INTRODUCTION


Before the dawn of history mankind was engaged in the study of dreaming.
The wise man among the ancients was preëminently the interpreter of
dreams. The ability to interpret successfully or plausibly was the
quickest road to royal favor, as Joseph and Daniel found it to be;
failure to give satisfaction in this respect led to banishment from
court or death. When a scholar laboriously translates a cuneiform tablet
dug up from a Babylonian mound where it has lain buried for five
thousand years or more, the chances are that it will turn out either an
astrological treatise or a dream book. If the former, we look upon it
with some indulgence; if the latter with pure contempt. For we know that
the study of the stars, though undertaken for selfish reasons and
pursued in the spirit of charlatanry, led at length to physical science,
while the study of dreams has proved as unprofitable as the dreaming of
them. Out of astrology grew astronomy. Out of oneiromancy has
grown--nothing.

That at least was substantially true up to the beginning of the present
century. Dream books in all languages continued to sell in cheap
editions and the interpreters of dreams made a decent or, at any rate, a
comfortable living out of the poorer classes. But the psychologist
rarely paid attention to dreams except incidentally in his study of
imagery, association and the speed of thought. But now a change has come
over the spirit of the times. The subject of the significance of dreams,
so long ignored, has suddenly become a matter of energetic study and of
fiery controversy the world over.

The cause of this revival of interest is the new point of view brought
forward by Professor Bergson in the paper which is here made accessible
to the English-reading public. This is the idea that we can explore the
unconscious substratum of our mentality, the storehouse of our memories,
by means of dreams, for these memories are by no means inert, but have,
as it were, a life and purpose of their own, and strive to rise into
consciousness whenever they get a chance, even into the
semi-consciousness of a dream. To use Professor Bergson's striking
metaphor, our memories are packed away under pressure like steam in a
boiler and the dream is their escape valve.

That this is more than a mere metaphor has been proved by Professor
Freud and others of the Vienna school, who cure cases of hysteria by
inducing the patient to give expression to the secret anxieties and
emotions which, unknown to him, have been preying upon his mind. The
clue to these disturbing thoughts is generally obtained in dreams or
similar states of relaxed consciousness. According to the Freudians a
dream always means something, but never what it appears to mean. It is
symbolic and expresses desires or fears which we refuse ordinarily to
admit to consciousness, either because they are painful or because they
are repugnant to our moral nature. A watchman is stationed at the gate
of consciousness to keep them back, but sometimes these unwelcome
intruders slip past him in disguise. In the hands of fanatical Freudians
this theory has developed the wildest extravagancies, and the voluminous
literature of psycho-analysis contains much that seems to the layman
quite as absurd as the stuff which fills the twenty-five cent dream
book.

It is impossible to believe that the subconsciousness of every one of us
contains nothing but the foul and monstrous specimens which they dredge
up from the mental depths of their neuropathic patients and exhibit with
such pride.