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.