Myths and Dreams

by Edward Clodd

In the belief that through dreams and oracles Yahweh made known his will, the influence of older beliefs and their literature is apparent. Among the Accadians, a pre-Semitic race in Babylonia, there existed a mass of treatises on magic and divination by dreams and visions, and both from this and from Egyptian sources, blended with survivals from their barbaric past, the Hebrews largely drew.

In this, too, “there is nothing new under the sun.” Homer, painting the vividness and agonising incompleteness of the passing visions, affirms that dreams from Jove proceed, although sometimes to deceive men; Plato assigns prophetic character to the images seen in them; Aristotle sees a divination concerning some things in dreams which is not incredible; the answer to oracles was sought in them, as when the worshipper slept in a temple on the skin of a sacrificed ram, and learned his destiny through the dream that came. The Stoics argued that if the gods love and care for men and are all-knowing, they will tell their purposes to men in sleep. Cicero attaches high importance to the faculty of interpreting them; their phenomena, like those of oracles and predictions, should, he contends, be explained just as the grammarians and the commentators explain the poets.[103]

With the influence of these beliefs in the air, and with the legend-visions of Scripture as authority, the divine origin of dreams became a doctrine of the Christian Church. Tertullian says that “we receive dreams from God, there being no man so foolish as never to have known any dreams come true,” and in his De Anima reference is made to a host of writers of dream treatises. For the most part they are but names; their treatises have perished, but enough remains for the perusal of the curious regarding ancient rules of interpretation and the particular significance of certain dreams. The current views of dreams in classic antiquity are believed to be partly embodied in the ’Ονειροκριτικα’ of Artemidorus of Ephesus, who flourished about the middle of the second century, and who reduces dream interpretation to a body of elaborate rules, while amongst Christian writers Synesius of Cyrene, who lived two centuries later, holds a corresponding place.

Both classic and patristic writers supply copious details concerning the classes into which dreams were divided, and which have some curious correspondences among the Oriental nations, as well as in our dream-lore, e.g., when Artemidorus says that he who dreams he hath lost a tooth shall lose a friend, we may compare with this a quotation which Brand gives from the Sapho and Phao of Lily, a playwright of the time of Elizabeth. “Dreams have their trueth. Dreams are but dotings, which come either by things we see in the day or meates that we eat, and so the common-sense preferring it to be the imaginative. ‘I dreamed,’ says Ismena, ‘mine eyetooth was loose, and that I thrust it out with my tongue.’ ‘It foretelleth,’ replies Mileta, ‘the loss of a friend; and I ever thought thee so full of prattle that thou wouldst thrust out the best friend with thy tatling.’”

It is, however, needless to quote from Artemidorus and others of their kin. They do but furnish samples of the ingenuity applied to profitless speculations on matters which were fundamental then, and around which the mind played unchecked and unchallenged. Moreover, the subtle distinctions made between dreams in former times were slowly effaced, or sank to their proper level in the gossip of chap books—our European kee-keé-wins. But the belief in the dream as having a serious meaning, and in the spectral appearances in visions as real existences, remained as strong as in any barbarian or pagan. In an atmosphere charged with the supernatural, apparitions and the like were matters of course, the particular form of the illusion to which the senses testified being in harmony with the ideas of the age. The devil does not appear to Greek or Roman, but he sorely troubled the saints, unless their nerves were, like Luther’s, strong enough to overmaster him. Luther speaks of him as coming into his cell, and making a great noise behind the stove, and of his walking in the cloister above his cell at night; “but as I knew it was the devil,” he says, “I paid no attention to him, and went to sleep.” Sceptics now and again arose protesting against the current belief, but they were as a voice crying in the desert. One Henry Cornelius Agrippa, in the fifteenth century, a man born out of due time, says, “To this delusion not a few great philosophers have given not a little credit, especially Democritus, Aristotle, Sincsius, etc., so far building on examples of dreams, which some accident hath made to be true, that thence they endeavour to persuade men that there are no dreams but what are real.”

His words have not yet lost their purport. For the credulity of man, the persistence with which he clings to the shadow of the supernatural after having surrendered the substance, seem almost a constant quantity, varying only in form. Unteachable by experience, fools still pay their guineas to mediums to rap out inane messages from the departed, and send postage stamps to the Astronomer Royal, asking him to “work the planets” for them, and secure them luck in love and law-suits. Nor is there any cure for this but in wise culture of the mind, wise correction, and wholesome control of the emotions. “By faithfully intending the mind to the realities of nature,” as Bacon has it, and by living and working among men in a healthy, sympathetic way, exaggeration of a particular line of thought or feeling is prevented, and the balance of the faculties best preserved. For, adds Dr. Maudsley, in pregnant and well-chosen words, “there are not two worlds—a world of nature and a world of human nature—standing over against one another in a sort of antagonism, but one world of nature, in the orderly evolution of which human nature has its subordinate part. Delusions and hallucinations may be described as discordant notes in the grand harmony. It should, then, be every man’s steadfast aim, as a part of nature—his patient work—to cultivate such entire sincerity of relations with it; so to think, feel, and act always in intimate unison with it; to be so completely one with it in life, that when the summons comes to surrender his mortal part to absorption into it, he does so, not fearfully, as to an enemy who has vanquished him, but trustfully, as to a mother who, when the day’s task is done, bids him lie down to sleep.”

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INDEX.

Abipone, [15], [151], [156].
Abraham, [135].
Accadians, [134], [240].
Æsop, [96].
Agassiz, [208].
Agni, [74].
Agrippa, Cornelius, [243].
Ahriman, [54].
Alger, [208].
Algonquins, [40], [43], [46], [91], [99], [110], [125], [167], [184], [203], [211], [216].
Allah, [159].
Ancestors, sun and moon as, [19].
worship of, [110], [112], [214].
Ancient Stone Age, [8].
Animal, descent from, [99].
worship, [110].
Animals, transformation into, [81].
virtue in flesh of, [164].
souls in, [207].
Apollo, [52].
Arabian folk-tales, [196].
notion of soul, [202].
Araucanians, [43], [163].
Arnobius, [167].
Arnold, Matthew, [14], [227].
Art, primitive, [147].
Artemidorus, [241].
Arthur, King, [123].
Aryan epics, [71].
Aryan folk-tales, [70], [95].
languages, [67].
myths, [51], [76].
Aryans, primitive home of, [69].
Astrology, [33].
Australians, [20], [26], [30], [99], [103], [150], [153], [157], [165], [179], [198], [205].
Aztecs, [44], [199], [210].
Barbaric belief in dreams, [168-174].
belief in souls in brutes, etc., [207-213].
belief in virtue in lifeless things, [12], [160-168], [181].
confusion about names, [154-159].
cures for disease, [179].
dread of portrait-taking, [162].
language, [150].
notions of soul’s abode, [215-222].
theory of disease, [174], [182].
theory of a soul, [182-187].
theory of soul’s nature, [198-206].
Baring Gould, [28], [84].
Basutos, [184].

Beast-fables, [94], [98].
Beowulf, [52].
Berserkr, [87].
Bifröst, [33].
Bird, soul as, [210].
wind as, [43-45].
Body, soul apart from, [188].
soul as replica of, [205].
Bohemian folk-tale, [195].
Bonaparte, [64].
Brain of man and ape, [144].
Brand, [17], [166], [241].
Brazilian Indians, [153], [156], [175].
Breath, soul as, [187], [198] ff.
Brébeuf, [165].
Brinton, [45], [92], [101], [210].
Brutes, souls in, [207].
Bryant, [7].
Buckle, [3].
Buddha, [64].
Buddhist fables (see [Jâtakas]).
Bunsen, [132].
Bushmen, [13], [20], [26].
Cæsar, [106].
Callaway, Bishop, [170].
Campbell, J. F., [193].
Cannibalism, [165].
Cardinal points, symbol of, [44].
Caribs, [167].
Carpenter, Dr., [88], [232].
Catlin, [162].
Charlemagne, [125].
Charles’s Wain, [30].
Charms, philosophy of, [164].
Chasuble, [167].
Chaucer, [28], [32].
Child and savage, [14].
Chimpanzee, brain of, [145].
Chinese myth, [16], [36].
Choctaws, [42], [184].
Christian heaven, [220].
religion, [231].
Cicero, [240].
Civilised theories of soul’s nature, [198], [203].
Clan-totems, [107], [109].
Cloud-serpent, [46].
Clouds as cows, [51].
Confession, [181].
Congo Negroes, [202].
Continuity, doctrine of, [228], [231].
Coral, [166].
Costa Ricans, [216], [234].
Counting, savage, [153].
Cox, Sir G. W., [37], [62], [75], [198].
Crest, totem as, [108].
Cronus, [35], [37].
Cross as wind symbol, [44].
Custom and Myth, [38].
Dakotas, [31], [46], [106], [175], [199], [213].
Dammaras, [151].
Darwin, [3], [230].
Dasent, [91], [121].
Dead, burial of food with, [212].
road of the, [32].
Death, savage notion of, [186].
Demons, [58], [178].
Dennys, [15].
Deodand, [15].
Devil, [53], [56], [60].
as disease-bringer, [176].
Disease, savage theory of, [89], [174] ff.
savage remedies for, [179].
Doctrine of signatures, [166].
Dorman, [42], [157], [209].
Dragons, battles with, [52].
Dreams as source of belief in soul, [183], [225].
Dreams, duality in, [183].
savage belief in reality of, [168-174].
omens from, [236-242].
Dyaks, [17], [25], [159], [171].
Dyaus, [36], [74].

Earth as source of heaven-theories, [219].
Earth-bearers, [40].
Echo, soul as, [185].
Edda, [15], [29], [33], [43], [52].
Effigy, burning in, [16].
Egg, world as, [38].
Ego, the, [232].
Egyptian folk-tale, [197].
Epics, Aryan, [71].
Epidemic delusions, [88].
Eskimos, [30], [91], [153], [163], [179], [199], [217], [237].
Esthonian myth, [39].
Euhêmeros, [66].
Eumenidês, [159].
Evolution, [144].
of mind, [5], [228].
Exile, Jewish, [134].
Exogamy, [104].
Eye-bright, [15], [166].
Fasting, [237].
Fijians, [171], [177], [184], [211].
Fingers in counting, [153].
Finnish myth, [16], [32], [38], [43], [45], [121], [176], [196], [219].
Finns, [159], [173].
Fire myths, [47].
Food, forbidden, [105].
Foster, Thomas, [63].
Frisian moon myth, [28].
Gaea, [35].
Galton, [151].
Gellert myth, [128].
Gender, origin of, [22].
Gesta Romanorum, [128].
Giant with no heart in his body, [192].
Gill, W. W., [20], [47], [177].
Gladstone, W. E., [7].
Gods, revelation from, through dreams, [239].
Goldziher, [62], [64], [135].
Greek myth, [33], [77].
notion of soul, [202].
Greenlanders, [27], [164], [171], [201], [212].
Grimm, [27], [30], [32], [55], [97], [178], [181], [201], [209], [210].
Grimm’s Law, [73].
Grote, [14].
Hades, [220].
Hall, Bishop, [18].
Heaven, [19].
imagery of, [221].
and earth, myths of, [34].
Hebrew myth, [33], [39], [64], [131-136].
notion of soul, [206].
Hell, [220].
Heraklês, [22], [31], [51], [63], [136].
Hêrê, [31].
Hiawatha, [158].
Hidatsa Indians, [235].
History, myth in, [114].
Hitopadesa, [129].
Holmes, [183].
Homer, [240].
Hottentot, [217].
Huc, Father, [181].
Hurricane, [199].
Huxley, [145], [228].
Icelandic moon myth, [28].
Iliad, [55], [64], [205].
Ilmarine, [39].
Im Thurn, [156], [171], [207].
Inanimate things, criminality of, [15].
sex in, [24].
souls in, [211].
Incas, [45].
Indian Fairy Tales, [191].
Indians, Columbian, [155].
Housatonic, [31].
North American, [13], [17], [21], [26], [30], [151], [156], [162], [164], [175], [199], [207], [212], [216], [219], [235], [237].
of Guiana, [156], [171].
Selish, [27].
Western, [46], [107].
Indra, [49], [53].
Iroquois, [156], [165], [167].
Isaac, [135].
Islam, [33].
Jack and Jill, [28].
Japanese myth, [40].
Jâtakas, [27], [96], [129], [192].
Jehovah, [159].
Johnson, Dr., [183].
Jonah, [136].
Kaffirs, [13], [164].
Kalevala, [38].
Kalevipöeg, [39].
Kane, Dr., [155].
Kasirs, [30].
Kenaima, [175].
Khasias moon myth, [27].
Kinship, primitive, [102].
Kirby, [196].
Kuhn, [41].
Lancashire folk-lore, [177], [204].
Lang, Andrew, [37], [166], [205].
Lang, Dr., [157].
Language, personification of, [24].
physical base of, [150].
primitive, [149].
Languages, savage, [23].
limitations of, [150].
Lapps, [156], [159], [201].
Leland, [44].
Lightning myths, [47].
Lithuanian, [32].
Living and not living, savage confusion between, [12], [160-168], [181].
Llewellyn myth, [128].
Lucretius, [169].
Luther, [242].
Lycanthropy, [83].
Lyell, [145].
Malays, [150].
Man, mental development of, [147], [228].
primitive interpretation of nature by, [10].
relation of, to nature, [4], [228].
savage and civilised, [144].
Manacicas, [20].
Manes, [212].
Maoris, [34].
Mapuches, [180].
Marriage, primitive, [103].
Maruts, [44], [53].
Matthews, Washington, [235].
Maudsley, Dr., [243].
Maui, sun-catcher, [21].
fire-bringer, [47].
M’Lennan, [102], [104].
Medicine-men, [92], [99], [237].
Melanesian, [166].
Men-beasts, [86].
Metamorphosis, [81].
Metempsychosis, [82].
Mexicans, [212].
Milky Way, [31], [222].
Mind, evolution of, [5], [228].
Mivart, [233].
Mohawk, [199].
Mohicans, [150].
Mongolian moon myth, [27].
Mongols, [150].
Moon, as mother, [25].
as sun’s sister, [26].
man in the, [28].
myths, [10], [19], [20].
patches, [27].
Moquis, [99], [102], [110].
Müller, Max, [37], [49], [56], [62], [66], [68], [111], [158].
Multiple souls, [234].
Myth in history, [114].
origin of, [17].
primitive meaning of, [3], [10].
serious meaning in, [7].
solar theory of, [61-81].
value of study of, [138].
Myths of Creation, [38].
earth-bearers, [40].