Thus far we have said nothing of the psycho- logical and physiological laws of dreams. The connexion between bodily states and dreams is recognized in practice if not in theory by the savage who induces dreams by fasting or the use of drugs. CiWlized man, even in the prescientitic period, further recognizes that the experiences of the day furnish most of the material for our fancies of the night: dreams, says Lily, 'come either by things we see in the day or meates that we eat' ; Herodotus makes Artabanus explain Xerxes' dream as due to his anxiety about his projected invasion of Greece ; and the dream of Pharaoh may similarly have been due to the anxiety which a 'low Nile' must cause in any one responsible for the government of Egj'pt. Hippocrates discovered that certain diseases announce their approach by disturbing dreams, and modem medical science con- firms the discovery. Without going further into the physiological theory of dreams, we may note that the ordinary concomitant of dreaming is probably an excessive or a deficient supply of blood to the brain. Now, the recognition of tlie fact that dream- ing has its laws, combmed with the belief that some dreams are supernatural coninmnications, some- times leads to the statement that some dreams are sent by God, .some (most) not ; and this statement conveys a truth in a form open to serious misappre- hension. It may be taken to imply two things, both false, viz. (1) that dreams which "happen according to natural laws are not part of God's will and design ; (2) that dreams which are divine are irreconcilable with the laws by which He governs the universe. A less misleading way of stating
DRESS
DRESS
623
the facts would seem to be to say that His laws act in such a way tliat we tiuJ oursehes at some times in closer communion with Him than at otliers. AH our states of consciousness (whether of complete or of partial consciousness) have their psycholojriciil laws and also tlieir physical counter- parts in the chemical processes of the brain and nervous tissue ; the mental processes which issued in the production of the Iliad or Hamlet were all it accordance with psychological laws, and all had their physiological counterparts. So, too, every process of reasoning has its psychological and phy.-iulogical laws, but we do not consider that this fact impedes us in any way from distinguish- ing good rca-soniiig from bad, or that it prevents OS from recognizing the truth when it is presented to us, or that any study of either of those sciences will enable us to dispense with lo^c or supply us with a better means of distinguishing, say, be- tween a correct syllogistic inference and an illicit process of the minor than logic already alibrds us. So, too, the fact that our states of partial con- sciousness are all under law — phj'siological and p.sychological — does not constitute any impediment to OUT distinguishing those states which do from those states which do not possess the charac- teristics of divine revelations ; nor can it impeach the validity of the distinction thus drawn by the religious consciousness of mankind. Christian, Jew, and Gentile, any more than it can imjieach the validity drawn by logic between correct and in- correct inferences. The question is one of fact. Do sub-conscious states, possessing the charac- teristics in (Question, occur ? And to recognize those characteristics is the prerogative of the religious oonsciousness. If it be said that in the waking ■tate such recognition is possible, but not in a •tate of partial consciousness, we must inquire on what grounds the statement is made. It on the ground that oui sub-conscious states are under physiological laws, then our reply is that so also are states of complete consciousness. If on the ground that in a state of partial consciousne.ss the very faculty whose function is recognition of the kind in question may be dormant, to this our reply is that in the vast number of cases it undoubtedly is dormant ; but just as Condorcet, in an excep- tional abnormal condition, could, in sub-conscious sleep, work out a mathematical problem which awaKe he could not solve, and just as Coleridge could compose in sleep the poem of Kubla Khan, so in abnormal cases the power of spiritual per- ception, relieved from the pressure of external sensations, may conceivably be heightened to a pitch of exaltation as far above its ordinary degree of activity and receptivity as the imagination of Coleridge or the mathematical rea-son of Condorcet was in the cases alluded to. ' The fact that all or most men suppose some significance in dreams con- stitutes a ground for believing that the supposition is based on experience' (Aristotle, i>tD./)er5o»in. i.).
LrmuTTTKH. — Camenter, Mfntal Phynoloffy \ Olodd, Myths and Vnanu ; Ladd, Doctrine o/ Sacrfd Scripture (18S3). ii. 429-436; Kej-noldii (J. W.), i>'at\tral Uittory of Immortaliti/ (1391), 1U-1S9: Driver on UU 13». F. B. JEVONS.
DRESS.— To 'dress' (fr. Lat. rfirer<iM, through old Fr. dresser) is in meaning an in deriv. the same as ' direct.' Thus Wyclif translates I's 5' ' dresse thou my weie in thi sight,' 40" ' he dresside my goyngis ; Lk 1™ ' to dresse oure feet in to the weie of pees.' (Cf. the use still of 'dress' as a military technical term.) In AV the word is used in the general sense of 'put right,' much as we now use 'do.' Indeed thelleb. mostfreq. translated 'dress ' is the ordinary verb 'to do' (npy YisAh), Gn 18'-' a call for food ; Lv 7* meat-oHering, 'dreased in the frying-pan,' 1 S 25" sheep for food, 2 S 12"*' a lamb