Be this as it may, when one has enjoyed for a certain length of time a plent.i.tude of life a time comes when he can enjoy nothing; his impressibility gradually decreases, and the effects on each of his senses are badly arranged. The organs are dull and the soul becomes obtuse.

It is easy to see that we have had social man under consideration, surrounded by all the attractions of civilization. The necessity of this is peculiarly evident to all who are buried either in the studio, travel, as soldiers, or in any other manner.

In repose our mother nature especially luxuriates. The man who really reposes, enjoys a happiness which is as general as it is indefinable; his arms sink by their own weight, his fibres distend, his brain becomes refreshed, his senses become calm, and his sensations obtuse. He wishes for nothing, he does not reflect, a veil of gauze is spread before his eyes, and in a few moments he will sink to sleep.

MEDITATION XVIII.

SLEEP.

THOUGH some men be organized that they may be said not to sleep, yet the great necessity of the want of sleep is well defined as is hunger or thirst. The advanced sentinels of the army used often to sleep though they filled their eyes with snuff.

DEFINITION.

Sleep is a physical condition, during which man separates himself from external objects by the inactivity of his senses, and has only a mechanical life.

Sleep, like night, is preceded and followed by two twilights. The one leads to inertion, the other to activity.

Let us seek to elucidate these phenomena.

When sleep begins, the organs of the senses fall almost into inactivity. Taste first disappears, then the sight and smell. The ear still is on the alert, and touch never slumbers. It ever warns us of danger to which the body is liable.

Sleep is always preceded by a more or less voluptuous sensation.

The body yields to it with pleasure, being certain of a prompt restoration. The soul gives up to it with confidence, hoping that its means of fiction will he retempered.

From the fact of their not appreciating this sensation, savants of high rank have compared sleep to death, which all living beings resist as much as possible, and which even animals show a horror of.

Like all pleasures, sleep becomes a pa.s.sion. Persons have been known to sleep away three-quarters of their life. Like all other pa.s.sions it then exerts the worst influences, producing idleness, indolence, sloth and death.

The school of Salernum granted only seven hours to sleep without distinction to s.e.x or age. This maxim was too severe, for more time is needed by children, and more should, from complaisance, be granted to women. Though whenever more than ten hours is pa.s.sed in bed there is abuse.

In the early hours of crepuscular sleep, will yet exists. We can rouse ourselves, and the eye has not yet lost all its power. Non omnibus dormio, said Mecenes, and in this state more than one husband has acquired a sad certainty. Some ideas yet originate but are incoherent. There are doubtful lights, and see indistinct forms flit around. This condition does not last long, for sleep soon becomes absolute.

What does the soul do in the interim? It lives in itself, and like a pilot in a calm, like a mirror at night, a lute that no one touches, awakes new excitement.

Some psycologists, among others the count of Redern, say that the soul always acts. The evidence is, that a man aroused from sleep always preserves a memory of his dreams.

There is something in this observation, which deserves verification.

This state of annihilation, however, is of brief duration, never exceeding more than five or six hours: losses are gradually repaired, an obscure sense of existence manifests itself, and the sleeper pa.s.ses into the empire of dreams.

MEDITATION XIX.

DREAMS.

Dreams are material impressions on the soul, without the intervention of external objects.

These phenomena, so common in ordinary times, are yet little known.

The fault resides with the savants who did not allow us a sufficiently great number of instances. Time will however remedy this, and the double nature of man will be better known.

In the present state of science, it must be taken for granted that there exists a fluid, subtle as it is powerful, which transmits to the brain the impressions received by the senses. This excitement is the cause of ideas.

Absolute sleep is the deperdition or inertia of this fluid.

We must believe that the labors of digestion and a.s.simulation do not cease during sleep, but repair losses so that there is a time when the individual having already all the necessities of action is not excited by external objects.

Thus the nervous fluid--movable from its nature, pa.s.ses to the brain, through the nervous conduits. It insinuates itself into the same places, and follows the old road. It produces the same, but less intense effects.

I could easily ascertain the reason of this. When man is impressed by an external object, sensation is sudden, precise, and involuntary. The whole organ is in motion. When on the contrary, the same impression is received in sleep, the posterior portion of the nerves only is in motion, and the sensation is in consequence, less distinct and positive. To make ourselves more easily understood, we will say that when the man is awake, the whole system is impressed, while in sleep, only that portion near the brain is affected.

We know, however, that in voluptuous dreams, nature is almost as much gratified as by our waking sensations; there is, however, this difference in the organs, for each s.e.x has all the elements of gratification.

When the nervous fluid is taken to our brain, it is always collected in vats, so to say, intended for the use of one of our senses, and for that reason, a certain series of ideas, preferable to others, are aroused. Thus we see when the optic nerve is excited, and hear when those of the ear are moved. Let us here remark that taste and smell are rarely experienced in dreams. We dream of flowers, but not of their perfume; we see a magnificently arranged table, but have no perception of the flavor of the dishes.

This is a subject of enquiry worthy of the most distinguished science. We mean, to ascertain why certain senses are lost in sleep, while others preserve almost their full activity. No physiologist has ever taken care of this matter.

Let us remark that the influences we are subject to when we sleep, are internal. Thus, sensual ideas are nothing after the anguish we suffer at a dream of the death of a loved child. At such moments we awake to find ourselves weeping bitterly.

NATURE OF DREAMS.

Whimsical as some of the ideas which visit us in dreams may be, we will on examination find they are either recollections, or combinations of memory. I am inclined to say that dreams are the memory of sensations.

Their strangeness exists only in the oddity of a.s.sociation which rejects all idea of law and of chronology, of propriety and time.

No one, however, ever dreamed of any thing absolutely unknown to him.

No one will be amazed at the strangeness of our dreams, when we remember, that, when awake, our senses are on the alert, and respectively rectify each other. When a man sleeps, however, every sensation is left to his own resources.

I am inclined to compare these two conditions of the brain, to a piano at which some great musician sits, and who as he throws his fingers over the keys recalls some melody which he might harmonize if he use all his power. This comparison may be extended yet further, when we remember that reflection is to ideas, what harmony is to sounds; that certain ideas contain others, as a principle sound contains the others which follow it, etc. etc.

SYSTEM OF DR. GALL.

Having followed thus far a subject which is not without interest, I have come to the confines of the system of Dr. Gall who sustains the multiformity of the organs of the brain.

I cannot go farther, nor pa.s.s the limits I have imposed on myself: yet from the love of science, to which it may be seen I am no stranger, I cannot refrain from making known two observations I made with care, and which are the more important, as many persons will be able to verify them.

FIRST OBSERVATION.

About 1790 there was in a little village called Gevrin, in the arrondiss.e.m.e.nt of Belley a very shrewd tradesman named Landot, who had ama.s.sed a very pretty fortune.

All at once he was stricken with paralysis. The Doctors came to his a.s.sistance, and preserved his life, not however without loss, for all of his faculties especially memory was gone. He however got on well enough, resumed his appet.i.te and was able to attend to his business.

When seen to be in this state, all those with whom he ever had dealings, thought the time for his revenge was come, and under the pretext of amusing him, offered all kinds of bargains, exchanges, etc. They found themselves mistaken, and had to relinquish their hopes.

The old man had lost none of his commercial faculties. Though he forgot his own name and those of his servants, he was always familiar with the price-current, and knew the exact value of every acre and vineyard in the vicinity.

In this respect his judgment had be en uninjured, and the consequence was, that many of the a.s.sailants were taken in their own snares.

SECOND OBSERVATION.