Page:Psychology of the Unconscious (1916).djvu/116

 in complete ignorance of Leibnitz, and, therefore, knew nothing of his doctrine 'dum Deus calculat, fit mundus.'"

Miss Miller's references to Anaxagoras and to Leibnitz both refer to creation by means of thought; that is to say, that divine thought alone could bring forth a new material reality, a reference at first not intelligible, but which will soon, however, be more easily understood.

We now come to those fancies from which Miss Miller principally drew her unconscious creation.

"In the first place, there is the 'Paradise Lost' by Milton, which we had at home in the edition illustrated by Doré, and which had often delighted me from childhood. Then the 'Book of Job,' which had been read aloud to me since the time of my earliest recollection. Moreover, if one compares the first words of 'Paradise Lost' with my first verse, one notices that there is the same verse measure.

"'Of man's first disobedience . . . "'When the Eternal first made sound.'

"My poem also recalls various passages in Job, and one or two places in Handel's Oratorio 'The Creation,' which came out very indistinctly in the first part of the dream."9

The "Lost Paradise" which, as is well known, is so closely connected with the beginning of the world, is made more clearly evident by the verse—

"Of man's first disobedience"

which is concerned evidently with the fall, the meaning of which need not be shown any further. I know the objection which every one unacquainted with psychoanalysis will raise, viz., that Miss Miller might just as well have chosen any other verse as an example, and that, accidentally, she had taken the first one that happened