364 MAURY OX SLEEP AND DREAMS. 



meet us at the very threshold of the enquiry. And if 

 some of these questions do admit of solution, others 

 are so deeply hidden in the ultimate mystery of the 

 mind itself as to be wholly inscrutable by any means 

 human reason can apply to them. 



It may seem strange to many of our readers that 

 we should preface the subject of Sleep and Dreams by 

 phrases thus grave and forbidding in their tenor. Acts 

 so familiar, and periodically habitual in our lives, might 

 be thought of easy interpretation. The sleep of the 

 rocking -cradle, of the bed, of the arm-chair or car- 

 riage, witnessed in their ever-recurring routine, would 

 seem to tell all that can or need be known on these 

 subjects. But it is this very familiarity which disguises 

 their nature, and begets indifference to the greatest 

 marvel of our existence. This, indeed, is one of the 

 numerous instances where we look heedlessly upon 

 phenomena become habitual to us, but which, seen as 

 solitary or infrequent events, are the subjects of admira- 

 tion or terror. We gaze with careless eye on the daily 

 march of the sun through the heavens, on the midnight 

 magnificence of the starry sky. Our wonder and awe 

 are reserved for the comet or the eclipse. We witness 

 the flowing and ebbing of the ocean and river tides at 

 their calculated times, ignorant or indifferent to the 

 fact that these changes express the action of the greatest 

 law of the universe. Travelling by railroad, we look 

 with idle eyes on those thin wire lines, traversing the 

 air beside us, which at the very moment are carry- 

 ing currents of electricity under human bidding 

 the instantaneous transmitters of human language 



