Schleyer, the inventor of Volapuk, the universal language, conceived the language in a dream. Having mastered fifty languages he was working over the problem of combining them into one, but the bulk of his knowledge had grown so unwieldy that the plan of a universal tongue seemed far away. One night as he lay asleep, he saw the necessary characters, forms and processes of the new language come trooping towards him and arranging themselves in a concise and orderly manner. When the vision ended he rose from his bed, rushed to his desk and recorded on a single sheet of note-paper the language which has remained as Schleyer received it in a vision.

It is said that Elias Howe solved the problem of threading the sewing machine in his dream of a long line of mounted warriors with leveled lances making a charge. Each spear-point was pierced with a tiny, needlelike hole, through which the light slanted sharply. "I must thread my needle at the end," he said when he awoke and grasped the symbol.

Apart from the cherished convictions of the dreamers themselves, certain eminent authorities concede that the fruits of science, literature and art are manifolded and enhanced in value by dreams. Lange, Helmholtz, Greisinger, Brodie, Maudsley, Herbart, Fechner and others lend the authority of great names to the statement, and while they express their concession grandiloquently and scientifically as "unconscious cerebral activity, the result of mental work during dreams," the dreamers receive the concession in the spirit of Lazarus who drew comfort from the crumbs that fell from Dives' table.