With these and such reasons it is pretended that much is communicated
through the medium of dreams:
When soft sleep the body lays at ease,
And from the heavy mass the fancy frees,
Whate'er it is in which we take delight,
And think of most by day we dream at night.
The transition from sleep is very natural to that of dreams, the
wonderful and mysterious phenomena of that state, the ideal transactions
and vain illusions of the mind. According to Wolfius, an eminent
philosopher of Silesia, every dream originates in some sensation, and is
continued by the succession of phantoms; but no phantasm can arise in
the mind without some previous sensation. And yet it is not easy to
confirm this by experience, it being often difficult to distinguish
those slight sensations, which give rise to dreams, from phantasms, or
objects of imagination.[81] The series of phantasms which thus constitute
a dream, seems to be accounted for by the law of the imagination, or
association of ideas; though it may be very difficult to assign the
cause of every minute difference, not only in different subjects, but in
the same, at different times, and in different circumstances.
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