Nothing could be more natural
than such an idea. From the crude and imperfect notions which long
prevailed with respect to the soul, it was scarcely possible for them to
ascribe the impressions, which their memory retained of the creation of
their fancy during their slumbers, to the instrumentality of their own
conceits; they could not fail therefore to impute them to the
interposition of some foreign agent, and to whom more naturally could
they refer them than to a divinity? When awake, they imagined themselves
always attended by the gods in person, and ascribed every thought, and
resolved every appearance or accident, which deviated from the common
course of nature, to the immediate influence of a superintending deity.
It was under such impressions that so many nations originally rested
their belief in divinatory dreams. The records of antiquity therefore
abound in instances (for the greater part of an early date) where the
actions of men have been the result of a dream, whose conceit was
entirely at variance with the real state of their affairs. It was not
long before the diversity of dreams awakened their attention: some were
connected and simple, others were obscure, and made up of curious
fancies, though not incapable of being resolved by the windings and
turnings of allegory.
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