388 MAURY ON SLEEP AND DREAMS. 



before the Will, or rather we must say (for the very 

 word is entangled in a metaphysical web) before Voli- 

 tion can bring the muscles into action. In the latter 

 stage of sleep, when dreams are passing into realities 

 of the senses, there is often an effort to speak, made 

 distressing by the difficulty or impossibility of utter- 

 ance. Or when under sleep in a sitting posture, the 

 head, deprived of the controlling muscular support, has 

 dropped upon the chest, the attempt to raise it is often 

 for a time painfully frustrated by the impotence of the 

 muscles in their relation to the will. At such times 

 volition is more awake than the instruments through 

 which it acts. 



We have just mentioned the curious knowledge 

 that may be obtained from broken or imperfect sleep. 

 The rapidly-shifting changes and alternations of sleep 

 and waking which then occur, can only be interpreted 

 by regarding the two states as gliding gradually, 

 physically and mentally, into each other interlacing, 

 it might be called, from the impossibility of drawing a 

 definite line between them. Dante, with his wonted 

 compression of language, finely describes this transi- 

 tion : 



' E '1 pensamento in sogno trasmutai.' 



In this intermediate condition, as already remarked, 

 and especially during the passage from drowsiness into 

 natural sleep, these alternations may generally be noted 

 by the sleeper himself, though, from their familiarity, 

 little heeded or remembered. Under certain circum- 

 stances they may even be counted as they occur. From 

 the slumber over a book, or in a carriage, or, yet more, 



