Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted; Or, What's in a Dream: A Scientific and Practical Exposition — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted; Or, What's in a Dream: A Scientific and Practical Exposition
John Stuart Mill · en
Petrarch saw his beloved Laura, in a dream, on the day she died,
after which he wrote his beautiful poem, ``The Triumph of Death.''
Cicero relates the story of two traveling Arcadians who went to
different lodgings--one to an inn, and the other to a private house.
During the night the latter dreamed that his friend was begging for help.
The dreamer awoke; but, thinking the matter unworthy of notice, went to
sleep again. The second time he dreamed his friend appeared, saying it would
be too late, for he had already been murdered and his body hid in a cart,
under manure. The cart was afterward sought for and the body found.
Cicero also wrote, ``If the gods love men they will certainly disclose
their purposes to them in sleep.''
Chrysippus wrote a volume on dreams as divine portent.
He refers to the skilled interpretations of dreams as a true divination;
but adds that, like all other arts in which men have to proceed
on conjecture and on artificial rules, it is not infallible.
Plato concurred in the general idea prevailing in his day,
that there were divine manifestations to the soul in sleep.
Condorcet thought and wrote with greater fluency in his dreams
than in waking life.
Tartini, a distinguished violinist, composed his ``Devil's Sonata''
under the inspiration of a dream. Coleridge, through dream influence,
composed his ``Kubla Khan.''
The writers of Greek and Latin classics relate many instances
of dream experiences. Homer accorded to some dreams divine origin.
During the third and fourth centuries, the supernatural origin
of dreams was so generally accepted that the fathers, relying upon
the classics and the Bible as authority, made this belief a doctrine
of the Christian Church.
Synesius placed dreaming above all methods of divining the future;
he thought it the surest, and open to the poor and rich alike.
Aristotle wrote: ``There is a divination concerning some things
in dreams not incredible.'' Camille Flammarion, in his great book
on ``Premonitory Dreams and Divination of the Future,'' says:
``I do not hesitate to affirm at the outset that occurrence of dreams
foretelling future events with accuracy must be accepted as certain.''
Joan of Arc predicted her death.
Cazotte, the French philosopher and transcendentalist, warned Condorcet
against the manner of his death.
People dream now, the same as they did in medieval and ancient times.
The following excerpt from ``The Unknown,''[1] a recent book
by Flammarion, the French astronomer, supplemented with a few
of my own thoughts and collections, will answer the purposes
intended for this book.
[1] ``From `The Unknown.' Published by Harper & Brothers Copyright,
1900, by Camille Flammarion.''
``We may see without eyes and hear without ears, not by unnatural excitement
of our sense of vision or of hearing, for these accounts prove the contrary,
but by some interior sense, psychic and mental.