The vanity of dogmatizing: or confidence in opinions (1661) - Page 10

The Preface.

We love, we hate, we feel joy, we grieve: passions bother us, and our minds are disturbed by those bodily agitations original: "corporal æstuations". Nor yet can we tell how these should reach our unbodied selves, or how the Soul should be affected by these different types of disturbances. We lay ourselves down to sleep away our daily cares; night shuts the windows of the Senses, the mind pulls back into the center of the Brain. We live in death, and lie as if in the grave. Now we know nothing, nor can our waking thoughts tell us who Morpheus the god of dreams is, or what that heavy Key is that locks us up within our senseless cells: There is a difficulty that pinches us, and it will not be easily solved. The Soul is awake, and moved by external motions, for some

The Preface.

some of them reach the perceiving part of the mind in the most silent rest and darkness of night. What is it then that prevents our sensations; or if we do perceive, how is it that we do not know it? But we Dream, see Visions, talk with Chimæra's mythological monsters; here meaning wild fancies, the one half of our lives is a Romance, a fiction. We remember fragments of those pretty stories, and our awakened imagination smiles at the memory. Nor yet can our most serious inquiries find what deceived us so, or show the nature and manner of these nightly illusions: When we puzzle ourselves in the investigation, we do but dream, and every Hypothesis theoretical explanation is a fancy. Our most hardworking ideas are just like their object, and as uncertain as those of midnight.