Idiots, whose minds are without action, dream like other men; therefore dreams are produced independent of the mind. Let any person reflect upon his dreams, and endeavour to discover why the circumstances are so unconnected, and the events so extravagant. To me it appears, that it is principally because they turn solely upon sensations, and not upon ideas. With the idea of time, for example, they have no affinity. Persons are represented whom we never saw, and even those who have been dead for many years, as alive, and as they formerly were when living; but we indifferently connect them with things and persons of the present, or of a different period. Thus it is also with the idea of place; we must perceive objects where they are not, or we should not see them at all. Did the mind act in a single instant it would give order to this incongruous train of sensations. Instead of which it allows the representations to succeed each other in disorder; and though each object appears in lively colours, the succession is often confused, and always chimerical. If the mind is rather roused by the enormity or force of these sensations, it will in the midst of this darkness produce a spark of light, and create in the midst of chimeras a real idea. We then dream, or rather we will think so, for though this action is but a small sign of the soul, it is yet neither a sensation nor a dream; it is a thought, a reflection, but being too weak to dispel the illusion, it mixes with and forms a part of the dream, and prevents not the representations from succeeding; insomuch, that on awaking, we imagine we had dreamed the very things we had thought. In dreams we see much, though we but seldom understand; we are powerfully agitated by our sensations, images follow each other, without the least intervention of the mind, either to compare or reconcile them. We have sensations, then, but no ideas, the latter being comparisons of the former; so dreams must reside solely in the internal material sense; and as the mind does not produce them, they must form a part of that animal reminiscence, of which we have already treated. Memory, on the contrary, cannot exist without the idea of time, without a comparison of ideas, and as these extend not to dreams, it seems to be obvious that they can neither be a consequence nor an effect, nor a proof of memory. But though it should be maintained that to some dreams ideas certainly belong; and as a proof of it, those people be quoted who walk, speak, and converse connectedly while asleep; still it would be sufficient for my argument, that dreams may be produced by the renovation of sensations alone, for in consequence thereof the dreams of animals must be merely of this species, and such dreams, far from supposing memory, indicate nothing but a material reminiscence.