We shall now proceed to notice the subject of dreams in another point of view--that is, as being employed as a medium of divination in the cure of diseases, in which the fancies of the brain appear, in reality, to as little advantage as they do with reference to any other considerations in which such pretended omens exist. FOOTNOTES: [81] Wolfius, Psychol. Empir. Sect. 123. [82] Mém. de l'acad. de Berlin, tom. ii. p. 316. [83] Arist. de insomn. cap 3. [84] Quae in vita usurpant homines, cogitant, curant, vident quaeque agunt vigilantes, agitantque, ea cuique in somno accidunt. _De Div._ [85] Essay on Human Understanding, book, chap. i. sect 17. [86] Obs, on Man, vol. 1, sect. 5. [87] There is a phenomenon in the mind, which, though it happen to us while we are perfectly awake, yet approaches the nearest to sleep of any I know. It is called the _Reverie_, or, as some term it, the _brown study_, a sort of middle state between waking and sleeping; in which, though our eyes are open, our senses seem to be entirely shut up, and we are quite insensible of every thing about us, yet we are all the while engaged in a musing indolence of thought, or a supine and lolling kind of roving from one fairy scene to another, without any self-command; from which, if any noise or accident rouse us, we wake as from a real dream, and are often as much at a loss to tell how our thoughts were employed, as if we had waked from the soundest sleep. This is frequently called _dreaming_, sometimes _absence_, a thing often observed in lovers and people of a melancholy or indeed speculative turn.--_Fordyce's Dialogues concerning education, vol. II. p. 255._ [88] Leviathan, part. 1. c. 1. CHAPTER XI. ON INCUBATION; OR THE ART OF HEALING BY VISIONARY DIVINATION. Medicine unquestionably ranks among the most ancient of all human sciences. In the infant state of society, when simplicity of manners characterised the pursuits of mankind, medical assistance was little wanted; but when the nature of man degenerated, and vice and luxury corrupted his habits of innocence and temperance, diseases sprung up which those aids alone could check or eradicate. The knowledge of them at first could not fail to be empirical and precarious. The sick were placed in the high ways, that travellers and passers by might assist them with their counsel; and at length the priesthood appropriated this privilege exclusively to themselves. It was not merely the sacerdotal dignity which rendered them objects of awe and reverence to the illiterate multitude; the priests were regarded as the depositaries of science and learning; and proved themselves as skilful as they were successful, in cementing their influence by those arts which were best calculated to inflame the prejudices of the vulgar in their favour.