OR, WHAT'S IN A DREAM Dreams

The meaning behind OR, WHAT'S IN A DREAM Dreams

.
A SCIENTIFIC AND PRACTICAL EXPOSITION

{This book seems to have a different title each time it is reprinted:
1) What's in a Dream: a Scientific and Practical Interpretation of Dreams.
G. W. Dillingham company, NY (1901) NUC# NM0587131.
2) Dreams, Their Scientific and Practical Interpretations. T.W. Laurie, London
(1910) NUC# NM0587126.
3) Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted, or, What's in a Dream: a Scientific and
Practical Exposition. M. A. Donohue & company, NY, [n.d.] NUC# NM0587130.
(This is the closest match to this etext)}


BY
GUSTAVUS HINDMAN MILLER


``In a dream, in a vision of the night, when
deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon
the bed; then he openeth the ears of men and
sealeth their instruction that he may withdraw
man from his purpose, and hide pride from man.''
--Job xxxiii., 15.




PREFACE.


``Dreams are rudiments of the great state to come.
We dream what is about to happen.''--BAILEY,


The Bible, as well as other great books of historical and
revealed religion, shows traces of a general and substantial
belief in dreams. Plato, Goethe, Shakespeare and Napoleon
assigned to certain dreams prophetic value. Joseph saw
eleven stars of the Zodiac bow to himself, the twelfth star.
The famine of Egypt was revealed by a vision of fat and lean cattle.
The parents of Christ were warned of the cruel edict of Herod,
and fled with the Divine Child into Egypt.

Pilate's wife, through the influence of a dream, advised her husband
to have nothing to do with the conviction of Christ. But the gross
materialism of the day laughed at dreams, as it echoed the voice and
verdict of the multitude, ``Crucify the Spirit, but let the flesh live.''
Barabbas, the robber, was set at liberty.

The ultimatum of all human decrees and wisdom is to gratify
the passions of the flesh at the expense of the spirit.
The prophets and those who have stood nearest the fountain
of universal knowledge used dreams with more frequency than
any other mode of divination.

Profane, as well as sacred, history is threaded with incidents
of dream prophecy. Ancient history relates that Gennadius
was convinced of the immortality of his soul by conversing
with an apparition in his dream.

Through the dream of Cecilia Metella, the wife of a Consul, the Roman Senate
was induced to order the temple of Juno Sospita rebuilt.

The Emperor Marcian dreamed he saw the bow of the Hunnish conqueror
break on the same night that Attila died.

Plutarch relates how Augustus, while ill, through the dream
of a friend, was persuaded to leave his tent, which a few hours
after was captured by the enemy, and the bed whereon he had lain
was pierced with the enemies' swords.

If Julius Caesar had been less incredulous about dreams he would
have listened to the warning which Calpurnia, his wife,
received in a dream.

Croesus saw his son killed in a dream.

Petrarch saw his beloved Laura, in a dream, on the day she died,
after which he wrote his beautiful poem, ``The Triumph of Death.''

Cicero relates the story of two traveling Arcadians who went to
different lodgings--one to an inn, and the other to a private house.
During the night the latter dreamed that his friend was begging for help.
The dreamer awoke; but, thinking the matter unworthy of notice, went to
sleep again. The second time he dreamed his friend appeared, saying it would
be too late, for he had already been murdered and his body hid in a cart,
under manure. The cart was afterward sought for and the body found.
Cicero also wrote, ``If the gods love men they will certainly disclose
their purposes to them in sleep.''

Chrysippus wrote a volume on dreams as divine portent.
He refers to the skilled interpretations of dreams as a true divination;
but adds that, like all other arts in which men have to proceed
on conjecture and on artificial rules, it is not infallible.

Plato concurred in the general idea prevailing in his day,
that there were divine manifestations to the soul in sleep.
Condorcet thought and wrote with greater fluency in his dreams
than in waking life.

Tartini, a distinguished violinist, composed his ``Devil's Sonata''
under the inspiration of a dream. Coleridge, through dream influence,
composed his ``Kubla Khan.''

The writers of Greek and Latin classics relate many instances
of dream experiences. Homer accorded to some dreams divine origin.
During the third and fourth centuries, the supernatural origin
of dreams was so generally accepted that the fathers, relying upon
the classics and the Bible as authority, made this belief a doctrine
of the Christian Church.

Synesius placed dreaming above all methods of divining the future;
he thought it the surest, and open to the poor and rich alike.

Aristotle wrote: ``There is a divination concerning some things
in dreams not incredible.'' Camille Flammarion, in his great book
on ``Premonitory Dreams and Divination of the Future,'' says:
``I do not hesitate to affirm at the outset that occurrence of dreams
foretelling future events with accuracy must be accepted as certain.''

Joan of Arc predicted her death.

Cazotte, the French philosopher and transcendentalist, warned Condorcet
against the manner of his death.

People dream now, the same as they did in medieval and ancient times.

The following excerpt from ``The Unknown,''[1] a recent book
by Flammarion, the French astronomer, supplemented with a few
of my own thoughts and collections, will answer the purposes
intended for this book.


[1] ``From `The Unknown.' Published by Harper & Brothers Copyright,
1900, by Camille Flammarion.''


``We may see without eyes and hear without ears, not by unnatural excitement
of our sense of vision or of hearing, for these accounts prove the contrary,
but by some interior sense, psychic and mental.

``The soul, by its interior vision, may see not only what is
passing at a great distance, but it may also know in advance
what is to happen in the future. The future exists potentially,
determined by causes which bring to pass successive events.

``POSITIVE OBSERVATION PROVES THE EXISTENCE OF A PSYCHIC WORLD,
as real as the world known to our physical senses.

``And now, because the soul acts at a distance by some power that belongs
to it, are we authorized to conclude that it exists as something real,
and that it is not the result of functions of the brain?

``Does light really exist?

``Does heat exist?

``Does sound exist?

``No.

``They are only manifestations produced by movement.

``What we call light is a sensation produced upon our optic nerve
by the vibrations of ether, comprising between 400 and 756 trillions
per second, undulations that are themselves very obscure.

``What we call heat is a sensation produced by vibrations between 350
and and{sic} 600 trillions.

``The sun lights up space, as much at midnight as at midday.
Its temperature is nearly 270 degrees below zero.

``What we call sound is a sensation produced upon our auditory nerve
by silent vibrations of the air, themselves comprising between 32,000
and 36,000 a second.

. . . . . .


``Very many scientific terms represent only results, not causes.
``The soul may be in the same case.

``The observations given in this work, the sensations, the impressions,
the visions, things heard, etc., may indicate physical effects produced
without the brain.

``Yes, no doubt, but it does not seem so.

``Let us examine one instance.

``Turn back to page 156.@@@

``A young woman, adored by her husband, dies at Moscow. Her father-in-law,
at Pulkowo, near St. Petersburg, saw her that same hour by his side.
She walked with him along the street; then she disappeared.
Surprised, startled, and terrified, he telegraphed to his son,
and learned both the sickness and the death of his daughter-in-law.

``We are absolutely obliged to admit that SOMETHING emanated
from the dying woman and touched her father-in-law. This

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Dream dictionary entry taken from 10,000 Dreams Interpreted by Gustavus Hindman Miller. Psychologist World provides these definitions as a courtesy and is not responsible for, or for any consequences resulting from the use of, Miller's archaic dream interpretations.