OF SLEEP AND SOMNAMBULISM. 717 



more general fact is, however, that there is an entire want of any ostensible 

 coherence between the ideas which successively present themselves to the 

 consciousness ; and yet we are completely unaware of the incougruousness of 

 the combinations which are thus formed. It has been well remarked that 

 "nothing surprises us in dreams." All probabilities of "time, place, and 

 circumstance" are violated; the dead pass before us as if alive and well; 

 even the sages of antiquity hold personal converse with us; our friends upon 

 the antipodes are brought upon the scene, or we ourselves are conveyed 

 thither, without the least perception of the intervening distance; and occur- 

 rences, such as in our waking state would excite the strongest emotions, may 

 be contemplated without the slightest feeling of a painful or pleasurable 

 nature. Facts and events long since forgotten in the waking state, and 

 remaining only as latent impressions, on the Cerebrum, present themselves 

 to the mind of the dreamer; and many instances have occurred, in which 

 the subsequent retention of the knowledge thus reacquired has led to most 

 important results. 1 But one of the most remarkable of all the peculiarities 

 in the state of dreaming, is the rapidity with which trains of thought pass 

 through the mind; for a dream in which a long series of events has seemed 

 to occur, and a multitude of images has been successively raised up, has been 

 often certainly known to have occupied only a few minutes, or even seconds, 

 although whole years may seem to the dreamer to have elapsed. There 

 would not appear, in truth, to be any limit to the amount of thought which 

 may thus pass through the mind of the dreamer, in an interval so brief as to 

 be scarcely capable of measurement ; as is obvious from the fact, that a 

 dream involving a long succession of supposed events, has often distinctly 

 originated in a sound which has also awoke the sleeper, so that the whole 

 must have passed during the almost inappreciable period of transition be- 

 tween the previous state of sleep and the full waking consciousness. 2 Hence 

 it has been argued by some, that all our dreams really take place in the 

 momentary passage between the states of sleeping and waking; but such an 

 idea is not consistent with the fact, that the course of a dream may often be 

 traced by observing the successive changes of expression in the countenance 

 of the dreamer. It seems, however, that those dreams are most distinctly 

 remembered in the waking state which have passed through the mind during 

 the transitional phase just alluded to; whilst those which occur in a state 

 more allied to Somnambulism, are more completely isolated from the ordi- 

 nary consciousness. There is a phase of the dreaming state which is worthy 

 of notice as marking another gradation between this and the vigilant state-; 

 that, namely, in which the dreamer has a consciousness that he is dreaming, 

 being aware of the unreality of the images which present themselves before 



Cours d'Etude, he frequently developed and finished a subject in his dreams, which 

 he had broken off before retiring to rest. Coleridge relates of himself that his frag- 

 ment Kubla Khan was composed during sleep, which had come upon Jiim whilst 

 reading the passage in Purchas's Pilgrimage, on which the poetical description was 

 founded, and was written down immediately on awaking, " the images rising up be- 

 fore him as things, with a parallel production of the corresponding expressions, with- 

 out any sensation or consciousness of effort." 



1 See a number of such cases in Dr. Abercrombie's Inquiries concerning the Intel- 

 lectual Powers. 



2 The only phase of the waking state in which any such intensely rapid succession 

 of thoughts presents itself, is that which is now well attested as a frequent occur- 

 rence, under circumstances in which there is imminent danger of death, especially 

 by drowning; the whole previous life of the individual seeming to be presented 

 instantaneously to his view, with its every important incident vividly impressed on 

 his consciousness, just as if all were combined in a picture, the whole of which could 

 be taken in at a glance. 



