[143] Webster's Dictionary—"Matter."
[144] "And it shall be as when a hungry man dreameth, and behold, he eateth: but he awaketh, and his soul is empty; or as when a thirsty man dreameth, and behold, he drinketh: but he awaketh, and behold, he is faint, and his soul hath appetite."—Isaiah.
[145] Scott's "Antiquary," note v.
[146] If it is objected that I have allowed Sophereus to overstate the power of the mind to deal better with difficulties after "a good night's sleep," as we say, than it had dealt with them before, I will cite the testimony of one of the most prolific of writers and one of the most self-observing of men, Sir Walter Scott, whose greatest success was achieved in the field of poetical and prose fiction. This is a department in which inventive genius is the main reliance, and is put to its greatest tasks. In that part of Scott's "Diary" which covers the year 1826—the period when he was writing "Woodstock"—he says:
"The half-hour between waking and rising has all my life proved propitious to any task which was exercising my invention. When I got over any knotty difficulty in a story, or have had in former times to fill up a passage in a poem, it was always when I first opened my eyes that the desired ideas thronged upon me. This is so much the case that I am in the habit of relying upon it and saying to myself when I am at a loss, 'Never mind, we shall have it at seven o'clock to-morrow morning.' If I have forgot a circumstance, a name, or a copy of verses, it is the same thing.... This morning I had some new ideas respecting 'Woodstock' which will make the story better." (Lockhart's "Life of Scott," vol. viii, chap. lxviii.)
This, it is true, was the experience of a man of extraordinary genius, whose facility of invention was as marvelous as the ease and rapidity with which he wrote. But his experience was a very common one. It has been shared by persons of much more humble faculties. I am sure that persons in my own profession, who have been engaged in pursuits very different from those of the poet or the novelist, will, from their own experience, confirm what is assumed by Sophereus as a well-known mental phenomenon. I could describe in detail many instances in which I have gone through with the same fruition of new ideas, resulting from the acquisitions obtained during sleep, or following from the benefits of sleep. For example, when having to do with a complex state of facts, needing orderly arrangement and analysis, it has repeatedly happened to me to rise in the morning after a night of undisturbed sleep, with the whole of an entangled skein unraveled, whereas before retiring to rest the mass of facts lay in some confusion in the mind. In like manner the mind can often deal with a legal question of a new and difficult character. The rule that ought to be applied to a particular case has to be extracted from many precedents, and perhaps none of them exactly cover the case in hand. On such occasions, if one refrains from pushing the study of his subject while awake to the severest analysis, and postpones the effort until the next morning, the experience of Sir Walter is very likely to be repeated. "It was always," he says, "when I first opened my eyes that the desired ideas thronged upon me." I am persuaded, therefore, that although in the study of any subject omission to master all its elements and details, when alone one can accumulate them, is not to be recommended, there is undoubtedly much to be gained by relieving the mind from the continued effort, and allowing some hours of sleep to intervene, during which the mind can act independently of all the bodily organs.
The question is, then, as above suggested, whether there come to us during sleep acquisitions of new ideas with or without a simultaneous consciousness that we are thinking of the subject, or whether the new ideas follow from the benefits of sleep as a state of absolute rest and inactivity of the brain, and of the intellectual faculties, so that when we awake both the brain and the mental powers are in greater vigor. The expression used by Scott in describing his own experience is that as soon as he awoke the desired ideas thronged upon him. This might happen upon the hypothesis that the desired ideas came because the brain and the mental powers, refreshed by sleep, were in greater vigor. But I incline to believe that his meaning was the reverse of this. At all events, it seems to me that the true explanation of the phenomenon is that during sound and undisturbed sleep of the body, including the brain, we do unconsciously think of the subject on which our waking thoughts had been previously employed; that in these states there are acquisitions of new ideas which we bring with us out of the state in which they were acquired, or, as Sir Walter expressed it, which throng upon us as soon as we open our eyes. While, therefore, it may be said that this hypothesis assumes the existence of the mind as a spiritual or intellectual entity capable of action as a thinking being without any action of the bodily organs, the question is, on the other hand, whether the phenomena here considered have not a very strong tendency to prove that the mind is such a substantive and independent existence. When it is remembered how common is the experience here referred to, how various the phenomena are, how they are manifested on all kinds of subjects, in regard to lines of conduct, and to everything about which we are perplexed, and when we add these peculiar phenomena to the other evidence which tends to establish the same belief in the existence of the mind as something entirely apart from all its physical environment, it seems to me that the argument becomes very strong, and that I have not made my imaginary philosopher press it beyond its legitimate bounds.
[147] Do him every honor.
[148] By some commentators, this hint, given with female subtilty, is explained to mean that their copy-hold, or lease, by which Banquo and his son hold their lives, is not eternal. The more probable meaning is that, if they are cut off, nature will produce no more copies of their race. But in either meaning the hint that she gave was the same, and it included both Banquo and his son.
[149] When the unknowable power ceases to pulsate through our physical organism, this "mental state" ceases—nothing survives—continuity is ended.