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PHILOSOPHY OF DREAMS. 1077
sources of dreams. We have the testimony of the wise king that
"a dream cometh through the multitude of business " (Eccl . v. 3).
The impressions which great and continued mental exertion leaves
upon the brain, give rise to dreams that may or may not have
relation to the matter of our waking thoughts.
Now the author has acknowledged that an inclination for women
had been his chief passion ; and, at the time these dreams occurred,
he was deeply engaged in physiological investigations: so that the
natural inclination and the "multitude of business" may have been,
combined, the exciting causes of these particular dreams. Nor is it
inconsistent with the nature of dreams to suppose that the subject
of his profound study-the bodily structure both of man and woman
-may have had some influence in giving direction and shape to
these nocturnal fancies. Yet it is deserving of remark that, while
he acknowledges the strength of the sexual inclination, there is no
evidence to show that he ever indulged it. Only in his dreams do
we hear of him giving way to this natural impulse. These dreams
therefore prove that the sexual passion was strong within him, but
they prove nothing more. So far as we know they were exceptional
experiences. They belong to one particular period of his life, and
that one of but brief duration. There is no record, by him who
recorded everything, of any such experience at any other time.
The very fact of his recording them, and never afterwards destroying
them, is in itself a convincing proof of unsuspecting innocence. And
when, in addition to these facts, we take into account the whole
of his previous and subsequent life, in which no blemish on this
score can be discovered, there is no other legitimate conclusion than
that these particular dreams indicate no more than the involuntary
and therefore sinless activity of a natural inclination- sinless, except
so far as they evince the corruption of our common nature.
So much may be concluded from these dreams as explicable on
merely natural principles. But there are other considerations to be
taken into account in his case. If we admit, or even assume, in
accordance with his own statement, not only that these were to him
exceptional experiences, but that they were the experiences of an
exceptional subject, we may find a reason and a use in them that
gave them another and higher character. In the transition state in
which he now was, he had to pass through the furnace of spiritual
affliction, where his Saviour was to sit as a refiner and purifier of
silver, to purge away his dross, and refine him as silver is refined,
and try him as gold is tried, to make him fit for the sacred office
to which he was being called. It was necessary for him to be puri
fied, even as to inclination, from all existing stains of the world and
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