ence, inasmuch as in it the mind is
passive, and does not assume the reins of empire. Such is the state in
which we are during our sleepless hours in bed; and in this state our
ideas, and the topics that successively occur, appear to go forward
without remission, while it seems that it is this busy condition of the
mind, and the involuntary activity of our thoughts, that prevent us from
sleeping.

The distinction then between these two sorts of indolence is, that
in the latter our ideas are perfectly distinct, are attended with
consciousness, and can, as we please, be called up to recollection. This
therefore is not what we understand by reverie. In these waking hours
which are spent by us in bed, the mind is no less busy, than it is
in sleep during a dream. The other and more perfect sort of mental
indolence, is that which we often experience during our exercise in the
open air. This is of the same nature as the condition of thought which
seems to be the necessary precursor of sleep, and is attended with no
precise consciousness.

By the whole of the above statement we are led to a new and a modified
estimate of the duration of human life.

If by life we understand mere susceptibility, a state of existence in
which we are accessible at any moment to the onset of sensation, for
example, of pain--in this sense our life is commensurate, or nearly
commensurate, to the entire period, from the quickening of the child in
the womb, to the minute at which sense deserts the dying man, and his
body becomes an inanimate mass.

But life, in the emphatical sense, and par excellence, is reduced to
much narrower limits. From this species of life it is unavoidable that
we should strike off the whole of the interval that is spent in sleep;
and thus, as a general rule, the natural day of twenty-four hours is
immediately reduced to sixteen.

Of these sixteen hours again, there is a portion that falls under the
direction of will and attention, and a portion that is passed by us in a
state of mental indolence. By the ordinary and least cultivated class of
mankind, the husbandman, the manufacturer, the soldier, the sailor, and
the main body of the female sex, much the greater part of every day
is resigned to a state of mental indolence. The will does not actively
interfere, and the attention is not roused. Even the most intellectual
beings of our species pass no inconsiderable portion of every day in a
similar condition. Such is our st