Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/321



It is not an uncommon phenomenon in the development of science that professional men of erudition, with all the help at their disposal, with all the implements of their knowledge and ability, combat some principle of popular wisdom which is, on the other hand, defended by the people with equal tenacity, and that finally science is forced to recognize that in essentials the popular conception, and not its own, is correct. It would be especially worthy of investigation to discover why it is that science, on its gradually mounting path, progresses in an irregular zigzag line, which at times comes close to the popular Weltanschauung, and then quite departs from it.

I mention this peculiar phenomenon for the reason that the latest investigations of dreams, those noteworthy and bizarre manifestations of mental life, have laid bare facts which compel us to abandon our former views of the nature of dreams, and, with certain limitations, to return to the popular theory.

The people have never given up a belief in the significance of dreams. The oldest writings which have been preserved to us, hewn out in stone in praise of the old Babylonian kings, as also the mythology and history of the Hindoos, Chinese, Aztecs, Greeks, Etruscans, Jews and Christians, take the point of view, held to-day by the mass of the people, that dreams can be interpreted. The interpretation of dreams was for thousands of years a special science, a particular cult, whose priests and priestesses often decided the fate of countries and called forth revolutions which changed the history of the world. This now antiquated science rested on the unshakable belief that the dream, though in a concealed way and by obscure analogies, was quite capable of interpretation by the initiate, revealed the future, and that by these nocturnal phenomena the higher powers desired to prepare mortals for approaching events of importance. In the lower ranks of the populace, the dream book, that noteworthy survival of ancient Babylonian astrology, still enjoys to-day great popularity and –9