REVERY, AND TRANCE. 



253 



The view we have thus taken of sleep and dreaming- will explain a variety 

 of other curious phenomena in natural philosophy, which have usually been 

 supposed of very difficult elucidation. 



What is REVERY 1 It is the dream of a man while awake. He is so intently 

 bent upon a particular train of thought, that he is torpid to every thing else : 

 he sees nothing, he hears nothing, he feels nothing ; and the only difference 

 between the two is, that in common dreaming, the sensitive and irritative 

 power of the external senses is exhausted progressively and generally, while 

 the will partakes of the exhaustion ; and that in revery the whole is directed 

 to a single outlet, the will, instead of being exhausted, being riveted 

 upon this one point alone ; and the external senses being alone rendered tor- 

 pid from the drain that is thus made upon them to support the superabundant 

 flow of sensitive and irritative power expended upon the prevailing ecstasy. 



It was my intention to have cited a few singular instances of this wonderful 

 aberrancy of the mind ; and to have followed them up with a momentary 

 glance at those interesting subjects so closely connected with it, nightmare, 

 delirium, madness, idiotism ; but the time will by no means allow me, and 1 

 hasten to close with a few observations upon winter-sleep and the revivifica- 

 tion of certain animals after their appearing to be dead. 



Upon a general survey of the preceding observations, it should follow that 

 every part of the animal system may safely sleep or become torpid except the 

 vital organs, or those that act independently of the will ; and that the moment 

 these participate in the torpor the principle of life ceases, and the spirit sepa- 

 rates from the body. Why the principle of life should even then cease we 

 know not, for we know not what produced its union at first. There are vari- 

 ous circumstances, however, which prove that this, though a general rule, is 

 not a rule without its exceptions. We have all heard and read of such extra- 

 ordinary occurrences as trances, or apparent absences of the soul from the 

 body : we have heard and read of persons who, after having been apparently 

 dead for many days, and on the point of being buried, have returned to a full 

 possession of life and health; and although most of these histories are wrapped 

 up in so much mystery and superstition, as to be altogether unworthy of no- 

 tice, there are many too cautiously drawn up and authenticated to be dis- 

 missed in so cursory a manner. But let us proceed to a few facts of a simi- 

 lar, yet of a more extraordinary kind, and which are or may be within the 

 personal knowledge of every one. 



In cases of suspended animation by hanging, drowning, or catalepsy, the 

 vital principle continues attached to the body after all the vital functions cease 

 to act, often for half an hour, and sometimes for hours. In the year 1769, 

 Mr. John Hunter, being then forty-one years of age, of a sound constitution^ 

 and subject to no disease except a casual fit of the gout, was suddenly 

 attacked with a pain in the stomach, which was shortly succeeded by a total 

 suspension of the action of the heart and of the lungs. By the power of the 

 will, or rather by violent striving, he occasionally inflated the lungs, but over 

 the heart he had no control whatever: nor, though he was attended by four 

 of the chief physicians in London from the first, could the action of either be 

 restored by medicine. In about three-quarters of an hour, however, the vital 

 actions began to return of their own accord, and in two hours he was per- 

 fectly recovered. "In this attack," observes Mr. (now Sir Evcrard) Home, 

 who has given an interesting memoir of his life, " there was a suspension 

 of the most material involuntary actions : even involuntary breathing wns 

 stopped : while sensation, with its consequences, as thinking and acting, 

 with the will, were perfect, and all the voluntary actions were as strong as 

 before." 



In the whole history of man I do not know of a more extraordinary case. 

 The functions of the soul were perfect, while the most important functions 

 of the body, those upon which the life depends absolutely, in all ordinary cases, 

 were dead for nearly an hour. Why did not the soul separate from the body? 

 and why did not the body itself commence that change, that subjection to the 

 laws of chemical affinity, which it evinces in every ordinary case of the death or 



