This is a common
experience with all of us. And so it was that I, the
modern, often entered into my dreaming, and in the
consequent strange dual personality was both actor and
spectator. And right often have I, the modern, been
perturbed and vexed by the foolishness, illogic,
obtuseness, and general all-round stupendous stupidity
of myself, the primitive.
And one thing more, before I end this digression. Have
you ever dreamed that you dreamed? Dogs dream, horses
dream, all animals dream. In Big-Tooth's day the
half-men dreamed, and when the dreams were bad they
howled in their sleep. Now I, the modern, have lain
down with Big-Tooth and dreamed his dreams.
This is getting almost beyond the grip of the
intellect, I know; but I do know that I have done this
thing. And let me tell you that the flying and
crawling dreams of Big-Tooth were as vivid to him as
the falling-through-space dream is to you.
For Big-Tooth also had an other-self, and when he slept
that other-self dreamed back into the past, back to the
winged reptiles and the clash and the onset of dragons,
and beyond that to the scurrying, rodent-like life of
the tiny mammals, and far remoter still, to the
shore-slime of the primeval sea.
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