PSYCHO-ANALYSIS.—Psycho-analysis is not the last word in psychological method; and a great deal more of experiment is needed. Freud’s theory of dreams, for instance, is excellent pioneer work in a field hitherto left more or less uncultivated, but it is very far from being exhaustively explanatory of the facts. Suppose it were possible to _control_ dreams—in other words, to dream of what you will—would not the theory of Freud that dreams are subconscious wish-fulfilments stand in need of amendment? But to control dreams is not an utter impossibility. Sufficient experimental work has been done in this direction to prove that the gate of dreams is open to the intelligent will. And there is warrant for the attempt in a good deal of mystical literature. I was reading only recently the poems of Vaughan the Silurist, and what should I come across but the following passage: Being laid and dress’d for sleep, close not thy eyes Up with the curtains; give thy soul the wing In some good thoughts; so when the day shall rise And thou unrak’st thy fire, those sparks will bring New flames; besides, where these lodge, vain heats mourn And die; that bush where God is shall not burn. Vaughan’s lines are not great poetry, but they contain a useful psychological hint. PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND THE MYSTERIES.—It would be unwise to make a dogma of any of the present conclusions of psycho-analysis. As a means of examining the contents of the subconscious, psycho-analysis is an instrument of the highest value, but in the interpretation of what it finds there, and in the conclusions it draws as to their origin—how the apple got into the dumpling, in fact—psycho-analysis requires to be checked by all the knowledge we have at our command. Mr. Mead has raised the question of origins, but it is just as easy to raise the question of interpretation. I am not satisfied that the interpretation placed by Jung on myths is any more than correct as far as it goes, and I am disposed to think that it does not go far enough. His reduction, for example, of a whole group of myths to the “incest” motive, appears to me, even in the light of his definition of incest as the “backward urge into childhood,” to give us only a partial truth, an aspect of truth. For there is a sense in which an “urge into childhood” is not backward but forward, not a regression into an old, but a progression into a new childhood. “Unless ye become as little children, ye can in no wise enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” “Incest” is a strictly improper term to apply to such a transformation; the new birth might suit the case better. Mr. Mead takes the same view. The interpretations of psycho-analysis carry us back, he suggests, to the lesser mysteries; but they need to be “elevated” in the Thomist sense in order to carry us back to the greater. So long as it confines itself to the “body” psycho-analysis must plainly be confined