Page:Letters on the Human Body (John Clowes).djvu/148

128 thoughtless log, not only destitute of all consciousness of his existence, but utterly unable, of himself, to recall that consciousness! How wonderful again is it, that when this thoughtless log has lain, for a certain time, in a state of insensibility even of his own being, he is suddenly aroused, without any exertions of his own, to the re-enjoyment both of his mental and bodily faculties, attended with the re-creation of all his thoughts, with all their former activities, delights, and interests, so closely connected with those of the foregoing day, that he is not sensible of any intervening interruption and suspension! Yet such are the wonders involved in and ; so that, as a certain writer expresses it, “Every man may be said to die and rise again once in every twenty-four hours.”

But the wonder does not end here, since it is notorious that, during this suspension of thought and intellect, the bodily life still remains, the pulse beats, the lungs respire, and all the interior organs of the body perform their functions as before, with this only difference, that the man himself has no sensibility of their operations. In the mean time (such is the adorable appointment of the Divine providence of the ), from the suspension of the activity of thought results the increase of activity, inasmuch as