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The Book of Dreams and Ghosts
·
Andrew Lang
33
Most
of
us
know
this
feeling,
all
the
circumstances
in
which
we
find
ourselves
have
already
occurred,
we
have
a
prophecy
of
what
will
happen
next
"on
the
tip
of
our
tongues"
(like
a
half-remembered
name),
and
then
the
impression
vanishes.
Scott
complains
of
suffering
through
a
whole
dinner-party
from
this
sensation,
but
he
had
written
"copy"
for
fifty
printed
pages
on
that
day,
and
his
brain
was
breaking
down.
Of
course
psychology
has
explanations.
The
scene
may
have
really
occurred
before,
or
may
be
the
result
of
a
malady
of
perception,
or
one
hemisphere
of
the
brain
not
working
in
absolute
simultaneousness
with
the
other
may
produce
a
double
impression,
the
first
being
followed
by
the
second,
so
that
we
really
have
had
two
successive
impressions,
of
which
one
seems
much
more
remote
in
time
than
it
really
was.
Or
we
may
have
dreamed
something
like
the
scene
and
forgotten
the
dream,
or
we
may
actually,
in
some
not
understood
manner,
have
had
a
"prevision"
of
what
is
now
actual,
as
when
Shelley
almost
fainted
on
coming
to
a
place
near
Oxford
which
he
had
beheld
in
a
dream.
Of
course,
if
this
"prevision"
could
be
verified
in
detail,
we
should
come
very
near
to
dreams
of
the
future
fulfilled.
Such
a
thing--
verification
of
a
detail--led
to
the
conversion
of
William
Hone,
the
free-thinker
and
Radical
of
the
early
century,
who
consequently
became
a
Christian
and
a
pessimistic,
clear-sighted
Tory.
This
tale
of
the
deja
vu,
therefore,
leads
up
to
the
marvellous
narratives
of
dreams
simultaneous
with,
or
prophetic
of,
events
not
capable
of
being
guessed
or
inferred,
or
of
events
lost
in
the
historical
past,
but,
later,
recovered
from
documents.
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