the mirth and galliardize of company; yet in one dream I can compose a whole comedy, behold the whole action, apprehend the jests, and laugh myself awake at the conceits thereof. Were my memory as faithful as my reason is then fruitful, I would never study but in my dreams; and this time also would I choose for my devotions; but our grosser memories have then so little hold of our abstracted understanding, that they forget the story, and can only relate to our awakened souls a confused and broken tale of that that has passed. Thus it is observed, that men sometimes, upon the hour of their departure, do speak and reason above themselves: for then the soul, beginning to be freed from the ligaments of the body, begins to reason like herself, and to discourse in a strain above mortality.' We may likewise observe in the third place, that the passions affect the mind with greater strength when we are asleep than when we are awake. Joy and sorrow give us more vigorous sensations of pain or pleasure at this time than at any other. Devotion likewise, as the excellent author abovementioned has hinted, is in a very particular manner heightened and inflamed, when it rises in the soul at a time that the body is thus laid at rest. Every man's experience will inform him in this matter, though it is very probable that this may happen differently in different constitutions. I shall conclude this. head with the two following problems, which I shall leave to the solution of my reader. Supposing a man always happy in his dreams, and miserable in his waking thoughts, and that his life was equally divided between them, whether would he be more happy or miserable? Were a man a king in his dreams, and a beggar awake, and dreamed as consequentially, and in as continued unbroken schemes as he thinks when awake, whether he would be in reality a king or a beggar, or rather whether he would not be both? There is another circumstance, which mcthinks gives us a very high idea of the nature of the soul, in regard to what passes in dreams: I mean that innumerable multitude and variety of ideas which then arise in her, Were that active watchful being only conscious of her own existence at such a time, what a painful solitude would her hours of sleep be? Were the soul sensible of her being alone in her sleeping moments, after the same manner that she is sensible of it while awake, the time would hang very heavy on her, as it often actually does when she dreams that she is in such solitude. -Semperque relinqui Sola sibi semper longam incomitata videtur -She seems alone VIRG. To wander in her sleep through ways unknown, DRYDEN. But this observation I only make by the way. What I would here remark is, that wonderful power in the soul of producing her own company on these occasions. She converses with numberless beings of her own creation, and is transported into ten thousand scenes of her own raising. She is herself the theatre, the actor, and the beholder. This puts me in mind of a saying which I am infinitely pleased with, and which Plutarch ascribes to Heraclitus, that all men. whilst they are awake are in one common world, but that each of them when he is asleep, is in a world of his own.' The waking man is conversant in the world of nature; when he sleeps he retires to a private world that is particular to himself. There seems something in this consideration that intimates to us a natural grandeur and perfection in the soul, which is rather to be admired than explained. I must not omit that argument for the excellency of the soul, which I have seen quoted out of Tertullian, namely, its power of divining in dreams. That several such divinations have been made, none can question, who believes the holy writings, or who has but the least degree of a common historical faith; there being innumerable instances of this nature in several authors, both ancient and modern, sacred and profane. Whether such dark presages, such visions of the night, proceed from any latent power in the soul, during this her state of abstraction, or from any communication with the Supreme Being, or from any operation of subordinate spirits, has been a great dispute among the learned; the matter of fact is, I think, incontestible, and has been looked upon as such by the greatest writers, who have been never suspected either of superstition or enthusiasm. I do not suppose, that the soul in these instances is entirely loose and unfettered from the body; it is sufficient, if she is not so far sunk, and immersed in matter, nor entangled and perplexed in her operations, with such motions of blood and spirits, as when she actuates the machine in its waking hours. The corporeal union is slackened enough to give the mind more play. The soul seems gathered within herself, and recovers that spring which is broke and weakened, when she operates more in concert with the body. The speculations I have bere made, if they are not arguments, they are at least strong intimations, not only of the excellency of a human soul, but of its independence on the body: and if they do not prove, do at least confirm these two great points, which are established by many other reasons that are altogether unanswerable. ADDISON. 0. No. 488. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 19. Quanti empte? parvo. Quanti ergo? octo assibus. Eheu! What doth it cost? Not much upon my word. * I FIND, by several letters which I receive daily, that many of my readers would be better pleased to pay three half-pence for my paper than twopence. The ingenious T. W. tells me, that I have deprived him of the best part of his breakfast, for that, since the rise of my paper, he is forced every morning to drink his dish of coffee * Dr. Thomas Walker, head master of the Charter School, whose scholars Addison and Steele had been. by itself, without the addition of the Spectator, that used to be better than lace to it. Eugenius informs me very obligingly, that he never thought he should have disliked any passage in my paper, but that of late there have been two words in every one of them which he could heartily wish left out, viz. Price Two-pence.' I have a letter from a soap-boiler, who condoles with me very affectionately upon the necessity we both lie under of setting a higher price on our commodities, since the late tax has been laid upon them, and desiring me when I write next on that subject, to speak a word or two upon the present duties on Castile soap. But there is none of these my correspondents who write with a greater turn of good sense and elegance of expression than the generous Philomedes, who advises me to value every Spectator at sixpence, and promises that he himself will engage for above a hundred of his acquaintance, who shall take it at that price. Letters from the female world are likewise come to me, in greater quantities upon the same occasion; and as I naturally bear a great deference to this part of our species, I am very glad to find that those who approve my conduct in this particular are much more numerous than those who condemn it. A large family of daughters have drawn up a very handsome remonstrance, in which they set forth that their father having refused to take in the Spectator, since the additional price was set upon it, they offered him unanimously to bate him the article of bread and butter in the tea-table account, provided the Spectator might be served up to them every |