NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND.

“And for my soul, what can it do for that,Being a thing immortal?”Hamlet.

“And for my soul, what can it do for that,

Being a thing immortal?”

Hamlet.

Cast.We have risen with the lark to salute you, Astrophel. And you have really slept in Tintern Abbey? Yet not alone; “I see queen Mab hath been with you,” and brushed you with her wing as you lay asleep.

Astr.Throughout the live-long night, sweet Castaly, I have revelled in a world of dreams. My couch and pillow were the green grass turf. No wonder that tales of the times of old should crowd on my memory, that elfin lips should whisper in my ear —

Cast.“The soft exquisite music of a dream.”

Ida.Talk not of dreams so lightly, dear Castaly; the visions of sleep are among the most divine mysteries of our nature: these transient flights of the spirit in a dream, unfettered as they seem by the will, are, to my own mind, among the most exalted proofs of its immortality. Is it not so, Evelyn?

Ev.The mystery which you have glanced at, Ida, is the most sublime subject in metaphysics. Yet in our analysis of the phenomena of intellect, it is our duty to discard, with reverential awe, many of the notions of thepseudo psychologistsin allusion to that self-evident truth, that requires not the support of such arguments.

In tracing the mystery of a dream to its association with our immortal essence, reason will at length be involved in a maze of conjecture. True philosophy will never presume toexplainthe mystical union of spirit and of flesh; she would be bewildered even in theirdefinitions, and would incur some peril of forming unhallowed conclusions. Even thenatureof the rational soul will involve him in endless conjecture, whether it befire, as Zeno believed; ornumber, according to Xenocrates; orharmony, according to Aristoxenus; or the lucid fire—the Creator of all things, of the Chaldean astrologers.

He who aspires to a solution of the mystery, may wear out his brain in the struggle, as Philetas worked himself to death in a vain attempt to solve the celebrated “Pseudomenos,” the paradox of the stoics; or, like the gloomy students of the German school, he might conclude his researches with a question like this rhapsody—unanswerable.

“But thou, my spirit, thou that knowest this, that speakest to thyself, what art thou? what wast thou ere this clay coat was cut for thee? and what wilt thou be when this rain-coat, this sleeping-frock, fall off thee like a garment torn to pieces? Whence comest thou? where goest thou? Ah! where from and to, where darkness is before and behind thee? Oh ye unclothed, ye naked spirits, hear this soliloquy—this soul-speech. Know ye that ye be? Know ye that ye were, that ye are as we are or otherwise, in eternity? Do ye work within us, when a holy thrilling darts through us like lightning, where not the skin trembles but the soul within us? Tell us, oh tell us, what then is death?”

Now, if we reflect on the psychology of the Greeks, can we discern their distinctions of νους, πνευμα, ψυχη, σωμα, of soul or spirit—of spiritual body, or of idol and of earthly body; or of θυμος, ψυχη, and νους, ψυχη, and so forth?

This fine distinction may be reduced to one simple proposition:—that soul and mind are the same, under different combinations: mind is soul evinced through the medium of the brain; soul is mind emancipated from matter. This principle, if established, might associate the anomalies of many sophists; the existence of two minds, the sensitive and intellectual, taught by the Alexandrian philosophers, or the tenets of Bishop Horsley, in his sermon before the Humane Society, the separation of the life ofintellectfromanimallife; and it might reconcile the abstract reasoning of medical philosophy, with the pure but misdirected arguments of the theological critic.

We believe the spirit to be the essence of life and immortality; and it signifies not whether our words are those of Stahl—that it presided over the animal body; or those of Galen and Aristotle—that it directed the function of life. It is enough that we recognize the πνοη ξωης, or thatbreath of life, which the Creator breathed into nonebutman; and the εικων θεου, theimage of God, in which he was created. In this one proposition all the points of this awful question are comprehended. And it is on thiscombinednature that we must reason, ere we discourse onsleepanddreams.

Cast.I condole with you, Astrophel; you must forget the splendour of your dreams, and listen to their dull philosophy.

Astr.We may indeed sympathize with each other, Castaly; we are threatened with another abstruse exposition of the mind, although we are already sated with the contrasted hypotheses of our deepest philosophers: thecogitationor self-reasoning of Descartes, (the essence of whose “Principia” was “Cogito, ergo sum;” and it is an adoption of Milton’s Adam, “That Iam, I know, becauseI think:” forgetting that the veryegowhich thinks, is a proof of prior existence;) and of Malebranche, who believed they existed because they thought; the abstractspiritualismof Berkley, who believed he existed merely because others thought of him; theconsciousnessof Locke; theidealismof Hume; thematerial psychologyof Paley; themental corporealityof Priestley; and the absolutenonentityof Pyrrho.

Ev.I leave these hypotheses to speak for themselves, Astrophel; my own discourse will be wearying enough without them.

Over the intricate philosophy of mind, Creative Wisdom has thrown a veil, which we can never hope to draw aside. True, the beautiful mechanism of itsorgan, the brain, is apparent; and we can draw some analogies from inspection of the brain of a brute, and its progressive development infœtallife, in reference to comparative simplicity and complexity; but its phenomena are not, like most of the organic functions of the body,demonstrable.

Now, although we know not themodeof this mutual influence, theseatof mind is a subject of almost universal belief; not that Aristotle, and Ætius, and John Locke, are our oracles on this point, although they have even identified thespot, terming theventriclesthe mind’s presence-chamber, while Descartes decided on thepineal gland. It is, however, into thebrainthat the nerves of all the senses enter, or from which they emanate: the senses constitute themediaby which the mind gains its knowledge of the world, and therefore we regard the brain as its seat.

We believe that the mind may possessfivefaculties; perception, association, memory, imagination, and judgment, and their focus or concentration is in the brain. We may argue long on theearthlynature of mind, contrasted with that of matter; yet, in the end, we commonly thus define it:a combination of faculties, and their sympathy with the senses.

That to different parts of this organ are allotted different functions cannot be doubted, when we look at its varied structure, its intricate divisions, its eccentric yet uniform cavities, its delicate and almost invisible membranes; and, indeed, physiological experiments are proof of it.

Astr.Then there is some truth in the whimsical localities in the “Anatomy of Melancholy,” and the pictures of the tenants and apartments of the brain in the ingenious romance of the “Purple Island” of Fletcher.

Ev.Although I grant that these eccentric writers evince much reading, I am not sure that their impersonations (like the “Polyolbion” of Drayton,) do not tend to confuse, rather than elucidate, a natural subject.

Of a plurality of organs in the brain, I have been convinced, even from my own knowledge and dissections. I have seen that very considerable portions of thecerebrummay be removed, the individual still existing. Thevitalfunctions may continue, theanimalfunctions are deranged or lost. The most extensive injuries of the brain, too, are often discovered, which were not even suspected; and the converse of this is often observed,—the diseases of the brain being commonly found in aninverse ratioto the severity of the symptoms. When chronic tumours andcystsof water aregraduallyformed, the extreme danger is averted by the balancing power of the circulation of the brain’s blood; without which its incompressibility would subject it to constant injury.

Intuberclesof the brain, it is curious thatmemoryis the faculty chiefly influenced; it is sometimes rendered dull, while the fancy is vivid,—often more perfect and retentive.

Brain, however, can no more be considered as mind itself, thanretinasight, or than the sealing-wax can be identical with the electricity residing in it. For if we look at the brain of a brute, we see how closely it resembles our own; then, if we reflect on human intellect and brute instinct, we must all believe at once that there is some diviner thing breathed into us than theanima brutorumof Aristotle, something more than the mere vitality, —

“Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artusMens agitat molem.”

“Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus

Mens agitat molem.”

Brain is therefore thehabitatof mind, the workings of which cannot be indicated without it; for, as the material world would be intact without a sense, so there can be no mortal evidence of mind without a brain, which is indeed the sense of the spirit. Thus, without adopting the creed of theHyloist, themoderatematerialist,—that the mind cannot have, during the life of the body, even a momentary existence independent of matter,—I believe, that when this matter is in a state of repose, mind is perfectly passive toour cognizance.

Ida.It is with diffidence, Evelyn, that I enter this arena with a physician, learned in the body; but is there no danger in this doctrine? does it not imply the office of agland,—that brain is theoriginof soul, and that its function was thesecretion of thought.

Ev.Such is the timid error of the mere metaphysician, Ida. There is no such danger; for, remember, if therebesecretion, it is thesoulwhichdirects. Many a thought is referred to things which we cannot bring into contact with our consciousness,—except by the brain.

Dr. Gall writes of a gentleman, whose forehead was far more elevated on the right side than the left; and he deeply regretted that with this left side he could never think. And Spurzheim, of an Irish gentleman, who has the left side of the forehead the least developed by four lines,—he also could not think with that side, as indeed I have before hinted.

I may tell you the brain isdouble, andonehealthyhemisphereis sufficient, as the organ of mind, if pain or encroachment of the opposite, when diseased, does not destroy life, and this especially when it is achronicchange, or exists from birth; so that I have often seen one hemisphere of the brain a pulpy bag of water, and yet vitality and many signs of intellect may still exist; nay, even if thewholebrain be reduced to onemedullarybag,animallife shall for some time be preserved.

To oppose this blending of mind and matter, Lord Brougham (in his Natural Theology) likens the marble statue hewn into beauty, to the perfect arrangement of organization in a being. While I admire the idea, I may observe that he forgets this truth,—that the maker of the one was a merestatuary, without even the fabulous power of Prometheus, or Pygmalion, or Frankenstein; the other, theCreatorof all things, whobreathed a breath of life into the shape he had made fitted to receive it. My lord thus halts at the threshold of discovery: mind is not theproductof organization, but it worksbyandthroughit; and therefore, for itsearthlyuses, cannot be independent of the qualities of matter. We may as well agree with Plato, in endowing the soul with “a plastic power, to fashion a body for itself, to enter a shape and make it a body living.” I remember Plutarch (in his Quæst. Platon.) makes him say, that the soul is older than the body, and the source of its existence, and that the intellect is in this soul. But where is the sacred evidence of this? for, even in ourantenatalstate, we live, and yet there is probably no consciousness; there is vitality, at least, without theconsciousnessof an intellect.

Astr.As the creation of light wasbeforethat of the sun, its reservoir, so the creation of the soul might be before the brain, in which the Creatorsubsequentlyplaced it.

Ev.For this thereissacred evidence, Astrophel. Therewaslight, ere the sun was created as its reservoir; but the soul was breathed into the body, which was already then created.

Astr.This is a specimen of your special pleading, Evelyn, allied to that perilous error of Priestley, that supposed function and structure to be identical, because they are influenced by the same disease, and seem to live and die, flourish and decay,together. Democritus also has written his belief that, “as the smell of a rose exists in the bloom, and fades as that dies, so the soul of an animal is born with its birth, and dies with its death.” You have conceded to me (and we must all be conscious of) the great difficulty of conceiving thenatureofspirit; but, if we are required to prove its existence, we may answer, by analogy, that we cannot always palpably prove the existence ofmatter, although weknow itto exist. Theelectric fluidmay remain for an indefinite period invisible, nay, may never meet the sight,—it may even traverse a space without any evidence but that of its wonderful influence, and at length be collected in a jar.

As light, existing in remote stars, has not yet reached our earth, so the electricity is now residing in myriads of bodies, which will never be elicited; and thus (if I may extend the simile) the principle of life, whatever it be, may have an independent existence during life, may leave the body and yet not perish. Is not this a fine illustration of the living of the soul without the body; for here even a grosser matter, yet invisible, is evinced by its passage from one thing to another, although it is inert when involved in the substance?

Ida.May I not fear that the errors of philosophy, grounded on the difficulty of conceiving the nature of a self-existent spirit, will not stop until they lapse into the belief of annihilation?

For there are many suspicious sentiments even in the pages of well-meaning writers; such are the dangerous sentiments which Boswell has ascribed to Miss Seward: “There is one mode of the fear of death which is certainly absurd, and that is the dread of annihilation, which is only a pleasing sleep without a dream.”

There may be nothing terrible in the condition of annihilation, yet the moral effect is deplorable; indeed, to doubt the eternal existence is to argue that man’s life is but a plaything of the Deity. The notion of annihilation is so abhorrent, that he who believes it dooms himself indeed to a miserable existence; for the crowning solace of a Christian life is holy hope, and belief in the priceless gift of immortality.

“Know’st thou th’ importance of a soul immortal?Behold this midnight glory—worlds on worlds!Amazing pomp: redouble this amaze!Ten thousand add; and twice ten thousand more;Then weigh the whole; one soul outweighs them all,And calls th’ astonishing magnificenceOf unintelligent creation poor.”

“Know’st thou th’ importance of a soul immortal?

Behold this midnight glory—worlds on worlds!

Amazing pomp: redouble this amaze!

Ten thousand add; and twice ten thousand more;

Then weigh the whole; one soul outweighs them all,

And calls th’ astonishing magnificence

Of unintelligent creation poor.”

Would that Priestley had read wisely that prophetic truth in Ecclesiastes: “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.”

Ev.I do not approve his latitude of thought, yet it were severe to think this, even of Priestley, merely because he disbelievedseparatespiritual existence; for Aristotle also asserts, that “the soul could not existwithout the body, and yet that it was not the body, but a part of it.” Zeno, and the Stoics, termed that which was called a spiritmaterial; and not only Ray and Derham, but even Paley, and Johnson, disbelieved the separate existence. The archdeacon’s opinion, that we should have asubstantialresurrection, is founded on New-Testament evidence, and expressed in his discourse on a future state. The apostle’s simile of the wheat implies adeathof the grain: it dies, but there is noremodelling, for it is thegermthat lives and grows; so, although the body may not be restored, there is a development ofitsgerm in the transit or resurrection ofitsspirit. The sage thought also the simile of St. Paul should be takenliterally, and notfiguratively: and yet he qualifies it thus: “We see that it is not to be the same body, for the Scripture uses the illustration of grain sown (which in its exact sense implies an offspring, and not a resurrection), and we know that the grain which grows is not the same with what is sown. You cannot suppose that we shall rise with a diseased body; it is enough if there be such a sameness as to distinguish identity of person.”

Blumenbach believed that when the soul revived, after death, the brain would equally revive; and there is, indeed, nothing very irrational in all this, for death is, even to our senses, not an annihilation, but only a new combination of matter. The Greek sceptics thought that the teeth would remain perfect, if all else was decomposed and lost; and the rabbins conferred this perpetuity ononebone of thespinal column, which they called LUZ. These strange notions of the mystic union may explain to us that diversity of custom, in various nations, as to the disposal of the dead. While the Irish papists, with a superstitious reverence for inanimate clay, celebrate their wakes with rites often as licentious as they are profane; the cannibalCalatiæthought it more respectful toeatthe bodies oftheirdeparted friends, at least so writes Herodotus; and the filial love of other Indian tribes invites the children to strangle their aged parents, as they sit in their fresh-made graves.

It is certainly more consolatory to associate our thoughts with theimmortalpart of a lost friend; to believe thespiritto be in celestial keeping, and that it still hovers around us. The collapse and change of features prove that thebodyis then but as the dust from which it was first formed. I would not wish, like Socrates, to have my limbs scattered over the earth, because

“Cœlo tegitur qui non habet urnam;”

but, as the bodymustbe consumed, were it not better and safer, as the Greeks did, toburnthe dead, to resolve the corpse, as soon as possible, into its constituent elements. I shall ever remember with horror the scenes which I witnessed in Naples, when apile of bodies, collected from the chapels by the dead carts, which go round the city at night, was thrown by irreverent hands into the public cemetery of the Campo Santo.

The fiat of the CreatorMAYat once produce a reconstruction of the body, however widely scattered its particles, and the return of the soul to the brain, from which it had once departed; but is it not somewhat irrational to think that we should again be endowed with organs, without the functions and passions to which they are subservient?

Ida.It may be a bliss to gaze even on theshadowsof those we love. There is a beautiful allegory of this solemn question told in the “Spectator,” which, as Addison approves, it cannot be profanation to admire. It is the Indian legend of “Marraton and Yaratilda,” in which the devoted husband comes unawares on Paradise, and sees the shadowyformsof his wife and children, without theirsubstance. The story exquisitely blends the fond wish of Marraton to die, that he may be again admitted to the holy communion of those so fondly loved; for Paradise is painted in the mind’s eye even of the heathen, although, in his dearth of revelation, he associates the joys of his elysium with the sensual pleasures of terrestrial life. The Indian dreams of his dogs, believing that the greatest hunters shall be in the highest favour with Brahma; the proselytes of the prophet die in a vision of their houri’s beauty; and the warriors of Odin already drink the honey-water from the skulls of their enemies, served up to them by the beautiful “Valkhas” of the “Valhalla.” Thus even the creed of infidels is not atheism. What thinks Evelyn?

Ev.As you do, Ida. As to the atheist, one, perchance, may havelived, if we rightly interpret the sentiments of Diogenes, and Bion, and Lucian, and Voltaire; but, I believe, one neverdied. My solemn duty has summoned me to the death-bed of more than one reputed infidel, who have in health reasoned with fluency and splendour, and have penned abstruse theses on life and the world’s creation. But, when danger lay in their path of life, their stoic heroism fled, and left them abject cowards. They looked not even on the lightning’s flash without trembling, and the vision of death was a sting to the conscience. I have seen many a death-bed like that of Beaufort, who made “no signal of his hope,” not because he disbelieved a God, but because a conviction of his sin left him without a hope and faith in the promises.

Of course there cannot be anEuthanasiawhere irreligion has marked a life, but, believe me, there would be nofearof death in an atheist.

Astr.The mythologist and pagan may cite their tables, and worship their idols in the recesses of their pagodas and choultries; but some idea of the Deity has been unfolded to the mind of all. Even the eastern princes have had some glimpses of the true faith, and shahs and caliphs were once engaged in building their Nestorine or Christian churches.

The profane Chinese has, it is true, called his realm thecelestial empire; Fohi, who is believed to have reigned three thousand years before Christ, established his “Iconolatria” or “idolatry,” and Si Lao Kiun struck at the establishment ofpolytheism, but the purer theology of Confucius prevailed over his rival.

The Deity, indeed, is the essence of every creed, for all believe in a great spirit as well as an immortal mind and a paradise. Like the reasonings of natural philosophy, our notions and epithets of the great Creator certainly differ, but in all there is faith in his perfection. Xam Ti is the great spirit of the Chinese, as Woden is the god of the Gothic races, and Brahma, or Alla, or the Kitchi Manitou, or even the sun, the source of light, and heat, and joy to the creation, are the deities of other nations. Nor may we wonder more that the Ghebir, and the Peruvian, and the Natches should worship their orb of fire, than that the Irish should, on the morning of theirBeltane, light their peat fires to the sun.

The doctrines of the Brahmins all attest their creed oftheism, if we interpret aright the evidence of the learnedPunditsof Benares, especially in the Gentoo code; and the records of Abul Fazel in the “Baghvat Geeta,” an episode in the poem of the “Mahabarat,” written to prove the unity. The devout Christian will deem this creed a woful error, but he will confess his admiration of their sublime notion of the divine attribute, which Colonel Dow has thus imparted to us: “As God is immaterial, he is above all conception; as he is invisible, he can have no form; but from what we behold of his works, we may conclude that he is eternal, omnipotent, knowing all things, and present everywhere.”

I will grant that the oriental notions of cosmogony, or the creation of the world, are a blot on their scripture page: because the pagan theologians were shorn of the light of Christianity, they were prone to refer creation to natural causes within their own comprehension, and their ideas were fabulous and impure. Thus, among the Hindoos and Egyptians, there is a mass of obscenity adduced to account for the development of the globe, in the associations ofVishnuandSiva, andOsirisandIsis; and the temples of Elephanta and Elora are adorned with symbolic paintings of this incarnation of Vishnu. Yet, with all this error, there is in the “Vedas” or Hindoo scriptures, a not remote analogy to the Bible itself; and, granting that the cosmogony of Phœnicia is little more than a mysterious romance; yet, whether the great cause be thedemiurgic spirituniting with desire, or the being “That” of the Hindoos, the essence of all these mysteries still combines the grand scheme of the creation,—the formation of a beautiful world from a chaos of wide and dark waters.

Ida.You are wandering very far eastward, Astrophel: I will propose this question to Evelyn.

If it is so evident that the brain and mind, although not identical, exist in a most intimate union, may we not undervalue their relative influence by adducing the energy of intellect and brilliancy of conception possessed by many in advanced life? Remember the green old age of Plato, and Cicero, and Newton, and Johnson, and, above all, Goëthe, whose last work was brilliant as his first. And all this, coincident with that love of Infinite Wisdom that exists, (as we read in the “Consolations of a Philosopher,”) “even in the imperfect life which belongs to the earth,increases with age, outlives the perfection of the corporeal faculties, and, at the moment of death is felt by the conscious being.” Does this imply decay?

Ev.The retentive powers of old age, are theexceptionto a rule, which the ultra spiritualist assumes as ageneralrule, in attempting to disprove the growth and decay of mind, according to the age of the body. But aslivesare of different duration andconstitutionsvary, so maymental powersindicate different degrees of vigour. If mindincreases, no doubt itdecreases; and I have known many, who retain every faculty butmemory, which is the first to decay and indicate failing power; and so also is it with idiots, in whosememory, usually, the greatest defects appear; the faculty of counting numbers reaches only to three, and of letters to C, the third letter in the alphabet.

Ida will grant that there is no more impressive lesson of humility than the dwindling and decay of genius, when, in the words of the Athenian misanthrope —

“Nature, as it grows again toward earth,Is fashion’d for the journey, dull and heavy.”

“Nature, as it grows again toward earth,

Is fashion’d for the journey, dull and heavy.”

Reflect on the painful end of Sheridan and other brilliant wits of their day; that

“From Marlborough’s eyes the streams of dotage flow,And Swift expires a driveller and a show;”

“From Marlborough’s eyes the streams of dotage flow,

And Swift expires a driveller and a show;”

and we may almost wish that biography should begin at each end, and finish in the middle, or zenith of a life.

Ida.If the fact be so, I grant the lesson to our pride, Evelyn; and we may dwell with fervent admiration on the divinity of that mind, which can ennoble and consecrate our body, so fraught as it is with basest passions, and so decayable withal.

NATURE OF SLEEP.

“——Sleep, gentle sleep!Nature’s soft nurse.”Henry IV.Part ii.

“——Sleep, gentle sleep!

Nature’s soft nurse.”

Henry IV.Part ii.

Ida.I begin to perceive the importance of this digression on the nature of mind. You wish us to believe, there is a temporary desertion of the spirit from the body, andthereforethe body sleeps?

Ev.Not absolute desertion, but a limit to its influence. Many have thought in conformity to your question; and indeed, Ida, it is a belief so holy, that I may feel it to be almost an impiety to differ.

From the time of Aristotle to Haller, the term “Sleep” expresses that condition which is marked by a cessation of certain mental manifestations, coincident with the degree of oppression; for it is an error to say that thebodysleeps,—it is thebrainonly, perhaps I may say, thecerebrum, or theforelobes; for I believe the lower part of it (that which imparts an energy to the process of breathing and of blood circulation) is never in a complete sleep, but merely in a state of languor, or rather of repose, sufficient for its restoration,—if it were to sleep,deathwould be the result.

This repose is in contrast with a state ofwaking, that activity of mind in which ideas are constantly chasing each other like the waves of ocean; the mode of displacing one idea being by the excitement of another in its place.

In that state of sound sleep which overcomes children, whose tender brains are soon tired, or old persons whose brains areworn, and in persons of little reflection,—the mind is perfectly passive, and its manifestations cease.

So writes Professor Stewart,—that there was a total suspension of volition during sleep, as regards its influence over mental or corporeal faculties; and I may even adduce a scrap from Burton, although I am an admirer of the quaint old compiler for little else than his measureless industry:—

“Sleep is a rest or binding of the outward senses, and of the common sense, for the preservation of body and soul. Illigation of senses proceeds from an inhibition of spirits, the way being stopped by which they should come; this stopping is caused by vapours arising out of the stomach, filling the nerves by which the spirits should be conveyed. When these vapours are spent, the passage is open, and the spirits perform their accustomed duties: so thatwakingis theactionandmotionof the senses, which the spirits, dispersed over all parts, cause.”

Astr.But is volition always suspended even in sound sleep? Was it not the opinion of Berkley, that the mind even then waspercipient? How else can we account for the waking exactly at one predetermined hour? If we retire to sleep at the latest hour, or oppressed with fatigue, so strong an impression is produced in our mind, that the breaking of our sleep is almost at the given moment.

Ev.I will answer you at present, Astrophel, only by analysis; it is not yet time toexplain.

I may grant that there is somelatenteffect,—passivememory, if you will,—for we do notcountthe hours in sleep, and calculate our timeby the clock; but we wake, and soon the bell strikes.

We have on record some very curious instances of the periodical recurrence of ideas in a waking state, the measurement of time being referrible to mental impression, mechanically established by constant habit.

There was an idiot once, who was in the habit of amusing himself constantly by counting the hours as they were struck on the clock. It chanced, after some time, that the works of the clock were injured, so that the striking for a time had ceased. The idiot, notwithstanding, continued to measure the day with perfect correctness, by counting and beating the hour. This is a story of Dr. Plott’s, in his History of Staffordshire.

There is one of more modern date, somewhat analogous to this.

I may quote Holy Writ in support of this passive condition of true sleep; nay, even its similitude to death. How often do we find allusions to sleep and death as synonymous! Sir Thomas Brown was impressed so deeply with thislikeness, that he “did not dare to trust it without his prayers.” And the Macedonian, who wished for more worlds to conquer, confessed his sleep proved to him his mortality. I may quote ancient poetry also in my support. Homer and Virgil describe sleep as the “Brother of Death;” and, among the profane poets of later times, the same sublime association is traced of this

“Mortis imago—et simulacrum.”

Among the ancient allegories, sleep is portrayed as a female, with black unfolded wings,—in her left hand, a white child, the image of Sleep; in her right, a black child, the image of Death.

On the tomb of Cypselus, according to Pausanias,nightis thus personified.

Cast.How true, then, was the thought of the first deep sleeper, on the sensation of slumber: —

“——There gentle sleepFirst found me, and with soft oppression seiz’dMy drownéd sense, untroubled; tho’ I thoughtI then was passing to my former state,Insensible, and forthwith to dissolve.”

“——There gentle sleep

First found me, and with soft oppression seiz’d

My drownéd sense, untroubled; tho’ I thought

I then was passing to my former state,

Insensible, and forthwith to dissolve.”

But how fearful is this resemblance which changes “tir’d nature’s sweet restorer” into a type of death! Pr’ythee, Evelyn, do not affright me thus, by clothing sleep with terror, as if it were disease and danger.

Ev.Why tremble for the mortal sleep of the just and good, who will feel, with William Hunter, on their death-bed, “howpleasantand easy it is to die;” and with another moralist, —

“Oh what a wonder seems the fear of death,Seeing how gladly we all sink to sleep;Night following night!”

“Oh what a wonder seems the fear of death,

Seeing how gladly we all sink to sleep;

Night following night!”

Fear not, Castaly; I do not termslumberandgentlesleep disease, but signs of health. Not so, however, many aprofoundsleep, and its advances towardscoma; those results of exhaustion from excess, or from intense and direct narcotics, as opium sleep, and the paralyzing senselessness from extreme cold, as in the story of Sir Joseph Banks and Dr. Solander in the antarctic regions.

You are aware that manyremediesin medicine may be so intense as to cause fatality: inflammation, too, is the restorative process of wounds, but if inexcessit is fatal. Appetite also, to a certain degree, is healthy; but craving and thirst, its extremes, are proved, bysuffering, to be morbid.

If the mind is composed to perfect rest, it is lulled to senselessness; then metaphysically we are said to sleep: the mind is not excited by thought, and, in consequence, its supply ofarterialblood is less, the morerapidflow of which would be the cause of waking.

Within certain limits sleep is aremedy; but it becomes perilous when intense, or too much indulged. One eccentric physician, as we read in the learned Boërhave, even fancied sleep thenaturalcondition of man, and was wont to yield to its influence during eighteen of the twenty-four hours; but apoplexy soon finished his experiment.

Thisnegativequiescence (for sleep is not apositivestate) allows the restoration of energy, and then we wake. Even the senses accumulate their power in sleep; the eye is dazzled by the light when we wake, from the sensitiveness imparted by this accumulation.

The conceits regarding the cause of sleep are so various, that if I were to discuss their merits I should only weary your patience, as I perceive I have already done.

Some have thought that sleep arose from certain conditions of the blood in the vessels and nerves of the brain; its congestion in thesinuses; or arefluxof a great portion of it towards the heart: the result of depressed nervous energy—exhaustion, fatigue, cold, and the influence of powerful narcotics, or the combustion of charcoal. Others, that sleep arises from the deposition of fresh matter on the brain, and its sudden pressure. Then we have the cerebral collapse of Cullen, and of Richerand; the deficiency of animal spirits of Haller; the diminished afflux of blood to the brain of Blumenbach; and the exhausted irritability of the Brunonian theory adopted by Darwin.

Where the truth lies I presume not to decide, but it is clear there is a necessity for the occasional repose of the mental organ:

“Non semper arcumTendit Apollo.”

“Non semper arcum

Tendit Apollo.”

Watchfulness invariably reduces, even in the brute: the wild elephant is tamed by the perseverance of the hunter in keeping it constantly awake.

The mind, then, as it is manifested to us (for deeply important is it that we confound not the perfect and pure, because unembodied essence of the soul, with itscombinedexistence in the brain—that union from which athought is born), the mind cannot exert itself beyond a certain period without a sensation of fatigue in the brain, as palpable as the exhaustion from excessive muscular exertion. And this depends on a natural law, that organs after acting a certain given period, flag and lose their energy. Thus the first harbinger of sleep is theclosing of the lidsfrom languor, and relaxation of the muscles. Muscular fibre will, however, regain its expenditure by simple rest, requiring a certain period for this re-accumulation, like the charging of an electrical jar. Sleep, however, is not always a sequence of exhausted irritability of muscle; we may betoo tiredto sleep; and thought and memory also will keep the mind awake, and prevent nervous energy from renewing corporeal vigour.

The excitement of thought beyond certain limits is both painful and destructive, evincing its effects by various grades of mental disorder, from simple headache to confirmed mania. Our first ray of hope, in fever, is often the coming on of a quiet sleep, and in the sad cases ofdelirium tremenswe must eithersleep or die; the effort of philosophical determination to overcome the depression only adding to its intensity, as in the case of a person worn out by labour, in attempting to labour on. This conflict cannot be more pertinently exemplified than by some passages in the life of Collins, by one who knew him well:—

“He languished some years under that depression of mind which unchains the faculties without destroying them, and leaves reason the knowledge of right without the power of pursuing it. These clouds which he perceived gathering on his intellects, he endeavoured to disperse by travel, and passed into France; but found himself constrained to yield to his malady, and returned. His disorder was no alienation of mind, but general laxity and feebleness, a deficiency rather of his vital than intellectual powers. What he spoke wanted neither judgment nor spirit, but a few minutes exhausted him, so that he was forced to rest upon the couch, till a short cessation restored his powers, and he was again able to talk with his former vigour.”

I believe that sensibility and fatigue of mind, by inducing sleeplessness, may often be the source even of mania.

The sleep of animals is usuallylight, especially that of birds, and they are easily startled when at roost. The cackling of the geese on their awaking, you know, saved the Roman capitol. Yet sleep is altogether very nearly balanced with waking. Some animals sleep often, like the cats, but they are long awake, and prowling in the night. The python and the boa are also long awake, and then sleep for many days during the process of digestion. Indeed, all theferæfall into sound sleep after feeding; while the ruminants scarcely sleep at all; nor do they crouch like theferæ, with the head between the legs: but then their whole life is one scene of quiet; rumination is a mindless reverie. The West Indian slaves and the Hottentots, or woolly bipeds, resemble the brute animal in this, that they fall asleep as soon as their labour is concluded.

That activity of mind in excess may induce even mania, I may offer two impressive, although negative, proofs, from the records of Dr. Rush.—“In despotic countries, and where the public passions are torpid, and where life and property are secured only by the extinction of domestic affections, madness is a rare disease. Dr. Scott informed me that he heard of but one single instance of madness in China.”

“After much inquiry, I have not been able to find a single instance of fatuity among the Indians, and but few instances of melancholy and madness.”

I may add, that Baron Humboldt assures us of this immunity among the wild Indians of South America.

Ida.And may not this melancholy effect be averted by caution and rule? We have a saying in Herefordshire, that “Six hours are enough for a man, seven for a woman, and eight for a fool.”

Ev.There cannot be a fixed rule on that point, except the prevailing law of nature,—the feeling of necessity; but this may often lead astray.

It is calculated that one half of a child’s life is passed in sleep, and one quarter to one sixth of the adult existence; but for old age there is no essential period or limit. Old Parr slept almost constantly about the close of his life; while Dr. Gooch records the case of one whose period of sleep was only one quarter of an hour in the twenty-four. It is well to inure an infant to agradualdiminution of its time of sleep, so that at ten years old its period should be about eight hours.

The strength or energy of brain will, when aided by custom, modify the faculty of controlling the disposition to slumber. Frederick the Great, and our own Hunter, slept only five hours in the twenty-four; while Napoleon seemed to exert a despotic power over sleep and waking, even amid the roaring of artillery. Sir J. Sinclair slept eight hours, and Jeremy Taylor three. As a general precept, however, for the regulation of sleep in energetic constitutions, I might propose the wise distribution which Alfred made of his own time into three equal periods,—one being passed in sleep, diet, and exercise, one in despatch of business, and one in study and devotion. Careful habit will often produce sleep at regular and stated periods, as it will render the sleeper insensible or undisturbed by loud noises; the gunner will fall asleep on the carriage amid the incessant discharge of the cannon; and, if I remember right, the slumbers of the bell-ringer of Notre Dame were not broken by the striking of the quarters and the hour close to his ear.

Ida.And at what seasons should we wake and sleep? It seems to me, that the Creator himself has written his precepts in the diurnal changes of this world, that are still so healthfully observed by the peasant, but so strangely perverted by the capricious laws of fashion, and even by the romantic

Back to Index Next