en conscious life and
dream life is abandoned and the unconscious psychic assigned to its
proper place. Thus many of the activities whose performances in the
dream have excited our admiration are now no longer to be attributed to
the dream but to unconscious thinking, which is also active during the
day. If, according to Scherner, the dream seems to play with a symboling
representation of the body, we know that this is the work of certain
unconscious phantasies which have probably given in to sexual emotions,
and that these phantasies come to expression not only in dreams but also
in hysterical phobias and in other symptoms. If the dream continues and
settles activities of the day and even brings to light valuable
inspirations, we have only to subtract from it the dream disguise as a
feat of dream-work and a mark of assistance from obscure forces in the
depth of the mind (_cf._ the devil in Tartini's sonata dream). The
intellectual task as such must be attributed to the same psychic forces
which perform all such tasks during the day. We are probably far too
much inclined to over-estimate the conscious character even of
intellectual and artistic productions. From the communications of some
of the most highly productive persons, such as Goethe and Helmholtz, we
learn, indeed, that the most essential and original parts in their
creations came to them in the form of inspirations and reached their
perceptions almost finished. There is nothing strange about the
assistance of the conscious activity in other cases where there was a
concerted effort of all the psychic forces. But it is a much abused
privilege of the conscious activity that it is allowed to hide from us
all other activities wherever it participates.

It will hardly be worth while to take up the historical significance of
dreams as a special subject. Where, for instance, a chieftain has been
urged through a dream to engage in a bold undertaking the success of
which has had the effect of changing history, a new problem results only
so long as the dream, regarded as a strange power, is contrasted with
other more familiar psychic forces; the problem, however, disappears
when we regard the dream as a form of expression for feelings which are
burdened with resistance during the day and which can receive
reinforcements at night from deep emotional sources. But the great
respect shown by the ancients for the dream is based on a correct
psychological surmise. It is a homa