eleutheria

Human, All Too Human

I've found it through google: http://www.geocities.com/thenietzschechannel/human1.htm
The quote is from Human, All Too Human

The logic of the dream.� When one sleeps, the nervous system is constantly excited by manifold internal stimuli: almost all the organs secrete and are active; the blood circulates turbulently; the position of the sleeper, his blankets, influence his feelings variously; the stomach digests and disturbs other organs with its movements; the intestines turn; the placement of the head occasions unusual positions of the muscles; the feet, without shoes, their soles not pressing on the floor, cause a feeling of unusualness, as does the different way the whole body is clothed after its daily change and variation, and all this excites by its unusualness the whole system, including the brain functions. Thus there are a hundred occasions for the mind to be surprised and to search for reasons for this excitation: the dream, however, is the searching for, and the imagining of, the causes for these excited feelings, i.e., the supposed causes. For example, if one ties two straps around one's feet, one may dream that two snakes are coiled around one's feet. This is at first a hypothesis, then a belief, accompanied by a pictorial idea and elaboration: "These snakes must be the cause of that feeling which I, the sleeper, am having"�thus judges the mind of the sleeper. What is thus inferred to have been the near past becomes the present through the excited imagination. Thus everybody knows from experience how quickly one blends a strong sound�e.g., the toiling of bells or cannon shots�into his dream, i.e., how he explains them ex post facto through his dream, in such a way that he supposes that he experiences first the causal circumstances and then this sound.

Of First and Last Things, 13.