§ 5. The Dream Combat-Games

§ 5. The Dream Combat-Games.

The dream-life is the ego's power fallen into disarray; the power of the ego, which by day held together the peripheral powers, has here fallen apart among them. Therefore all these powers are torn loose in the night-time of the spirit; all are ruling, freely surging powers of selfhood; all move in tumult, and each, precisely because it is free, is passion and uproar. And since they are nonetheless bound to one and the same space of movement, because they all belong together to one and the same atmosphere of being, that of the soul and of the dream, there naturally arises, out of the surging to and fro of all of them within that same space, the mighty collision, the frenzy of all against all in the clash of force, the passionate tournament of combat unto victory or extinction.

Even the dreaming ego itself, however carelessly it may rest there and behold the scenes which its own scattered power prepares for it, cannot withhold itself from excitement and from a defensive counter-thrust against that power. The dangers which the dream spreads out before it play, flickering and licking, about the weak power of the ego; none lets it rest, each sprays it with the tinder of passion, and it stirs and surges, and despite the rigidity of sleep it sends out, here and there, a blow from its fettered power. But the dangers feel how far superior they are to it, and, struck by the flashing ray of the ego, they close ranks all the more firmly and press their attack the harder still. Cloud upon cloud, the storm of danger gathers; pain upon pain, disgrace upon disgrace, strikes the dreamer; monsters with jaws and teeth, with claws and venom full of hatred, hurl themselves upon the weak one, whom fear and trembling overcome. If it was the feeling woman who dreamed, she weeps bitterly in the dream, encircled by menace, and she sobs, and tears well over the cheek that offered such blissful fields to kisses; and if it is the man who dreams, he growls with fierce shame, or he thrashes his limbs about as though stirring to fight, without the power to send and set them to actual defense; often he only increases his own distress through the real pain which his blindly flailing limbs inflict upon him. Or the woman sighs aloud in the dream, and lets loose in her whimpering the tones of pity, her strongest weapon, against the monsters; and the man curses in isolated bursts of force, or in raging, swiftly rushing torrents of senseless words; the dreaming child, however, often cries out with the full strength of its breast in shrill tones of terror, like the beasts of the mountain-pasture when an approaching enemy wrings from them a signal for rescue, and, like lightning, the child's cry pierces the heart of mother or nurse, and wakes her from sleep. There is no power in the soul that the menacing dream does not roll forth into the light of day; it stirs up every affect to battle against the dying ego, as though against its own army.