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| No Soul Naturally Exempt from Dreams.
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Chapter
XLIX.—No Soul Naturally Exempt from Dreams.
As for those persons who suppose that infants do not
dream, on the ground that all the functions of the soul throughout life
are accomplished according to the capacity of age, they ought to
observe attentively their tremors, and nods, and bright smiles as
they sleep, and from such facts understand that they are the emotions
of their soul as it dreams, which so readily escape to the surface
through the delicate tenderness of their infantine body. The fact,
however, that the African nation of the Atlantes are said to pass
through the night in a deep lethargic sleep, brings down on them the
censure that something is wrong in the constitution of their soul. Now
either report, which is occasionally calumnious against barbarians,
deceived Herodotus,1780
| 1780 Who mentions
this story of the Atlantes in iv. 184. | or else a large
force of demons of this sort domineers in those barbarous regions.
Since, indeed, Aristotle remarks of a certain hero of Sardinia that he
used to withhold the power of visions and dreams from such as resorted
to his shrine for inspiration, it must lie at the will and caprice of
the demons to take away as well as to confer the faculty of dreams; and
from this circumstance may have arisen the remarkable fact (which we
have mentioned1781
| 1781 In ch. xliv. p.
223. | ) of Nero and
Thrasymedes only dreaming so late in life. We, however, derive dreams
from God. Why, then, did not the Atlantes receive the dreaming faculty
from God, because there is really no nation which is now a stranger to
God, since the gospel flashes its glorious light through the world to
the ends of the earth? Could it then be that rumour deceived Aristotle,
or is this caprice still the way of demons? (Let us take any view of
the case), only do not let it be imagined that any soul is by its
natural constitution exempt from dreams.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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