Now it also seems to me that he who dreams is more awake than he who
sleeps, and that he who spends a third part of his life in utter
unconsciousness better deserves to be called a sleepyhead and dullard,
than he for whom the dark nights are also vivid and rich with pulsing
life. To me it has always seemed a shame to lie like a stone for so
many hours, and to arise from sleep no wiser than when we sank into it.
And after having experienced several times in my early youth that sleep
possesses riches of sensations and a wealth of rapture that surpass the
intensest joys of brilliant day, shedding behind them a radiance that
penetrates the brightest daylight as sunshine penetrates an
electrically lighted hall, - I began to pay more attention to my dreams
and, especially in dreary joyless days, to look forward to the nights
in which I had unmistakably felt the shining presence of such great
treasure.
As to the doctors' opinion regarding the morbidness of dreams, I refer
again to my observations on the philistinism prevalent among
physicians, and I know from very positive experience that there are
healthy as well as morbid sensations in sleep, precisely as in the
day-life.
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