The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 03 (of 11)Hobbes, Thomas
Philosophy
The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 03 (of 11)
Hobbes, Thomas
Philosophy, English -- 17th century
And seeing dreams are caused by the distemper of some of the inward
parts of the body, divers distempers must needs cause different dreams.
And hence it is that lying cold breedeth dreams of fear, and raiseth the
thought and image of some fearful object, the motion from the brain to
the inner parts and from the inner parts to the brain being reciprocal;
and that as anger causeth heat in some parts of the body when we are
awake, so when we sleep the overheating of the same parts causeth anger,
and raiseth up in the brain the imagination of an enemy. In the same
manner, as natural kindness, when we are awake, causeth desire, and
desire makes heat in certain other parts of the body; so also too much
heat in those parts, while we sleep, raiseth in the brain an imagination
of some kindness shown. In sum, our dreams are the reverse of our waking
imaginations; the motion when we are awake beginning at one end, and
when we dream at another.
[Sidenote: Apparitions or visions.]
The most difficult discerning of a man’s dream, from his waking
thoughts, is then, when by some accident we observe not that we have
slept: which is easy to happen to a man full of fearful thoughts, and
whose conscience is much troubled; and that sleepeth, without the
circumstances of going to bed or putting off his clothes, as one that
noddeth in a chair. For he that taketh pains, and industriously lays
himself to sleep, in case any uncouth and exorbitant fancy come unto
him, cannot easily think it other than a dream. We read of Marcus
Brutus, (one that had his life given him by Julius Cæsar, and was also
his favourite, and notwithstanding murdered him), how at Philippi, the
night before he gave battle to Augustus Cæsar, he saw a fearful
apparition, which is commonly related by historians as a vision; but
considering the circumstances, one may easily judge to have been but a
short dream. For sitting in his tent, pensive and troubled with the
horror of his rash act, it was not hard for him, slumbering in the cold,
to dream of that which most affrighted him; which fear, as by degrees it
made him wake, so also it must needs make the apparition by degrees to
vanish; and having no assurance that he slept, he could have no cause to
think it a dream, or any thing but a vision. And this is no very rare
accident; for even they that be perfectly awake, if they be timorous and
superstitious, possessed with fearful tales, and alone in the dark, are
subject to the like fancies, and believe they see spirits and dead men’s
ghosts walking in churchyards; whereas it is either their fancy only, or
else the knavery of such persons as make use of such superstitious fear,
to pass disguised in the night, to places they would not be known to
haunt.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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