alling
asleep and waking up, which I have mentioned in the second part in
connection with the interpretation of the parable.

The two categories of symbolism, if they never did anything but parallel
each other, would afford us no analogues for our problem of double
meaning. Now the cases, however, are extremely rare where there is only
functional or only material symbolism; the rule is an intimate
interweaving of both. To be sure, one is frequently more emphasized than
the other or more easily accessible, but we can generally find cases where
long contexts of images are susceptible of material as well as functional
interpretation, alike in detail and continuity of connection.

The following may serve as a very simple case in point. Lying one evening
in bed and exhausted and about to fall asleep, I devoted my thoughts to
the laborious progress of the human spirit in the dim transcendant
province of the mothers-problem. (Faust, Part II.) More and more sleepy
and ever less able to retain my thoughts, I saw suddenly with the
vividness of an illusion a dream image. I stood on a lonely stone pier
extending far into a dark sea. The waters of the sea blended at the
horizon with an equally dark-toned mysterious, heavy air. The overpowering
force of this tangible picture aroused me from my half sleeping state, and
I at once recognized that the image, so nearly an hallucination, was but a
visibly symbolic embodiment of my thought content that had been allowed to
lapse as a result of my fatigue. The symbol is easily recognized as such.
The extension into the dark sea corresponds to the pushing on into a dark
problem. The blending of atmosphere and water, the imperceptible gradation
from one to the other means that with the "mothers" (as Mephistopheles
pictures it) all times and places are fused, that there we have no
boundaries between a "here" and a "there," an "above" and a "below," and
for this reason Mephistopheles can say to Faust on his departure,

"Plunge then.--I could as well say soar."

We see therefore between the visualized image and the thought content,
which is, as it were, represented by it, a number of relations. The whole
image resolves itself insofar as it has characteristic features, almost
entirely into such elements as are most closely related to the thought
content. Apart from these connections of the material category, the image
represents also my momentary psychic condition (transition to sleep).