PREFACE THIS Volume is written for the perusal of the unprejudiced. It is an appeal to those who neither affirm the infallibility of dreams, nor yet deny their significance as symbols, also to those persons who have given the subject no thought whatsoever, but who are nevertheless willing to listen impartially to the arguments of the old-fashioned dream interpreters and to the hypotheses of modern psycho-analysts. At first glance a vast distance seems to stretch between the desert of sterile scientific facts and the teeming jungle of riotous dreams, yet between these extremes winds many a temperate, pleasant path which the normal mind may follow if it will. The writer does not advocate any especial theory over another; the purpose is merely to untangle the truth, if truth there be. At times this quest has led to the oracular springs of old Egypt, or to the temples of Greece, or through the sickly vaporings of medievalism and again through the bleak materialism of modern physiology, for each cult that has withstood the blight of time must perforce have held its strength, and that strength must have been born of truth, otherwise the teachings would have been forgotten. The writer has merely gathered the facts-the reader is left to judge them. CONTENTS An Ancient Cult, a Mediæval Jest, a Modern Science-Ancient Divina- tion and Modern Dream Analysis-Converging Theories Old and New -The Soul and the Scalpel of Science-Dreams that Made History -The Purpose of Dreams-Their Therapeutic Value-Their Psychic Psychologists at Loggerheads-the Ancients and a Few Moderns-The Mohammedan Theories-Plato, Pythagoras, etc.-Charcot, Jung, PAGE |