Chapter Chapter 105 · How Pantagruel adviseth Panu

Chapter 3.XIII.

How Pantagruel adviseth Panurge to try the future good or bad luck of his

marriage by dreams.

Now, seeing we cannot agree together in the manner of expounding or

interpreting the sense of the Virgilian lots, let us bend our course

another way, and try a new sort of divination. Of what kind? asked

Panurge. Of a good ancient and authentic fashion, answered Pantagruel; it

is by dreams. For in dreaming, such circumstances and conditions being

thereto adhibited, as are clearly enough described by Hippocrates, in Lib.

Peri ton enupnion, by Plato, Plotin, Iamblicus, Sinesius, Aristotle,

Xenophon, Galen, Plutarch, Artemidorus, Daldianus, Herophilus, Q. Calaber,

Theocritus, Pliny, Athenaeus, and others, the soul doth oftentimes foresee

what is to come. How true this is, you may conceive by a very vulgar and

familiar example; as when you see that at such a time as suckling babes,

well nourished, fed, and fostered with good milk, sleep soundly and

profoundly, the nurses in the interim get leave to sport themselves, and

are licentiated to recreate their fancies at what range to them shall seem

most fitting and expedient, their presence, sedulity, and attendance on

the cradle being, during all that space, held unnecessary. Even just so,

when our body is at rest, that the concoction is everywhere accomplished,

and that, till it awake, it lacks for nothing, our soul delighteth to

disport itself and is well pleased in that frolic to take a review of its

native country, which is the heavens, where it receiveth a most notable

participation of its first beginning with an imbuement from its divine

source, and in contemplation of that infinite and intellectual sphere,

whereof the centre is everywhere, and the circumference in no place of the

universal world, to wit, God, according to the doctrine of Hermes

Trismegistus, to whom no new thing happeneth, whom nothing that is past

escapeth, and unto whom all things are alike present, remarketh not only

what is preterit and gone in the inferior course and agitation of sublunary

matters, but withal taketh notice what is to come; then bringing a relation

of those future events unto the body of the outward senses and exterior

organs, it is divulged abroad unto the hearing of others. Whereupon the

owner of that soul deserveth to be termed a vaticinator, or prophet.

Nevertheless, the truth is, that the soul is seldom able to report those

things in such sincerity as it hath seen them, by reason of the

imperfection and frailty of the corporeal senses, which obstruct the

effectuating of that office; even as the moon doth not communicate unto

this earth of ours that light which she receiveth from the sun with so much

splendour, heat, vigour, purity, and liveliness as it was given her. Hence

it is requisite for the better reading, explaining, and unfolding of these

somniatory vaticinations and predictions of that nature, that a dexterous,

learned, skilful, wise, industrious, expert, rational, and peremptory

expounder or interpreter be pitched upon, such a one as by the Greeks is

called onirocrit, or oniropolist. For this cause Heraclitus was wont to

say that nothing is by dreams revealed to us, that nothing is by dreams

concealed from us, and that only we thereby have a mystical signification

and secret evidence of things to come, either for our own prosperous or

unlucky fortune, or for the favourable or disastrous success of another.

The sacred Scriptures testify no less, and profane histories assure us of

it, in both which are exposed to our view a thousand several kinds of

strange adventures, which have befallen pat according to the nature of the

dream, and that as well to the party dreamer as to others. The Atlantic

people, and those that inhabit the (is)land of Thasos, one of the Cyclades,

are of this grand commodity deprived; for in their countries none yet ever

dreamed. Of this sort (were) Cleon of Daulia, Thrasymedes, and in our days

the learned Frenchman Villanovanus, neither of all which knew what dreaming

was.

Fail not therefore to-morrow, when the jolly and fair Aurora with her rosy

fingers draweth aside the curtains of the night to drive away the sable

shades of darkness, to bend your spirits wholly to the task of sleeping

sound, and thereto apply yourself. In the meanwhile you must denude your

mind of every human passion or affection, such as are love and hatred, fear

and hope, for as of old the great vaticinator, most famous and renowned

prophet Proteus, was not able in his disguise or transformation into fire,

water, a tiger, a dragon, and other such like uncouth shapes and visors, to

presage anything that was to come till he was restored to his own first

natural and kindly form; just so doth man; for, at his reception of the art

of divination and faculty of prognosticating future things, that part in

him which is the most divine, to wit, the Nous, or Mens, must be calm,

peaceable, untroubled, quiet, still, hushed, and not embusied or distracted

with foreign, soul-disturbing perturbations. I am content, quoth Panurge.

But, I pray you, sir, must I this evening, ere I go to bed, eat much or

little? I do not ask this without cause. For if I sup not well, large,

round, and amply, my sleeping is not worth a forked turnip. All the night

long I then but doze and rave, and in my slumbering fits talk idle

nonsense, my thoughts being in a dull brown study, and as deep in their

dumps as is my belly hollow.

Not to sup, answered Pantagruel, were best for you, considering the state

of your complexion and healthy constitution of your body. A certain very

ancient prophet, named Amphiaraus, wished such as had a mind by dreams to

be imbued with any oracle, for four-and-twenty hours to taste no victuals,

and to abstain from wine three days together. Yet shall not you be put to

such a sharp, hard, rigorous, and extreme sparing diet. I am truly right

apt to believe that a man whose stomach is replete with various cheer, and

in a manner surfeited with drinking, is hardly able to conceive aright of

spiritual things; yet am not I of the opinion of those who, after long and

pertinacious fastings, think by such means to enter more profoundly into

the speculation of celestial mysteries. You may very well remember how my

father Gargantua (whom here for honour sake I name) hath often told us that

the writings of abstinent, abstemious, and long-fasting hermits were every

whit as saltless, dry, jejune, and insipid as were their bodies when they

did compose them. It is a most difficult thing for the spirits to be in a

good plight, serene and lively, when there is nothing in the body but a

kind of voidness and inanity; seeing the philosophers with the physicians

jointly affirm that the spirits which are styled animal spring from, and

have their constant practice in and through the arterial blood, refined and

purified to the life within the admirable net which, wonderfully framed,

lieth under the ventricles and tunnels of the brain. He gave us also the

example of the philosopher who, when he thought most seriously to have

withdrawn himself unto a solitary privacy, far from the rustling

clutterments of the tumultuous and confused world, the better to improve

his theory, to contrive, comment, and ratiocinate, was, notwithstanding his

uttermost endeavours to free himself from all untoward noises, surrounded

and environed about so with the barking of curs, bawling of mastiffs,

bleating of sheep, prating of parrots, tattling of jackdaws, grunting of

swine, girning of boars, yelping of foxes, mewing of cats, cheeping of

mice, squeaking of weasels, croaking of frogs, crowing of cocks, cackling

of hens, calling of partridges, chanting of swans, chattering of jays,

peeping of chickens, singing of larks, creaking of geese, chirping of

swallows, clucking of moorfowls, cucking of cuckoos, bumbling of bees,

rammage of hawks, chirming of linnets, croaking of ravens, screeching of

owls, whicking of pigs, gushing of hogs, curring of pigeons, grumbling of

cushat-doves, howling of panthers, curkling of quails, chirping of

sparrows, crackling of crows, nuzzing of camels, wheening of whelps,

buzzing of dromedaries, mumbling of rabbits, cricking of ferrets, humming

of wasps, mioling of tigers, bruzzing of bears, sussing of kitlings,

clamouring of scarfs, whimpering of fulmarts, booing of buffaloes, warbling

of nightingales, quavering of mavises, drintling of turkeys, coniating of

storks, frantling of peacocks, clattering of magpies, murmuring of

stock-doves, crouting of cormorants, cigling of locusts, charming of

beagles, guarring of puppies, snarling of messens, rantling of rats,

guerieting of apes, snuttering of monkeys, pioling of pelicans, quacking of

ducks, yelling of wolves, roaring of lions, neighing of horses, crying of

elephants, hissing of serpents, and wailing of turtles, that he was much

more troubled than if he had been in the middle of the crowd at the fair of

Fontenay or Niort. Just so is it with those who are tormented with the

grievous pangs of hunger. The stomach begins to gnaw, and bark, as it were,

the eyes to look dim, and the veins, by greedily sucking some refection to

themselves from the proper substance of all the members of a fleshy

consistence, violently pull down and draw back that vagrant, roaming spirit,

careless and neglecting of his nurse and natural host, which is the body; as

when a hawk upon the fist, willing to take her flight by a soaring aloft in

the open spacious air, is on a sudden drawn back by a leash tied to her

feet.

To this purpose also did he allege unto us the authority of Homer, the

father of all philosophy, who said that the Grecians did not put an end to

their mournful mood for the death of Patroclus, the most intimate friend of

Achilles, till hunger in a rage declared herself, and their bellies

protested to furnish no more tears unto their grief. For from bodies

emptied and macerated by long fasting there could not be such supply of

moisture and brackish drops as might be proper on that occasion.

Mediocrity at all times is commendable; nor in this case are you to abandon

it. You may take a little supper, but thereat must you not eat of a hare,

nor of any other flesh. You are likewise to abstain from beans, from the

preak, by some called the polyp, as also from coleworts, cabbage, and all

other such like windy victuals, which may endanger the troubling of your

brains and the dimming or casting a kind of mist over your animal spirits.

For, as a looking-glass cannot exhibit the semblance or representation of

the object set before it, and exposed to have its image to the life

expressed, if that the polished sleekedness thereof be darkened by gross

breathings, dampish vapours, and foggy, thick, infectious exhalations, even

so the fancy cannot well receive the impression of the likeness of those

things which divination doth afford by dreams, if any way the body be

annoyed or troubled with the fumish steam of meat which it had taken in a

while before; because betwixt these two there still hath been a mutual

sympathy and fellow-feeling of an indissolubly knit affection. You shall

eat good Eusebian and Bergamot pears, one apple of the short-shank pippin

kind, a parcel of the little plums of Tours, and some few cherries of the

growth of my orchard. Nor shall you need to fear that thereupon will ensue

doubtful dreams, fallacious, uncertain, and not to be trusted to, as by

some peripatetic philosophers hath been related; for that, say they, men do

more copiously in the season of harvest feed on fruitages than at any other

time. The same is mystically taught us by the ancient prophets and poets,

who allege that all vain and deceitful dreams lie hid and in covert under

the leaves which are spread on the ground--by reason that the leaves fall

from the trees in the autumnal quarter. For the natural fervour which,

abounding in ripe, fresh, recent fruits, cometh by the quickness of its

ebullition to be with ease evaporated into the animal parts of the dreaming

person--the experiment is obvious in most--is a pretty while before it be

expired, dissolved, and evanished. As for your drink, you are to have it

of the fair, pure water of my fountain.

The condition, quoth Panurge, is very hard. Nevertheless, cost what price

it will, or whatsoever come of it, I heartily condescend thereto;

protesting that I shall to-morrow break my fast betimes after my somniatory

exercitations. Furthermore, I recommend myself to Homer’s two gates, to

Morpheus, to Iselon, to Phantasus, and unto Phobetor. If they in this my

great need succour me and grant me that assistance which is fitting, I will

in honour of them all erect a jolly, genteel altar, composed of the softest

down. If I were now in Laconia, in the temple of Juno, betwixt Oetile and

Thalamis, she suddenly would disentangle my perplexity, resolve me of my

doubts, and cheer me up with fair and jovial dreams in a deep sleep.

Then did he say thus unto Pantagruel: Sir, were it not expedient for my

purpose to put a branch or two of curious laurel betwixt the quilt and

bolster of my bed, under the pillow on which my head must lean? There is

no need at all of that, quoth Pantagruel; for, besides that it is a thing

very superstitious, the cheat thereof hath been at large discovered unto us

in the writings of Serapion, Ascalonites, Antiphon, Philochorus, Artemon,

and Fulgentius Planciades. I could say as much to you of the left shoulder

of a crocodile, as also of a chameleon, without prejudice be it spoken to

the credit which is due to the opinion of old Democritus; and likewise of

the stone of the Bactrians, called Eumetrides, and of the Ammonian horn;

for so by the Aethiopians is termed a certain precious stone, coloured like

gold, and in the fashion, shape, form, and proportion of a ram’s horn, as

the horn of Jupiter Ammon is reported to have been: they over and above

assuredly affirming that the dreams of those who carry it about them are no

less veritable and infallible than the truth of the divine oracles. Nor is

this much unlike to what Homer and Virgil wrote of these two gates of

sleep, to which you have been pleased to recommend the management of what

you have in hand. The one is of ivory, which letteth in confused,

doubtful, and uncertain dreams; for through ivory, how small and slender

soever it be, we can see nothing, the density, opacity, and close

compactedness of its material parts hindering the penetration of the visual

rays and the reception of the specieses of such things as are visible. The

other is of horn, at which an entry is made to sure and certain dreams,

even as through horn, by reason of the diaphanous splendour and bright

transparency thereof, the species of all objects of the sight distinctly

pass, and so without confusion appear, that they are clearly seen. Your

meaning is, and you would thereby infer, quoth Friar John, that the dreams

of all horned cuckolds, of which number Panurge, by the help of God and his

future wife, is without controversy to be one, are always true and

infallible.