THE SYMBOLISM OF DREAMS 43 



and other senses besides hearing and sight — causes an impression of one 

 sensory order to be automatically and involuntarily linked on to an 

 impression of another totally different order. In other words, we may 

 say that the one impression becomes the symbol of the other impression, 

 for a symbol — which is literally a throwing together — means that two 

 things of different orders have become so associated that one of them 

 may be regarded as the sign and representative of the other. 



There is, however, another still more natural and fundamental form 

 of symbolism which is entirely normal, and almost, indeed, physiolog- 

 ical. This is the tendency by which qualities of one order become 

 symbols of qualities of a totally different order because they instinctively 

 seem to have a similar effect on us. In this way, things in the physical 

 order become symbols of things in the spiritual order. This symbolism 

 penetrates indeed the whole of language; we can not escape from it. 

 The sea is deep and so also may thoughts be ; ice is cold and we say the 

 same of some hearts; sugar is sweet, as the lover finds also the presence 

 of the beloved; quinine is bitter and so is remorse. ' Not only our 

 adjectives, but our substantives and our verbs are equally symbolical. 

 To the etymological eye every sentence is full of metaphor, of symbol, 

 of images that, strictly and originally, express sensory impressions of one 

 order, but, as we use them to-day, express impressions of a totally dif- 

 ferent order. Language is largely the utilization of symbols. This is 

 a well-recognized fact which it is unnecessary to elaborate. 1 



An interesting example of the natural tendency to symbolism, which 

 may be compared to the allied tendency in dreaming, is furnished by 

 another language, the language of music. Music is a representation of 

 the world — the internal or the external world — which, except in so far 

 as it may seek to reproduce the actual sounds of the world, can only be 

 expressive by its symbolism. And the symbolism of music is so pro- 

 nounced that it is even expressed in the elementary fact of musical 

 pitch. Our minds are so constructed that the bass always seems deep 

 to us and the treble high. We feel it incongruous to speak of a high 

 bass voice or a deep soprano. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that 

 this and the like associations are fundamentally based, that there are, 

 as an acute French philosophic student of music, Dauriac (in an essay 

 "Des Images Suggerees par 1' Audition musicale ") has expressed it, 

 " sensorial correspondences," as, indeed, Baudelaire had long since 

 divined; that the motor image is that which demands from the listener 

 the minimum of effort; and that music almost constantly evokes motor 

 imagery. 2 



1 Ferrero, in his "Lois Psychologiques du Synibolisnie " (1895), deals 

 broadly with symbolism in. human thought and life. 



2 The motor imagery suggested by music is in some persons profuse and 

 apparently capricious, and may be regarded as an anomaly comparable to a 

 synesthesia. Heine was an example of this and he has described in " Florentine 



