The news that Modern Science had rehabilitated dreams was flashed around the wire-bound world. Volumes upon the subject were promptly forthcoming. Psychologists and students proceeded to analyze their own dreams and those of their long-suffering friends. Whenever an unwary dreamer could be induced to reveal his dream his soul was dissected with a thoroughness that warned against future confidences. The scalpel, microscope and X-ray were alike invoked. Diviners and oracles of the past had become the dream analysts of super-civilization.

The preservation of dreams in man's memory is their strongest claim to consideration. The fact that amid the myriad evanescent visions of the dream-world any one dream should be sufficiently strong to figure in human history, is in itself proof of the importance of the dream state. But for these examples the transient character of the average dream, its apparent irrelevance, and above all the frequency of its occurrence, would relegate it to a functional rather than to a phenomenal condition. In the former circumstance the average person could no more recall his dream than he could recollect the normal beating of his heart, the circulation of his blood, or his respiration.

Yet notwithstanding their proverbial fragility, dreams have frequently coped with time, which is even more destructive than death, in that death may leave in its wake memories which time destroys. The pyramids of Egypt have thus far defied time, so have Buddhism, Christianity, a few of the more precious legends and - dreams. Dreams came before man found articulate thoughts or words for the myriad symbols that crowded his brain with the persistence and regularity of a physical process. Despite their infinite throngs on countless nights in unnumbered brains, many dreams have been preserved and handed down to posterity. We may forget our thoughts of the past, our opinions, the garments that we wore, or even the friends whom we loved, but memory holds our more significant dreams from our very childhood. Herodotus does not tell us what Xerxes wore, nor how he looked, nor whom he loved, yet one of the Persian King's dreams altered the course of history.

Xerxes, bewildered by quarreling counsellors, some of whom advised the campaign against Greece, whilst others opposed it, had fallen into a troubled sleep. A tall, beautiful figure appeared to his dream and urged the continuance of the expedition. Xerxes, however, remained undecided. A second time the admonitory figure appeared. Puzzled, Xerxes summoned Artabanus, a counsellor who had opposed the undertaking. Artabanus sneered at his master's weakness, whereupon Xerxes, whose superstition makes him human through the centuries, became indignant and commanded Artabanus to don the royal robes, place himself upon the kingly couch and await developments. The figure presently appeared to Artabanus, but its respectful demeanor was replaced by a ferocity that frightened Artabanus into withdrawing his opposition to the expedition.

The Venerable Bede of unquestioned veracity describes many dreams, among them that of Edwin, a Saxon king, a maker of English history.

Rollo the Norseman, who lived in the seventh century and whose strength was such that no horse could carry him, had a "supernatural dream" warning him not to land in England, which country was amply protected by Alfred the Great. In-steady he was advised to try France. He accordingly sailed tip the Seine to Rouen and laid siege to Paris. Afterwards he married Gisela, daughter of Charles the Simple, became a.

Christian, and was transformed from a fierce sea-rover to one of the most humane princes of his time. He was an ancestor of William the Conqueror.

The dream of Theodora, the courtesan, that she would one day become an Empress caused her to abandon her loose mode of life and to try to fit herself for the exalted station promised by her vision. Afterwards she married Justinian and ruled Rome.

The dreams of Catherine de Medici, astrologer and practitioner of various occult arts, not only strengthened her own blood-lust, but induced feeble Francis to consent to the massacre of Saint Bartholomew. This royal lady, herself addicted to magic, protected magicians and sorcerers, while her lord and master, Henry II, and his affinity, Diane de Poitiers, burned them. Queen Catherine was also given to dreams, for while she lay ill at Metz the night before the battle of Jarnac she saw her victory over the Huguenots in a vision.

Whether Cromwell's dream that he should become the greatest man in England had aught to do with his career is a problem for students of psychology.

Madame de Krudener believed her dreams inspired and attained so great an influence over Alexander I of Russia that he is said to have accepted from her the idea of the Holy Alliance, concluded September 5, 1815, in the name of the Holy Trinity, between Russia and Austria.

"I believe men only dream that they may not cease to see. I have fallen asleep in tears, but in my dreams the loveliest figures came to give me comfort and happiness and I awoke the next morning fresh and cheerful."

(Quoted by Havelock Ellis from Goethe's letter to Erck-mann.)

Doubtless Goethe's contemporaries shrugged at the poet's vagary, which afterwards was to be accepted as sound psychology, for at that date the therapeutic value of sleep was unappreciated and the purpose of dreams wholly unknown. Men of genius, notably Byron, Poe, and Napoleon, were rather inclined to boast of being able to dispense with the normal amount of slumber, while many physicians regarded sleep as the result of toxic poisons in the system. The comparative leisure of the world had not at that time been broken by the mad rush that later overwhelmed the nineteenth century and the necessity for sleep as a repairer of wornout nerve tissue and a source of physical endurance and the value of the dream as a respite from the wear and tear of reality had not been revealed to the western world.