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Dreams and Guilt

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2011

Manfred Weidhorn
Manfred Weidhorn
Affiliation:
Yeshiva University, New York
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Extract

When, in the fifth book of Paradise Lost, Eve reveals her unsettling dream, in which she saw herself eating the forbidden fruit at the prompting of a mysterious stranger, Adam dismisses it as an experience of no importance. Since her will was not involved, he believes, she incurred no guilt. His argument that the dream is without significance persuades her but not us, who have beheld Satan, during the couple's sleep, causing the dream in Eve in order to taint her faculties and perhaps to probe her weaknesses:

Squat like a Toad, close at the ear of Eve;

Assaying by his Devilish art to reach

The Organs of her Fancy, and with them forge

Illusions as he list, Phantasms and Dreams.

(IV, 800–03)

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Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 58 , Issue 1 , January 1965, pp. 69 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1965

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References

1 Stein, Arnold, Answerable Style (Minneapolis, 1953), pp. 83, 93–94, 102Google Scholar; Tillyard, E. M. W., Studies in Milton (London, 1951), pp. 11, 30, 70.Google Scholar

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5 Epictetus, II, 23; Zeno quoted in Plutarch, I, 441–43. The point is, as Plutarch went on to explain, that the soul is like a trained beast; both, if properly disciplined, will behave as well without restraints as with them. So, too, a character in Philostratus's Apollonius (VI. x) asserts that we must be on our guard in all dreams which lift us off the earth. This attitude is reflected in a work as late as Calderon's La vida es sueno (II. xviii), where the hero is rebuked for nasty behavior to his father in his “dream”:

que aun en sueños
No se pierde el hacer bien.

6 Tertullian, Apologetic Works, trans. Quinn, E. A. (New York, 1950), pp. 278–88;Google ScholarChrysostom, St. John, Homilies, in “The Library of the Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church” (London, 1841)Google Scholar, VII, 410; St. Augustine, Super Genesim ad Litt., xii, quoted in St. Thomas, Summa Theologica, III, 80, 7; Timothy quoted in Nemesius of Emesa, trans. Telfer, T. (New York, 1950), p. 368Google Scholar n. 4. Nemesius of Emesa himself based his assertion that the generative faculty is a bodily function not answerable to reason (although the sexual act itself is) on the notion, expressed by Timothy et al., that in dreams we emit semen involuntarily (loc. cit.).

The contemporary rabbis of the Talmud likewise held, despite the possible import of Deut. 23:10–11 and of the incident in Josephus, that sexual intercourse with a spirit in dreams (or standing naked in Babylon) is without sin (Kristianpoller, Alexander, Traum und Traumdeutung im Talmud [Wien, 1923], pp. 22 n. 55, ss n. 178).Google Scholar

7 St. Gregory the Great quoted in Bede, Opera Historica, ed. King, J. E. (London, 1930), I, 146–52Google Scholar (I. xxvii q. 9).

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9 Caramuel's 1645 letter to Fr. A. Kircher is quoted in Meseguer, Pedro, J., S., The Secret of Dreams, trans. Burns, Paul (Westminster, Md., 1961), p. 168.Google Scholar Meseguer defends St. Thomas by pointing out that at issue is not reason alone, which does sometimes survive to a degree, but a fullness of judgment necessary for free choice; as a matter of fact, the common sense is always deceived in dreams. Yet ultimately Meseguer tends to agree with someone like the fifteenth-century Venetian, St. Laurence Justinian, who declared that the evil dream reveals some sort of concupiscence deep within not yet overcome (pp. 178, 181); see below.

10 Taylor, Jeremy, The Rule and Exercise of Holy Living and Dying, ed. Malleson, F. A. (London, 1894), p. 135Google Scholar; Morton, Charles, Compendium Physicae (c. 1687), ed. Hornberger, T. (Boston, 1940), p. 195Google Scholar; Bishop Usher, Body of Divinity, quoted in Thomas Tryon, A Treatise of Dreams and Visions … (London, 2nd ed., 1695), p. 215; Philip Goodwin, The Mystery of Dreames (London, 1657), Epistle Declaratory and pp. 100, 104, 106, 286, 307.

11 Sir Browne, Thomas, “On Dreams,” in Miscellaneous Writings, ed. Keynes, G. (London, 1931), pp. 186–87.Google Scholar

12 Richard III, I, i, 33–54; Butler, S., Satires, ed. Lamar, R. (Cambridge, 1928), p. 252Google Scholar; Jonson, Ben, Plays, ed. Schelling, F. E. (London, 1910), I, 312Google Scholar, 367. Other seventeenth-century allusions to this are to be found in Cowley, A., Works, ed. Waller, A. R. (Cambridge, 1905–1906), II, 190Google Scholar, and Oldham, J., Works (London, 6th ed., 1703), p. 122.Google Scholar

13 For Laud, see History of the Troubles and Tryal of … William Laud … (London, 1694), passim, and William Prynne, A Breviate of the Life of William Laud (London, 1643); the Spanish inquisitor is Thomas Careña, Tractatus de Officio sanctissimae Inquisitionis (Lyons, 1659), quoted in Freud, Die Traumdeutung (Wien, 7th ed., 1922), p. 49 n.Google Scholar

14 Measure for Measure, II, ii, 4; W. Sampson, The Vow Breaker (III, i), quoted in Jones, Ernest, The Nightmare (London, 1931), p. 89Google Scholar; Wycherly, Plays, ed. Ward, W. C. (New York, 1949), p. 140.Google Scholar

15 Meseguer, op. cit., pp. 166, 170–71, 178, 181, 182.

16 Freud, op. cit., pp. 457–58. For the idea in Browne and Freud that the dream is wanting in “reality,” cf. Aristotle's Metaphysics, V. xxix (1024b), where the “false” is compared to unreal things like the dream, which seems to be something but does not exist.

17 The only objection that might be raised here is that Eve seems to have reprehensible thoughts from the moment of her creation, as is seen by her narcissistic preference of her own reflection in the water to Adam. This is Stein's contention. But the question of how well such thoughts could have brought on the dream or have presented Satan with a vulnerability remains arguable.

18 Paradise Regained, II, 260–83; IV, 407–09, 422–31. To be sure, though Eve's dream and Christ's first dream are about eating, Eve's seems more evil in that her dream action involves the breaking of God's command. Christ's dream, however, represents the breaking of a self-imposed fast and discipline; the Bible did not look lightly on such actions.

19 McColley, Grant, “Paradise Lost,” HTR 32 (1939), 210 n. 137.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 St. Thomas, Summa Theologica, I, 114, 2.