The philosophy of sleep / [Robert Macnish].

  • Robert Macnish
Date:
1834
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The philosophy of sleep / [Robert Macnish]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Like echo of the mountain streams In sportive waterfall : I see thy form, as when Thou wert a living thing, And blossomed in the eyes of men Like any flower of spring.” Nor is the passion of love, when experienced in dreams, less vivid than any other emotion, or the sensations to which it gives rise less pleasurable. I do not here allude to the passion in its physical sense, but to that more moral and intellectual feel- ing, the result of deep sensibility and attachment. Men who never loved before, have conceived a deep affection to some particular woman in their dreams, which, continuing to operate upon them after they awoke, has actually terminated in a sincere and lasting fondness for the object of their visionary love. Men, again, who actually are in love, dream more frequently of this subject than of any thing else—fancying themselves in the society of their mistresses, and enjoying a happi- — ness more exquisite than is compatible with the waking state—a happiness, in short, little removed from celestial. Such feelings are not confined to men; they pervade the female breast with equal intensity ; and the young maiden, stretched upon the couch of sleep, may have her spirit filled with the image of her lover, while her whole being swims in the ecstacies of impassioned, yet virtuous attachment. At other times, this pure passion may, in both sexes, be blended with one of a 8
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