The dream state, therefore, is regarded at once as an evidence and a foretaste of the immortality of the soul when it shall be freed of its clogging terrestrial prison. It is right here to speak of the immortality of the soul, for by the time this idea that we are referring to had come into the psychologies, the idea of the eternal life of the soul, as distinct from a mere prolongation of life, had also been developed. It was the apparent separation of the soul (as they chose to regard it) from the body during sleep that seemed to certain speculators one of the strongest evidences of the soul's independence of the body, and of a possibility of its separate life. The view is best expressed perhaps by Bishop Newton, in his Dissertations, in the following words: "It is evident that the soul is in a great measure independent of the body even while she is within the body, since the deepest sleep that possesseth the one cannot affect the other; and while the avenues of the body are closed, the soul is still indued with sense and perception, and the impressions are often stronger and the images more lively when we are asleep than when awake.

They must necessarily be two distinct and different substances, whose natures and properties are so very different that while the one shall sink under the burden and fatigue of the day the other shall be fresh and active as the flames; while the one shall be dead to the world, the other shall be ranging the universe. Why, then, should the death of the one be any more the death of the other than the sleep of the one is the sleep of the other? Since the soul can think and act in this manner without the body even while united to it, why should she not be able to think and act in a more enlarged and more exalted manner when separated from the body, or united to a spiritual body that shall no longer hinder her operations? Since the soul hath her distinct joys and sorrows, pleasures and pains, while the body is senseless and asleep, why should she not be capable of the same when the body shall be no more?"

Thus his lordship the Bishop, and although all this psychology, the idea of the "soul" being indued with "sense " and so on, sounds a sad muddle to us who have had our ideas of the dependence of mind and body a good deal further analysed and developed, still the passage gives an excellent notion of the way in which dreams suggested the independence of soul and body: - "Why then should the death of the one be any more the death of the other than the sleep of the one is the sleep of the other? "This sentence puts the point of view before us briefly and distinctly.

Seafield quotes this passage from Bishop Newton, in a chapter headed "On Dreams as Arguments for Immortality," and follows it with a quotation from "Letters to a German Princess on Divers Subjects in Physics and Philosophy" - surely a princess would have to be German to be entertained with so fearful - sounding a correspondence - "Sleep furnishes something like an example (prefiguration) of the state of the soul after death, as the union of soul and body is then in a great measure interrupted, yet the soul ceases not from activity, being employed in the production of dreams. These are usually disturbed by the remaining influence which the senses exercise; and we know by experience that the more this influence is suspended, which is the case in profound sleep, the more regular and connected are our dreams.

"Thus after death we shall find ourselves in a more perfect state of dreaming, which nothing shall be able to decompose. It will consist of representations and meanings perfectly well sustained."

"Decompose" is good. For the rest the view of the correspondent, by name Leonhard Euler, of the Royal German Lady, that dreams are "usually disturbed by the remaining influence which the senses exercise'1 is no doubt as accurate as his inference therefrom is singular. Whether our dreams are more regular and connected in proportion as our sleep is more profound, which Mr. Euler says is a thing well proved by common experience, is in fact an interesting speculation on which there will be about as many opinions as there are dreamers, save that a certain number of people hold the view that in profound sleep we do not dream at all. But this evidently is by no means the view of Mr. Euler as communicated to his German princess on whom all must have compassion for the formidable nature of her correspondence.

Porphyrius and Macrobius tell us of a fancy of the ancients that the souls of the dead dwell in the Galaxy or Milky Way, as we call it, and these it is, according to Pythagoras, that descend to the earth and appear to men in dreams.

We of the twentieth century have been brought up with our ideas on subjective and objective comparatively so fully grown, that it is very hard for us to put ourselves into the mental attitude of our savage forefather. But the more we can succeed in so doing the more we shall see, I think, that it was not only - natural, but even inevitable, that he should take of dreams the view that all evidence derived from observations of the savage tribes of to - day leads us to suppose that he did take, the view that the apparitions manifested in them were real - in the sense that they were living and visible beings - and, granted that, the inference followed, no less of necessity, that, if he saw visions of people whom he knew to be dead, these people were living again in a life after death, and capable of re - visiting the earth, in their bodily shape, and in the garments (though in those days that was a less consideration than it is now) which they used to wear when on earth. In a word, he had the strongest grounds for inferring at once immortality (or at least the life after death) and also something that was equivalent to the resurrection of the body.

It is an interesting speculation, though one that does not lead to much solidity of conclusion, what the course of human psychology' would have been had it never happened to man to perform "mental operations during sleep of which he retains consciousness on awaking". Had the world been peopled by men and women who never dreamed, it would have been not a little different. As history - makers, dreams have played a big part. "We are such stuff as dreams are made on" is scarcely as true as if it were a little inverted to "We are such stuff as dreams have made us .