Page:The reflections of Lichtenberg.djvu/66

 to their original state of innocence; to find one’s way out of the mass of alien thoughts; to begin to feel, to speak, and I might almost say, to exist for oneself. We imagine we are free in our actions, just as in dreaming we deem a place perfectly familiar which we then see doubtless for the first time. Thus I lately dreamt that I had lost my way in a town of which not even the name was known to me in my dream; but at length, upon perceiving a ruined arch in the distance, I grew relieved, because that landmark could be seen from my garden, and so my house could not be far away. When I awoke, however, I found that I had never lived near such an arch in my life. Things like this often happen in my dreams. I am of opinion that instinct in us outruns our logical judgment, and that in this waynot formally, perhaps, but nevertheless exactlya good deal may be revealed which strict reasoning is as yet incapable of pursuing and attaining. Animal heat is generated, and will be generated, without our being at present in a position to say just where it comes from. In the same category I place the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. “It will be the same after our life as it was before it"this is a piece of instinct anterior to all reasoning. It cannot at present be proved; but for myself, taken in conjunction with the phenomena of fainting, insensibility, and with other circumstances, it has an