Editorial. 23 



nature and value of sleep is gathered from a comparison of 

 Hegel, who said life is divided into two realms — a night life of 

 genius, and a day life of consciousness, or of Fortlage who says, 

 ' ' only in as far as we sleep do we live, when we awake we begin 

 to die," or Erdman, who said " sleep is a regression into embry- 

 onic life," with that of Spitta, who says that in sleep the life is 

 impoverished as though it were only present in outline. 



The view held by Hegel resembles more than any other 

 the opinion prevalent among the Greenlanders that there are 

 two souls; 1st, the breath of life which forms the psychical 

 continuum during the entire life ; 2d, the spirit or shade, which 

 is a more etherial essence not so strictly connected with the 

 body. The latter during dreams may entirely leave the body 

 and pursue an independent avocation in the realm of shades. 



The question whether the active life of the soul is inter- 

 rupted during dreamless sleep has a theoretical importance 

 quite disproportionate to its practical significance. Were it 

 true that such an interruption occurs, it would never enter 

 consciousness, since an unfilled portion of experience like 

 the non-visual portion of the retina never finds immediate 

 expression. On the one hand, if the soul were simply the sum 

 of the physical stimuli which attain a certain violence or refine- 

 ment there could be no question of chronological continuity or 

 integrity ; on the other, if the soul be a being distinct from the 

 body and only incidentally connected with the latter in certain 

 conditions of excitation, the activity of consciousness might be 

 doubly determined by the variations of the body and en- 

 tirely inaccessible psychical phenomena beyond conscious- 

 ness. If we substitute the monistic interpretation and 

 consider the conscious life as one aspect of a real being whose 

 other side finds expression in terms of physical phenomena it 

 would be natural to expect these two manifestations to be con- 

 tinuously associated though with varying intensity. Striimpel, ^ 

 says, "The activity of the soul in sleep is not limited to dreams, 

 as it is not limited when awake to consciousness. It withdraws 



I. Natur u. Entstehung der Triume ; Leigzig, 1874. 



