Oneirocriticism, or the art of interpreting dreams, seems of all the
modes of prediction the most inseparable from the nature of man. A
considerable portion of every twenty-four hours of our lives is spent
in sleep; and in sleep nothing is at least more usual, than for the
mind to be occupied in a thousand imaginary scenes, which for the time
are as realities, and often excite the passions of the mind of the
sleeper in no ordinary degree. Many of them are wild and rambling; but
many also have a portentous sobriety. Many seem to have a strict
connection with the incidents of our actual lives; and some appear as
if they came for the very purpose to warn us of danger, or prepare us
for coming events. It is therefore no wonder that these occasionally
fill our waking thoughts with a deep interest, and impress upon us an
anxiety of which we feel it difficult to rid ourselves. Accordingly,
in ages when men were more prone to superstition, than at present,
they sometimes constituted a subject of earnest anxiety and
inquisitiveness; and we find among the earliest exercises of the art
of prediction, the interpretation of dreams to have occupied a
principal place, and to have been as it were reduced into a science.