23.0 Reverie y\ considered as 



in the morjilng on first getting up, because the 

 mind is nqtithen pre^-occupied with any ideas 

 which may hinder the subject's getting fast 



hold of it."- jGer^ird's Pastoral Care, 



^^0n the whole, whatever destroys the 

 balance between body and mind, whatever 

 impairs the firm tone of the animal fibre, ought 

 to be studiously avoided by those whose habits 

 arc literary. The debility subsequent to a 

 debauch, a warm climate, fatigue, corpulency, 

 are all favourable to reverie. And every thing 

 that br^^ces the fibre, and gives the systerp (not 



* It is a law in the animal osconomy, (hat sensibility 

 accumulates as irritability is exhausted : in other words, 

 that the nervous fibre becomes more sensible to impres- 

 sions, as the muscular fibre becomes less so, and vice 

 versa. — Preternatural or diseased sensibility is not found 

 in the strong labourer so much as in the hysterical and 

 debilitated female. The author of this essay, who can 

 encounter without mental pain, any scenes of distress 

 whtch he may witness in his professional character,, in 

 the morning, when the frame is in tone, has observed in 

 himself a propensity to be much aifected by them, when 

 presented to him after fatigue and long fasting. What- 

 ever accumulates sensibility, encreases the mind's liabi- 

 lity to be acted upon by external stimuli, and carried 

 away by them from its steady observance of the ol ject 

 of its study. And since the exhaustion of irritability 

 produces this effect, the propriety of the foregoing in- 

 junctions is evident. 



2 



