why my dream took the form of a leering demon with the impolite habit
of squatting on my chest. The stuff that dreams are made of is not
susceptible of that type of analysis. The most generous allowance
must be made for coincidences and irrelevancies, and it must be
constantly remembered that the obscure phenomena of psychology,
and, indeed, the phenomena of more thoroughly established and
intrinsically more definite sciences, cannot be expected to pass
the test of detailed and concrete combinations of circumstances. In
other classes of knowledge the temptation to demand such explicit
explanations of observations and experiences is not so strong,
because of the absence of an equally strong personal interest; but
clearly this does not affect the logical status of the problem.
The reply to this argument I can readily anticipate; and I confess
that my admiration of Hamlet is somewhat dulled by reason of that
ill-advised remark to Horatio about there being more things in heaven
and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies. The occultist
always seizes upon that citation to refute the scientist. He prints
it as his motto on his books and journals, and regards it as a slow
poison that will in time effect the destruction of the rabble of
scientists, and reveal the truth of his own Psycho-Harmonic Science
or Heliocentric Astrology. It is one thing to be open-minded, and to
realize the incompleteness of scientific knowledge, and to appreciate
how often what was ignored by one generation has become the science
of the next; and it is a very different thing to be impressed with
coincidences and dreams and premonitions, and to regard them as
giving the keynote to the conceptions of nature and reality, and
to look upon science as a misdirected effort. Such differences of
attitude depend frequently upon a difference of temperament as well
as upon intellectual discernment. The man or the woman who flies to
the things not dreamt of in our philosophy quite commonly does not
understand the things which our philosophy very creditably explains.
The two types of mind are different, and, as Professor James
expresses it, "the scientific-academic mind and the feminine-mystical
mind shy from each other's facts just as they fly from each other's
temper and spirit."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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