Note 144 — Chapter VII
Reading edition
K. A. Scherner, Das Leben des Traumes, 1861. In France Hervey de Saint-Denis, in a remarkable anonymous work which I have not seen (Les Rêves et les Moyens de les Diriger, p. 356, quoted by Vaschide and Piéron, Psychologie du Rêve, p. 26), tentatively put forward a symbolic theory of dreams, as a possible rival to the theory that permanent associations are set up as the result of a first chance coincidence. 'Do there exist,' he asked, 'bizarre analogies of internal sensations in virtue of which certain vibrations of the nerves, certain instinctive movements of our viscera, correspond to sensations apparently quite different? According to this hypothesis experience would bring to light mysterious affinities, the knowledge of which might become a genuine science;... and a real key to dreams would not be an unrealisable achievement if we could bring together and compare a sufficient number of observations.'