He said it had been done already, and was answered, "Go and be truly
baptised, for _that_ thou didst but see in vision". So Augustine
christened him, and later, hearing of the trance, asked him about it,
when he repeated the tale already familiar to his neighbours.
Augustine thinks it a mere dream, and apparently regards the death of
Curma the smith as a casual coincidence. Un esprit fort, le Saint
Augustin!
"If the dead could come in dreams," he says, "my pious mother would no
night fail to visit me. Far be the thought that she should, by a
happier life, have been made so cruel that, when aught vexes my heart,
she should not even console in a dream the son whom she loved with an
only love."
Not only things once probably known, yet forgotten, but knowledge
never _consciously_ thought out, may be revealed in a dramatic dream,
apparently through the lips of the dead or the never existent. The
books of psychology are rich in examples of problems worked out, or
music or poetry composed in sleep. The following is a more recent and
very striking example:--
THE ASSYRIAN PRIEST
Herr H.
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