193

Quidquid luce fuit, tenebris agit [What goes on in the light, acts in the darkness], but the other way around as well. What we experience in a dream, provided we experience it frequently, finally is as much a part of the collective household of our souls as anything "truly" experienced. Thanks to this, we are richer or poorer, have one more need or one less, and finally in the bright light of day and even in the happiest moments of our waking spirit we are ordered around a little by the habits of our dreams. Suppose that an individual in his dreams has often flown and, finally, as soon as he dreams, becomes aware of the power and art of flying as his privilege and also as his own enviable happiness; such a man who believes he is capable of realizing every kind of curving or angled flight with the easiest impulse, who knows the feeling of a certain godlike carelessness, an "upward" without tension and compulsion, a "downward" without condescension and without humiliation - without gravity! - how should a man with such dream experiences and dream habits not also finally discover in his waking day that the word "happiness" has a different colour and definition! How could he not want a different happiness? "A swing upward," as described by poets, for him must be, in comparison with that "flying," too earthbound, too muscular, too forceful, even too "heavy."

Friedrich Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil
Part V - Aphorism # 193

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