13. Such, however, is human
infirmity, that when in a dream a person shall see a dead man, he
thinks it is the soul that he sees: but when he shall in like
manner dream of a living man, he has no doubt that it is not a soul
nor a body, but the likeness of a man that has appeared to him:
just as if it were not possible in regard of dead men, in the same
sort unconscious of it, that it should not be their souls, but
their likenesses that appear to the sleepers. Of a surety, when we
were at Milan, we heard tell of a certain person of whom was
demanded payment of a debt, with production of his deceased
father’s acknowledgment,2740
which
debt unknown to the son the
father had paid, whereupon the man began to be very sorrowful, and
to
marvel that his
father while dying did not tell him what he owed
when he also made his will. Then in this exceeding anxiousness of
his, his said
father appeared to him in a
dream, and made known to
him where was the counter
2741
acknowledgment by which that
acknowledgment was cancelled. Which when the young man had found
and showed, he not only rebutted the wrongful claim of a false
debt, but also got back his
father’s note
2742
of
hand which the
father had not
got back when the
money was paid. Here then the
soul of a man is
supposed to have had care for his son, and to have come to him in
his
sleep, that, teaching him what he did not know, he might
relieve him of a great
trouble. But about the very same time as we
heard this, it chanced at Carthage that the rhetorician Eulogius,
who had been my
disciple in that art, being (as he himself, after
our return to Africa, told us the
story) in course of lecturing to
his
disciples on Cicero’s rhetorical books, as he looked over the
portion of reading which he was to
deliver on the following day,
fell upon a certain passage, and not being able to understand it,
was
scarce able to
sleep for the
trouble of his
mind: in which
night, as he
dreamed, I
expounded to him that which he did not
understand; nay, not I, but my likeness, while I
was unconscious of the thing, and far away beyond the sea, it might
be, doing, or it might be dreaming, some other thing, and not in
the least caring for his cares. In what way these things come
about, I know not: but in what way soever they come, why do we not
believe it comes in the same way for a person in a dream to see a
dead man, as it comes that he sees a living man? both, no doubt,
neither knowing nor caring who, or where, or when, dreams of their
images.
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
