The oracle is a revelation, or information given us by some angel or other celestial spirit who does God’s bidding. The angel appearing to Joseph the husband of the Virgin, and to the wise men, are examples of this. Revery occurs when the passions are so vehement that they destroy the mental equilibrium for a time. Then what one thinks of during the day he will dream of at night, as a lover who has been thinking during the day of his beloved one will continue to do so at night while he is sleeping. Sometimes when one fears to meet a person, he will dream at night that he has met him; having fasted during the day, he will dream of eating, or, having been thirsty, of drinking. Avarice will make the miser dream of his gold, and speak of it when sleeping, as he would not do when awake. Apparition is named Phantom by the Greeks, and is only that nocturnal vision sometimes presented to children and weak-minded persons, who imagine they see objects presented to intimidate or pain them. Of these five kinds of dreams, the three first have an appearance of truth, but the last two are absolutely false. It is to be remarked, with regard to all dreams, that those of which only parts are remembered, signify nothing at all; that those that memory retains are good and true; that they ought to occur about day-break, or at least after midnight, because until that time the senses and the body are occupied in the labor of digestion, and the mind disturbed by the remembrance of dinner, can dream of nothing reasonable. Nevertheless Artemidorus says, that a sober, temperate, and tranquil man can dream at any hour of the night, or even during the day, and that the fulfilment of such dreams will be certain. Some authors divide dreams into three kinds, namely, dreams of natural objects, of animals, and of celestial objects. The natural things are those by which physicians judge of the temperament; dreams of animals show the passions and cares that the mind has felt during the day; those of celestial objects are the intimations of divine things, as for example, the statue that the king of Babylon saw when asleep, which is so well explained by the prophet Daniel. There are few persons who have the gift of dreaming that which will be fulfilled, fewer still who know how to interpret them, because it is necessary to observe many things not generally known.