2731. To the very sensible nervous system the vegetable system and its impulse is a foreign object, which detaches itself from the above system, just as the objects of sense have done from the sensorial organs. The vegetable, or in general the material body, appears therefore to the mesmerized like a strange world—they see their own organs—are clair-voyants. Mesmerism therefore comprises nothing which could contradict physiology.
Vegetative Nerves.
2732. The splanchnic or visceral nerves are also distinguished from the animal by their being in a constant state of tension, and hence keeping the processes of their system in constant repair.
2733. The rationale of this resides in the two nervous substances having separated into ganglia and plexuses.
2734. This also serves to explain another phenomenon, viz. that the nerves indeed, but never the brain, attain to perfect rest; because the former is without ganglionic or cortical substance, the latter is throughout surrounded, and obviously interwoven, by it.
2735. Therein lies the reason why the viscera do not sleep.
Sleep.
2736. The condition of the nervous system, as hitherto represented, is called that of being awake. It is the interlude played by the nerves with the world, and with the animal body.
2737. When in a state of health the first interlude ceases, then the other also is over or past. The world-nerves, however, operate only upon the animal systems, upon the senses and the motion of the muscles; it could therefore be these only wherein the nervous function, in compliance with this cessation, is suppressed. Now, muscular rest originates through suppression of the tension between nerve and muscle. In sleep this rest is also derived from the same means.
2738. The tension between nerve and muscle can only cease, if the tension also between the termination of the brain and nerves be suppressed. We are now reduced simply to the consideration of the nervous system, and may, in treating of sleep, pay no attention to the muscular system.