3. The Symbolism of Nature

3. The Symbolism of Nature.3. Die Symbolik der Natur.

Of those images and forms which the language of dreams, like that of poetry and of the higher prophetic region, uses as words, we find the originals in the nature that surrounds us, and in this alone nature already appears to us as an embodied dream world, a prophetic language in living hieroglyphic forms. The Unknown Philosopher^*†V therefore seems not without reason to compare nature with a somnambulist, a woman who talks in her dreams, who everywhere works according to the same inner necessity, according to the same unconscious and blind drive from which the actions of a sleepwalker come forth, and whose products, in all their manifold genera and kinds, resemble the images of our dreams, which are unessential in themselves and receive sense and essence only through what they signify, what they represent.

* Esprit des choses humaines.