Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

184 Aristotle and his schoolsense-movements. Number 13 serves as an illustration of the ‘extrusion’ ofweak movements through stronger ones. Numbers 14–17 are concernedwith the physiological conditions that influence or disturb the transportof sense-movements from the peripheral sense-organs to the central senseorgan.Numbers 10–12 and 18–20 illustrate the ‘experiencing’ or ‘noticing’of the sense-movements by the dreaming subject: the experiences of illusionin the waking state serve as analogy for the fact that the dreaming subjectoften does not notice that what (s)he experiences is only a dream.(iii) Aristotle’s answer to the third question of the definition of the dreamis best studied through a quotation from the last chapter of On Dreams (462a 15–31): ’ . , , . , ’ From all this we have to conclude that the dream is a sort of appearance, and,more particularly, one which occurs in sleep; for the images just mentioned arenot dreams, nor is any other image which presents itself when the senses are free[i.e. when we are awake]; nor is every image which occurs in sleep a dream. For, inthe first place, some persons actually, in a certain way, perceive sounds and lightand taste and contact [while asleep], albeit faintly and as it were from far away.For during sleep people who had their eyes half open have recognised what theybelieved they were seeing in their sleep faintly as the light of the lamp, as the reallight of the lamp, and what they believed they were hearing faintly as the voiceof cocks and dogs, they recognised these clearly on awakening. Some even giveanswers when being asked questions. The fact is with being awake and being asleepthat it is possible that when one of them is present without qualification, the otheris also present in a certain way. None of these [experiences] should be called dreams,nor should the true thoughts that occur in sleep as distinct from the appearances,but the appearance which results from the movement of the sense-effects, whenone is asleep, in so far as one is asleep, this is a dream.Thus the dream is defined as ‘the appearance which results from the movementof the sense-effects, when one is asleep, in so far as one is asleep.’ The