DREAMING. 615 



" When the organs are fatigued by the waking state and 

 exertion, we usually do not dream during the first hours of sleep, 

 at least unless the brain is very irritable. But, in propprtion as 

 the organs become refreshed, they are more disposed to enter 

 into activity, whence towards the approach of rising, we dream 

 more and with greater vivacity." 



" How is it that in a dream certain faculties occasionally dis- 

 play more energy than in the waking state ? What precautions 

 do we not take to meditate profoundly on a subject. We prevent 

 all external impressions, we put our hand before our eyes, we 

 shut ourselves up, to concentrate all our attention on a single 

 point. The same thing takes place in certain dreams. All the 

 vital energy is concentrated on one organ, or upon a small num- 

 ber of organs, while others are in repose ; so that the energy of 

 the former becomes necessarily more energetic. The sentiments 

 and ideas excited in a dream are, in some cases, completely dis- 

 engaged from all external mixture. We therefore cannot be 

 astonished if some, like Augustus La Fontaine, make admirable 

 verses in their sleep, or like Alexander draw out the plan of a 

 battle ; if others, like Condillac, solve difficult problems ; if on 

 waking in the morning some, like Franklin, find a work com- 

 pleted which had been projected on going to bed ; if in sleep the 

 true relations of things are discovered, which in the tumult of 

 sentiments and ideas had defied our sagacity." x 



In ordinary dreaming, our conceptions of objects of sense 



* 11. cc. 4to. vol ii. p. 454, sq. 8vo. t. ii. p. 506, sqq. Cabanis relates that 

 Franklin had on several occasions been informed in his dreams of the 

 issue of affairs in which he was engaged. His vigorous mind, otherwise 

 free from prejudice, says Cabanis, could not quite secure him from a super- 

 stitious notion with respect to these premonitions. He did not take into 

 consideration that his profound prudence |nd rare sagacity still characterised the 

 operations of his brain during sleep. It is also related of Condillac that, 

 while writing his Cours d Etudes, he was frequently obliged to leave a chapter 

 incomplete and go to bed, and that, on awaking, he found it, on more than one 

 occasion, finished in his head. Voltaire assures us that, like La Fontaine, he 

 many times in his sleep made verses which he remembered on waking. Tartini 

 composed his Devil's Sonata in a dream, in which Satan appeared and challenged 

 him to a competition on his own fiddle. Coleridge prefaces his poetical frag- 

 ment called Kubla Khan with the following account of himself : "In the 

 summer of the year 1797, the author, then in ill health, had retired to a lonely 

 farmhouse between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset 

 and Devonshire. In consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been 

 prescribed, from the effects of which he fell asleep in his chair, at the moment 



