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Men have always been interested in their dreams. In superstitious ages and countries, dreams were regarded very seriously. Every dream was supposed to have a , and it was the business of priests and astrologers to interpret people's dreams for them. They were generally looked upon as predictions of the future—warnings coming dangers or sorrows, or prophecies of coming good fortune. Moreover, dreams were believed to be supernatural communications from the gods or the spirits of the , and so were divine revelations.
Educated people no longer look at dreams in this way. Some dismiss them as mere illusions unworthy of serious , while others find them intriguing for psychological research. For one thing, dreams prove that we are not completely unconscious in sleep. Part of our brain is and working. In sleep, we are unconscious of our immediate surroundings. We see nothing, hear nothing, and know nothing of what is going on us. Yet, the fact that we dream proves we are not completely unconscious.
It is often interesting to try to discover the cause of dreams. The of some dreams are purely physical. A heavy dinner, which causes indigestion, will give us nightmares, particularly horrible and terrifying kinds of dreams. Someone at our door may make us dream that we are on the battlefield and deafened by the thunder of guns. One man dreamt he was near the crater of a volcano and his feet were burnt with the hot rocks; "but when he woke up, he found his feet were upon his hot water bottle!
Most dreams are confused and disjointed memories of past events in our lives. Nevertheless, we can often trace a dream and find it was suggested by something we saw, heard, or read about only a day or two before. For example, a lawyer, who had thinking over a case late at night, dreamt when he went to bed of nothing but lizards. When he came to his study in the , he found that, while he was thinking out his case, he had been staring unconsciously at his clock, the case of which was decorated with bronze image of a lizard.
Dreams refer to the past, not the future. And they are not supernatural, but only the confused workings of our .