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Aristotle on sleep and dreams 185
qualification ‘when one is asleep and in so far as one is asleep’ is necessary in
order to distinguish the dream from other experiences one may have in and
around sleep; and there is a pun here, for the Greek wordenhupnion, which
Aristotle uses throughout for ‘dream’, literally means ‘(something) in sleep’,
en hupnoi ̄. These ‘other experiences’ have been discussed by Aristotle in the
preceding lines with the aid of examples ( 462 a 9 – 15 ): in sleep we some-
times perceive things which on awakening we recognise as being caused by
sense-movements that actually present themselves to our sense-organs, and
children often see frightening visions in the dark with their eyes open; and
as he says in the passage quoted, in transitional states of half-sleep we may
perceive weak impressions of light and sound, we may even give answers to
questions which are being asked, and we may have thoughts in sleep about
the dream image. How these experiences are physiologically possible is not
explained by Aristotle, but what he says about them is highly significant in
theoretical respect. Sleep and waking are not absolute opposites: when one
of them is present ‘without qualification’ (hapl ̄os), the other may also be
present ‘in a certain way’ (p ̄ei). In these transitional states between sleeping
and waking, we may, after all, have some sort of direct perception of the
actual state of affairs in the external world. Aristotle’s recognition of this
possibility entails an implicit modification of his earlier assertions in the
first chapter ofOn Sleep and Waking, where he defined sleep and waking
as opposites and sleep as the privation of waking ( 453 b 26 – 27 ), and in
chapter 1 ofOn Dreams, where he said that we cannot perceive anything
in sleep. It now turns out that wemayactually perceive in sleep, though
faintly and unclearly. In accordance with his dream theory, Aristotle here
insists that none of these experiences ‘in sleep’ (en hupn ̄oi) are ‘dreams’,
that is,enhupniain the strict sense.
A remarkably modern consequence of this view is that according to
Aristotle the state of sleeping can be divided into different stages. Aristotle
does not show any awareness of ‘rapid eye movements’; but on theoretical
grounds he assumes that the beginning of sleep is characterised by an
absence of dreams, because then, as a result of the process of digestion,
there is too much confusion and ‘turbulence’ in the body, which disturbs the
transport of sense-movements through the blood ( 461 a 8 ff.). Appearances
that manifest themselves in that early stage are not dreams, Aristotle points
out: dreams occur later, when the blood is separated into a thinner, clearer
part and a thicker, troubled part; when this process of separation of the
blood is completed, we wake up ( 458 a 10 – 25 ). Thus dreams are experiences
which we have when in fact we are on our way to awakening. Experiences,
however, which we havejust before or simultaneously withawakening and
