DREAMS. 23 



lated and bewildering incidents, the powers indwelling 

 in all things around him seemed to come nearer than 

 IQ the more monotonous events of the day, uttering 

 their \varnings and conveying their messages. There 

 needed but slender data to reach conclusions. Let 

 the death of a friend be dreamt of, and the event 

 follow; or a hunting-feast fill the half -torpid fancy, 

 and a day's privation give the lie to the dream ; the 

 arbitrary relation is made. Lord Bacon says : 

 "Men mark the hits, but not the misses," and a 

 thousand dreams unfulfilled count as nothing against 

 one dream fulfilled. Out of that a canon of inter- 

 pretation is framed by which whole races of men 

 will xplain their dreams, never staying to wonder 

 that the correspondences are not more frequent and 

 minute than they really are. 



" To this delusion/' says Cornelius Agrippa, an 

 ancient rationalist, "not a few great philosophers 

 have given a little credit .... so far building upon 

 examples of dreams, which some accident hath made 

 to be true, that thence they endeavour to persuade 

 men that there are no dreams bub what are real." 

 When Homer says that te dreams, too, from Jove pro- 

 ceed/' 1 painting the vividness and agonising incom- 

 pleteness of those passing visions; when Tertulliau 

 says that " we receive dreams from God, there being 

 no man so foolish as never to have known any d?eains 

 come true/' both classic and patristic opinion are 



1 " Iliad," Book I., 77. 



