ABSTRACT
Herbert Spencer, the High Priest of nineteenth century materialism, seized upon the superstitions of primitive races about dreams to account for the universal belief in a spirit world and the survival of personality after death. Perhaps, with the exception of "love", no single word in the dictionary has been, and continues to be, so abused as "dream". To make the experience still more awesome, sometimes a dream "comes true", a circumstance which adds enormously to the belief that dreams must have a meaning. Further, the vast majority of dreams are hazy, illogical, silly, sometimes obscene, sometimes terrifying, and for the most part rapidly forgotten on waking. Alexander the Great is said to have had more than one prophetic dream, but anything out of the ordinary that happened to him is easily dismissed as legend. A similar prophetic dream, however, that happened to a member of one's own family or to a friend, is another matter.
