Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] As for infants, who are thought not to dream, since everything in the soul is worked out in proportion to the age of life — let people take note of their starts, their nods, their little smiles in sleep, so that from this evidence they may grasp that the movements of a dreaming soul easily break through to the surface, given the tenderness of the flesh. [2] But as for the Libyan tribe said to pass their lives, the Atlantes, in blind sleep — this at any rate is charged against the nature of their soul. Either Herodotus's report has, as sometimes happens, lied slanderously about barbarians, or some great force of demons of this kind holds sway in that climate. For if Aristotle also notes a certain hero of Sardinia who deprives the incubants of his shrine of visions, then this too will fall among the caprices of demons — to take away dreams as much as to send them — just as the mark of Nero, likewise a late dreamer, and of Thrasymedes, arose from that very source. [3] But we also trace dreams back to God. Why then should the Atlantes not dream from God as well, seeing that no nation is any longer a stranger to God, over the whole earth and to the ends of the world, now that the gospel shines out? So then, has Herodotus's report lied to Aristotle, or is there still some working of demons here? — provided no one believes any nature of soul to be exempt from dreaming.