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| Dreams, an Incidental Effect of the Soul's Activity. Ecstasy.
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Chapter XLV.—Dreams,
an Incidental Effect of the Soul’s Activity.
Ecstasy.
We are bound to expound at this point what is the
opinion of Christians respecting dreams, as incidents of sleep, and as
no slight or trifling excitements of the soul, which we have declared
to be always occupied and active owing to its perpetual movement, which
again is a proof and evidence of its divine quality and immortality.
When, therefore, rest accrues to human bodies, it being their own
especial comfort, the soul, disdaining a repose which is not natural to
it, never rests; and since it receives no help from the limbs of the
body, it uses its own. Imagine a gladiator without his
instruments or arms, and a charioteer without his team, but still
gesticulating the entire course and exertion of their respective
employments: there is the fight, there is the struggle; but the effort
is a vain one. Nevertheless the whole procedure seems to be gone
through, although it evidently has not been really effected. There is
the act, but not the effect. This power we call ecstasy, in
which the sensuous soul stands out of itself, in a way which even
resembles madness.1766
| 1766 We had better give
Tertullian’s own succinct definition: “Excessus sensûs
et amentiæ instar.” | Thus in the very
beginning sleep was inaugurated by ecstasy: “And God sent an
ecstasy upon Adam, and he slept.”1767
The sleep came on his body to cause it to rest, but the ecstasy fell on
his soul to remove rest: from that very circumstance it still happens
ordinarily (and from the order results the nature of the case) that
sleep is combined with ecstasy. In fact, with what real feeling, and
anxiety, and suffering do we experience joy, and sorrow, and alarm in
our dreams! Whereas we should not be moved by any such emotions, by
what would be the merest fantasies of course, if when we dream we
were masters of ourselves, (unaffected by ecstasy.) In these dreams,
indeed, good actions are useless, and crimes harmless; for we shall no
more be condemned for visionary acts of sin, than we shall be crowned
for imaginary martyrdom. But how, you will ask, can the soul remember
its dreams, when it is said to be without any mastery over its own
operations? This memory must be an especial gift of the ecstatic
condition of which we are treating, since it arises not from any
failure of healthy action, but entirely from natural process; nor does
it expel mental function—it withdraws it for a time. It is one
thing to shake, it is another thing to move; one thing to destroy,
another thing to agitate. That, therefore, which memory supplies
betokens soundness of mind; and that which a sound mind ecstatically
experiences whilst the memory remains unchecked, is a kind of madness.
We are accordingly not said to be mad, but to dream, in that state; to
be in the full possession also of our mental faculties,1768
if we are at any time. For although the
power to exercise these faculties1769
may be dimmed
in us, it is still not extinguished; except that it may seem to be
itself absent at the very time that the ecstasy is energizing in us in
its special manner, in such wise as to bring before us images of a
sound mind and of wisdom, even as it does those of
aberration.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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