Maury[[48]] agrees with him; he says (p. 163): “Il n’y a pas des rêves absolument raisonnables et qui ne contiennent quelque incohérence, quelque anachronisme, quelque absurdité.”
According to Hegel, quoted by Spitta,[[64]] the dream lacks all objective and comprehensible connection.
Dugas[[19]] says: “Le rêve, c’est l’anarchie psychique, affective et mentale, c’est le jeu des fonctions livrées à elles-mêmes et s’exerçant sans contrôle et sans but; dans le rêve l’esprit est un automate spirituel.”
“The relaxation, solution, and confusion of the presentation life which is held together through the logical force of the central ego” is conceded even by Volkelt[[72]] (p. 14), according to whose theory the psychic activity during sleep seems in no way aimless.
The absurdity of the presentation connections appearing in the dream can hardly be more strongly condemned than it was by Cicero (De Divin. II.): “Nihil tam praepostere, tam incondite, tam monstruose cogitari potest, quod non possimus somniare.”
Fechner[[52]] says (p. 522): “It is as if the psychological activity were transferred from the brain of a reasonable being into the brain of a fool.”
Radestock[[35]] (p. 145) says: “It seems indeed impossible to recognise in this absurd action any firm law. Having withdrawn itself from the strict police of the rational will guiding the waking presentation life, and of the attention, the dream whirls everything about kaleidoscopically in mad play.”
Hildebrandt[[35]] (p. 45) says: “What wonderful jumps the dreamer allows himself, e.g., in his chain of reasoning! With what unconcern he sees the most familiar laws of experience turned upside down! What ridiculous contradictions he can tolerate in the orders of nature and society before things go too far, as we say, and the overstraining of the nonsense brings an awakening! We often multiply quite unconcernedly: three times three make twenty; we are not at all surprised when a dog recites poetry for us, when a dead person walks to his grave, and when a rock swims on the water; we go in all earnestness by high command to the duchy of Bernburg or the principality of Lichtenstein in order to observe the navy of the country, or we allow ourselves to be recruited as a volunteer by Charles XII. shortly before the battle of Poltawa.”
Binz[[4]] (p. 33) points to a dream theory resulting from the impressions. “Among ten dreams nine at least have an absurd content. We unite in them persons or things which do not bear the slightest relation to one another. In the next moment, as in a kaleidoscope, the grouping changes, if possible to one more nonsensical and irrational than before; thus the changing play of the imperfectly sleeping brain continues until we awaken, and put our hand to our forehead and ask ourselves whether we really still possess the faculty of rational imagination and thought.”
Maury[[48]] (p. 50) finds for the relation of the dream picture to the waking thoughts, a comparison most impressive for the physician: “La production de ces images que chez l’homme éveillé fait le plus souvent naître la volonté, correspond, pour l’intelligence, à ce que cont pour la motilité certains mouvements que nous offrent la chorée et les affections paralytiques....” For the rest, he considers the dream “toute une série de dégradation de la faculté pensant et raisonant” (p. 27).