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The Book of Dreams and Ghosts
·
Andrew Lang
11
The
nature
of
things
and
of
men
has
fortunately
made
this
method
at
once
easy,
obvious,
and
scientific.
Even
in
the
rather
fantastic
realm
of
ghosts,
the
stories
fall
into
regular
groups,
advancing
in
difficulty,
like
exercises
in
music
or
in
a
foreign
language.
We
therefore
start
from
the
easiest
Exercises
in
Belief,
or
even
from
those
which
present
no
difficulty
at
all.
The
defect
of
the
method
is
that
easy
stories
are
dull
reading.
But
the
student
can
"skip".
We
begin
with
common
every-night
dreams.
Sleeping
is
as
natural
as
waking;
dreams
are
nearly
as
frequent
as
every-day
sensations,
thoughts,
and
emotions.
But
dreams,
being
familiar,
are
credible;
it
is
admitted
that
people
do
dream;
we
reach
the
less
credible
as
we
advance
to
the
less
familiar.
For,
if
we
think
for
a
moment,
the
alleged
events
of
ghostdom--apparitions
of
all
sorts--are
precisely
identical
with
the
every-night
phenomena
of
dreaming,
except
for
the
avowed
element
of
sleep
in
dreams.
In
dreams,
time
and
space
are
annihilated,
and
two
severed
lovers
may
be
made
happy.
In
dreams,
amidst
a
grotesque
confusion
of
things
remembered
and
things
forgot,
we
see
the
events
of
the
past
(I
have
been
at
Culloden
fight
and
at
the
siege
of
Troy);
we
are
present
in
places
remote;
we
behold
the
absent;
we
converse
with
the
dead,
and
we
may
even
(let
us
say
by
chance
coincidence)
forecast
the
future.
All
these
things,
except
the
last,
are
familiar
to
everybody
who
dreams.
It
is
also
certain
that
similar,
but
yet
more
vivid,
false
experiences
may
be
produced,
at
the
word
of
the
hypnotiser,
in
persons
under
the
hypnotic
sleep.
A
hypnotised
man
will
take
water
for
wine,
and
get
drunk
on
it.
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