THE DEER IN THE DREAM

a person become accumulating fuel inside the Cheng state while he fell in with a deer that had been startled from its common haunts. He gave chase, and succeeded in killing it. He became overjoyed at his desirable luck; but, for worry of discovery, he hastily concealed the carcass in a dry ditch, and covered it up with brushwood.

Afterwards, he forgot the spot wherein he had hidden the deer, and eventually have become satisfied that the entire affair was simplest a dream. He instructed the tale to human beings he met as he went alongside; and certainly one ofindividuals who heard it, following the indicators given, went and determined the deer.

On reaching home with his booty, this man made the subsequent declaration to his wife: “once upon a time,” he stated, “a wood-cutter dreamt that he had were given a deer, however couldn’t take into account the region where he had put it. Now i've found the deer, so it seems that his dream was a true dream.”

“on the contrary,” said his wife, “it is you who need to have dreamt which you met a timber-cutter who had stuck a deer. here you have a deer, true enough. however in which is the wooden-cutter? it's far evidently your dream that has come actual.”

“i have in reality got a deer,” replied her husband; “so what does it remember to us whether or not it was his dream or mine?”

meanwhile, the wood-cutter had long gone home, in no way disgusted at having lost the deer. For he notion the entiretyought to have been a dream. but the same night, he noticed in a dream the region wherein he had really hidden it, and he also dreamt of the man who had taken it. So, the next morning, according with his dream, he went to seek him out with the intention to get better the deer.

A quarrel ensued, and the matter turned into ultimately introduced before the magistrate, who gave judgment in thesephrases: “You,” he stated to the wooden-cutter, “began by using simply killing a deer, but wrongly thought it become a dream. then you definately truly dreamt that you had got the deer, but wrongly took the dream to be a fact. the alternative guy actually took your deer, which he's now disputing with you. His spouse, then again, broadcasts that he saw both guy and deer in a dream, so that no one may be stated to have killed the deer in any respect. in the meantime, right here is the deer itself in court docket, and also you had higher divide it among you.”

The case was reported to the Prince of the Cheng nation, who stated: “Why, the magistrate need to have dreamt the whole lot himself!”

The query changed into noted the high Minister, but the latter confessed himself unable to disentangle the componentthat became a dream from the element that changed into now not a dream. “if you want to distinguish among waking and dreaming,” he stated, “you'll ought to move lower back to the Yellow Emperor or Confucius. but both these sages are dead, and there may be nobody now alive who can draw this kind of difference. Of course, it's miles implied that there isno real difference among the 2. So the exceptional element you could do is to uphold the Justice of the Peace’s choice.”