The Autobiography of an Idea by Louis H. Sullivan

As one in tranquillity gazes into the crystal depths called Memory, in search of sights and sounds and colors long since physically passed out from what is otherwise called memory; when one is intent, not upon recalling but upon reentering, he finds a double motion setting in. While out of the gray surface-obscurity of supposed oblivion, there emerges to his view, as through a thinning haze, a broad vision assuming the color and movement of a life once lived, of a world once seen and felt to be real, so likewise, the intensive soul moves eagerly forward descending through intervening atmospheric depths toward this oncoming solid reality of time and place, a reality growing clearer, more colorful, more vibrant, more alluring, more convincing -- filling the eye, the ear with sound and color and movement, with broad expanses, with minute details, with villages and cities, farms and work shops, men and women densely gathered or widely scattered, and children, little children always and everywhere. So moving, the two great illusions, the two dreams of the single dreamer, accelerating, rush onward, and vanish both into a single life which is but a dream; -- the dream of the past enfolding and possessing the dreamer of today; the dreamer of today enveloping, entering and possessing the dream-reality of the past; all within the inscrutable stillness of a power unknown, within which we float, with our all, and believe ourselves real. We believe in our reality in our strenuous hours, in our practical doings, in our declamatory moments, and even in our hours of silence.

In sleep there come images before us, floating by, irretrievable, or steadfastly convincing; and these we speak of casually as dreams. We are willing even to extend the idea of dream to man's ambition. We say such or such a man had or has dreams of empire, of dominion, of achievement, of fulfilment of this or that sort. And occasionally we acknowledge, upon information, that such dream had taken full possession not of a man we read about, or see in the plenitude of his power, but that the dream arose within a child, in broad daylight -- as night-dreams do in their way -- and aroused in him a passionate desire.