_Dreams._--Dreams are symptoms of the eternal law of compensation. In our waking hours we develop a countless horde of yearnings, cravings and desires, and by the very nature of things, the majority of them must go ungratified. The feeling that something is wanting, thus left within us, is met and satisfied by our imaginary functionings during sleep. That is to say, dreams represent the reaction of our yearnings upon the phenomena actually encountered during sleep--the motions of our blood and intestines, the pressure of the bedclothes, the sounds of church-bells, domestic animals, etc., and the state of the atmosphere. These phenomena are fairly constant, but our dreams vary widely on successive nights. Therefore, the variable factor is represented by the yearnings we harbor as we go to bed. Thus, the man who loves music and must go without it all day, hears celestial harmonies in his sleep. Thus the slave dreams of soaring like an eagle. Thus the prisoner dreams that he is free and the sailor that he is safely at home. Inasmuch as the number of our conscious and unconscious desires, each day, is infinite, there is an infinite variety in dreams. But always the relation set forth may be predicated. [1] "_Also sprach Zarathustra_," I. [2] "_Menschliches allzu Menschliches_," III, § 185. [3] "_Science and Immortality_," New York, 1904. [4] "_Menschliches allzu Menschliches_," II, § 88. [5] "_Morgenröte_," § 42. [6] "_Zur Genealogie der Moral_," III, 11 to 17. [7] "_Morgenröte_," § 91. [8] "_Götzendämmerung_," IX, § 19. [9] "_Götzendämmerung_," IX, § 24. [10] "_Götzendämmerung_," IX, § 38. [11] "_Morgenröte_," § 6. [12] "_Morgenröte_," § 7. [13] "_Morgenröte_," § 205. [14] "_Morgenröte_," § 201. XIV NIETZSCHE VS. WAGNER Nietzsche believed in heroes and, in his youth, was a hero worshipper. First Arthur Schopenhauer's bespectacled visage stared from his shrine and after that the place of sacredness and honor was held by Richard Wagner. When the Wagner of the philosopher's dreams turned into a Wagner of very prosaic flesh and blood, there came a time of doubt and stress and suffering for poor Nietzsche. But he had courage as well as loyalty, and in the end he dashed his idol to pieces and crunched the bits underfoot. Faith, doubt, anguish, disillusion--it is not a rare sequence in this pitiless and weary old world.