licitatis. That, according to a typical dream symbolism, is also a part
of the female body. The obstacles in the way we recognize as a recoil from
or impediment to incest; so it is evident that a definite female body,
namely that of the mother, is meant. The penetration leads to the Pratum
felicitatis, to blissful enjoyment. In fairy lore the sojourn in the
forest generally signifies death or the life in the underworld. Wilhelm
Muller, for example, writes, "As symbols of similar significance we have
the transformation into swans or other birds, into flowers, the exposure
in the forest, the life in the glass mountain, in a castle, in the
woods.... All imply death and life in the underworld." The underworld is,
when regarded mythologically, not only the land where the dead go, but
also whence the living have come; thence for the individual, and in
particular for our wanderer, the uterus of the mother. It is significant
that the wanderer, as he strolls along, ponders over the fall of our first
parents and laments it. The fall of the parents was a sexual sin. That it
was incest besides, will be considered later. The son who sees in his
father his rival for his mother is sorry that the parents belong to each
other. A sexual offense (incest) caused the loss of paradise. The wanderer
enters the paradise, the Pratum felicitatis. [Garden of Joy, Garden of
Peace, Mountain of Joy, etc., are names of paradise. Now it is
particularly noteworthy that the same words can signify the beloved.
(Grimm, D. Mythol., II, pp. 684 ff., Chap. XXV, 781 f.)] The path thither
is not too rough for him (Sec. 2).

In Sec. 3 the wanderer enters his paradise (incest). He finds in the
father an obstacle to his relation with the mother. The elders (splitting
of the person of the father) will not admit him, forbid his entrance into
the college. He himself, the youth is already among them. The younger man,
whose name he knows without seeing his face, is himself. He puts himself
in the place of his father. (The other young man with the black pointed
beard may be an allusion to a quite definite person, intended for a small
circle of readers of the parable, contemporaries of the author. Either the
devil or death may be meant, yet I cannot substantiate this conjecture.)

In the fourth section the examinations begin. First the examination in the
narrower sense of the word. The paternal atmosphere of every examination
has already been emphasized in the passage fr