t128 An Essay on Dreaming, including 



should introduce, by way of episode, into an essay like this, the 

 volume of facts and observations by which they have endeavoured 

 to establish the plurality of organs. It is enough if my reader is 

 satisfied that this fact, or let us be contented to call it this sup- 

 position, in accounting for every circumstance, affords a sufficient , 

 foundation for a rational and satisfactory theory of dreaming. 



.It has also been asserted that there ai"e no grounds to suppose 

 that the assimilating process does not occur in the brain except 

 during sleep. Neither, it may be replied, is there any evidence 

 of the affirmative — so far both sides of the argument are equally 

 balanced ; but it seems rather more probable that this process is 

 in operation, not onlv in the brain but in every part of the frame 

 at intervals of inactivity and repose. The athletic arm accus- 

 tomed to laborious exertion, becomes every day more muscular 

 and powerful ; but if it were allowed no intermission from toil — 

 nay, if it did not enjoy a due portion of quiet, does any one doubt 

 but its vigour would diminish and its bulk waste away ? It can- 

 not, therefore, be the labour that increases its size — its influence 

 can only extend to render it more fit to receive the deposition of 

 the nutritive particles ; and if that deposition be supposed to take 

 eflfect on the cessation of exercise only, every circumstance in- 

 cluded in these phasnomena finds a distinct and easy solution. 



What exercise is to the limbs, thinking is to the brain; and 

 the latter, like the former, may be exerted to intensity, or relaxed 

 to lassitude and listlessness. As motion, whether slothful or vi- 

 gorous, so thought, whether feeble or powerful, seems an indis- 

 pensable condition of being awake ; it is caught from organ to 

 organ, as this or that association stirs up their energy : but al- 

 though onlv one be active at a time, the unity of the man and 

 the concord of his volitions, appear to require that every faculty 

 he possesses should exert an attention subservient to that peculiar 

 power of the mind which happens to domineer for the moment; 

 this passive vigilance and active intellection would, therefore, take 

 their turn till the majority of the organs, in a state of fatigue or 

 exhaustion, forgo all employment, and receive, at rest, a renewal 

 of their substance from the process of assimilation. 



But it may still be objected, that the nerves of organic life are 

 always in action. — How therefore can they be renewed, if the 

 process in question only takes place in an interval of rest? This 

 is indeed a formidable difficulty, though perhaps not an invinci- 

 ble one, notwithstanding the obscurity of the subject. Of all the 

 organs of the human frame, the heart is the most incessant in 

 its motions ; we may therefore confine our inquiries to the phse- 

 nomena it displays. It has its systole and diastole, its contrac- 

 tion and expansion — during the former the nerves may be con- 

 sidered in a state of exertion, and in the latter in a state of re- 

 laxation 



