ON THE EFFECTS CF CERTAIN MENTAL 



sion of fear being destroyed by sleep. The perilous situations of 

 somnambulists have formed the wonder and admiration of gazing 

 multitudes, and the mind of the vulgar has been impressed with the 

 importance of leaving the sleep-wanderer to his own guidance, 

 where a mistake in his footing of the twentieth part of an inch 

 would have plunged him into eternity. The intense interest thus 

 excited has been scarcely lessened by the admirable personification 

 of the Somnambulist by Garcia, Kelly, and Damoreau Cinti. 



The somnambulist is limited in all he does, during this state, to 

 the ideas which are furnished by the dream under whose impression 

 he acts; his mind and, it should seem, his organs of sense generally, 

 are likewise limited to these impressions. Many persons have com- 

 posed sermons and themes, elucidated difficult points in law and 

 mathematics, during sleep, which they were unable to accomplish 

 when awake. The intellectual faculties are here concentrated, by 

 the power of Imagination, upon one train of ideas, to the exclusion 

 of all the rest. From this cause, those passions which agitate us 

 when awake are, in sleep, all in a state of oblivion, except those 

 which are connected with the Imagination of our dream. The 

 state of the perceptive power of the senses of vision, hearing, taste, 

 and touch, are under the complete control of the Imagination, 

 during the somnambulatory state. In the waking state, the Ima- 

 gination is dependent for the materials of its actions upon the 

 senses, particularly upon the sense of vision. Fancy is " engen- 

 dered in the eye, by gazing fed :" but during sleep-walking, when 

 the senses are evidently in action,' they appear to be entirely go- 

 verned by the Imagination, and see and hear only what the Imagi- 

 nation chooses to take cognizance of, or only perceive those objects 

 about which the Fancy is then employed. Castelli was a pupil of 

 Porati, an Italian apothecary. He was found one night, being 

 asleep, in the act of translating from Italian into French, and 

 looked for words in a dictionary, as usual. His candle being extin- 

 guished, he fancied himself in the dark, although several other 

 candles were burning in the apartment, groped for the candle, and 

 went to light it again at the kitchen fire. He used to leave his 

 bed, go down to the shop, and weigh out medicines to supposed 

 customers, to whom he talked. When any one conversed with him 

 on a subject upon which his mind was bent, he gave rational an- 

 swers. He had been reading Macquer's Chemistry, and somebody 

 altered his marks, to see if he would notice it. This puzzled him, 

 and he said " Bel piacere di sempre togliermi i segni.** He found 

 his place and read aloud ; but his voice growing fainter, his master 



