Buddha claimed to have done. Corresponding to the movement of soul in dreams is its subliminal action. I believe that none of the students of psychic phenomena have seen this and yet it is the simplest explanation of clairvoyance. The visions which the somnambulist has are real and true; they are past experiences, but precipitated through a presentday brain, often uneducated, hence they are more or less distorted. I have always looked upon Andrew Jackson Davis's "Nature's Revelation as a revelation of the seer's past evolutionary stages from the material through the organic to the human, and the universe constructed with his own personality as a guide and interpreter. understand Nature and to translate objectivity into a language of my own, that I might identify myself with it, I have often attempted consciously to descend through the strata of my personality and have met with varying success. I have realized the universal life current, identified myself with it, and had intercourse with "things" as transient processions of the Infinite; plants and animals I have, after the example of the mystics, regarded as brothers and sisters. Thus atuning myself I have had introspective glimpses of a past, which gives me surety as to myself in many important directions. This confession will of course smack of insanity to him to whom life is no more than a scientific generalization and to whom the universe is simply a system of laws. If the world is simply a molecular machine and not a living power, Mind, then all insight, is a delusion and a snare. If no invisible goodness throbs in the "universal vibrations," then. our hearts reach out in vain for a companion. In everything that happens there is light and goodness! "We all live in the sublime Where else can we live? That is the only place of life?" On the highest mountains and in the deepest caves life absorbs the soul, and the soul thus freeing itself, finds itself as spirit. Of There can be no question then, I take it, of the uses or mediatorial powers of dreams. They are self-expressions and world-expressions. But some will question if they reach beyond this sphere of perception. The answer is, that it is possible to reduce the so-called prophetic dreams of antiquity to previsions of coming events and show that they are simple logical sequences of present existing circumstances. If that reasoning can be proved correct, then it seems that all transcendentalism can be disposed of in the same way. Can we deny "a going beyond," a "transcending experience"? what value is this definition of Coleridge:* "There is a philosophic consciousness which lies beneath, or (as it were) behind the spontaneous consciousness natural to all reflecting beings. As the elder Romans distinguished their northern provinces into Cis-Alpine and Trans-Alpine, so we may divide all the objects of human knowledge into those on this side, and those on the other side of spontaneous. consciousness?" How this is to be done except for convenience is difficult to see. It seems that the division is practical, even as it was practical to the old Romans, in order to locate their dominions; but beyond that it does not contain a real division, for as both CisAlpina and Trans-Alpina were Roman, so the mind that splits its glass of vision only to see one-half at the time, still remains one Mind, and more than that, it remains a living unit as much as Rome did. The ciscendental and transcendental can only be two poles of the Immanent: Being. Vigorous thinking and spontaneous perception can come to no other conclusion. The opposite admits a fatal dualism. Some Hindoos talk much about dreamless sleep as the supreme condition. That teaching involves the declaration that all appearance is a sham, a mockery of the senses. Only a Hindoo whose property is nakedness, whose sensibilities are deadened, and who lives on charity can afford to hold such a contemptuous view of life. Such * Biographia Literaria. an one does not even see the contradictions of his theory and life. Logic ought to bid him to quit existence, yea, even ought never have allowed him to be born. The simplest examination of his theory and life shows readily how untenable is the view that inertia is the summum bonum. History also proves in the repeated conquests of India that the ignoring of objective existence is fatal. Instead of being a master of his own soil the Hindoo has been a slave on it to every vigorous nation that has overrun his peninsula. The whole world of perception is not a lie, it is a revelation of Being. He who denies it is destroyed by his own lie. C. H. A. BJERREGAARD. UNITY AND INFINITY IN ART. Count Tolstoi's recent promulgation of his thoughts on "What Is Art?" has reopened an old wound; and our reviews and magazines have been spasmodically discussing once more the eternal questions of "Art for Art's Sake," and the relations of Art and Morality. It is quite safe to predict that the result will be as usual-each side retiring to its tent muttering anathemas against the narrow-mindedness of the other. Nor is it likely that this ghost will ever be laid; it will continue to walk the night and stir up strife so long as men differ in their views of things in general. The present writer accordingly has no intention of trying to say anything decisive, but desires merely to contribute a few remarks upon some of the questions involved. When theorists ask what is the object of Art, I find it convenient to answer that it is the same as the object of life; that Art is simply a page of the great book of the Universe, one of the many factors. contributing to influence humanity; and that if it is to have any real meaning for man its object must be precisely the same as that of Nature, of History, of Experience. Under any ideal philosophy such a statement is self-evident. Art is simply one of the many manifestations of Being; it is Evolution become conscious-Evolution self-anticipated. |