24 NATURE STUDIES. 



clearly survivals from the lower culture, its lineal and 

 thinly-disguised descendants. For the savage, the 

 bard, and the theologian lived in days when the con- 

 caption of orderly sequence was unthinkable to them ; 

 where the arbitrary act was wrought, the isolated or 

 the conflicting influence manifest, there tne deity or 

 the devil was present ; while for us, could we discover 

 where law is not, thence God would seem to have 

 withdrawn. 



The passage from the crude interpretation of his 

 dreams by the savage to the formal elaboration of the 

 dream-oracle is obvious, the more so as this latter was 

 only one of many modes by which it was sought to 

 divine the will of heaven, and read that " book of 

 fate " hidden from men. This dream-lore, as ancient 

 records far back to Accadian times show, not only 

 called into existence a class of men whose position as 

 interpreters of royal and other dreams ensured them 

 commanding place, but gave rise to a mass of literature 

 most prolific in classic times. It maintained an almost 

 canonical supremacy down to the Middle Ages, finding 

 its befitting level in our day in the ' ' Libri dei Sogni " 

 which the Italian lottery-gambler consults, and in 

 the "Imperial Dream-Book" by which the English 

 domestic forecasts whether King Cophetua or Police- 

 sergeant X 32 is to be her fate ! 



At this nether depth, Science, content with having 

 shown the persistence of primitive modes of thinking 

 in all subsequent interpretation of his own nature by 

 man ; finding its evidence and the warrant of its con- 



