THE EQUINOX
Dreams reveal to us the sickness or the health, the calm
or the disturbance, of our plastic medium, and consequently,
also, that of our nervous apparatus.
They formulate our presentiments by the analogy which
the images bear to them.
For all ideas have a double significance for us, relating to
our double life.
There exists a language of sleep; in the waking state it is
impossible to understand it, or even to order its words.
The language of slumber is that of nature, hieroglyphic in
its character, and rhythmical in its sounds.
Slumber may be either giddy or lucid.
Madness is a permanent state of vertiginous somnambu-
lism.
A violent disturbance may wake madmen to sense, or kill
them.
Hallucinations, when they obtain the adhesion of the
intelligence, are transitory attacks of madness.
Every mental fatigue provokes slumber; but if the fatigue
is accompanied by nervous irritation, the slumber may be
incomplete, and take on the character of somnambulism.
One sometimes goes to sleep without knowing it in
the midst of real life; and then, instead of thinking, one
dreams.
How is it that we remember things which have never
happened to us? Because we dreamt them when wide awake.
This phenomenon of involuntary and unperceived sleep
when it suddenly traverses real life, often happens to those
who over-excite their nervous organism by excesses either of
work, vigil, drink, or erethism.
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