Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted; Or, What's in a Dream A Scientific and Practical Exposition — Story, Setting & Ideas

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In Category - Metaphysics

Authors: Miller, Gustavus Hindman, 1857-1929 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 1997 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Dreams -- Dictionaries; Dream interpretation; Dreams Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 149,169

Reading time 649 min

Text sections 18

The catalog record for Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted; Or, What's in a Dream A Scientific and Practical Exposition — Story, Setting & Ideas provides practical reading context through 149,169 words, 10 hr 49 min estimated reading time, and 18 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 17.4 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Dreams -- Dictionaries,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #926

Gustavus Hindman Miller's dream dictionary, organized alphabetically by dream symbol, offers concise interpretations blending biblical, classical, and folkloric sources. The preface frames dreams as prophetic, while the entries themselves shift to practical, often moralistic advice. This edition's structure reveals a tension between spiritual authority and everyday counsel.

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File: pg926

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Condorcet thought and wrote with greater fluency in his dreams than in waking life.

Tartini, a distinguished violinist, composed his ``Devil's Sonata'' under the inspiration of a dream. Coleridge, through dream influence, composed his ``Kubla Khan.''

The writers of Greek and Latin classics relate many instances of dream experiences. Homer accorded to some dreams divine origin. During the third and fourth centuries, the supernatural origin of dreams was so generally accepted that the fathers, relying upon the classics and the Bible as authority, made this belief a doctrine of the Christian Church.

Synesius placed dreaming above all methods of divining the future; he thought it the surest, and open to the poor and rich alike.

Aristotle wrote: ``There is a divination concerning some things in dreams not incredible.'' Camille Flammarion, in his great book on ``Premonitory Dreams and Divination of the Future,'' says: ``I do not hesitate to affirm at the outset that occurrence of dreams foretelling future events with accuracy must be accepted as certain.''

Joan of Arc predicted her death.

Cazotte, the French philosopher and transcendentalist, warned Condorcet against the manner of his death.

People dream now, the same as they did in medieval and ancient times.

The following excerpt from ``The Unknown,''[1] a recent book by Flammarion, the French astronomer, supplemented with a few of my own thoughts and collections, will answer the purposes intended for this book.

[1] ``From `The Unknown.' Published by Harper & Brothers Copyright, 1900, by Camille Flammarion.''

``We may see without eyes and hear without ears, not by unnatural excitement of our sense of vision or of hearing, for these accounts prove the contrary, but by some interior sense, psychic and mental.

``The soul, by its interior vision, may see not only what is passing at a great distance, but it may also know in advance what is to happen in the future. The future exists potentially, determined by causes which bring to pass successive events.

``POSITIVE OBSERVATION PROVES THE EXISTENCE OF A PSYCHIC WORLD, as real as the world known to our physical senses.

``And now, because the soul acts at a distance by some power that belongs to it, are we authorized to conclude that it exists as something real, and that it is not the result of functions of the brain?

``Does light really exist?

``They are only manifestations produced by movement.

``What we call light is a sensation produced upon our optic nerve by the vibrations of ether, comprising between 400 and 756 trillions per second, undulations that are themselves very obscure.

``What we call heat is a sensation produced by vibrations between 350 and and{sic} 600 trillions.

``The sun lights up space, as much at midnight as at midday. Its temperature is nearly 270 degrees below zero.

``What we call sound is a sensation produced upon our auditory nerve by silent vibrations of the air, themselves comprising between 32,000 and 36,000 a second.

``Very many scientific terms represent only results, not causes. ``The soul may be in the same case.

``The observations given in this work, the sensations, the impressions, the visions, things heard, etc., may indicate physical effects produced without the brain.

``Yes, no doubt, but it does not seem so.

``Let us examine one instance.

``Turn back to page 156.@@@

``A young woman, adored by her husband, dies at Moscow. Her father-in-law, at Pulkowo, near St. Petersburg, saw her that same hour by his side. She walked with him along the street; then she disappeared. Surprised, startled, and terrified, he telegraphed to his son, and learned both the sickness and the death of his daughter-in-law.

``We are absolutely obliged to admit that SOMETHING emanated from the dying woman and touched her father-in-law. This _thing unknown_ may have been an ethereal movement, as in the case of light, and may have been only an effect, a product, a result; but this effect must have had a cause, and this cause evidently proceeded from the woman who was dying. Can the constitution of the brain explain this projection? I do not think that any anatomist or physiologist will give this question an affirmative answer. One feels that there is a force unknown, proceeding, not from our physical organization, but from that in us which can think.

``Take another example (see page 57).@@@

``A lady in her own house hears a voice singing. It is the voice of a friend now in a convent, and she faints, because she is sure it is the voice of the dead. At the same moment that friend does really die, twenty miles away from her.

``Does not this give us the impression that one soul holds communication with another?

``Here is another example (page 163):@@@

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Gustavus Hindman Miller's Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted opens with a preface that invokes biblical authority—quoting Job on dreams as divine instruction—and then quickly cites Plato, Goethe, Shakespeare, and Napoleon to establish a pedigree for dream prophecy. The preface argues that materialism has suppressed this ancient wisdom, yet the body of the book abandons that lofty tone for a brisk, alphabetical catalogue of dream symbols. Each entry, typically one to three sentences, delivers a terse verdict: dreaming of a judge portends legal disputes; a jug of clear liquid signals true friends. The shift from prophetic preamble to practical dictionary creates a curious dissonance between the work's stated ambition and its everyday advice.

From Prophecy to Proverb

The preface positions dreams as a conduit for universal knowledge, citing Joseph's eleven stars and Pilate's wife's warning. But the dictionary entries rarely echo that grandeur. Instead, they read like folk proverbs: “To dream that you go on a journey, signifies profit or a disappointment, as the travels are pleasing and successful or as accidents and disagreeable events take active part.” The conditional phrasing—if the travels are pleasing, if you jump and fall back—turns each symbol into a miniature moral calculus. Miller’s voice oscillates between the oracular and the homespun, as when he warns that a broken jug indicates “sickness and failures in employment.” The entries are not systematic; they are associative, drawing on common sense, superstition, and occasional literary allusion.

The Moral Weight of Everyday Objects

Miller’s interpretations consistently attach ethical consequences to mundane items. A “jumping-jack” (a toy) signifies “idleness and trivial pastimes” that exclude “serious and sustaining plans.” A “jubilee” promises “pleasurable enterprises,” but a “religious jubilee” yields only “close but comfortable environments.” The dream of “July” brings depression followed by sudden joy—a pattern of reversal that recurs throughout. These judgments are not neutral; they carry a clear moral valence. The entry for “judgment day” warns that a guilty verdict in a dream portends “selfish and unbecoming conduct” that distresses friends. Miller’s dictionary thus functions as a guide not only to dream symbols but to proper behavior, blending psychological advice with Victorian propriety.

Pace and the Alphabetical Frame

The alphabetical structure imposes a staccato rhythm. Entries for “jockey,” “jolly,” “journey,” “journeyman,” “joy,” “jubilee,” “judge,” “judgment day,” “jug,” “July,” “jumping,” “jumping-jack,” and “June” follow in rapid succession, each a self-contained unit. There is no narrative flow; the reader dips in and out. This format suits a reference work but undercuts the preface’s claim that dreams reveal a coherent spiritual order. The pace is brisk, almost telegraphic, with entries averaging two sentences. Miller occasionally varies the pattern with longer warnings—the “judgment day” entry runs to several sentences—but the overall effect is one of compressed, almost proverbial wisdom. The reader must supply the connective tissue between symbols, a task the preface’s grand claims do little to assist.

Biblical Echoes and Classical Precedent

Miller’s preface leans heavily on biblical and classical authority: Job, Joseph, Pilate’s wife, Plutarch’s Augustus, and the Emperor Marcian. These examples establish dreams as a mode of divination used by “those who have stood nearest the fountain of universal knowledge.” Yet the dictionary entries rarely cite these sources. Instead, they rely on common sense and folk tradition. The entry for “judgment day” borrows imagery from Christian eschatology—the dead rising, the solemn earth—but applies it to personal conduct: a woman who dreams of a guilty verdict will cause “distress among her friends.” This slippage between cosmic prophecy and domestic morality is the book’s defining feature. Miller wants dreams to be both transcendent and practical, a tension that the dictionary form cannot resolve.

Readers approaching Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted should treat it as a period artifact rather than a systematic guide. The preface and the dictionary speak different languages: one prophetic, the other proverbial. To use the book effectively, skip the preface and browse the entries for their cultural assumptions—what objects carry moral weight, what behaviors are rewarded or punished. The real interest lies not in dream interpretation but in the Victorian worldview that shapes each verdict.

That dream dictionary felt less like a prophecy and more like a quiet chat with someone older, mixing awe with plain sense. It lingered because it trusted both worlds. I remember that same gentle tension in The University of Hard Knocks — Themes and Context, where hard lessons arrive softly, almost like a friend sitting beside you, saying, “we’ll figure this out slowly.”