Apart from dreamings or visionings, one idea is held by the human race as a whole, and while furnishing the basis of dreams and of creeds, refuses to be accounted for upon any ground that has thus far fallen beneath the spade of modern iconoclasm - the thought of infinity. Its presence in the consciousness could not have found its way through the five senses, nor can it be the product of human experience, nor of the subconsciousness. We know that all human knowledge and experience is finite and that personal experience is limited to ourselves - and yet we have a positive thought, an articulate idea concerning Infinity. Our experience is of perpetual change - yet this thought is changeless; experience deals with yesterdays, to-days and to-morrows of time - yet the thought of Infinity is above and beyond time. Whence, then, in experience, which is limited to the relative and the dependent, do we find the source of this all-pervading idea of Infinity except in the knowledge that is above the senses, yet pertains to them, the knowledge that can only come through the sixth or transcendental sense - the sense of dreams?

Since the abolishment of the Inquisition, an institution that vigorously put an end to skepticism by heroic remedies of torture chamber and scaffold and stake, freed iconoclasm has reveled in the ridicule of religious and spiritual enthusiasm. St. Paul has been described as an epileptic, the martyrs as maniacs, the saints as insane persons of a type more or less pronounced. In fact the theory of religious mania has developed the universality of a popular fallacy. The layman in hurling reproaches at mysticism and at faith ignores the narrow margin that separates genius and enthusiasm from insanity, and while he pillories the religious mystic, the secular monomaniac goes free. While reminding us that St. Paul was an epileptic, the student forgets that Julius Caesar suffered from a similar affliction. St. John may have been a neuropath, but so were Cromwell and Alexander the Great. Both Lincoln and Napoleon were subject to mental hallucinations, while Descartes and Sir Isaac Newton were unbalanced mentally. All were instances of genius or of the sixth sense, sometimes termed neurasthenia - and all were weavers of dreams, or they could not have helped the world.

Undoubtedly many of the satanic or angelic visions of the mediaeval saints were dreams, whether they originated in the subconsciousness or from the sixth sense. St. Hildegarde of Bingen and St. Elizabeth of Schonau illustrate the dreams of the subconscious mind and those of the sixth sense respectively.

St. Hildegarde, born in 1098 A. D., died in 1179, called the Sibyl of the Rhine, was abbess of a nunnery which she ruled with all the sternness and vigor of an ascetic nature. Her dreams were seldom prophetic save of the punishment of sin, but on this subject her visions of the future were numerous and horrific. Apparently she was perfectly sincere in dreaming of confusion to her enemies whom she likewise modestly regarded as enemies of God. Her dreams were terrifying to her antagonists who found to their discomfiture that quite as often as not they were verified. To-day they would furnish excellent examples of the so-called "wish-dream" albeit they were too frankly anathemistic for the average modern.

The dreams of St. Elizabeth of Hungary are trenchantly contrasted with the neurotic visions of the ascetic Hildegarde.

The daughter of a Hungarian Prince and the wife of a

Margravine, she sensed more of the beautiful side of the world than was the fashion of that stern age, and the spirit of her dreams was celestial and full of joy. Hyacinthine skies, purple peaks and mystical presences thronged her visions which were essentially of the sixth sense. The legend of the loaves miraculously converted into roses in order that she might avert the wrath of the cruel Margravine, whom she afterwards influenced into becoming a Christian, is one of the most tender and charming of the sacred legends.

The continuance of the sixth sense and of its dream gifts in the present workaday world is implied in an extract from the New York World, dated October 2nd, 1915:

Melody Dream Haunts Girl from Childhood marie hughes spends ten years trying to catch an elusive tune

"A little eight-year-old girl had a dream about ten years ago in Chicago. She dreamed of sitting before a piano idly running her fingers over the keys when from the instrument issued forth the grandest music that she had ever heard. This music haunted her hours of wakefulness and at night she always dreamed of the same beautiful composition.

"As she grew older the dream of sweet music followed her. Her sleeping hours were filled with the mysterious music that haunted her brain. By day as she practiced at the piano she sought vainly to play the haunting melody, but while awake it ever eluded her. . . . Marie Hughes of Chicago is the girl of the haunting musical dream. After two years striving with the piano masters of Europe she has been unable to catch the dream melody. She is now a finished pianist but is not at all satisfied."

"When I am able to play the music that has run through my mind asleep and awake since I was a little girl I will feel that I have succeeded as a musician/' says Miss Hughes. "I don't think that any one has ever had such a strange dream experience as I have had."

" 'If I am ever able to play the mysterious, haunting piece that has followed me since childhood, it will be the greatest music in all the world. My dream experience makes me think of the old song, "The Lost Chord"! At night, when I am asleep I can hear each note distinctly and even when I am awake the mysterious, beautiful melody haunts me, but try as I may, I cannot play it on the piano.' "

"SAW IRVING DIE IN DREAM

"Stage Manager of London Theatre Tells of a Remarkable

Vision!'

Special Cable to the New York Times.