Page:Letters on the Human Body (John Clowes).djvu/147

Rh immediately dissipated by what I have now to communicate to you, respecting the two bodily acts of sleeping and awaking; if indeed they may be called bodily acts, when yet the body appears to have so little to do with either. For that the body is not able, of itself, to lay itself asleep, or to awake out of sleep, is a truth confirmed by universal experience, and therefore we must look to some higher cause than the body for a solution of these otherwise unaccountable phenomena.

In discussing then the subject of sleeping and awaking, the first point of consideration is the phenomenon itself; the second is its cause; and the third its use and benefit.—I shall begin with the phenomenon itself.

Perhaps in the whole range of bodily acts, none is more astonishing—none more inexplicable, than that of sleeping, except it be the consequent act of awaking; yet perhaps none, in general, is less attended to,—which is one proof, amongst many others, that the mind has its sleep as well as the body. For how wonderful is it, that in a moment, without any effort on the part of man (for effort would, in this case, defeat its own purpose), all his thoughts, with all their activities, delights, and interests, apparently perish; so that the man himself, for a few hours at least, becomes a