18 HISTORY OF 



dentally came to be known : however, he was or- 

 dered to remain for the rest of his life in his own 

 convent, and upon no account whatsoever to stir 

 abroad. 



What are we to say of such actions as these, or 

 how account for this operation of the mind in 

 dreaming ? It should seem, that the imagination 

 by day, as well as by night, is always employed j 

 and that often, against our wills, it intrudes where 

 it is least commanded or desired. While awake, 

 and in health, this busy principle cannot much 

 delude us : it may build castles in the air, and 

 raise a thousand phantoms before us, but we have 

 every one of the senses alive to bear testimony to 

 its falsehood. Our eyes shew us that the prospect 

 is not present ; our hearing and our touch depose 

 against its reality; and our taste and smelling 

 are equally vigilant in detecting the impostor. 

 Reason, therefore, at once gives judgment upon 

 the cause ; and the vagrant intruder, imagination, 

 is imprisoned, or banished from the mind. But 

 in sleep it is otherwise : having, as much as pos- 

 sible, put our senses from their duty, having closed 

 the eyes from seeing, and the ears, taste, and 

 smelling, from their peculiar functions, and hav- 

 ing diminished even the touch itself, by all the 

 arts of softness, the imagination is then left to 

 riot at large, and to lead the understanding with- 

 out an opposer. Every incursive idea then be- 

 comes a reality ; and the mind, not having one 

 power that can prove the illusion, takes them for 

 truths. As, in madness, the senses, from strug- 

 gling with the imagination, are at length forced 



