who are asleep; but that his other bodily dispositions which bear no natural relation with the imagination cannot be so affected; so that imagination cannot, for example, cause any man to add one cubit to his stature.
The argument is proved also by the daily experience of sleep-walkers who do wonderful things in their sleep: for it is agreed that such things are done through the power of imagination while the senses are asleep. Many such matters are discussed by Martin Delrio,[1] Disquisitiones Magicae, Quaest. I, 3.
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Examples.
Martin Delrio[2] tells of what happened at a monastery at Liège a few years ago. There was a certain lay brother whose duty it was during the day to teach the rudiments of the Catechism to a class of boys: and when he slept his thoughts were occupied with the same subject, so that he used to teach in his sleep, encouraging and scolding the boys as loudly and fervently as he did when he was awake; and in this way he disturbed the sleep of those near him. Another lay brother who slept next to him often complained to him about it; and one day he jokingly threatened that, if he made that noise again, he would get up in the night and go to his bed and beat him with a rope whip. And what did Gundislaus, as his name was, do? In the middle of the night he arose in his sleep and went from his bed to his fellow’s cubicle with a pair of scissors in his hand which he pointed straight at the bed of the other who had threatened him. But see the providence of God! The moon was shining, and the night was clear and cloudless; so that the brother, who was awake, saw him coming and at once threw himself from the bed on that side where the partition was farthest removed. The sleeper came up to the bed and stabbed the mattress three or four times with the scissors, and quickly went back where he came from. In the morning he was questioned, and said that he remembered nothing of it, adding that he had never had the least thought of doing such a thing; but that he had only contemplated frightening that brother and driving him off with the scissors if he had approached him with a whip.
Two friends[3] were travelling together back to their own country and came one day to a town where one of them had an acquaintance with whom he lodged, while the other went to an inn for the night, intending to resume their journey the next day. But while his guest was sleeping the innkeeper, conceiving a greedy desire to take his money, killed him; and having done so began to think how he could smuggle the body out of the town to
- ↑ “Martin Delrio.” This famous Jesuit scholar was born at Antwerp, 17 May, 1551, and died at Louvain, 19 October, 1608. His encyclopaedic “Disquisitionum Magicarum Libri Sex,” 3 vols., 5to, 1599, was frequently reprinted. Of these the folio, 1603, Mainz, is among the most highly esteemed. It is sometimes said that the first edition of Delrio’s work was Mainz, 1593, but this folio is a mere myth.
- ↑ “Delrio.” “Disquisitiones Magicae,” III, q. 3.
- ↑ “Two friends.” This history is very famous in English literature as having been introduced by Chaucer into the Nonne Preestes Tale of the Cok and Hen, Chauntecleer and Pertelote. Guazzo had it from Cicero, “De Diuinatione,” I, 27. It is also related by Valerius Maximus, I, 7 (“De Somniis”), where Warton wrongly supposed that Chaucer had found it. But it is plain that Cicero was the author to whom Chaucer refers, since in the “De Diuinatione” are two histories and both these the poet gives, but in a changed order and notes before the second narrative:
And certes, in the same book I rede,
Right in the nexte chapitre after this …
