The Rev. James Wills on Dreams. 13 



is capable of partial and local inequalities. Now the nerves connected with 

 the exterior of the frame, and immediately employed in relation to external 

 objects, are the first to become inert, and the most liable to this temporary 

 suspension ; while the very occurrence of the dreaming state, beyond doubt, 

 proves that the brain can be in active operation, while the external nervous 

 tissues connected with it are in a condition of great comparative inertness : thus, 

 too, establishing very fully the former condition, by the indication of a higher 

 degree of sensibility, in the special instance that our argument requires. It is by 

 no means necessary to infer that this condition of protracted wakefulness of the 

 brain is constant or total ; it may, consistently witli the utmost inference here to 

 be sought, be supposed to be in all cases largely affected with the exhaustion of 

 the entire system; but it is plain that, in whatever degree, tlie brain may be awake, 

 while the external sense is lost in sleep. Now we are thus led to one very proba- 

 ble explanation of the occasion or initial process of dreaming. From the condi- 

 tions thus described, it is easy to conceive that some accidental dull impression 

 on any of the outer termini of the nerves, too faint to break the repose of sense, 

 may still be capable of transmission through their habitual channel to the region 

 of the brain, with enough of power to communicate movement to its finer appa- 

 ratus ; and thus hj the reciprocal action (whatever it may be) between that 

 organ and the mind, generate those ideal aberrations of thought known in 

 dreaming. 



It is evidently not necessary to restrict the application of the foregoing infer- 

 ences to the operation of the nerves from the external surface. All that has been 

 said will equally apply to any dull sensation through any nervous branch which 

 has its terminus in the brain, — nor is there any reason against the assumption 

 of some slight exciting impulse, having its origin within the brain itself. The per- 

 petually active element of mind offers a probable ground of extension to this 

 theory. There is no reason to exclude the fount and origin of thought from a simi- 

 lar claim in the origination of a process of which it must itself be an essential 

 element. But, beyond this allowance, any further explanation upon grounds so 

 little within the scope of observation, would be the merest empiricism. 



Numerous delicate processes, regular and irregular, mental and material, 

 latent and observable, are hourly taking place in the vital compound so "fearfully 

 and wonderfully made." Disturbances too minute for the senses may vibrate 



