[Footnote 257: Laistner, _Das Rätsel der Sphinx_, 1889, vol. 1. p. xiii. While Laistner was chiefly concerned with the exploration of the religious myths, he pointed out that epics and fairy-tales (Amor and Psyche, the stories of the Nibelung and Baldur, etc.) may be similarly explained. It seems probable that his investigations received a stimulus in the earlier experiments of J. Boerner (_Das Alpdrücken_, 1855) on the production of nightmare. Laistner has had many followers, notable C. Ruths (_Experimental-Untersuchungen über Musikphantome_, 1898), who argues (pp. 415-46) that the old Greek myths had their chief root in dream phenomena, in delirium, and in the visions aroused in some persons by hearing music, while he considers that many fabulous monsters and dragons have arisen from the combinations seen in dreams. We know that the Greeks, who were such great myth-makers, much occupied themselves in lying in wait for dreams, and in oneiromancy and necromancy (_e.g._, Bouché-Leclercq, _Histoire de la Divination dans l'Antiquité_, vol. 1. Bk. ii. ch. i. pp. 277-329). In this way alone it is doubtless true that, as Jewell says, 'dreams have had a great effect upon the history of the world.'] [Footnote 258: For evidence regarding the high esteem in which many of the greatest Greek and Latin Fathers held dreams as divine revelations, see _e.g._, Sully, Art. 'Dreams,' _Encyclopædia Britannica_.] [Footnote 259: There is still a natural tendency in the uninstructed mind to identify spontaneous visual phenomena with Heaven. 'When I gets to bed,' said an aged and superannuated dustman to Vanderkiste (_The Dens of London_, p. 14), 'I says my prayers, and I puts my hands afore my eyes--so [covering his face with his hands]; well, I sees such beautiful things, sparkles like, all afloating about, and I wished to ax yer, sir, if that ain't a something of Heaven, sir.'] [Footnote 260: This was the only traceable element in the dream. The dreamer was accustomed to look at her watch on awaking in the morning, and, if it was seven or later, not to go to sleep again.] [Footnote 261: Freud, 'Der Dichter und das Phantasieren' (1908), in second series of his _Sammlung Kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre;_ K. Abraham, _Traum und Mythus_ (1909); and O. Rank, _Der Mythus von der Geburt des Helden_ (1909), both published in the _Schriften zur angewandten Seelenkunde_, edited by Freud.]