TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 81 
a dead muscle, and by the fracture of bones by falling, without the contact of hard 
substances. Dead fishes are disintegrated by being frozen ; but Sir John Franklin’s 
fish, at Fort Enterprize, were alive when thawed, after having remained frozen thirty- 
six hours, Men have resisted the effects of temperature which roasted and boiled 
butchers’ meat, 
To what source but to mind can we refer the existence and marks of intelligent © 
contrivance on the earth, and in all we have learned of the universe? 
It is an indispensable condition of all force to be latent to our faculties till a fit 
coil is present. We knew but little of motion, heat, light, gravitation, &c., before 
the watch, steam-engine, thermometer, barometer, &c., were invented; but the 
presence of the coil ensures the presence of the force, and the more perfect the coil 
the stronger the force (coil for atmospheric electricity)*. 
When asleep, our coil is like a drum unbraced, or harp unstrung—unadjusted, 
whether for sénsation or action. But what is its state when we dream? Then 
some of our organs retain such a state of tension as to be excited by impressions or 
conceptions, and impressions upon vital: coils induce definite adjustments (probably 
by retransmission). If the lips of a comatose patient be rubbed with a spoon before 
its contents are put into the mouth, the adjustments of deglutition are so accurately 
made as not to risk suffocation. It is thus intelligible. How suggestive touches 
induce retransmissive adjustments, by which sleepers, the blind and ceaf (feeling 
by the touch), are enabled to interpret the meaning of others; and questions to 
persons asleep are suggestive of the adjustments by which they are answered. This 
is analogous to the suggestive effects of questions in ordinary conversation, but still 
more palpably of leading questions in courts of justice. 
The less the relaxation of tension (as in the morning) the more vivid the dream. 
Our belief in our dream (as in the diorama) is not contradicted by objects outside. 
When conceptions are vivid, such as belong to the passions, they produce retrans- 
missions to the parts to which the conceptions belong. —__ 
Again—That the adjustments required for sensation are the same as those by 
which conceptions are formed, is proved by various cases—by the experiment of 
Bankst+—by the murderer, suffering from remorse, having always the image of his 
murdered child before him. 
It is contrived by Benevolence, that like adjustments induce like conceptions. 
Many repetitions are required to form accurate conceptions. And we must do to 
know, for it is not till we have done that we get the conceptions which form the 
painter, sculptor, orator, singer, &c. Sir J. Reynolds says, that it was not till he 
had been at Rome a year, that he began to appreciate the works of Raphael. 
We know how vibrations induce definite diagrams. Thus are also definite adjust- 
ments induced, and thus identity is recognised, by the likeness of this object to our 
previous conceptions of it. 
Unadjust the coil, and the force disappears. This is the sleep of the coil, not of 
a force. In man, who is, as we have said, a congeries of coils, they do not all 
sleep. 
Feeling in the body, and conception from abiding adjustments of past sensations, 
are the instructive interpreters of new sensations, ‘Thus the conception of a ship 
near to us, interprets the perspective appearance of a distant sail. Every known 
part is suggestive of its whole. A conception already in the mind retransmits such 
adjustments to the ear, that it interprets the sound of the words sung in music. 
(Men “‘ walking in darkness.” Chant.) - 
Some persons seem to live in a dreaming state, unadjusted by attention. They 
do not observe what is passing; for we must look to see, listen to hear, &c. Their 
impressions and conceptions induce no definite adjustments, and adjustments are, to 
the perceptive mind, signs of thought. 
In profound sleep, we are. not aware of more than suspension of consciousness, 
and are without dreams. In what, then, does this differ from death but in time? 
*<Sleep, the death of each day’s life.” ‘But in the sleep of death, what dreams 
* The late Mr. Read of Knightsbridge had on the top of his house an electrical apparatus, 
oe that it indicated by-bells the slightest change in the electric strata of the atmo- 
sphere. u 
: Banks in Dr. Darwin’s Zoonomia (his report on ocular spectra). 
