586 Dr. B. W. Bicliardson [April 29, 



sense of hearing, we should be able by the microphone to hear it, for 

 again the instrument would dream. Or, once more, if we were to put 

 into vibration other strings, we could bring out a series of discordant 

 noises^, confused, unpleasant, and audible by the microphone, even 

 when we did not appreciate them if I may so say, by the naked 

 sense. 



In these similes I have cast a glance at certain vibratory movements 

 which occur and are the causes of some dreams in men, women, and 

 animals. Dreams are vibrations varying from those of the waking 

 dream down to the most delicate and accidental. The sleep that is 

 free from dreams is therefore that which is most clear of any vibratory 

 movement derived either from within the body or from without. Some 

 physiologists have contended that no sleep is quite free from dream, 

 but that many dreams are existent that, make no impression on the 

 memory, and are therefore as if they had no existence. Whether this 

 hypothesis be sound or unsound is difficult to say, for although it be 

 true that the memory carries dreams that are so intense as to be like 

 waking dreams, it is also true that the body often wakes with weari- 

 ness for which there is no accounting except the weariness of dreamings 

 that have left no impression on the memory. Again, acts are some- 

 times performed in sleep which are not carried in memory — a fact 

 which indicates that active dreaming may leave no story. 



The most perfect sleep, the sleep least molested with dreams, is 

 one in which the sleeper sinks into repose and wakes again after 

 several hours, having no more consciousness of lost time than if he 

 had closed his eyes and opened them once more. This is what Words- 

 worth called " the twinkling of oblivion," and a healthful twinkling it 

 is. It belongs perhaps always to the happiest days of childhood. In 

 a condition of body leading to such an elysium, the balance of all the 

 organic parts is being accurately timed and sustained. There is no 

 jarring chord within the organism to disturb by its own motion ; the 

 senses rest too soundly to allow of the conveyance of any vibration 

 from without. If then there be a dream, it must be of the lightest 

 kind, so light that not even the responsive movement of a limb is per- 

 ceivable. In adult life such sleep is exceptional, and marks out an 

 exceptionally healthy and strong individual, in whom mental placidity 

 balances physical strength, one who even during waking hours is less 

 perturbed than others about him by the clamours of life. I know an 

 individual of this kind who can lay himself down in a Pullman car 

 and sleep from London to Glasgow without being conscious of the 

 journey and without recalling a dream on the awakening — the nearest 

 perfection, perchance, of adult repose in nervous serenity. Such 

 persons are to be envied ; they never grow prematurely old ; and when 

 they are stricken with diseise of a passing kind, they are led to believe 

 with Menander that sleep is the natural cure for all diseases. 



There are not many of this dreamless nature ; the majority of men 

 and women dream, and some so intently that they work, it may almost 

 be said, as earnestly by night as by day, waking in fact as fatigued as 



