"A skilful man reads dreams for his self-knowledge."

- Emerson.

Recent students affirm the existence of certain rules and laws that govern dreams. By applying these rules the dreamer's mental processes may be followed through the mazes of the subconsciousness and the dream analyzed and explained. However new the methods, the result is merely the recovery of a long-lost art, for dream interpretation is nothing new. By the modern processes human motives, unrecognized thoughts and forbidden desires are unerringly ferreted out and, in the case of a neurotic patient, frequently cured, but here the work ends. The older methods dealt in divination, prophecy and occult matters, warnings and admonitions were administered and heeded by the recipients thereof. At first glance the difference seems as vast as the distance that sweeps between the generations of the dreamers, but in reality the variance is slight. For while the modern method merely claims to dissect character or tendencies, and the ancient oneirocritics attempt to forecast the future, the scientists are confronted with the fact that "character is destiny," and thus despite themselves the ultra-moderns become prophetic.

In all ages students have divided the dream into various classes according to their form and meaning. This differentiation agrees in essentials, for excepting the divinatory and prophetic dreams that abound in the sacred literature of every race and creed, the universal classification of the dream rests upon the same basic principles. The symbolic, significant, and curative dreams of Egypt find a replica in the symbolic, symptomatic and therapeutic dreams of modern medicine. The classification of dream stimuli, or causes, in Dr. Freud's work, "The Interpretation of Dreams," written in 1900 agrees in the salient points with the "Philosophy" of Paracelsus, an equally significant work in its day and generation, 1650 A. D.

The Mediaeval Philosopher has no hesitation in acknowledging the Greeks as his authority, while Freud, the modern scientist, actually over-reaches the older authorities by attributing vast importance to every dream, however trivial.

Comparison of Dream Stimuli according to the Classification of Freud and Paracelsus respectively:

Freud (1900)

Paracelsus (1493-1531)

1.

External, objective stimulus

1

Arising from physical conditions

2.

Internal, subjective stimulus

2-3

Dreams resulting from psychological conditions and astral influences

3.

Internal, objective stimulus

4

Those that are caused by spiritual agency

4.

Purely psychical excitations

The more important visions Paracelsus attributes either to a natural cause or to a spiritual source, the latter being especially significant. Dreams arising from physical sources may originate from joy or sadness, from impurities of the blood or from internal or external stimuli, as when a gambler dreams of his cards, or when a victim of heart trouble dreams of toiling uphill. Supernatural or spiritual dreams can not be traced, as they arise from the spirit and they may be messages from God or warnings of danger. Only the wise pay attention to dreams, says Paracelsus, the foolish pass them by.

Modern students unhesitatingly accept the first three of the Freudian stimuli or dream sources: the fourth, however, attributing a specific class of dream to purely psychical excitation, they challenge, contending that it opens the door for the debatable hypothesis of spiritism.

Freudians universally agree that the source of every dream is a wish.

Dr. Frink divides the wishes that may become dream sources as follows:

I. Wishes originating during the day and remaining unfulfilled by accident, either from being crowded out of the mind by other things which absorb the attention, or because they are impossible of gratification.

Petty problems and unpleasant situations of every day life are taken up in dreams and so adapted that the dreamer is relieved of unpleasant emotion. Things unattainable in waking life are thus attainable in sleep, and as the dreamer escapes the annoyance of unsatisfied desire his slumber remains practically undisturbed.

II. Wishes that occur during the day but that are repressed for moral, ethical or other reasons.

III. Wishes that were conscious in early childhood, but that were rejected in later life are frequently brought into dream-forming activity by some occurrence during the day-Dream students generally attach great importance to the third class of dream inciters, although they do not regard them as the sole source of dreams, as do ultra-Freudians.

Biblical students classify the dteam according to the manner in which the vision appeared to the dreamer. Their classification falls into four groups.

1. Purely symbolic dreams as instanced in Joseph's earlier visions, to which Jacob, his father, attached little importance.

2. Dreams characterized by divine manifestation sufficiently obvious to be recognized. Exemplified in the appearance of the angel to Joseph, "Behold the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying: Arise, take the young child and his mother and flee into Egypt," etc. Matthew ii, 13.

3. Purely prophetic dreams, without celestial or angelic interposition. These usually require interpretation, as in Nebuchadnezzar's dreams, those of Pharaoh's butler and the baker.

4. Moral warnings, threats or promises, generally symbolic. Jacob's dream of the ladder stretching to heaven is of this group.

Laurentius, a Christian bishop and a contemporary of Paracelsus, classifies dreams clearly and distinctly.

1. Dreams of Nature (those produced by external causes).

2. Dreams of the mind (based on memories).

3. Dreams of God and of the Devil.

A comparatively modern treatise classifies under separate headings, Dreams, Oracles, Reveries and Apparitions. The first class are purely symbolical and frequently require interpretation, as in Pharaoh's dream of the seven kine. The second class, or Vision, is immediately prophetic and is recognized by the dreamer on awakening, as in the instance of Elijah, who when pursued by the malice of Jezebel of the feminine foible for cosmetics which afterwards led to her undoing, fled to Beersheba and from there a day's journey into the wilderness: "as he lay under a juniper tree behold an angel of the Lord touched him and said to him, arise, and eat." - Kings, xix.