Author of nature manifest even in this seeming imperfection of his
work!

The truth of this assertion with respect to the large muscles of the body,
which are concerned in locomotion, is evident; as no one in perfect sanity
walks about in his sleep, or performs any domestic offices: and in respect
to the mind, we never exercise our reason or recollection in dreams; we may
sometimes seem distracted between contending passions, but we never compare
their objects, or deliberate about the acquisition of those objects, if our
sleep is perfect. And though many synchronous tribes or successive trains
of ideas may represent the houses or walks, which have real existence, yet
are they here introduced by their connection with our sensations, and are
in truth ideas of imagination, not of recollection.

2. For our sensations of pleasure and pain are experienced with great
vivacity in our dreams; and hence all that motley group of ideas, which are
caused by them, called the ideas of imagination, with their various
associated trains, are in a very vivid manner acted over in the sensorium;
and these sometimes call into action the larger muscles, which have been
much associated with them; as appears from the muttering sentences, which
some people utter in their dreams, and from the obscure barking of sleeping
dogs, and the motions of their feet and nostrils.

This perpetual flow of the trains of ideas, which constitute our dreams,
and which are caused by painful or pleasurable sensation, might at first
view be conceived to be an useless expenditure of sensorial power. But it
has been shewn, that those motions, which are perpetually excited, as those
of the arterial system by the stimulus of the blood, are attended by a
great accumulation of sensorial power, after they have been for a time
suspended; as the hot-fit of fever is the consequence of the cold one. Now
as these trains of ideas caused by sensation are perpetually excited during
our waking hours, if they were to be suspended in sleep like the voluntary
motions, (which are exerted only by intervals during our waking hours,) an
accumulation of sensorial power would follow; and on our awaking a delirium
would supervene, since these ideas caused by sensation would be produced
with such energy, that we should mistake the trains of imagination for
ideas excited by irritation; as perpetually happens to people debilitated
by fevers on their first awaking; for in these fevers with debil