Page:The reflections of Lichtenberg.djvu/96

 day has started and we are up and about; or why then more than at mid-day, or at night when we go to bed? I have experienced this again and again. I have gone to bed in the evening with a perfectly easy mind as regards some affair or other, and at four next morning have found myself so much troubled about it again as to lay awake tossing from side to side for an hour or two at a time. By nine o'clock, if not earlier, I was indifferent again, or even hopeful. The reason why people are able to retain so little of what they read is that they think so little for themselves. When anyone is well able to repeat what others have stated, it is certain that he has reflected a great deal on the subjectunless of course his head happens to be one of the pedometer class, of which there are not a few on exhibition, attracting attention by their feats of memory. Let me once again commend dreams to the reader’s notice. In dreams we live and experience no less than in waking, and the one is just as much a part of our existence as the other. That he dreams and knows that he dreams is to be reckoned as among the privileges of man. But up to the present people have hardly put this advantage to the best use. The dream is an existence which, joined to the remaining portion, becomes what we call human life. Our dreaming gradually merges into our waking, and we can hardly tell where the one ends or the other begins.