Bergson_Henri_Dreams__.pdfVIP

Dreams, by Henri Bergson 1 Dreams, by Henri Bergson The Project Gutenberg EBook of Dreams, by Henri Bergson This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at Title: Dreams Author: Henri Bergson Translator: Edwin E. Slosson Release Date: March 17, 2007 [EBook #20842] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DREAMS *** Produced by Bryan Ness, Hillary Fischer and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) DREAMS BY Dreams, by Henri Bergson 2 HENRI BERGSON TRANSLATED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, BY EDWIN E. SLOSSON NEW YORK B. W. HUEBSCH 1914 COPYRIGHT, 1913, By THE INDEPENDENT COPYRIGHT, 1914, By B. W. HUEBSCH First printing, April, 1914 Second printing, November, 1914 PRINTED IN U. S. A. INTRODUCTION Before the dawn of history mankind was engaged in the study of dreaming. The wise man among the ancients was preëminently the interpreter of dreams. The ability to interpret successfully or plausibly was the quickest road to royal favor, as Joseph and Daniel found it to be; failure to give satisfaction in this respect led to banishment from court or death. When a scholar laboriously translates a cuneiform tablet dug up from a Babylonian mound where it has lain buried for five thousand years or more, the chances are that it will turn out either an astrological treatise or a dream book. If the former, we look upon it with some indulgence; if the latter with pure contempt. For we know that the study of the stars, though undertaken for self