Edward W Cox

A monograph on sleep and dream Edward W Cox

Some papers on the Phenomena of Sleep and Dream, read before The Psychological Society of Great Britain, having excited much interest and caused considerable discussion, I was requested to put them into the more formal shape of a treatise. For this purpose I found it necessary to recast and rewrite the whole. The modern endeavour to pursue Psychology, as all the physical sciences are now pursued, by the study of facts and phenomena, instead of by metaphysical abstractions, consulting of inner consciousness and argument à priori, has invested the subject of this monograph with extraordinary importance, because Sleep and Dream are familiar physical and psychical conditions, disputed by none and which cannot be ascribed to prepossession, [iv] dominant ideas, or diluted insanity. Therefore a profound, fearless, and searching investigation of their characteristics, causes, and operations could not fail to throw a flood of light upon many of the seeming mysteries of mental philosophy and psychology, promising a solution of some most difficult problems of life and mind, and revealing to us-as do the phenomena of dream-much of the structure and action of the Mechanism of Man. The marvel is that such obvious means of access to hidden springs of that mechanism should have been so long neglected by Physiologists and Psychologists. In dealing with a subject so old and yet so new, I can do little more than suggest explanations of phenomena. I do not venture to assert them. Those suggestions are submitted to the reader to induce him to think and as subjects for further examination and discussion rather than as dogmatic assumptions of ascertained truths. The facts and phenomena reported are vouched for so far as my own means of ascertaining their truth[v] enable me; but causes and conclusions can of necessity be little more than conjecture until a much larger collection of the facts be made. To the gathering of such facts I hope this little book may stimulate many observers. I shall deem the communication of them a valuable contribution to science, and a favour to myself.