282 HUMANISM 



XV 



It is true that the reality of each dream-world is very 

 precarious : it is dissolved by every clumsy interruption 

 from a more real world, in the ex post facto judgment 

 of which the dream-world is fleeting, chaotic, and un 

 manageable. 1 But the philosophic critic cannot thus 

 presume the theoretical correctness of our ordinary judg 

 ment. To him all modes of experience are, in the first 

 instance, real. 2 He can find no standing ground outside 

 experience whence to judge it. All our distinctions, then, 

 between the real and unreal are intrinsic : it is the 

 dream-world s character itself that leads us to condemn 

 it. 3 And if in our dreams we found ourselves transported 

 into worlds more coherent, more intelligible, more beautiful 

 and more delightful than that of daily life, should we not 

 gladly attribute to them a superior reality, and, like 

 Mohammed, hold that in our sleep our souls had been 

 snatched up to heaven and privileged to commune with 

 the gods ? 4 The fact, indeed, that such experiences have 

 played a signal part in the lives of nearly all the world s 

 greatest heroes, and thereby left an indelible mark upon 

 its history, should make us chary of dogmatic denials of 

 the value of such dream-worlds. But as a rule we do 

 deny without a scruple, and, reasoning as pragmatists, do 

 ruthlessly reject them for yielding nothing that sense can 

 use and sanity can tolerate. Hence the consensus of 

 common sense declares dream experiences to be unreal 

 though, it may be noted, it has taken men a long time to 

 arrive at this conclusion and to disabuse themselves of 

 the notion that after all there must be a literally veridical 

 and inspired meaning in all their experiences. What 

 has not been realised with equal clearness probably 

 because the observation seemed to have no direct practical 

 bearing is that the existence of unreal worlds of dream- 

 experience casts an indelible slur on the claim of our 

 present waking life to absolute reality. 5 What has 

 happened once may happen again, and when we wake to 

 another world our terrestrial life may appear as grotesque 



1 Cp. p. 113 note. 2 Cp. p. 192. 3 Cp. p. 195. 



4 Cp. pp. 22, 32. 5 Cp. p. 198. 



