«Antoaio Álzate" 35 



Keep this rule in mind; whenever tliere is a cause, be it 

 »f, z^ or n tbat modifies nutrition, sleep will increase in the 

 exhausted convalescent, in the uewly-delivered mothei", in the 

 child endowed whitli an exceedingly active eirculation, in the 

 inhabitant of the tropics whose salts and water are perpe- 

 tually drainedby theeverlastingcuppinglassof climate, in the 

 traveller, in the drunkard, in Bütschli's ''artificial protoplasin," 

 and in my own when seen under the microsyope at their res- 

 pective periods o£ activity and asthenia, in the glutton who 

 ingests and absorbs large quantities o£ nutritive material, and 

 in the youth who has prvoked great waves o£ eommotion whieh 

 propágate themselves through vast uervous territoñes. On the 

 contrary, oíd people and sedentary persons sleep both badly 

 and scantily, as they stand in waiting £or death. 



I do not admit, O metaphysicians! the existe nce o£ any 

 hard and £ast line between sleep, this anaesthetic of life, and 

 waking. I do not beUeve, O vitalists! that an organism can 

 ever be either completely awake or completely asleep. There 

 is always something living, ene organ sleeping and another 

 palpitating. A goose never happens to shut both its eyes at 

 once. My own heart has atno time slept as ray brain does; it 

 hardly ever rests, poor perpetual sentinel! And you, O más- 

 eles? We yawn, wake and work too. There are some disinhe- 

 rited, beggared organs sleeping in asceties. Yet, there is a 

 weak and slow nutritive current even there. 



I deny, then, any hard and £ast Une; there are no barriers 

 between sleeping and waking, just as there are no absolutely 

 separated and divided things in naiture, whether stars or or- 

 ganisms. 



But th e day comes when both the currents aind the general 

 irrigation ceace; my Amazon is dry and the palé brain can drink 

 no more £rom the drained internal streám.. Trae sleep comes 

 then. Cadaverous decomposition is, however, accompanied 

 ■svith some slight currents which are neither protoplasmic ñor 

 co-ordinated. 



