We learn things today just as readily by tales, only our tales are a little different. Aladdin's lamp, interpreted, means an individual's will to accomplish, and the wishes are the purposes, the dreams, if you will, the point on which we shape our lives. Unconsciously our characters shape themselves to meet the requirements which our dreams put upon our life. A great doctor dreamed in his youth that he would save people, that he would help a suffering humanity. Instead of sliding out from under responsibility, he accepted it because he knew that he had to develop all those qualities of mind and heart if he were going to be a great doctor or a great surgeon.
Most women dream first of a happy family.
The instinct for reproduction is inborn in most of us. In some intangible way it satisfies our hunger for eternity. We may not actually figure it out, but the long line that we see streaming down uncounted years, going back of us and going on beyond us, comes to mean for us immortality. For a number of years it took so much vitality to keep the home going, and that home represented so many different kinds of activities, that none of us had any urge to go outside of this sphere. Gradually in every civilization there comes a time when work of the household is done by servants, either human or mechanical.