Chapter XIII: Conclusion

The Fundamental Nature of Dreaming--Insanity and Dreaming--The
Child's Psychic State and the Dream State--Primitive Thought and
Dreams--Dreaming and Myth-Making--Genius and Dreams--Dreaming as a
Road into the Infinite.

In the preceding chapters we have traced some of the elementary tendencies which prevail in the formation of dreams. These tendencies are in some respects so unlike those that rule in waking life--slight and subtle as their unlikeness often seems--that we are justified in regarding the psychic phenomena of sleeping life as constituting a world of their own.

Yet when we look at the phenomena a little more deeply we realise that, however differentiated they have become, dream life is yet strictly co-ordinated with other forms of psychic life. If we pierce below the surface we seem to reach a primitive fundamental psychic stage in which the dreamer, the madman, the child, and the savage alike have their starting point, and possess a degree of community from which the waking, civilised, sane adult of to-day is shut out, so that he can only comprehend it by an intellectual effort.[243] It thus happens that the ways of thinking and feeling of the child and the savage and the lunatic each furnish a road by which we may reach a psychic world which is essentially that of the dreamer.

The resemblance of insanity to dream life has, above all, impressed observers from the time when the nature of insanity was first definitely recognised. It would be outside the limits of the present book to discuss the points at which dreams resemble or differ from insanity, but it is worth while to touch on the question of their affinity. The recognition of this affinity, or at all events analogy, though it was stated by Cabanis to be due to Cullen, is as old as Aristotle, and has constantly been put forward afresh. Thus in the sixteenth century Du Laurens (A. Laurentius), in his treatise on the disease of melancholy, as insanity was then termed, compared it to dreaming.[244] The same point is still constantly brought forward by the more philosophic physician. 'Find out all about dreams,' Hughlings Jackson has said, 'and you will have found out all about insanity.' From the wider standpoint of the psychologist, Jastrow points out that not only insanity, but all the forms of delirium, including the drug-intoxications, are 'variants of dream consciousness.'

The reality of the affinity of dreaming and insanity is well illustrated by a case, coming under the observation of Marro, in which a dream, formed according to the ordinary rules of dreaming, produced a temporary fit of insanity in an otherwise perfectly sane subject.[245] In this case a highly intelligent but somewhat neurotic young man was returning to Italy after pursuing his studies abroad, and reached Turin, on the homeward journey, in a somewhat tired state. In the train he believed that he had detected some cardsharpers, and that they suspected him of finding them out, and bore him ill-will in consequence. This produced a state of general nervous apprehension. At the hotel his room was over the kitchen; it was in consequence very hot, and to a late hour he could still hear voices and catch snatches of conversation, which seemed to him to be directed against himself. His suspicions deepened, he heard noises, in reality due to the kitchen utensils, which seemed preparations for his murder, and he ultimately became convinced that there was a plot to set fire to his room in order to force him to leave it, when he would be seized and murdered. He resolved to escape, got out of the window with his revolver in his hand, found his way to another part of the house, encountered a man who had been awakened by his movements, and shot at him, believing him to be a party to the imaginary conspiracy. He was seized and taken to the asylum, where he speedily regained calm, and realised the delusion into which he had fallen. When questioned by Marro, on reaching the asylum, he was unaware that he had ever fallen asleep during the night; he could not, however, account for all the time that had elapsed before he left the room, and it was probable, Marro concludes, that he was in a state between waking and sleeping, and that his delusion was constituted in a dream. Fatigue, nervous apprehension, an unduly hot bedroom, the close proximity of servants' voices, and the sound of kitchen utensils, had thus combined, in a state of partial sleep, to produce in an otherwise sane person, a morbid condition in every respect identical with that found in insane persons who are suffering from systematised delusions of persecution.[246]

The resemblance of the child's psychic state to the dream state is an observation of less ancient date than that of the analogy between dreaming and insanity, but it has frequently been made by modern psychologists. 'In dreams,' says Freud, 'the child with his impulses lives again,'[247] and Giessler has devoted a chapter to the points of resemblance between dream life and the mental activity of children.[248]

I should be more especially inclined to find the dream-like character of the child's mind at three points: (1) the abnormally logical tendency of the child's mind and the daring mental fusions which he effects in forming theories; (2) the greater preponderance of hypnagogic phenomena and hallucinations in childhood, as well as the large element of reverie or day-dreaming in the child's life, and the facility with which he confuses this waking imagination with reality; and (3) the child's tendency to mistake, also, the dreams of the night for real events.[249] This last tendency is of serious practical import when it leads a child, in all innocence, to make criminal charges against other persons.[250] This tendency clearly indicates the close resemblance which there is for children between dream life and waking life; it also shows the great vividness which children's dreams possess. In imaginative children, it may be added, a rich and vivid dream life is not infrequently the direct source of literary activities which lead to distinction in later life.[251]

The child, we are often told, is the representative of the modern savage and the primitive man. That is not, in any strict sense, true, nor can we assume without question that early man and modern savages are identical. But we can have very little doubt that in our dreams we are brought near to ways of thought and feeling that are sometimes closer to those of early man, as well as of latter-day savages, than are our psychic modes in civilisation.[252] So remote are we to-day from the world of our dreams that we very rarely draw from them the inspiration of our waking lives. For the primitive man the laws of the waking world are not yet widely differentiated from the laws of the sleeping world, and he finds it not unreasonable to seek illumination for the problems of one world in the phenomena of the other. The doctrine of animism, as first formulated by Tylor (more especially in his _Primitive Culture_) finds in dreams the chief source of primitive religion and philosophy. Of recent years there has been a tendency to reject the theory of animism.[253] Certainly it is possible to rely too exclusively on dreams as the inspiration of early man; if the evidence of dreams had not been in a line with the evidence that he derived from other sources, there is no reason why the man of primitive times should have attached any peculiar value to dreams. But if the animistic conception presents too extreme a view of the primitive importance of dreaming, we must beware lest the reaction against it should lead us to fall into the opposite extreme. Durkheim argues that it is unlikely that early man attaches much significance to dreams, for the modern peasant, who is the representative of primitive man, appears to dream very little, and not to attach much importance to his dreams. But it is by no means true that the peasant of civilisation, with his fixed agricultural life, corresponds to early man who was mainly a hunter and often a nomad. Under the conditions of civilisation the peasant is fed regularly and leads a peaceful, stolid, laborious, and equable life, which is altogether unfavourable to psychic activity of any kind, awake or asleep. The savage man, now and ever, as a hunter and fighter, leads a life of comparative idleness, broken by spurts of violent activity; sometimes he can gorge himself with food, sometimes he is on the verge of starvation. He lives under conditions that are more favourable to the psychic side of life, awake or asleep, than is the case with the peasant of civilisation.

Moreover, it must be remembered that all the peoples whom we may fairly regard as in some degree resembling early man possess a specialised caste of exceptional men who artificially cultivate their psychic activities, and thereby exert great influence on their fellows. These are termed, after their very typical representatives in some Siberian tribes, _shamans_, and combine the functions of priests and sorcerers and medicine men. It is nearly everywhere found that the shaman--who is often, it would appear, at the outset a somewhat abnormal person--cultivates solitude, fasting, and all manner of ascetic practices, thereby acquiring an unusual aptitude to dream, to see visions, to experience hallucinations, and, it may well be, to acquire abnormally clairvoyant powers. The shamans of the Andamanese are called by a word signifying dreamer, and in various parts of the world the shaman finds the first sign of his vocation in a dream. The evocation of dreams is often the chief end of the shaman's abnormal method of life. Thus, among the Salish Indians of British Columbia, dreams are the proper mode of communication with guardian spirits, and 'prolonged fasts, bathings, forced vomitings, and other exhausting bodily exercises are the means adopted for inducing the mystic dreams and visions.'[254]

When we witness the phenomena of Shamanism in all parts of the world it is difficult to dispute the statement of Lucretius that the gods first appeared to men in dreams. This may be said to be literally true; even to-day it often happens that the savage's totem, who is practically his tutelary deity, first appears to him in a dream.[255] An influence which seems likely to have been so persistent may well have had a large plastic power in moulding the myths and legends which everywhere embody the religious impulses of men. This idea was long ago suggested by Hobbes. 'From this ignorance of how to distinguish dreams and other strong Fancies,' he wrote, 'from Vision and Sense, did arise the greatest part of the Religion of the Gentiles in time past, that worshipped Satyrs, Fauns, Nymphs, and the like.'[256]

Ludwig Laistner, however, appears to have been the first to argue in detail that dreams, and especially nightmares, have played an important part in the evolution of mythological ideas. 'If we bear in mind,' he said in the Preface to his great work, 'how intimately poetry and religion are connected with myth, we encounter the surprising fact that the first germ of these highly important vital manifestations is not to be found in any action of the waking mind, but in sleep, and that the chief and oldest teacher of productive imagination is not to be found in the experiences of life, but in the phantasies of dream.'[257] The pictures men formed of the over-world and the under-world have the character of dreams and hypnagogic visions, and this is true even within the sphere of Christianity.[258] The invention of Hell, Maudsley has declared, would find an adequate explanation, if such is needed, in the sufferings of some delirious patients, while the apocalyptic vision of Heaven with which our Christian Bible concludes, is, Beaunis remarks, nothing but a long dream.[259] And if it is true, as Baudelaire has said, that 'every well conformed brain carries within it two infinites: Heaven and Hell,' we may well believe that both Heaven and Hell find their most vivid symbolism in the spontaneous action of dreams.

In migraine and the epileptic aura visions of diminutive creatures sometimes occur, and occasionally micropsic vision in which real objects appear diminished. It has been suggested by Sir Lauder Brunton that we may here have the origin of fairies, at all events for some races of fairies; for fairies, though diminutive in some countries, as in England, are not diminutive in others, as in Ireland. A more normal and frequent channel of intercourse with such creatures is, however, to be found in dreams. This is illustrated by the following dream experienced by a lady: 'I saw a man wheeling along a cripple. Eventually the cripple became reduced to about the size of a walnut, and the man told me that he had the power of becoming any size and of going anywhere. To my horror he then threw him into the water. In answer to my remonstrances that he would surely be drowned, the man said that it was all right, the little fellow would be home in a few hours. He then shouted out, "What time do you expect to get back?" The tiny creature, who was paddling along in the water, then took out a miniature watch, and replied: "About seven!"'[260] In a dream of my own I saw little creatures, a few inches high, moving about and acting on a diminutive stage. Though I regarded them as really living creatures, and not marionettes, the spectacle caused me no surprise.

The dream-like character of myths, legends, and fairy tales is probably, however, not entirely due to direct borrowing from the actual dreams of sleep, or even from the hallucinations connected with insanity, music, or drugs, though all these may have played their part. The greater nearness of the primitive mind to the dream-state involves more than a tendency to embody in waking life conceptions obtained from dreams. It means that the waking psychic life itself is capable of acting in a way resembling that of the sleeping psychic life, and of evolving conceptions similar to dreams.

This point of view has in recent years been especially set forth by Freud and his school, who argue that the laws of the formation of myths and fairy tales are identical with the laws in accordance with which dreams are formed.[261] It certainly seems to be true that the resemblances between dreams and legends are not adequately explained by supposing that the latter are moulded out of the former. We have to believe that on the myth-making plane of thought we are really on a plane that is more nearly parallel with that of dreaming than is our ordinary civilised thought. We are in a world of things that are supernormally enormous or delicate, and the emotional vibrations vastly enlarged, a world in which miracles happen on every hand and cause us no surprise. Slaughter and destruction take place on the heroic scale with a minimum expenditure of effort; men are transformed into beasts and beasts into men, so that men and beasts converse with each other.[262]

Finally, it may be observed that the atmosphere into which genius leads us, and indeed all art, is the atmosphere of the world of dreams. The man of genius, it is often said, has the child within him; he is, according to the ancient dictum, which is still accepted, not without an admixture of insanity, and he is unquestionably related to the primitive myth-maker. All these characteristics, as we see, bring him near to the sphere of dreaming, and we may say that the man of genius is in closer touch with the laws of the dream world than is the ordinary civilised man. 'It would be no great paradox,' remarks Maudsley, 'to say that the creative work of genius was excellent dreaming, and dramatic dreaming distracted genius.'[263] This has often been recognised by some of the most typical men of genius. Charles Lamb, in speaking of Spenser, referred to the analogy between dreaming and imagination. Coleridge, one of the most essential of imaginative men, argued that the laws of drama and of dreaming are the same.[264] Nietzsche, more recently, has developed the affinity of dreaming to art, and in his _Birth of Tragedy_ argued that the Appollonian or dream-like element is one of the two constituents of tragedy. Mallarmé further believed that symbolism, which we have seen to be fundamental in dreaming, is of the essence of art. 'To name an object,' he said, 'is to suppress three-quarters of the enjoyment in a poem which is made up of the happiness of gradually divining; to suggest--that is our dream. The perfect usage of this mystery constitutes symbolism: to evoke an object, little by little, in order to exhibit a state of the soul, or, inversely, to choose an object, and to disengage from it a state of the soul by a series of decipherments.'[265] It may be added that imaginative and artistic men have always been prone to day-dreaming and reverie, allowing their fancies to wander uncontrolled, and in so doing they have found profit to their work.[266] From Socrates onwards, too, men of genius have sometimes been liable to fall into states of trance, or waking dream, in which their mission or their vision has become more clearly manifested;[267] the hallucinatory voices which have determined the vocation of many great teachers belong to psychic states allied to these trances.

It is scarcely necessary to refer to the occasional creative activity of men of genius during actual sleep or to the debts which they have acknowledged to suggestions received in dreams.[268] This has perhaps, indeed, been more often exaggerated than overlooked. There can be no doubt that a great many writers and thinkers, including some of the highest eminence, have sometimes been indebted to their dreams. We might expect as much, for most people occasionally have more or less vivid or suggestive new ideas in dreams,[269] and it is natural that this should occur more often, and to a higher degree, in persons of unusual intellectual force and activity. But it is more doubtful whether the creative activity of normal dreams ever reaches a sufficient perfection to take, as it stands, a very high place in a master's work. Coleridge's 'Kubla Khan' has the most notable claim to be an exception to this rule. This poem was written by Coleridge in 1788, soon after 'Christabel,' and at a time when the poet was suffering much from depression, and taking a great deal of laudanum. We are entitled to assume, therefore, that the poem was composed under the influence of opium, and not in normal sleep. It may be added that it is difficult to believe that Coleridge could have recalled the whole poem from either a normal or abnormal dream; as a rule, when we compose verses in sleep we can usually recall only the last two, or at most four, lines.[270] Moreover, there is reason to believe that the first draft of 'Kubla Khan' was not the poem as we now know it.[271]

After Coleridge's 'Kubla Khan' the most important artistic composition usually assigned to a dream is the _Trillo del Diavolo_ sonata of Tartini, the eighteenth-century composer and violinist, who has been called the prototype of Paganini. Tartini, who was a man of nervous and emotional temperament, seems to have possessed real genius, and this sonata is his principal work. But there is not the slightest ground for stating that it was composed in a dream, and Tartini himself made no such claim.[272]

The imaginative reality of dreams is perhaps appreciated by none so much as by those who are deprived of some of their external senses. Thus a deaf and dumb writer of ability who has precise and highly emotional dreams--which sometimes remind him of the atmosphere of Poe's tales, and are occasionally in organised sequence from night to night--writes: 'The enormous reality and vividness of these dreams is their remarkable point. They leave a mark behind. When I come to consider I believe that much that I have written, and many things that I have said and thought and believed, are directly due to these dream-experiences and my ponderings over how they came. Beneath the superficiality of our conscious mind--prim, smug, self-satisfied, owlishly wise--there lies the vast gulf of a subconscious personality that is dark and obscure, seldom seen or even suspected. It is this, I think, that wells up into my dreams. It is always there--always affecting us and modifying us, and bringing about strange and unforeseen new things in us--but in these dreams I peer over the edge of the conscious world into the giant-house and Utgard of the subconscious, lit by one ray of sunset that shows the weltering deeps of it. And the vivid sense of this is responsible for many things in my life.'[273]

Dreaming is thus one of our roads into the infinite. And it is interesting to observe how we attain it--by limitation. The circle of our conscious life is narrowed during sleep; it is even by a process of psychic dissociation broken up into fragments. From that narrowed and broken-up consciousness the outlook becomes vaster and more mysterious, full of strange and unsuspected fascination, and the possibilities of new experiences, just as a philosophic mite inhabiting a universe consisting of a Stilton cheese would probably be compelled to regard everything outside the cheese as belonging to the realm of the Infinite. In reality, if we think of it, all our visions of the infinite are similarly conditioned. It is only by emphasising our finiteness that we ever become conscious of the infinite. The infinite can only be that which stretches far beyond the boundaries of our own personality. It is the charm of dreams that they introduce us into a new infinity. Time and space are annihilated, gravity is suspended, and we are joyfully borne up in the air, as it were in the arms of angels; we are brought into a deeper communion with Nature, and in dreams a man listens to the arguments of his dog with as little surprise as Balaam heard the reproaches of his ass. The unexpected limitations of our dream world, the exclusion of so many elements which are present even unconsciously in waking life, impart a splendid freedom and ease to the intellectual operations of the sleeping mind, and an extravagant romance, a poignant tragedy, to our emotions. 'He has never known happiness,' said Lamb, speaking out of his own experience, 'who has never been mad.' And there are many who taste in dreams a happiness they never know when awake.[274] In the waking moments of our complex civilised life we are ever in a state of suspense which makes all great conclusions impossible; the multiplicity of the facts of life, always present to consciousness, restrains the free play of logic (except for that happy dreamer, the mathematician), and surrounds most of our pains and nearly all our pleasures with infinite qualifications; we are tied down to a sober tameness. In our dreams the fetters of civilisation are loosened, and we know the fearful joy of freedom.

In this way the Paradise of dreams has been a reservoir from which men have always drawn consolation and sweet memory and hope, even belief, the imagination and gratification of desires that the world restrained, the promise and proof of the dearest and deepest aspirations.

Yet, while there is thus a real sense in which dreams produce their effect by the retraction of the field of consciousness and the limitation of the psychic activities which mark ordinary life, it remains true that if we take into account the complete psychic life of dreaming, subconscious as well as conscious, it is waking, not sleeping, life which may be said to be limited.[275] Thus it is, as we have seen, that the most fundamental and the most primitive forms of psychic life, as well as the rarest and the most abnormal, all seem to have their prototype in the vast world of dreams. Sleep, Vaschide has said, is not, as Homer thought, the brother of Death, but of Life, and, it may be added, the elder brother.

'We dream, see visions, converse with chimæras,' said Joseph Glanvill, the seventeenth-century philosopher; 'the one half of our life is a romance, a fiction.' And what of the other half? Pepys tells us how another distinguished man of the same century, Sir William Petty, 'proposed it as a thing that is truly questionable whether there really be any difference between waking and dreaming.'[276] Our dreams are said to be delusions, constituted in much the same way as the delusion of the insane. But, says Godfernaux, 'all life is a series of systematised delusions, more or less durable.' Men weary of too much living have sometimes found consolation in this likeness of the world of dreams to the world of life. 'When thou hast roused thyself from sleep thou hast perceived that they were only dreams which troubled thee,' wrote the Imperial Stoic to himself in his _Meditations;_ 'now in thy waking hours look at these things about thee as thou didst look at those dreams.' Dreams are true while they last. Can we, at the best, say more of life?

* * * * *

We set out to study as carefully as possible the small field of dream consciousness belonging to a few persons, not, it may be, abnormal, of whom it was possible to speak with some assurance. The great naturalist, Linnæus, once said that he could spend a lifetime in studying as much of the earth as he could cover with his hand. However small the patch we investigate, it will lead us back to the sun at last. There is nothing too minute or too trivial. I have often remembered with a pang, how, long years ago, I once gave pain by saying, with the arrogance of boyhood, that it was foolish to tell one's dreams. I have done penance for that remark since. 'Il faut cultiver notre jardin,' said the wise philosopher of the eighteenth century. I have cultivated, so far as I care to, my garden of dreams, and it scarcely seems to me that it is a large garden. Yet every path of it, I sometimes think, might lead at last to the heart of the universe.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 243: Certain phases of waking psychic life are, however, closely related to dreaming. This is obviously the case as regards day-dreaming or reverie. (See _e.g._ Janet, _Névroses et Idées Fixes_, vol. i. pp. 390-6.) It would also appear that wit is the result of a process analogous to that fusion of incompatible elements which we have found to prevail in dreams. Our dreams are sometimes full of usually ineffective wit; I could easily quote dreams in illustration. (Freud has, from his point of view, studied the analogy between wit and dreaming in _Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten_.)]

[Footnote 244: In more recent times Moreau of Tours, especially, argued (_Du Haschich et de l'Aliénation Mentale_, 1845) that _haschisch_-intoxication is insanity, and that insanity is a waking dream.]

[Footnote 245: In insane subjects a dream not uncommonly forms the starting point of a delusion, and many illustrative examples could be brought forward.]

[Footnote 246: Marro, _La Pubertà_, pp. 286-92.]

[Footnote 247: Freud, _Die Traumdeutung_, p. 13. Elsewhere (p. 135) Freud remarks: 'The deeper we go in the analysis of dreams the more frequently we come across traces of childish experience which form a latent source of dreams.' The same point had been previously emphasised by Sully, 'The Dream as a Revelation,' _Fortnightly Review_, March 1893.]

[Footnote 248: C. M. Giessler, _Die Physiologischen Beziehungen der Traumvorgänge_, ch. iv.]

[Footnote 249: Jewell, who gives illustrations in evidence, concludes (_American Journal of Psychology_, January 1905, pp. 25-8) that 'the confusion of dreams with real life is almost universal with children, and quite common among adolescents and adults.']

[Footnote 250: Hans Gross, the distinguished criminologist, refers (_Kriminalpsychologie_, p. 672) to two cases of children who brought criminal charges which were apparently based on dreams. Gross mentions that this may often be suspected when the child says nothing at the time, and shows no excitement or depression until a day or two after the date of the alleged event. For confusion of dream with reality, see also Gross, _Gesammelte Kriminalistische Aufsätze_, vol. ii. p. 174.]

[Footnote 251: Thus Rachilde (Mme. Vallette) writes that as a young girl her dreams were so vivid that 'I would often ask myself if I had not an existence in two forms: my waking personality and my dreaming personality. Sometimes I was deceived and imagined that my real life was dreams.' She instinctively began to write at the age of twelve, and it was by completing her dreams that she became a novelist (Chabaneix, _Le Subconscient_, p. 49). George Sand's early day-dreams, of which she gives so interesting an account (_Histoire de ma Vie_, part III. ch. viii), developed around the central figure of Corambé, first seen in a real dream. Corambé was, at the same time, a divine being, to whom she erected an altar. So that of the child it may be said, as Lucretius said of primitive man, that the gods first appear in dreams.]

[Footnote 252: 'In sleep,' says Sully (_Fortnightly Review_, March 1893), 'we have a reversion to a more primitive type of experience.' 'Dreaming,' says Jastrow (_The Subconscious_, p. 219), 'may be viewed as a reversion to a more primitive type of thought.']

[Footnote 253: This tendency is notably represented by Durkheim ('Origines de la Pensée Religieuse,' _Revue Philosophique_, January 1909) and Crawley (_The Idea of the Soul_, 1909).]

[Footnote 254: Hill Tout, _Journal_, Anthropological Institute, January-June 1905, p. 143; Sidney Hartland, in his presidential address to the Anthropological Section of the British Association, in 1906, emphasised the significance of dreams in Shamanism, and Sir Everard im Thurn, in his _Among the Indians of Guiana_, shows how practically real are dreams to the savage mind.]

[Footnote 255: See, _e. g_., as regards the American Indians, Thornton Parker in the _Open Court_, May 1901.]

[Footnote 256: _Leviathan_, part I. ch. ii.]

[Footnote 257: Laistner, _Das Rätsel der Sphinx_, 1889, vol. 1. p. xiii. While Laistner was chiefly concerned with the exploration of the religious myths, he pointed out that epics and fairy-tales (Amor and Psyche, the stories of the Nibelung and Baldur, etc.) may be similarly explained. It seems probable that his investigations received a stimulus in the earlier experiments of J. Boerner (_Das Alpdrücken_, 1855) on the production of nightmare. Laistner has had many followers, notable C. Ruths (_Experimental-Untersuchungen über Musikphantome_, 1898), who argues (pp. 415-46) that the old Greek myths had their chief root in dream phenomena, in delirium, and in the visions aroused in some persons by hearing music, while he considers that many fabulous monsters and dragons have arisen from the combinations seen in dreams. We know that the Greeks, who were such great myth-makers, much occupied themselves in lying in wait for dreams, and in oneiromancy and necromancy (_e.g._, Bouché-Leclercq, _Histoire de la Divination dans l'Antiquité_, vol. 1. Bk. ii. ch. i. pp. 277-329). In this way alone it is doubtless true that, as Jewell says, 'dreams have had a great effect upon the history of the world.']

[Footnote 258: For evidence regarding the high esteem in which many of the greatest Greek and Latin Fathers held dreams as divine revelations, see _e.g._, Sully, Art. 'Dreams,' _Encyclopædia Britannica_.]

[Footnote 259: There is still a natural tendency in the uninstructed mind to identify spontaneous visual phenomena with Heaven. 'When I gets to bed,' said an aged and superannuated dustman to Vanderkiste (_The Dens of London_, p. 14), 'I says my prayers, and I puts my hands afore my eyes--so [covering his face with his hands]; well, I sees such beautiful things, sparkles like, all afloating about, and I wished to ax yer, sir, if that ain't a something of Heaven, sir.']

[Footnote 260: This was the only traceable element in the dream. The dreamer was accustomed to look at her watch on awaking in the morning, and, if it was seven or later, not to go to sleep again.]

[Footnote 261: Freud, 'Der Dichter und das Phantasieren' (1908), in second series of his _Sammlung Kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre;_ K. Abraham, _Traum und Mythus_ (1909); and O. Rank, _Der Mythus von der Geburt des Helden_ (1909), both published in the _Schriften zur angewandten Seelenkunde_, edited by Freud.]

[Footnote 262: Synesius refers to conversations with sheep in dreams, and he was probably the first to suggest that such dream phenomena may be the origin of fables in which animals speak. The dog and the cat, as we should expect, seem most frequently to speak in the dreams of civilised people. Thus I dreamed that I had a conversation with a cat who spoke with fair clearness and sense, though the whole of her sentences were not intelligible. I was not surprised at this relative lack of intelligibility, but neither was I surprised at her speaking at all. I have also encountered a talking parrot whose speech was more relevant than that of most talking parrots; this somewhat surprised me. In legends a wider range of animals are able to speak, no doubt because the primitive legend-makers were familiar with a wider range of animal life. How natural it is to the uninstructed mind to treat animals like human beings is well shown by the experiences of Helen Keller, the blind deaf-mute, who writes (_The World I Live in_, p. 147): 'After my education began, the world which came within my reach was all alive.... It was two years before I could be made to believe that my dogs did not understand what I said, and I always apologised to them when I ran into or stepped on them.']

[Footnote 263: _Journal of Mental Science_, January 1909, p. 16.]

[Footnote 264: 'Images and thoughts,' he said, 'possess a power in and of themselves independent of that act of the judgment or understanding by which we affirm or deny the existence of a reality correspondent to them. Such is the ordinary state of the mind in dreams.... Add to this a voluntary lending of the will to this suspension of one of its own operations, and you have the true theory of stage illusion.']

[Footnote 265: Quoted by Paul Delior, _Remy de Gourmont et son Œuvre_, p. 14.]

[Footnote 266: Thus even Leonardo da Vinci (Solmi, _Frammenti_, p. 285) acknowledged the benefit which he had gained by gazing at clouds or at mud-bespattered walls; and recommended the practice to other artists, for thereby, he says, they will receive suggestions for landscapes, battlepieces, 'and infinite things,' which they may bring to perfection. He compared this to the possibility of hearing words in the sounds of bells. Some other distinguished artists have adopted somewhat similar practices which are fundamentally the child's habit of seeing pictures in the fire.]

[Footnote 267: Thus Tennyson (_Memoir_, by his son, vol. i. p. 320) was subject from boyhood to a kind of waking trance. 'This has generally come upon me,' he wrote, 'through repeating my own name two or three times to myself silently.' (It thus seems to have been a sort of auto-hypnotisation.) In this state, individuality seemed to dissolve, he said, and he found in it a proof that the extinction of personality by death would not involve loss of life, but rather a fuller life. We are so easily convinced in these matters!]

[Footnote 268: See _e.g._, De Manacéïne, _Sleep_, p. 314; Arturo Morselli, 'Dei Sogni nei Genii,' _La Cultura_, 1899.]

[Footnote 269: Thus I once planned in a dream a paper on the Progress of Psychology, which seemed to me on awakening to present a quite workable though not notably brilliant scheme.]

[Footnote 270: Sante de Sanctis, however (_I Sogni_, p. 369), reproduces a dream poem of twelve lines.]

[Footnote 271: See note in J. D. Campbell's edition of Coleridge's _Poetical Works_, p. 592.]

[Footnote 272: Tartini composed the sonata--a noble and beautiful work which still survives--at the age of twenty-one. In old age he told Lalande the astronomer (as the latter relates in his _Voyage d'un Français en Italie_, 1765, vol. ix. p. 55) that he had had a dream in which he sold his soul to the Devil, and it occurred to him in his dream to hand his fiddle to the Devil to see what he could do with it. 'But how great was my astonishment when I heard him play with consummate skill a sonata of such exquisite beauty as surpassed the boldest flights of my imagination. I felt enraptured, transported, enchanted; my breath was taken away, and I awoke. Seizing my violin I tried to retain the sounds I had heard. But it was in vain. The piece I then composed, the "Devil's Sonata," was the best I ever wrote, but how far below the one I had heard in my dream!' The dream, it will be seen, was of a fairly common type, and to Tartini's excitable temperament it served as a stimulus to his finest energies. But the real 'Devil's Sonata' was hopelessly lost. (See the articles on Tartini in Fetis, _Biographic Universelle des Musiciens_, and Grove's _Dictionary of Music and Musicians_.)]

[Footnote 273: Helen Keller, the blind deaf-mute, has written some interesting chapters on her dreams in _The World I Live in_. For the most part it would seem that the dream life of the blind (which has been studied by, among others, Jastrow, _Fact and Fable in Psychology_, pp. 337 _et seq._) is not usually rich or vivid.]

[Footnote 274: See _e.g._, Marie de Manacéïne, _Sleep_, p. 313.]

[Footnote 275: This aspect of dreaming has been set forth by Bergson (_Revue Philosophique_, December 1908, p. 574). 'The dream state,' he remarks, 'is the substratum of our normal state. Nothing is added in waking life; on the contrary, waking life is obtained by the limitation, concentration, and tension of that diffuse psychological life which is the life of dreaming. The perception and the memory which we find in dreaming are, in a sense, more natural than those of waking life: consciousness is then amused in perceiving for the sake of perceiving, and in remembering for the sake of remembering, without care for life, that is to say for the accomplishment of actions. To be awake is to eliminate, to choose, to concentrate the totality of the diffused life of dreaming to a point, to a practical problem. To be awake is to will; cease to will, detach yourself from life, become disinterested: in so doing you pass from the waking ego to the dreaming ego, which is less _tense_, but more _extended_ than the other.']

[Footnote 276: Pepys, _Diary_, 2nd April 1664.]

INDEX

Abraham, K., 65, 272.

After-images, 26.

Albès, 246, 248, 252, 256.

Alcohol, 250.

Aliotta, 102.

Allin, 249.

Analogy in dreams, 41.

Andamanese shamans, 268.

Anaesthesia from drugs, 101.

Andrews, Grace, 84, 108.

Animism and dreaming, 210, 266.

Anjel, 247, 257.

Antoninus, 281.

Apperception in dreams, 68, 259.

Apraxia, 97.

Aristotle, 17, 31, 65, 92.

Arnaud, 255.

Artemidorus of Daldi, 157.

Atavistic dreams, alleged, 133.

Attention in dreams, 24 _et seq.;_ 67, 219, 229, 252.

Auditory element in dreams, 77 _et seq._

Augustine, St., 239.

Aural origin of some dreams, alleged, 139.

Autoscopy, 163.

Bach, 153.

Baldwin, 2, 4, 68.

Ballet, G., 253.

Bancroft, H. H., 37.

Baudelaire, 152.

Beaunis, 14, 33, 72, 132, 145, 203, 211, 224, 270.

Beddoes, T., 199.

Benson, Archbishop, 224.

Bergson, 137, 255 _et seq._, 280.

Binet, 56, 57, 58, 201.

Binns, 246.

Binswanger, L., 144.

Birds in dreams, 37.

Bladder as a stimulant to dreams, 88, 96, 163, 164.

Bleuler, 150, 154.

Blind, dreams of the, 278.

Blood, dreams of, 183.

Bode, 2.

Boerner, J., 269.

Bolton, F. E., 133.

Bolton, J., 69.

Bonatelli, 247.

Bonne, 244.

Bouché-Leclercq, 270.

Bourget, 241.

Bradley, F. H., 97.

Bramwell, J. M., 188.

Brill, 165.

Brodie, Sir B., 13.

Brown, Horatio, 30, 108.

Browning, 146.

Brunton, Sir Lauder, 270.

Buccola, 244.

Buchan, 90.

Burnham, 230, 242.

Cabanis, 13.

Calkins, 17.

Capuana, 92.

Cardiac stimuli of dreams, 88, 90, 136, 140.

Carpenter, W., 14.

Cerebral light, 27.

Cervantes, 129.

Chabaneix, 130, 143, 206, 265.

Child, psychic state of, 189, 264.

Childhood, hypnogogic hallucinations of, 28 _et seq._, 232.

Chloroform anaesthesia compared to dreaming, 16, 32, 34, 135, 137.

Christina the Wonderful, 144.

Cicero, 129.

Claparède, 171, 174.

Clarke, E. H., 30, 119.

Classification of dreams, 17, 71.

Clavière, 150, 215, 216.

Cleland, 155.

Colegrove, 234.

Coleridge, 273, 275.

Colour in dreams, 33.

Colour associations, 149.

Coloured hearing, 150.

Comar, 163.

Confusion in dreams, 36 _et seq._

Consciousness, definition of, 2.

Contrast dreams, 175, 208.

Cooley, 189.

Corning, L., 79.

Crawley, 266.

Crichton-Browne, 108.

Criminals, dreams of, 120.

Curnock, N., 228.

Dauriac, 79, 152.

Day-dreams, 167, 244, 261, 274.

Dead, dreams of the, 194 _et seq._

Delacroix, 60.

Delage, 31.

Delbœuf, 5, 23.

Delior, 274.

Descartes, 13.

Dickens, 239.

Dircks, H., 2.

Dissociation in dreams, 66, 148, 185, 195, 221.

Dissolving view, dreams compared to, 36, 47.

Dogs, sleep of, 15, 101.

Dramatic element in dreams, 180 _et seq._

Dreaming, alleged dreams of, 65.

Dreamless sleep, 14.

Dreamy state, 239.

Dromard, 248, 255.

Drowning, hallucinations of the, 145, 214.

Dugas, 240, 248, 252, 253.

Duplex brain, theory of, 244.

Durkheim, 266.

Dying, hallucinations of the, 145, 161.

Ecstasy, Hysterical, 144.

Egger, 213, 216.

Ellis, Havelock, 28, 37, 165, 168, 179, 191, 197.

Emotion in dreams, 94 _et seq._

Epilepsy and pseudo-reminiscence, 239, 245.

Epileptic dreams, 139.

Erotic dreams, 88, 126, 177.

Erotic symbolism, 65, 179.

Extrospection, 172.

Fairies and dreams, 270.

Falling, dreams of, 129 _et seq._

False recognition in dreams, 230 _et seq._

Fear in dreams, 121, 174.

Féré, 92, 139, 156, 163, 248.

Ferenczi, 168.

Ferrero, 151.

Fish, dreams of, 163.

Floating, dreams of, 143.

Flournoy, 174, 187.

Flying, dreams of, 129 _et seq._

Forman, Simon, 30.

Foucault, 5, 6, 7, 8, 13, 17, 22, 24, 174, 187, 195, 202, 215, 216,
224, 234.

Fouillée, 252, 255.

Freud, 52, 56, 65, 89, 99, 119, 120, 127, 133, 164 _et seq._, 210,
216, 217, 244, 262, 264, 272.

Fusion of dream imagery, 36 _et seq._

Galton, Sir F., 149.

Gassendi, 65, 202.

Genius and dreaming, 273.

Giessler, 22, 72, 174, 187, 189, 264.

Gissing, 170.

Glanvill, J., 280.

Glossolalia, 225.

Goblot, 6, 32, 154.

Godfernaux, 280.

Gods first appeared in dreams, 268.

Goethe, 70, 208.

Goncourt, E. de, 203.

Goncourt, J. de, 142.

Goron, 140.

Gowers, Sir W. R., 139, 239.

Grasset, 240, 243.

Greenwood, F., 66, 113, 163, 228.

Griesinger, 208.

Gross, Hans, 265.

Gruithuisen, 32.

Gustatory dreams, 85.

Guthrie, 76, 108, 138.

Guyon, E., 29, 31.

Hall, Stanley, 29, 65, 133, 174, 189.

Hallam, Florence, 74.

Hallucinations, 26, 159, 182, 188, 235, 271.

Hammond, 14, 65, 92, 104.

Hartland, E. S., 268.

Haschisch, 98, 215, 262.

Haskovec, 246.

Hawthorne, 228.

Head, H., 34, 121.

Headache and dreams, 34, 91, 116, 177.

Hearn, Lafcadio, 108, 133, 138, 209.

Heaven and dreams, 270.

Heine, 152.

Hell and dreams, 270.

Hermes, 129.

Herodotus, 89.

Herrick, C. L., 107.

Hervey de Saint-Denis, 159.

Heymans, 240, 248, 255.

Hilprecht, 220.

Hinton, James, 63.

Hippocrates, 13.

Hobbes, 31, 109, 269.

Holland, Sir H., 13.

Howells, W. D., 121.

Hutchinson, H., 132, 138.

Hypermnesia, 218 _et seq._

Hypnagogic hallucinations, 15, 28 _et seq._, 67, 141, 160, 181, 215,
232, 265.

Hypnagogic paramnesia, 232 _et seq._

Hypnopompic state, 238.

Hypnotism, 79, 231, 232, 234.

Hyslop, J. H., 27.

Hysteria, 67, 143, 162, 168, 187, 217, 219.

Icarus, 130, 138.

Ida of Louvain, St., 144.

Imagery in dreams, 21 _et seq._, 64, 104, 120.

Insane, hallucinations of, 34, 271.

Insanity compared to dreaming, 48, 69, 105, 170, 188, 231, 262
_et seq._

Isserlin, 165.

Jackson, Hughlings, 239, 240, 262.

James-Lange theory of emotion, 109.

Janet, 67, 144, 187, 229, 254, 255, 261.

Jastrow, J., 14, 64, 96, 220, 247, 262, 266, 278.

Jerome, St., 129.

Jessin, 242.

Jesus, 147, 210.

Jewell, 92, 99, 138, 140, 199, 211, 228, 265, 270.

Johnson, Dr., 185.

Joseph of Cupertino, St., 144.

Jones, Elmer, 32, 34, 135, 137.

Jones, Ernest, 165.

Jung, C. J., 89.

Kaleidoscope, dream process compared to, 21, 28.

Keller, Helen, 273, 278.

Kiernan, 92, 239.

Kingsford, Anna, 119, 247.

Kraepelin, 48, 230.

Krauss, F. S., 157.

Laistner, 269.

Lalande, 240, 247, 255.

Lalanne, 105.

Lamb, C., 273.

Languages remembered In sleep, 225.

Lapie, 243.

Laud, 176.

Laurentius, 17, 262.

Legends, symbolism in, 156, 209.

Leibnitz, 13.

Léon-Kindberg, 252, 255.

Leroy, 26, 60, 161, 239, 247.

Lessing, 14.

Levitation, 144.

Liepmann, 97, 170.

Lilliputian hallucinations, 161, 270.

Little, Graham, 108.

Linnæus, 281.

Locke, 14.

Logic of dreams, 5 _et seq._, 56 _et seq._

Logorrhœa, 170.

Lombard, E., 225.

Lombroso, 208.

Lorrain, Jacques le, 105.

Löwenfeld, 165.

Lubbock, 210.

Lucretius, 15, 129, 238, 268.

Macario, 92.

Macaulay, Lord, 221.

MacDougall, R., 79, 107, 138, 208, 229.

Macnish, 14.

Maeder, 156, 160, 164, 166.

Magnification of dream imagery, 104 _et seq._, 135, 160.

Maine de Biran, 26, 94.

Maitland, E., 119, 247.

Mallarmé, 274.

Manacéïne, Marie de, 119, 163, 187, 199, 229, 232, 275, 279.

Marillier, 251.

Marro, 263.

Marshall, H. R., 57.

Masselon, 92.

Maudsley, 119, 270, 273.

Maurier, G. du, 206.

Maury, 31, 32, 47, 186, 203, 213.

Memory and dreams, 8 _et seq._, 212 _et seq._

Mercier, C., 2, 110.

Méré, 243.

Mescal, 27, 28.

Metamorphosis of dream imagery, 22.

Metaphysics and dreams, 63.

Metchnikoff, 174.

Meunier, R., 84, 92, 108.

Migraine, 34, 270.

Millet, J., 150.

Miner, J. B., 138, 152.

Mitchell, Sir A., 13.

Mitchell, Weir, 32.

Moll, 234.

Monboddo, Lord, 158, 226.

Monroe, W. S., 74, 83.

Moral attitude in dreaming, 118 _et seq._

Moreau of Tours, 262.

Morphia dreams, 140.

Morselli, A., 275.

Mosso, 136.

Mourre, Baron, 24.

Movement in dreams, 20, 45, 96, 97 _et seq._

Movement in sleep, 15.

Müller, J., 32.

Murder, dreams of, 111 _et seq._, 142.

Murray, Elsie, 110.

Music, symbolism of, 151.

Music in dreams, 77 _et seq._

Myers, 255.

Myth-making and dreaming, 210, 269 _et seq._

Näcke, 13, 119, 175, 202, 208, 236.

Nayrac, 68.

Neologisms in dreams, 48.

Neurasthenia, 27.

Newbold, 220.

Newman, E., 153.

Nietzsche, 274.

Nightmare, 99, 181.

Night-terrors, 30, 96, 108.

Nitrous oxide anaesthesia, 101, 135.

Nocturnal enuresis, 90.

Number-forms, 149.

Olfactory dreams, 83.

Oneiromancy, 156, 270.

Opium visions, 28, 140.

Orpheus, 210.

Paramnesia, 230 _et seq._

Paraphasia, 48.

Parish, E., 67, 184, 235.

Parker, Thornton, 269.

Partridge, G. E., 29.

Paul, St., 191.

Pepys, 202, 280.

Periodicity in memory, 224.

Personality in dreams, division of, 187.

Peter, St., 146.

Petty, Sir W., 280.

Philostratus, 157.

Pick, 97.

Piderit, 155.

Piéron, 92, 145, 159, 162, 215, 216, 252, 255.

Pirro, 153.

Pliny the Elder, 157.

Prel, Carl du, 221.

Premonitory dreams, 91, 163.

Presentative dreams, 17, 71, 166.

Primitive psychic slate, 266.

Prince, Morton, 174, 187.

Prodromic dreams, 91, 157, 163.

Prophetic dreams, 93, 157.

Pseudo-reminiscence in dreams, 230 _et seq._

Psychasthenia, 255.

Punning in dreams, 51.

Purcell, 153.

Pury, Jean de, 251.

Pythagoras, 242.

Quincey, De, 28, 30.

Rachilde, 143, 265.

Raffaelli, 130.

Railway travelling, dreams of, 81, 119.

Rank, O., 272.

Rapidity of dreams, alleged, 213 _et seq._

Raymond, 229.

Reasoning in dreams, 56 _et seq._

Renan, 203.

Representative dreams, 17, 71, 167.

Respiratory stimuli to dreams, 134 _et seq._

Retinal element in dreams, 23, 26, 31, 183.

Rhythm, 138.

Ribot, 25, 26, 79, 85, 242, 252, 255.

Rochas, Colonel de, 79, 131, 144.

Rosenbach, 246.

Ruths, C., 79, 129, 211, 269.

Sageret, 41.

Saints, alleged levitation of, 144.

Salish Indians, 210, 268.

Sand, George, 239, 265.

Sante de Sanctis, 92, 120, 168, 199, 208, 276.

Savage, psychic state of, 190, 266.

Savage, G. H., 33.

Schaaffhausen, 13.

Scherner, 88, 135, 159, 163, 164.

School, dreams of return to, 83, 195.

Schopenhauer, 175.

Schroeder, T., 191.

Schweitzer, 153.

Scripture, E. W., 27.

Secondary self in dreams, 187.

Segre, 96.

Sensory impressions in sleep, 71 _et seq._

Shamans, 268.

Shelley, 241.

Silberer, 141.

Simon, Max, 91.

Skin sensations in dreams, 74 _et seq._, 117, 135, 137.

Sleep, dreamless, 14.

Smith, Hélène, 187.

Snakes, dreams of, 65.

Sollier, 144, 163, 188.

Solmi, 274.

Somnambulism, 95.

Spencer, Herbert, 130, 210.

Spontaneous character of dream imagery, 24.

Ssikorski, 145.

Stekel, 168.

Stewart, Dugald, 104.

Stoddart, 34, 221.

Stomach on dreams, influence of, 108 _et seq._

Storms as cause of dreams, 81.

Stout, 2, 4, 68, 98, 195.

Stevenson, R. L., 217.

Stretton, 2.

Strümpell, 14, 135.

Suarez de Mendoza, 150.

Subconscious, definition of, 4.

Subconsciousness in dreams, 23, 63.

Suggestibility in dreams, 230.

Sully, 17, 234, 242, 244, 264, 266, 270.

Sunshine in dreams, 2.

Sutton, Bland, 133.

Swedenborg, 239.

Swoboda, 224.

Syllogistic arrangement of dreams, 58.

Symbolism in dreams, 81, 91, 109, 141, 148 _et seq._

Symonds, J. A., 30, 108.

Synaesthesias, 149.

Synesius, 65, 129, 157, 227, 272.

Tactile sensations in dreams, 74 _et seq._, 85, 137.

Tannery, 5, 6, 66, 244.

Tartini, 276.

Taste dreams, 85.

Taylor, S., 239.

Therapeutic use of music during sleep, 79, 84.

Theresa, St., 144.

Thurn, Sir E. im, 268.

Tennyson, 275.

Time in dreams, estimate of, 250.

Tissié, 17, 72, 250.

Titchener, 85.

Tobolowska, 60, 216.

Toothache as a cause of dreams, 116.

Tout, Hill, 268.

Tuke, Hack, 235.

Turner, J., 231.

Turner, W. A., 239.

Tylor, 210, 266.

Urbantschitsch, 155.

Vanderkiste, 270.

Vaschide, 13, 92, 159, 162, 172, 199, 280.

Verbal transformations in dreams, 47.

Vesical dreams, 88, 96, 163, 164.

Vesme, C. de, 131.

Vigilambulism, 144.

Vinci, L. da, 274.

Visceral stimuli of dreams, 87 _et seq._, 121, 164.

Vision in dreams, 20.

Visual stimuli of dreams, 86, 108 _et seq._

Vold, Mourly, 32.

Volkelt, 89.

Vurpas, 172.

Wagner, 153, 183.

Weed, Sarah, 74.

Weygandt, 14, 72, 199.

Wigan, 244, 245.

Wiggam, 176, 208.

Wilks, Sir S., 214.

Wilson, A., 187.

Winslow, Forbes, 92.

Wish-dreams, 89, 165 _et seq._

Wordsworth, 215.

Wright, H., 96.

Wundt, 14, 23, 57, 72, 135, 136, 195, 210.

Zenoglossia, 225.

Printed in Great Britain by T. and A. CONSTABLE LTD.
at the Edinburgh University Press

* * * * *

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| Transcriber notes: |
| |
| P. 189. 'given him posion', changed 'posion' to 'poison'. |
| P. 203. Added footnote [184] link. |
| P. 214. 'concommitants' changed to 'concomitants'. |
| P. 215. 'alarum clock', changed 'alarum' to 'alarm'. |
| P. 215. 'hashisch' changed to 'hashish'. |
| P. 231. Footnote 210, 'alcholic' changed to 'alcoholic'. |
| P. 249. 'hue to' changed to 'due to'. |
| Fixed various punctuation |
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