Somnial or Morphean Space

Now I propose to note down the characteristics of Dreams, especially my infernal Dreams, as they occur to me—as so many parts of the Problem to be solved. [...]

    The first point of course is the Vision itself—that we see without eyes and hear without Ears.—

    The second (& which I have never seen noticed) is—that we live without consciousness of Breathing. You never suppose the Men & Women of the Dream to breathe—<you do not suppose them not to breathe>—the thought is wholly suspended—and absent from your consciousness. 

    The third concerns the qualities & relations of Somnial or Morphean Space— [...]

    The fourth is the spontaneity of the Dream-personages—Each is its own centre—herein so widely differing from the vivid thoughts & half-images of poetic Day-dreaming. —In sleep you are perfectly detached from the Dramatis Personæ—and they are from you.

    The 5th is the whimsical transfer of familiar Names and the sense of Identity and Individuality to the most unlike Forms & Faces. [...]

    6th. Conversion of bodily Pain into some passion of the Mind—Heart-burn becomes intense Grief, with bitter Weeping; Pain in the Umbilical Region becomes Terror [...]

    7th. Imaginary Air-piercing, Air-shooting, skimming, soaring by successive Jerks of Volition or rather a nisus-analogue of inward volition./

    8. & most interesting—the apparent representative character of particular Forms and Images, repr. I mean, each of some particular organ or structure—Ex. gr. I have never of later years awaked, desiderio mingendi*, but the preceding Dream had presented some water-landskip, Lake, River, Pond, or Splashes, Water-pits. [...]

    9. The frustration most common in Dreams.

    10. Non-descript & yet not composite Animals—the magnificent Fassades [sic] of Architecture. 

    11. The occasional sui generis Elysean Sunshine—/ 

 

Entry 5360, The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Vol. 4: 1819-1826, ed. Kathleen Coburn and Merton Christensen, London: Routledge, 2002.

 * desiderio mingendi - with the urge to urinate

 

Dark reflections from below all life

Habitually to dream magnificently, a man must have a constitutional determination to reverie. This in the first place; and even this, where it exists strongly, is too much liable to disturbance from the gathering agitation of our present English life. Already, what by the procession through fifty years of mighty revolutions amongst the kingdoms of the earth, what by the continual development of vast physical agencies,—steam in all its applications, light getting under harness as a slave for man, powers from heaven upon education and accelerations of the press, powers from hell (as it might seem, but these also celestial) coming round upon artillery and the forces of destruction,—the eye of the calmest observer is troubled; the brain is haunted as if by some jealousy of ghostly beings moving amongst us; and it becomes too evident that, unless this colossal pace of advance can be retarded (a thing not to be expected) [...] left to itself, the natural tendency of so chaotic a tumult must be to evil; for some minds to lunacy, for others a reagency of fleshly torpor. How much this fierce condition of eternal hurry upon an arena too exclusively human in its interests is likely to defeat the grandeur which is latent in all men, may be seen in the ordinary effect from living too constantly in varied company. The word dissipation, in one of its uses, expresses that effect; the action of thought and feeling is consciously dissipated and squandered. [...]

 

Among the powers in man which suffer by this too intense life of the social instincts, none suffers more than the power of dreaming. Let no man think this a trifle. The machinery for dreaming planted in the human brain was not planted for nothing. That faculty, in alliance with the mystery of darkness, is the one great tube through which man communicates with the shadowy. And the dreaming organ, in connexion with the heart, the eye, and the ear, compose the magnificent apparatus which forces the infinite into the chambers of the human brain, and throws dark reflections from eternities below all life upon the mirrors of the sleeping mind. 

Thomas de Quincey, ‘Dreaming’, Suspiria de Profundis, 1845

The harmfulness of knowledge

Scientiæ suntne inutiles?

 

R. Ita probatur. I. Rhetorica est ars mentiendi, ex albo facit nigrum, hominem candidæ vitæ atramento & meris carbonibus denigrat. Theologia superat captum nostrum. Medicina boletos venenatos & artem intoxicandi nos docuit; Ars conquinaria gulositatem inducit. Imo Historiographicus quidam tradit nescio in quo libro coquos in causa fuisse ut dives ille helluo Evangelicus ad inferos descenderit. Nisi enim cibos opipare conditos illi apposuissent non ita genio indulsisset; summa summarum scientia multa incommoda procreat, inducit vigilias, parit catharros, &c. Qualis autem effectus talis causa. Ergo conferamus nos omnes ad Abbatem fratrum ignorantiæ, missos faciamus alchymistas cum suo auro imaginario, Philosophos cum ente rationis, &c. Arrigite aures auditores sicuti lepores; hoc enim scriptum inveni in vocabulo Reformatorum, quam pravam imaginationem tum perversis quibusdam hominibus ademeris, cum crepitum ex asino mortuo extruseris.  

 

Nugæ Venales, sive Thesaurus Ridendi et Jocandi. Ad Gravissimos Severissimosque Viros, Patres Melancholicorum Conscriptos. Anno 1689. Prostant Neminem; sed tamen Ubique. 

 

Is knowledge harmful?

Answer. Yes, proven thus: 1. Rhetoric is the art of lying, it makes white black, with ink and bare coals it dyes black the man whose life is pure white. Theology soars above our ken. Medicine teaches us deadly mushrooms and the art of poisoning. The art of cookery leads to gluttony. There's even a historian who puts forward in some book or other that it was because of cooks that the gourmandising rich man of the Gospel descended to hell. If they hadn't set those lavishly seasoned meals before him, he wouldn't have indulged in such good living; all in all, much knowledge begets inconveniences, it keeps you up at night, it gives you a runny nose, etc. As the effect, so the cause. Therefore let all us join brother Abbot of Ignorance, let us send packing the alchemists and their imaginary gold, the philosophers and their ens rationis,* etc. Listeners, pluck up your ears like rabbits, for I have devised this text in the name of the Reformers: you would as much deprive certain bad men of their mistaken mental image as you could squeeze a fart out of a dead donkey.

 

* ens rationis - entity that exists only in the mind. Entia rationis are opposed to entia realia, beings that have a real existence outside the mind. 

translation: Alistair Ian Blyth