text: When the body is awake and the senses are functioning properly, a person constantly encounters new stimuli to sense and so the impressions of previously perceived stimuli are ignored.However, during sleep the impressions made throughout the day are noticed as there are no new distracting sensory experiences.So, dreams result from these lasting impressions.Since impressions are all that are left and not the exact stimuli, dreams do not resemble the actual waking experience.During sleep, a person is in an altered state of mind.Aristotle compares a sleeping person to a person who is overtaken by strong feelings toward a stimulus.For example, a person who has a strong infatuation with someone may begin to think they see that person everywhere because they are so overtaken by their feelings.Since a person sleeping is in a suggestible state and unable to make judgements, they become easily deceived by what appears in their dreams, like the infatuated person.This leads the person to believe the dream is real, even when the dreams are absurd in nature.In De Anima iii 3, Aristotle ascribes the ability to create, to store, and to recall images in the absence of perception to the faculty of imagination, phantasia.One component of Aristotle's theory of dreams disagrees with previously held beliefs.He claimed that dreams are not foretelling and not sent by a divine being.Aristotle reasoned naturalistically that instances in which dreams do resemble future events are simply coincidences.Aristotle claimed that a dream is first established by the fact that the person is asleep when they experience it.If a person had an image appear for a moment after waking up or if they see something in the dark it is not considered a dream because they were awake when it occurred.Secondly, any sensory experience that is perceived while a person is asleep does not qualify as part of a dream.