Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 January 1910 — The Meaning of Dreams. [ARTICLE]

The Meaning of Dreams.

It is well known, for example, says H. Addington Bruce in Success Magazine, that dreams have stimulated men to remarkable intellectual achievements. and have even supplied the material for these achievements. Thus, Coleridge composed “Kubla Kahn” in a dream.. Tartini got his "Devil’s Sonata" From a dream in which the devil appeared and challenged him to a musical competition. It was a dream that gave- Voltaire the first canto of his Henriade,” and Dante’s “Divina Commedia” is likewise said to have been inspired by a dream. Many novelists, on their own admission, have obtained the plots for some of their best works from materials provided in dreams. A particularly impressive instance is that of Robert Louis Stevenson, whose “Chapter on Dreams,” in his book, “Across the Plains,” should be read by all who would learn what dreams can’"do~foir a man intellectually. The solution of baffling mathematical problems, the ideas necessary to complete some invention, have been supplied by dreams. Occasionally the dreamer has been known to rise in his sleep and jot down the information thus acquired. In such cases he usually forgets alf about the helpful dream, and on awaking is greatly surprised at finding the record he has made of it. Which shows that—as with the visions so potently influencing health—it is possible for dreams to aid a man in an intellectual way without his being consciously aware of them.