The Project Gutenberg EBook of Dreams, by Henri Bergson

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Title: Dreams

Author: Henri Bergson

Translator: Edwin E. Slosson

Release Date: March 17, 2007 [EBook #20842]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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DREAMS

BY

HENRI BERGSON

TRANSLATED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, BY

EDWIN E. SLOSSON

NEW YORK

B. W. HUEBSCH

1914

COPYRIGHT, 1913, By THE INDEPENDENT

COPYRIGHT, 1914, By B. W. HUEBSCH

First printing, April, 1914

Second printing, November, 1914

PRINTED IN U. S. A.

INTRODUCTION

Before the dawn of history mankind was engaged in the study of dreaming.
The wise man among the ancients was preeminently the interpreter of
dreams. The ability to interpret successfully or plausibly was the
quickest road to royal favor, as Joseph and Daniel found it to be;
failure to give satisfaction in this respect led to banishment from
court or death. When a scholar laboriously translates a cuneiform tablet
dug up from a Babylonian mound where it has lain buried for five
thousand years or more, the chances are that it will turn out either an
astrological treatise or a dream book. If the former, we look upon it
with some indulgence; if the latter with pure contempt. For we know that
the study of the stars, though undertaken for selfish reasons and
pursued in the spirit of charlatanry, led at length to physical science,
while the study of dreams has proved as unprofitable as the dreaming of
them. Out of astrology grew astronomy. Out of oneiromancy has
grown--nothing.

That at least was substantially true up to the beginning of the present
century. Dream books in all languages continued to sell in cheap
editions and the interpreters of dreams made a decent or, at any rate, a
comfortable living out of the poorer classes. But the psychologist
rarely paid attention to dreams except incidentally in his study of
imagery, association a