Others to-day are fascinated by their _dreams_, because they regard them as messengers from that mysterious inner world in which, like the Christians of old, they are beginning to divine depths hitherto unimagined. They feel “forces” at work there which they are tempted to personify in terms of ancient myth—_Ahriman_, _Lucifer_, _Oedipus_, _Psyche_, and the like. But outside the significant adjective _sub-conscious_, which has almost certainly come to stay, the effect which such tendencies may have on the English language remains a tale to be told a hundred years hence. The numerous secondary implications unfolding within _dream_, however, its popularity, and its obvious power of suggesting images, must interest us as further symptoms of a now almost universal consciousness of at any rate the existence of such an “inner” world. In some lines written as a preface to the _Recluse_—the long, unfinished philosophical poem of which the _Prelude_ and the _Excursion_ were to form parts—Wordsworth has described the holy awe which he, for one, entertained as he realized that he must now set out to explore this world: Urania, I shall need Thy guidance, or a greater Muse, if such Descend to earth or dwell in highest heaven! For I must tread on shadowy ground, must sink Deep—and, aloft ascending, breathe in worlds To which the heaven of heavens is but a veil. All strength—all terror, single or in bands, That ever was put forth in personal form— Jehovah—with his thunder, and the choir Of shouting Angels, and the empyreal thrones, I pass them unalarmed. Not Chaos, not The darkest pit of lowest Erebus, Nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out By help of dreams—can breed such fear and awe As fall upon us often when we look Into our Minds, into the Mind of Man— My haunt, and the main region of my song. BIBLIOGRAPHY