And I ought to set
aside all the doubts of these past days as hyperbolical and
ridiculous, particularly that very common uncertainty
respecting sleep, which I could not distinguish from the
waking state; for at present I find a very notable difference
between the two, inasmuch as our memory can never connect our
dreams one with the other, or with the whole course of our
lives, as it unites events which happen to us while we are
awake. And, as a matter of fact, if someone, while I was
awake, quite suddenly appeared to me and disappeared as fast
as do the images which I see in sleep, so that I could not
know from whence the form came nor whither it went, it would
not be without reason that I should deem it a spectre or a
phantom formed by my brain [and similar to those which I form
in sleep], rather than a real man. But when I perceive things
as to which I know distinctly both the place from which they
proceed, and that in which they are, and the time at which
they appeared to me; and when, without any interruption, I can
connect the perceptions which I have of them with the whole
course of my life, I am perfectly assured that these
perceptions occur while I am waking and not during sleep.
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