Dreams | Page 2

be
nightmares down cellar, as we thought as a child, but even in those
days we knew how to dodge them when we went after apples; that is,
take down a light and slam the door quickly on coming up.
Maeterlinck, too, knew this trick of our childhood. When in the Palace
of Night scene of his fairy play, the redoubtable Tyltyl unlocks the cage
where are confined the nightmares and all other evil imaginings, he
shuts the door in time to keep them in and then opens another revealing
a lovely garden full of blue birds, which, though they fade and die
when brought into the light of common day, yet encourage him to
continue his search for the Blue Bird that never fades, but lives
everlastingly. The new science of dreams is giving a deeper
significance to the trite wish of "Good night and pleasant dreams!" It
means sweet sanity and mental health, pure thoughts and good will to
all men.
Professor Bergson's theory of dreaming here set forth in untechnical
language, fits into a particular niche in his general system of
philosophy as well as does his little book on Laughter. With the main
features of his philosophy the English-reading public is better

acquainted than with any other contemporary system, for his books
have sold even more rapidly here than in France. When Professor
Bergson visited the United States two years ago the lecture-rooms of
Columbia University, like those of the Collège de France, were packed
to the doors and the effect of his message was enhanced by his
eloquence of delivery and charm of personality. The pragmatic
character of his philosophy appeals to the genius of the American
people as is shown by the influence of the teaching of William James
and John Dewey, whose point of view in this respect resembles
Bergson's.
During the present generation chemistry and biology have passed from
the descriptive to the creative stage. Man is becoming the overlord of
the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms. He is learning to make
gems and perfumes, drugs and foods, to suit his tastes, instead of
depending upon the chance bounty of nature. He is beginning
consciously to adapt means to ends and to plan for the future even in
the field of politics. He has opened up the atom and finds in it a
microcosm more complex than the solar system. He beholds the
elements melting with fervent heat and he turns their rays to the healing
of his sores. He drives the lightning through the air and with the
product feeds his crops. He makes the desert to blossom as the rose and
out of the sea he draws forth dry land. He treats the earth as his
habitation, remodeling it in accordance with his ever-varying needs and
increasing ambitions.
This modern man, planning, contriving and making, finds Paley's watch
as little to his mind as Lucretius's blind flow of atoms. A universe
wound up once for all and doing nothing thereafter but mark time is as
incomprehensible to him as a universe that never had a mind of its own
and knows no difference between past and future. The idea of eternal
recurrence does not frighten him as it did Nietzsche, for he feels it to be
impossible. The mechanistic interpretation of natural phenomena
developed during the last century he accepts at its full value, and would
extend experimentally as far as it will go, for he finds it not invalid but
inadequate.

To minds of this temperament it is no wonder that Bergson's Creative
Evolution came with the force of an inspiration. Men felt themselves
akin to this upward impulse, this élan vital, which, struggling
throughout the ages with the intractableness of inert matter, yet finally
in some way or other forces it to its will, and ever strives toward the
increase of vitality, mentality, personality.
Bergson has been reluctant to commit himself on the question of
immortality, but he of late has become quite convinced of it. He even
goes so far as to think it possible that we may find experimental
evidence of personal persistence after death. This at least we might
infer from his recent acceptance of the presidency of the British Society
for Psychical Research. In his opening address before the Society, May
28, 1913, he discussed the question of telepathy and in that connection
he explained his theory of the relation of mind and brain in the
following language. I quote from the report in the London Times:
The rôle of the brain is to bring back the remembrance of an action, to
prolong the remembrance in movements. If one could see all that takes
place in the interior of the brain, one would find that that which takes
place there corresponds to a small part only