Dreaming by the Book

By means of the vividness of perceptions, we remain at all moments capable of recovering, of “recognizing” the material world and distinguishing it from our imaginary world, even as we lapse into and out of our gray and ghostly daydreams. Aristotle refers to this grayness as “the feebleness” of images. Sartre calls it their “essential poverty.”

Of course, insofar as the imagination is enfeebled and impoverished, it is so only on sensory grounds. To complain that the imagined object lacks vivacity and vitality is only to complain that it is not a perceptual object, since vivacity and vitality are the very heart of perception.