Elements of the philosophy of the human mind. By Dugald Stewart. Rev. and abridged, with critical and explanatory notes, for the use of colleges and schools. By Francis Bowen ...

DREAMING. 197
"And hither Morpheus sent his kindest dreams,
Raising a world of gayer tinct and grace;
O'er which were shadowy cast Elysian gleams,
That play'd, in waving lights, from place to place,
And shed a roseate smile on Nature's face.
Not Titian's pencil e'er could so array,
So fleece with clouds the pure ethereal space;
Nor could it e'er such melting forms display,
As loose on flowery beds all languishingly lay.
No, fair illusions! artful phantoms, no!
My muse will not attempt your fairy land:
She has no colors, that like yours can glow;
To catch your vivid scenes, too gross her hand." —
Castle of Indolence.
As a further proof that the succession of our thoughts in
dreaming, is influenced by our prevailing habits of association,
it may be remarked, that the scenes and occurrences which most
frequently present themselves to the mind while we are asleep,
are the scenes and occurrences of childlhood and early youth. The
facility of association is then much greater than in more advanced
years; and although, during the day, the memory of the events
thus associated may be banished by the objects and pursuits
which press upon our senses, it retains a more permanent hold
of the mind than any of our subsequent acquisitions; and like
the knowledge which we possess of our mother tongue, is, as it
were, interwoven and incorporated with all its most essential
habits. Accordingly, in old men, whose thoughts are, in a
great measure, disengaged from the world, the transactions of
their middle age, which once seemed so important, are often
obliterated; while the mind dwells, as in a dream, on the spots
and the companions of their infancy.
I shall only observe further, on this head, that in our dreams,
as well as when awake, we occasionally make use of words as
an instrument of thought. Such dreams, however, do not affect
the mind with such emotions of pleasure and of pain, as those
in which the imagination is occupied with particular objects of
sense. The effect of philosophical studies, in habituating the
mind to the almost constant employment of this instrument, and,
of consequence, its effect in weakening the imagination, was fol17~