Now let us return to the house symbolism. When in our dreams we make use of the projections of houses as supports, does that not suggest a well-known, popular German saying, with reference to a woman with a markedly developed bust: “She has something for one to hold on to” (_Die hat etwas zum Anhalten_), whilst another colloquialism in the same connection is: “She has plenty of wood in front of her house” (_Die hat viel Holz vor dem Hause_), as though our interpretation were to be borne out by this when we say that wood is a female maternal symbol. There is still something to be said on the subject of wood. It is not easy to see why wood should have come to represent a woman or mother, but here a comparison of different languages may be useful to us. The German word _Holz_ (wood) is said to be derived from the same root as the Greek ὔλη, which means stuff, raw material. This would be an instance of a process which is by no means rare, in that a general name for material has come finally to be applied to a particular material only. Now, in the Atlantic Ocean, there is an island named Madeira, and this name was given to it by the Portuguese when they discovered it, because at that time it was covered with dense forests; for in Portuguese the word for wood is _madeira_. But you cannot fail to notice that this _madeira_ is merely a modified form of the Latin _materia_, which again signifies material in general. Now _materia_ is derived from _mater_ = mother, and the material out of which anything is made may be conceived of as giving birth to it. So, in the symbolic use of wood to represent woman or mother, we have a survival of this old idea.