g Aristotle's saying, that much learning raises many doubts.
Other topics made our walks every day very pleasant, but the common
saying concerning dreams,--that those in autumn are the vainest,--I
know not how, whilst Favorinus was engaged in other matters, was started
after supper. Your friends and my sons thought Aristotle had given
sufficient satisfaction in this point, and that no other cause was to be
sought after or allowed but that which he mentions, the fruit. For the
fruit, being new and flatulent, raises many disturbing vapors in the
body; for it is not likely that only wine ferments, or new oil only
makes a noise in the lamp, the heat agitating its vapor; but new corn
and all sorts of fruit are plump and distended, till the unconcocted
flatulent vapor is broke away. And that some sorts of food disturb
dreams they said, was evident from beans and the polypus's head, from
which those who would divine by their dreams are commanded to abstain.

But Favorinus himself, though in all other things he admires Aristotle
exceedingly and thinks the Peripatetic philosophy to be most probable,
yet in this case resolved to scour up an old musty opinion of
Democritus. He first laid down that known principle of his, that images
pass through the pores into the inmost parts of the body, and being
carried upward cause dreams; and that these images fly from everything,
vessels, garments, plants, but especially from animals, because of their
heat and the motion of their spirits; and that these images not only
carry the outward shape and likeness of the bodies (as Epicurus thinks,
following Democritus so far and no farther), but the very designs,
motions, and passions of the soul; and with those entering into the
bodies, as if they were living things, discover to those that receive
them the thoughts and inclinations of the persons from whom they come,
if so be that they preserve their frame and order entire. And that is
especially preserved when the air is calm and clear, their passage then
being quick and undisturbed. Now the autumnal air, when trees shed
their leaves, being very uneven and disturbed, ruffles and disorders
the images, and, hindering them in their passage, makes them weak and
ineffectual; when, on the contrary, if they rise from warm and vigorous
subjects, and are presently applied, the notices which they give and the
impressions they make are clear and evident.

Then with a smile looking upon Autobulus, he continu