104 Rev. J. Wills on Mr. Stewarfs Explanation of 



thoughts over which it has no such power when awake ; it can compose new 

 novels with a rapidity unknown to Scott, and dramatize them with a facility be- 

 yond the joint efforts of Shakspeare and Garrlck. No matter with what lumber- 

 ing incapacity, or what inert and floundering dulness its waking thoughts may 

 be combined, all at once in sleep, it can take the wings of Ariel and " Put a 

 girdle round about the earth in forty minutes," or rather in the twinkling of an 

 eye. — So much for increased energy. 



But it acts according to a new law. Mr. Stewart says not. He meets the 

 objection by those solutions which I have already gone through. But if these were 

 even granted, the matter is not mended. For a moment, assuming Mr. Stewart's 

 explanations to be all correct, it will yet appear that the sleeping and waking 

 processes have the essential difference of a new law. 



According to Mr. Stewart, the process of the mind, when awake, becomes so 

 rapid that separate attentions and volitions grow imperceptible ; if so, how does 

 it happen that in a case of the same supposed process in sleep they all become dis- 

 tinctly perceptible and conscious ? 



The romance comprising a long succession of events, occurs in an Instant, 

 but all the parts of which it is composed are (according to Mr. Stewart) so sepa- 

 rately attended to that they could not be more observed assunder, if they actually 

 took a long period of time. Here, then, is one difference ; there is not only an 

 increase of power, but a different mode of action. 



But I have another question to ask — if the assumed rapidity of ideas does not 

 escape the attention, when asleep, and does when awake, why is not this character 

 at least uniform ? why, in fact, is it reversed ? 



Why, in sleep, do not all the other operations of habit become similarly re- 

 solved, by separate acts of attention, into their constituent parts ? If this law were 

 to be followed out into its consequences, there could be no such thing as a dream 

 at all ; thoughts would be thus resolved into their elements, and the mind could 

 not think even for the purpose of dreaming. The case amounts to this ; when awake, 

 the effect of habit enables the mind to pursue a succession of musical notes, so 

 fast that it cannot have a conscious perception of their separate occurrence: when 

 asleep, it seems to have acquired a faculty the converse of this ; that is, it accele- 

 rates a succession of slow operations, which, when awake, no power of conception 



