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Show Lest Night's Dreams What They Mean I DID YOU DREAM OF DECAPITATION? DECAPITA-TION? EVERYBODY will agree that In our waking life it Is most uufor- , tuuate for one to huve his head cut off. Iu dreamland, however, It is most fortunate. Tills is one of the cases where dreams go by contraries, uo- ; cording to nearly all the mystic in- terpreters. Even to dream of seeing j a guillotine Is good luck; to see It I cutting off somebody's head is better, and best of all Is to dream that It Is j your own head which Is being sev- j ered. Are you In love? Then sue- j cess in your lovemaklng awaits you. i Are you ambitious? You will rise, i You are going to meet long absent ' friends and whatever troubles may ' now surround you after an Interview with a guillotine In dreamland they will vanish away. If you are In business, busi-ness, then your business will prosper pros-per and as for money, It Is sure to come your way. Though, one or two pessimists say that you are going to experience some losses through a treacherous friend. A dream of this sort, experienced by Maury, the eminent French savant who wrote extensively on the subject of dreams, has become famous under the name of "Mnury's Dream," and the subject of endless discussion. Maury dreamed that he was living In the time of the French Revolution ; he had many adventures ; he was arrested ar-rested and brought before the revolutionary revolu-tionary tribunal, where he was examined exam-ined by Robespierre, Marat and others oth-ers of the "Terror." He was condemned con-demned to death, and after some other adventures was taken to the guillotine surrounded by a vast throng, strapped to the board and the ax fell. He awoke to find that a piece of the bedstead had fallen and hit him on the back of the neck just where he had felt the knife. He awoke Instantly; the "stimulus" for the dream was the blow on the neck. The question argued ar-gued by the" scientists is this : Is the dream consciousness capable i of such rapidity of action as to create cre-ate and comprehend such a long and minute as Maury's dream in the almost al-most Infinitesimal period of time between be-tween Ills being struck and starting ; to awake? Freud meets the difficulty by suggesting that the wdiole thing had been imagined by Maury when reading as a boy of the French Revo-, lution when he had had the" natural wish of a French boy that he had lived In those times to have taken a part in such stirring events. And at the blow on the neck which suggested sug-gested the stroke of the knife of the guillotine the drama popped entire from its psychic pigeonhole. However. How-ever. Maury's dream and all that it implies with regard to the rapidity of action of the dream consciousness is still debatable ground with the scientists. |
