366 MAURY ON SLEEP AND DREAMS. 



strangely to disturb. A line of rigid demarcation be- 

 tween the states of waking and sleeping might well 

 appear to dissever this unity. But no such line exists ; 

 and it may readily be shown, under appeal to individual 

 experience, that these various states endlessly commingle 

 and graduate into each other ; thus affording mutual 

 illustration, and, as we believe, a more intimate know- 

 ledge of the mysteries of the human mind than can be 

 obtained from any other source. 



It would hardly be worth while to preface what we 

 have to say on Sleep and Dreams by citing what ancient 

 writers philosophers, physicians, and poets have be- 

 queathed to us on the subject. The phenomena were 

 to them the same as to us the dream, perhaps, more 

 exciting to the imagination from its connexion with 

 various superstitions of the age. Seeing, indeed, the 

 tendency of their mythology and poetry to deify what- 

 ever is wonderful in man or nature, it is not surprising 

 that they should clothe these great functions of life 

 with a personality, vague indeed in kind, but such as 

 to satisfy the popular and poetic feeling of the time. 

 Nor can we wonder that they should have been the 

 subjects of superstitious belief, seeing how variously 

 and strangely these functions are blended with the 

 spiritual part of our nature. Even now, when science 

 imposes so many new checks upon credulity, the in- 

 spired dream the "Ovap e/c Jtos has its occasional 

 place among other still less rational beliefs of the world. 



Aristotle, whose chapters on Sleep and Dreams 

 rank foremost of all that the ancients have left us on 

 the subject, says on the question of inspiration of 



