Some more phenomena of sleep and dream : paper read to the Psychological Society of Great Britain / by the President, Mr. Serjeant Cox.

  • Cox, Edward W. (Edward William), 1809-1879.
Date:
[1877]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Some more phenomena of sleep and dream : paper read to the Psychological Society of Great Britain / by the President, Mr. Serjeant Cox. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    and in which it may do great services to the Science of Mind and Soul. But in sleep the Self has ceased to control the body. That force (whatever it be) is suspended which in waking life enables us to distinguish between ideas and objects— between dreams and realities. What is this force that has thus suddenly ceased and by its ceasing has changed the whole character of our intelligent being ? Why can- not we at this minute distinguish the shadow from the substance, the false from the true, the impossible from the possible, as we did but a minute ago ? What a curious problem is here presented to us! Although this wonderful fact has actually happened to every person in this room every day of his life, who among you has ever reflected upon its marvellousness or asked himself how such a miracle is caused ? So far as investigation has yet gone, we can trace but two distinct differences in the waking and the sleeping states. In sleep, the power of the Will is suspended. It has ceased to control either mental or bodily action and the brain is left to its own undirected energies. In dream some of the mental faculties are awake while others are asleep and hence it is that they are unable to exercise over each other that mutual check and correction, the common action of which in a healthy structure constitutes that complex whole, made up of many parts, to which is given the collective title of Mind. The Senses are said to be locked up in sleep; but they are not so entirely. Some of them convey sensations imperfectly. Sounds are audible, touch is felt, the senses of smell and taste are not extinguished. Sight alone is wholly suspended. But we have lost the power of measuring the impressions made upon these slumbering senses. A slight sound often seems to the sleeper, whether _[172]