210 A HISTORY OF 



contrive a method of palliating their hunger by swallowing pills made 

 of calcined shells and tobacco. These pills take away all appetite, by 

 producing a temporary disorder in the stomach ; and, no doubt, the 

 i'requent repetition of this wretched expedient must at last be fatal. 

 By this means, however, they continue several days without eating, 

 cheerfully bearing such extremes of fatigue and watching, as would 

 quickly destroy men bred up in a greater state of ^delicacy. For those 

 arts by which we learn to obviate our necessities, do not fail to unfit 

 us for their accidental encounter. 



Upon the whole, therefore, man is less able to support hunger than 

 any other animal ; and he is not better qualified to support a state of 

 watchfulness. Indeed, sleep seems much more necessary to him, than 

 to any other creature : as, when awake, he may be said to exhaust a 

 greater proportion of the nervous fluid, and consequently to stand 

 in need of an adequate supply. Other animals, when most awake, 

 are but little removed from a state of slumber ; their feeble faculties, 

 imprisoned in matter, and rather exerted by impulse than deliberation 

 require sleep rather as a cessation from motion than from thinking. 

 But it is otherwise with man ; his ideas, fatigued with their various 

 excursions, demand a cessation, not less than the body, from toil ; and 

 he is the only creature that seems to require sleep from double mo- 

 tives : not less for the refreshment of the mental, than of the bodily 

 frame. 



There are some lower animals, indeed, that seem to spend the 

 greatest part of their lives in sleep ; but, properly speaking, the sleep 

 of such may be considered as a kind of death, and their waking a re 

 surrection. Flies and insects are said to be asleep at a time when all 

 the vital motions have ceased ; without respiration, without any cii- 

 culation of their juices, if cut in pieces, they do not awake, nor does 

 any fluid ooze out at the wound. These may be considered rather as 

 congealed than as sleeping animals ; and their rest, during winter, 

 rather as a cessation from life than a necessary refreshment ; but in 

 the higher races of animals, whose blood is not thus congealed and 

 thawed by heat, these all bear the want of sleep much better than 

 man ; and some of them continue a long time without seeming to take 

 any refreshment from it whatsoever. 



But man is more feeble ; he requires its due return ; and if it fails 

 to pay the accustomed visit, his whole frame is in a short time thrown 

 into disorder ; his appetite ceases ; his spirits are dejected ; his pulse 

 becomes quicker and harder ; and his mind, abridged of its slumber- 

 ing visions, begins to adopt waking dreams. A thousand strange 

 phantoms arise, which come and go without his will : these, which are 

 transient in the beginning, at last take firm possession of the mind, 

 which yields to their dominion, and after a long struggle, runs into 

 confirmed madness. In that horrid state, the mind may be considered 

 as a city without walls, open to every insult, and paying homage to 

 every invader ; every idea that then starts witn any force, becomes a 

 eality ; and the reason, over-fatigued with its former importunities, 

 makes no head against the tyrannical invasion, but submits to it froui 

 mere imbecility. 



