Privy matters (3)

 —then the fantastic puppet-old-man that threw himself in my way and under my feet where ever I went—my intreatng some one to take him away—and a huge bloater fat fellow came & sat on him, saying, there was no other way—I went it—and a villainous little dog contrived to fly at me & bit me, with a sharp nip (the nearest imitation of proper pain, that I have found occur in sleep—Some one of the half-friendly Inhabitants of the Sleep-world observed, that the little old man had contrived to let the dog slip in the moment, the fat fellow sate on him—then the Drama of Puppets—& that I must stay it out before I could go to relieve myself—but I grew angry—& stole away down a hollow lane that led to a river, on the other side of which was a field or plot with a number of rather pretty yet fear-inspiring Child-men, with sheaves, as in a harvest field, of dry exceedingly light <Bean> Halms or the dried out Rushes in a dry summer ditch/ —I was on a sloping hillock or bank of the River—& said to myself—These are Tieck’s Fairies / alluding in my mind to the exquisite tale of the Girl who passed from Childhood to Womanhood among the Fairies & supposed she had been only a few hours / —and then a white-faced Boy came on the left of the harvest field but the other side of the Stream, as if to watch what I was about to do—and as I thought, to bring the natives about me, should I persist in profaning the place by letting down my small clothes— —& in this uneasy feeling I awoke—.. P.S. I had deferred taking my regular quantity of Mustard Seed till the moment, that I was undressing—three hours later than my wont—& in consequence, had to undergo all the process in sleep / But from these dreams (and no week occurs in which I have not one or two; always originating in the Kidneys, or Bladder, or Intestinal Canal) I derive convincing confirmation of the diversity between Reason & Understanding. The latter we retain in Dreams—it is “I” still, & the Understanding belongs to “I”—but Reason is a Loan, a Light.—The memory is lost: for it is objectivity that differences Memory from Fancy—and Objectivity, the offspring of Reason, is by divine ordinance connected with the Senses in our present fallen state—We have not God within; but must look out of ourselves for him.

 

Entry 5641, November 1827,  The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 5: 1827-1834, ed. Kathleen Coburn and Anthony John Harding, Routledge, 2002