Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

200 Aristotle and his schoolBut the problem is that the empirical examples of this mechanism given inthe following lines seem to belong to a different category. The experiencesof hearing thunder, tasting sweet flavours and going through a fire areapparently the result of movements in the body which present themselvesat the time of sleep. These movements are not the remnants of movementswhich have occurred during the daytime but which were overruled then,but they are actual movements which take place at the moment of sleepand which are noticed at the moment that they occur.Now, as we have seen, Aristotle in On Dreams acknowledges that thiskind of perception may take place in sleep; but he immediately adds thequalification that this kind of perception is not a dream (an enhupnion)inthe strict sense of the word, whereas that is the word he is using here in OnDivination in Sleep. Moreover, in the present passage Aristotle states that weperceive these movements ‘more clearly’ in sleep than in the waking state,whereas the examples of the borderline experiences he gives in On Dreamsare said to be perceived ‘faintly and as it were from far away’.There are several ways to cope with this problem, none of which, however,are free from difficulties. 52 We might consider the possibility that theexperiences mentioned here are not examples of dreams, but effects of amore general mechanism which is operative in sleep, and of which dreamsare a different species. In this respect the transition from line 10 to 11 maybe understood – and paraphrased with some exaggeration – as follows: ‘forthen it even happens that small movements (no matter whether they areremnants of earlier perceptions or actual impressions) appear stronger thanthey really are’. The word ‘even’ (kai) may then be taken as pointing tothe fact that the examples which follow demonstrate more than is reallynecessary for Aristotle’s purpose. What is necessary for the argument isthat the small movements which escaped our notice in the waking statebecome manifest to us in sleep. What is redundant in it is, first, that allkinds of small movements (i.e. both remnants of small movements from thewaking state and small movements which actually occur to us when we areasleep) manifest themselves more clearly in sleep than in the waking stateand, secondly, that these small movements appear stronger than they reallyare.52 I leave aside the interpretation according to which the experiences mentioned here are, after all,remnants of actual sense impressions received during the waking state, in which case there wouldbe no inconsistency with On Dreams. This interpretation, however, seems unlikely: the presentparticiples gignomenōn, katarrheontos, gignomenēs, as well as the fact that no example from the visualdomain is given, surely indicate that the occurrence of the stimulus and its experience by the sleeperare simultaneous.