Page:The reflections of Lichtenberg.djvu/101

 nerve-extremities exertion and reparation appear to counteract each other; and where the nerves are under process of restoration there is an absence of sensation. Those parts that lie more towards the interior are merely for purposes of sustenance, not for transmission and reaction. In this way the necessity for sleep might be demonstrated à priori. Delicate parts which have to be renovated by coarser are unable to fulfil their functions whilst they are thus undergoing repair. Has anyone, I wonder, ever dreamt of odours, without an external cause to give rise to the impression?dreamt, for instance, of the smell of roses, when there was no rose or rosewater in the vicinity. With music this is certainly the case, and with light too; but feelings of pain in a dream usually have some external cause. As regards odours I am uncertain. Dreams lead us into circumstances and adventures in which when awake we cannot easily be involved ; or again, they make us feel inconveniences which perhaps from a distance we had at first despised, but in which we were in the course of time actually involved. A dream may on this account often change our resolves, and confirm our moral basis to a greater extent than all the precepts that reach the heart by round-about ways.