Page:The Naturalisation of the Supernatural.pdf/96

 CHAPTER IV SPONTANEOUS THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE: COINCIDENT DREAMS

HE belief that in sleep are revealed things hidden from the common daylight is coeval probably with the beginnings of human history. The savage cult of spirits and the belief in survival after death are traced by modern anthropologists to the mysterious visions of dream-life. The dreamer and the interpreter of dreams are alike held in high honour amongst primitive races: and it is hardly necessary to remind the reader that soothsaying by dreams is not even yet obsolete in our own and other civilised countries.

Now it may be claimed that the hypothesis of telepathy has given a new meaning to the interpretation of dreams. It was no doubt the frequent occurrence in dreams of mysterious correspondences with things actually happening in the world outside the dreamer's mind which first called attention to the subject: and in sleep, if anywhere, we may expect to find traces of the operation of telepathy, for the quiescence and almost complete freedom from external disturbance which characterise that state are precisely the conditions which are indicated as favourable to the reception of stimuli so weak as are presumably these messages from other minds. 76