ht phenomena of
dreaming, except for the avowed element of sleep in dreams.
In dreams, time and space are annihilated, and two severed lovers may
be made happy. In dreams, amidst a grotesque confusion of things
remembered and things forgot, we _see_ the events of the past (I have
been at Culloden fight and at the siege of Troy); we are present in
places remote; we behold the absent; we converse with the dead, and we
may even (let us say by chance coincidence) forecast the future. All
these things, except the last, are familiar to everybody who dreams.
It is also certain that similar, but yet more vivid, false experiences
may be produced, at the word of the hypnotiser, in persons under the
hypnotic sleep. A hypnotised man will take water for wine, and get
drunk on it.
Now, the ghostly is nothing but the experience, when men are awake, or
_apparently_ awake, of the every-night phenomena of dreaming. The
vision of the absent seen by a waking, or apparently waking, man is
called "a wraith"; the waking, or apparently waking, vision of the
dead is called "a ghost". Yet, as St. Augustine says, the absent man,
or the dead man, may know no more of the vision, and may have no more
to do with causing it, than have the absent or the dead whom we are
perfectly accustomed to see in our dreams. Moreover, the
comparatively rare cases in which two or more waking people are
alleged to have seen the same "ghost," simultaneously or in
succession, have _their_ parallel in sleep, where two or more persons
simultaneously dream the same dream. Of this curious fact let us give
one example: the names only are altered.
THE DOG FANTI
Mrs. Ogilvie of Drumquaigh had a poodle named Fanti. Her family, or
at least those who lived with her, were her son, the laird, and three
daughters. Of these the two younger, at a certain recent date, were
paying a short visit to a neighbouring country house. Mrs. Ogilvie
was accustomed to breakfast in her bedroom, not being in the best of
health. One morning Miss Ogilvie came down to breakfast and said to
her brother, "I had an odd dream; I dreamed Fanti went mad".
"Well, that _is_ odd," said her brother. "So did I. We had better
not tell mother; it might make her nervous."
Miss Ogilvie went up after breakfast to see the elder lady, who said,
"Do turn out Fanti; I dreamed last night that he went mad and bit".
In the afternoon the two younger sisters came home.
"How did you enjoy yourse
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