I woke one morning with
a sudden flash of common-sense. Sympathetic ink had been used, and
the papers had been toasted or treated with acids. This I had
probably reasoned out in sleep, and, had I dreamed, my mind might have
dramatised the idea. Old Mr. Edgar, the king's secretary, might have
appeared and given me the explanation. Maury publishes tales in which
a forgotten fact was revealed to him in a dream from the lips of a
dream-character (Le Sommeil et les Reves, pp. 142-143. The curious
may also consult, on all these things, The Philosophy of Mysticism, by
Karl du Prel, translated by Mr. Massey. The Assyrian Priest is in
Proceedings, S.P.R., vol. xii., p. 14).
On the same plane as the dreams which we have been examining is the
waking sensation of the deja vu.
"I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell."
Most of us know this feeling, all the circumstances in which we find
ourselves have already occurred, we have a prophecy of what will
happen next "on the tip of our tongues" (like a half-remembered name),
and then the impression vanishes. Scott complains of suffering
through a whole dinner-party from this sensation, but he had written
"copy" for fifty printed pages on that day, and his brain was breaking
down.
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