REVfiEY, AND TRANCE, 



275 



sleep soundly : — so soundly, indeed, that no common stimulus is able for 

 a long timo to rouse them from their torpor. In other words, it requires a 

 period of many hours for the external organs to recover from their ex- 

 haustion. The smallest undulatory motion in the uterus, perhaps, or the 

 very action of the vital organs themselves, may be sufficient to wear out, 

 from time to time, the sensorial power of the fetus on its first formation : 

 and hence the fetus sleeps, with few intermissions, through the whole 

 period of parturition. 



For the same reason, persons in advanced age are far less impressed by 

 common stimuH than in any former part of their lives ; from a long series of 

 exposure to their influence, the organs of sense are become more torpid, 

 and hence they require less sleep, and at the same time Ifess food. The 

 vital organs partake of the same disposition, and they are in consequence 

 less liable to violent or inflammatory disorders. But the general tofpitude 

 increasing, the heart is stimulated with greater difficulty ; a smaller portion 

 of sensorial fluid is secreted by the brain ; a smaller portion of nutriment 

 is thrown into the circulation from the digestive organs : the pulse and 

 every other power gradually declines, till at length, if ever man were to die 

 of old age alone, he would die from a total torpor or paralysis of the 

 heart. But debilitated as every organ is become long before such a pe- 

 riod can arrive, the general frame is incapable of resisting the smallest of 

 the more trivial shocks, whether external or internal, to which man is daily 

 exposed : in other words, there is no reservoir of sensorial power to supply 

 the local or temporary demand ; and the man dies, even at last, from 

 sudden exhaustion, rather than from progressive paralysis. 



Sleep, then, is a natural fcorpitude or inertness, induced upon the organs 

 of the body, and the faculties of the mind, by fatigue and exhaustion ; and, 

 in a physiological survey, consists of the three stages of slumber, dreaming 

 and lethargy. In slumber, the exhaustion is slight, and is almost confined 

 to the organs of external sense, the will only inclining to their inertness : 

 in dreaming, the exhaustion is usually more considerable, the will alto- 

 gether associating in their inertness : in lethargy, the exhaustion extends 

 to and embraces the mental faculties. When the system is under the in- 

 fluence of disease, the usual course of the phsenomenaof sleep and dream- 

 ing is often disturbed and interrupted ; and when the torpitude extends 

 to the vital organs, the effect produced is death. 



But the chief difficulty in the subject of dreaming remains still to be 

 accounted fcr. How is it possible for thoughts or ideas to exist in the 

 brain, and be continued while the will, which usually regulates them, and 

 the external senses which give birth to them, have their continuity of action 

 broken in upon ? I shall endeavour to explain this difficulty in language 

 as famihar as 1 can employ. 



A certain, but a very small degree of stimulus applied to any of the cere- 

 bral fibres of the human body, whether sensitive or irritative, instead of 

 sensibly exhausting them, seems rather to afford them pleasure ; at least 

 the fibres are able to endure it without becoming torpid, or which is the 

 same thing, requiring sleep or rest. 



Hence every gentle sight, and every gentle sound, or any other gentle 

 object in nature, to what sense soever it be directed ; the still twilight of 

 a summer evening ; the mild lustre of the moon, interwoven with the foliage 

 of forest-scenery ; the reposing verdure of a spreading lawn ; soft playful 

 breezes ; the modest fragrance of roses and violets ; the light murmurs of 

 a ripphng stream : the tinkling of a neighbouring sheep-fold, and the ^mnd 



