The following rather comical dream illustrates quite as clearly the
growth of a feeling of irritation and vexation, probably connected with
the development of some slightly discomposing organic sensation. I
dreamt I was unexpectedly called on to lecture to a class of young
women, on Herder. I began hesitatingly, with some vague generalities
about the Augustan age of German literature, referring to the three
well-known names of Lessing, Schiller, and Goethe. Immediately my
sister, who suddenly appeared in the class, took me up, and said she
thought there was a fourth distinguished name belonging to this period.
I was annoyed at the interruption, but said, with a feeling of triumph,
"I suppose you mean Wieland?" and then appealed to the class whether
there were not twenty persons who knew the names I had mentioned to one
who knew Wieland's name. Then the class became generally disorderly. My
feeling of embarrassment gained in depth. Finally, as a climax, several
quite young girls, about ten years and less, came and joined the class.
The dream broke off abruptly as I was in the act of taking these
children to the wife of an old college tutor, to protest against their
admission.
It is worth noting, perhaps, that in this evolution of feeling in
dreaming the quality of the emotion may vary within certain limits. One
shade of feeling may be followed by another and kindred shade, so that
the whole dream still preserves a degree, though a less obvious degree,
of emotional unity. Thus, for example, a lady friend of mine once dreamt
that she was in church, listening to a well-known novelist of the more
earnest sort, preaching. A wounded soldier was brought in to be shot,
because he was mortally wounded, and had distinguished himself by his
bravery. He was then shot, but not killed, and, rolling over in agony,
exclaimed, "How long!" The development of an extreme emotion of horror
out of the vague feeling of awe which is associated with a church, gives
a curious interest to this dream.
_Verisimilitude in Dreams._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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