The links of this chain are proven by the material, with the exception of sun and fire, which I put in parentheses, but which, however, will be proven through what follows in the further course of the analysis. All of these expressions, with one exception, belong to erotic speech. (“My God, star, light; my sun, fire of love, fiery love,” etc.) “Creator” appears indistinct at first, but becomes understandable through the reference to the undertone of Eros, to the vibrating chord of Nature, which attempts to renew itself in every pair of lovers, and awaits the wonder of creation.
Miss Miller had taken pains to disclose the unconscious creation of her mind to her understanding, and, indeed through a procedure which agrees in principle with psychoanalysis, and, therefore, leads to the same results as psychoanalysis. But, as usually happens with laymen and beginners, Miss Miller, because she had no knowledge of psychoanalysis, left off at the thoughts which necessarily bring the deep complex lying at the bottom of it to light in an indirect, that is to say, censored manner. More than this, a simple method, merely the carrying out of the thought to its conclusion, is sufficient to discover the meaning. Miss Miller finds it astonishing that her unconscious phantasy does not, following the Mosaic account of creation, put light in the first place, instead of tone.
Now follows an explanation, theoretically constructed and correct ad hoc, the hollowness of which is, however, characteristic of all similar attempts at explanation. She says:
“It is perhaps interesting to recall that Anaxagoras also had the Cosmos arise out of chaos through a sort of whirlwind, which does not happen usually without producing sound.[[67]] But at this time I had studied no philosophy, and knew nothing either of Anaxagoras or of his theories about the ‘νοῦς,’ which I, unconsciously, was openly following. At that time, also, I was equally 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.”[[68]]