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Until now there was surely only one man—and about this man I wish to speak—who could say about himself: that in his whole life, he never dreamed nonsense. This man who led a very modest bachelor existence has gained no special reputation in this world. He would have been entirely forgotten and no one would have known about his existence—if we did not speak here about his remarkable quality, never to have dreamed nonsense. And it would have been an everlasting loss if people could not have learned that such a thing is possible and that such a person had really once existed.
He never dreamed, as happens so often to others, that he was in many places at the same time; or that someone long dead still lived; and similar things. He did dream however, as we do on occasion, that he could fly or that he met persons who never existed in the waking state; but all these things were not so contradictory with the waking world that one could definitely say that they were impossible or entirely absurd.
Moreover this man was not a little proud of this characteristic of his and he was, at the same time, so pleased over it that he believed that his continuous happiness was due to that. In this he was mistaken, for his cheerfulness and his happy disposition stemmed from a deeper source, from the same source which as will be seen, was responsible for his remarkable quality never to have dreamed nonsense.
He often was in the habit of speaking of this thing with friends. “My whole being”, he then said with beaming face, “my whole existence is clear. In my thinking as in my feelings, there reigns order and harmony. Nor do these two states war with each other and I am not forever constrained to secure this harmony. Indeed, my intelligence is not one of the highest but I can well say that it was