SLUHl' AND DiJUAMS. 



71 



application arc also able to stoop iniintciTuptcdly for fifteen 

 or even thirty hours ; but T ciinnot vouch foi' this. 



(2) To ivhat extent is deep dreamless? Before answering 

 this we must try to get some idea as to what dreams are. 

 It is a very obscure subject, as is to he expected ; for dreams 

 are chiarly modified thoughts, and " thought " cannot be 

 explained. But we know, from tlie experiments of disease 

 and physiology, that wc; ca,nnot think without a brain 

 and the only part of the brain that feels and originates 

 ideas and movements is the surface : what is called cortex 

 or rind. This is composed, as we find under the microscope, 

 of fibres of different kinds, blood-veSsels, and large irregular 

 bodies called nerve-cells. {Fig. 2, Plate IX.) Those cells are 

 undoubtedly the seat of thought. That is about as much as 

 wo oan say. Whether they manufacture thought as a liver- 

 coll manufactures bile, or whcthci' they are the machinery 

 by which thought works and manifests itself, as the locomo- 

 tive is the apparatus by which the force of steam may make 

 itself felt iiiid seen, wo cannot say. 



Those cells, therefore, are concerned in dreams, which 

 are our sleeping thoughts, and it will thi'ow light on the 

 subject if wo stop to incpiire what the functions or duties 

 of those colls are : (1) They think, or are the only organs 

 of thought. (2) Thoy originate movement (this function 

 is really a kind of thought). (3) They feel. (4) They act 

 as modifiers of other cells or other nerve impulses, con- 

 verting the latter from sensation into movement, etc. ; and 

 (•'>) They have the power of restraining or holding in check 

 most of their other energies. This hist, which is often lost 

 sight), of, is in one way the most important of all, heoauso 

 with.ontHt^tho others would be as useless as a runaway horse, 

 l-^^or instance, in convulsive diseases, such as tetanus, they 

 lose the command over themselves, and on'ginate move- 



