o make it be believed. For who can without any more ado, but
being barely told so, imagine that the greatest part of men do, during
all their lives, for several hours every day, think of something, which
if they were asked, even in the middle of these thoughts, they could
remember nothing at all of? Most men, I think, pass a great part of
their sleep without dreaming. I once knew a man that was bred a scholar,
and had no bad memory, who told me he had never dreamed in his life,
till he had that fever he was then newly recovered of, which was about
the five or six and twentieth year of his age. I suppose the world
affords more such instances: at least every one's acquaintance will
furnish him with examples enough of such as pass most of their nights
without dreaming.

15. Upon this Hypothesis, the Thoughts of a sleeping Man ought to be
most rational.

To think often, and never to retain it so much as one moment, is a very
useless sort of thinking; and the soul, in such a state of thinking,
does very little, if at all, excel that of a looking-glass, which
constantly receives variety of images, or ideas, but retains none;
they disappear and vanish, and there remain no footsteps of them; the
looking-glass is never the better for such ideas, nor the soul for,
such thoughts. Perhaps it will be said, that in a waking MAN the
materials of the body are employed, and made use of, in thinking; and
that the memory of thoughts is retained by the impressions that are made
on the brain, and the traces there left after such thinking; but that
in the thinking of the SOUL, which is not perceived in a sleeping man,
there the soul thinks apart, and making no use of the organs of the
body, leaves no impressions on it, and consequently no memory of such
thoughts. Not to mention again the absurdity of two distinct persons,
which follows from this supposition, I answer, further,--That whatever
ideas the mind can receive and contemplate without the help of the body,
it is reasonable to conclude it can retain without the help of the body
too; or else the soul, or any separate spirit, will have but little
advantage by thinking. If it has no memory of its own thoughts; if it
cannot lay them up for its own use, and be able to recall them upon
occasion; if it cannot reflect upon what is past, and make use of its
former experiences, reasonings, and contemplations, to what, purpose
does it think? They who make the soul a thinking thing, at this rat