370 MAURY ON SLEEP AND DREAMS. 



those of another, and we must check as well as multiply 

 the proofs before setting down anything as certain. In 

 common life, the very nature of a dream gives a sanc- 

 tion to a loose or exaggerated relation of it. No one 

 is disposed to quarrel with the relater for filling up 

 gaps in his dream with the little parentheses needed to 

 complete his story ; or, if a little of the marvellous be 

 brought into the subject one of those strange coinci- 

 dences to which the vision of the night contributes its 

 part we generally find truth more deeply trespassed 

 upon. Stories, vague and loose in their origin, are 

 made more compact by successive additions, and often 

 go on from one generation to another, acquiring a sort 

 of spurious credit from age, and from the impossibility 

 of refuting them by any living evidence. 



We come now more directly to the subject before 

 us, embodying, as M. Maury has done, under a single 

 title our consideration of these great acts of life Sleep 

 and Dreaming. They cannot, in truth, be treated of 

 separately. Their conjunction is so general, if not uni- 

 versal, and they are linked together by such complex 

 ties, that we are almost compelled to view them as a 

 single function of our being. Still there are certain 

 considerations which must be admitted as possible 

 grounds of distinction. We cannot prove that the con- 

 junction of sleep and dreams is absolute arid universal. 

 There may be times and conditions of sleep, in which 

 there is a total inactivity of brain a complete absence 

 of those images and trains of thought which form the 

 dream. In connexion with this comes the further con- 

 sideration, that sleep is a necessity of our nature a 



