Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/58

44 the body. But what can it be? To this question the fanciful imagination of primitive man produced several answers, giving to this principle of life, this soul, the form of some creature. Some called the soul a dove, others, a butterfly, and those capable of more abstract conceptions, imagining it to be a shadow, or a breath of wind. The disquieting and inexplicable phenomena of sleep and dreams, were capable of an explanation by the acceptation of such ideas, which was perfectly satisfactory to a primitive mind. The soul, that material and organic inhabitant of the body, that kind of parasite on the living organism, experienced at times a desire to forsake its cage. When this happened, the body was left in a condition very similar to that which followed its final abandonment by the soul: it knew and felt nothing, it did not move: it slept. The soul went somewhere; it did and experienced many things, of which an indistinct recollection was retained after its return, and these were the dreams. Grimm tells a story, taken from Paulus Diaconus, that describes how a certain King Gun tram lay down to sleep when out hunting one day, and the servant who accompanied him saw a little animal resembling a snake, crawl out from his mouth and hasten to the brook near by, which it was unable to cross. The servant noticing this, drew his sword from its scabbard and laid it across the brook. The little animal crossed over upon the sword, and after an absence of several hours, returned in the same way, and crawled back into the king's mouth. The king then awoke and told his companion how he had dreamed of coming to an immense river, which he had crossed upon an iron bridge, etc. Grimm relates another legend of the same kind, about a maid out of whose mouth crept a little red mouse after she had fallen asleep; some one then turned her over upon her face, so that when the