ON SLEEP, DREAMING, 



]ike manner, in greater or less degree aws^ke ; whence the mind is >et 

 filled with ideas, that crowd upon one another with about an equal degree 

 of regularity and confusion : and, if we be spoken to in this state, we return 

 an answer, which intimates indeed that we have heard ; but, by itsincon^ 

 gruity with the observations made to us, intimates also that the will has, in 

 some degree, lost its control ; — that it has become drowsy, and is affected 

 by the slumber of the organs of external sense. 



If the genc^y'al exhaustion be not very considerable, as after dinner, or 

 during the digestion of any other meal, the sleep may not extend beyond 

 this first or simple stage of slumber ; though it should be observed that, 

 from the power of association, the internal and external senses have a 

 strong tendency, if in health, to concur or catenate in one common state 

 or action. When the one are in full vigour, the other are usually in full 

 vigour also ; and when the one become drowsy, the other incline to the 

 same drowsiness. But if the general exhaustion be more violent than we 

 are now contemplating, the internal sense will unquestionably concur in 

 the efiect, and evince, in some or ail of them, an equal degree of sleep. 



The first of the internal senses that becomes thus influenced is the will 

 itself. It would be easy to show, if we had time, that the will is infinitely 

 more disposed to catenate with the motions of the external senses than 

 any of the othet faculties of the mind. It hence gives way first of all, 

 and sleeps along with the exterior organs, while the other faculties of the 

 mind remain awake. We are now arrived at the second stage of sleep ; 

 and it is this which we call and which constitutes dkeamimg. The will 

 catenates in the sleep of the organs of exterior sense ; but all the interior 

 senses, except the will, are still awake. Hence we have ideas of memory, 

 ideas of consciousness, ideas of imagination, ideas of reasoning ; but, 

 destitute of a controlling power, they rush forward with a very considerable 

 degree of irregularity, and would do so with the most unshapeable confu- 

 sion, but that the power of association still retains some degree of influence, 

 and produces some degree of concert in the midst of the wildest and 

 most extravagant vagaries. And hence that infinite variety that takes place 

 in the character of our dreams ; and the greater regularity of some, and 

 the greater irregularity of others. 



But the general fatigue and exhaustion may be still more violent ; and 

 it may also be produced by motions in which the internal senses havfe 

 principally co-operated ; and in such cases, not the will only, but the 

 whole of the internal senses concur in the common torpor or inertness^ 

 that is produced ; and we now advance to a third state, which I shall 

 beg leave to call lethargy : dead, senseless sleep, or a stage of sleep 

 without thought or idea of any kind, but still natural and healthy : the vital 

 organs, though none but the vital organs, still continuing their action. 



It has been a question often proposed, whether the mind ever does, or 

 ever can, exist without thinking ? But it can only have been proposed 

 by persons who have not paid a due attention fo a variety of phienomena, 

 which are perpetually occurring, and which must be conclusive as to the 

 fa<^t. The mind of an infant, or rather of afetus, must anticipate Ihe thoughts 

 or ideas that are afterwards introduced within it. In a complete parox- 

 ysm of apoplexy, no man has ever been conscious of a single thought or 

 idea ; in sleepy coma or lethargy in fevers, as opposed to restless coma, the 

 same discontinuity of all thought and idea takes place uniformly ; and we' 

 meet with it perhj^s still more incontrovertibly in all cases of suspended 

 animation from drowning, hanging, or catalepsy. I enter not into aTt"' 



