256 An Essay on Dreaming, including 



during our waking moments. Are we then to conclude, in op- 

 position to so respectable an opinion as that of Professor Stewart, 

 that our voluntary powers are not always suspended when we 

 dream ? 



But these are not the difficulties which appear to me to weigh 

 most against his hypothesis. 



In supposing that the influence of the will is suspended, it also 

 supposes, as this revered philosopher expresses himself, that al! 

 our voluntary operations, such as recollection, reasoning, &c. 

 must also be suspended. — If there be in nature pure mental ope- 

 rations, recollection and reasoning are entitled to the rank ; yet 

 we learn from this hypothesis that a simple essence, such as the 

 soul is considered, can be at the same moment, with respect to 

 its different powers, awake and asleep — all its operations which 

 are independent of the will may continue, but its recollection and 

 reasoning must be absolutely suspended. Dr. Beattie's explana- 

 tion involves the same incongruity. All the faculties, according 

 to him, are more or less affected, and some for a time wholly ex- 

 tinguished, while the operations of imagination or fancy are alone 

 unsuspended by sleep. The elucidations of Hartley are exempt 

 from this inconsistency, and remove every difficulty but one — 

 why sometimes we dream, and sometimes do not. Darwin re- 

 peats an exploded hypothesis in a more plausible form. Locke 

 simply discusses the phsenomena of dreaming in proof of his po- 

 sition, that men think not always ; he does not attempt to ac- 

 count for them ; yet from the questions detailed in the passage 

 I have quoted above, it is manifest that he was inclined to refer 

 the explanation to organic rather than to spiritual operation. 



If we but do so likewise, all these difficulties vanish ; we are 

 not driven to -the absurdity of supposing that sleep is necessary 

 to a pure spirit, and that its simple essence may be half asleep 

 and half awake — a moiety of its powers suspended or extin- 

 guished, and another moiety active and busy. We may look for 

 the solution in the corporeal organs of the soul, and not in the 

 soul itself; there is nothing incongruous in supposing that some 

 of these organs may be in a state of activity while others are at 

 rest. " Watching (says Dr. Spurzheim) is called the state wherein 

 the will can put in action the organs of the intellectual faculties, 

 of the five sen>es, and of voluntary motion ; but it is impossible 

 to define watching as the state wherein all these organs are ac- 

 tive, for it cannot happen that all the faculties should be active 

 at the same time ; all organs, being fatigued, take rest, and this 

 state of rest is sleep ; but any particular organ, or even several 

 organs, may be active while the other organs rest ; then the pe- 

 culiar sensations or ideas which result from this particular activity 



constitute 



