Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Of Dreaming [from Dissertations Moral and Critical]

London

Printed for W. Strahan; and T. Cadell ... and W. Creech

1783

The human body is like a barometer: "If the external air can affect the motions of so heavy a substance as mercury, in the tube of the barometer; we need no wonder, that it should affect those finer fluids, that circulate through the human body."

9. My next remark is, that dreams depend in part on the state of the air. That, which has power over the passions, may reasonably be presumed to have power over the thoughts of men. For the thoughts, that occur to a mind actuated by any passion, are always congenial to that passion, and tend to encourage it. Now, most people experimentally know, how effectual, in producing joy and hope, are pure skies and sunshine; and that a long continuance of dark weather brings on solicitude and melancholy. This is particularly the case with those persons, whose nervous system has been weakened by a sedentary life, and much thinking; and they, as I hinted formerly, are most subject to troublesome dreams. If the external air can affect the motions of so heavy a substance as mercury, in the tube of the barometer; we need no wonder, that it should affect those finer fluids, that circulate through the human body. And if our passions and thoughts, when we are awake, may be variously modified by the consistency, defect, or redundance of these fluids, and by the state of the tubes through which they circulate; need we wonder, that the same thing should happen in sleep, when our ideas, disengaged from the controul of reason, may be supposed to be more obsequious to material impulse? When the air is loaded with gross vapour, dreams generally disagreeable to persons of a delicate constitution.
(p. 227)

Weather::Barometer

Reading

Beattie, James. Dissertations Moral and Critical. Printed for Strahan, Cadell, and Creech: London, 1783. Facsimile-Reprint: Friedrich Frommann Verlag, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1970.

07/26/2005