Cast. Evelyn, you have again bewildered my thoughts. Sleep, that should be the anodyne of the mind, has awakened afresh my curiosity. I am in a mood for mystery. Any more wonders?
Ev. The prototypes of sleep, dear Castaly, are all “mysteries,” as you call them, and marked by ever-varying shades.
The most impressive conditions of the mind are these:
Unconscious and passive, as in sound sleep.
Conscious yet passive, as in dreaming.
Conscious and willing, yet powerless, as in night-mare.
Unconscious yet active, as in somnambulism.
If we go deeper in our analysis, we shall discover a state more wondrous still than all we have unravelled, in which mind is unconscious, sensationless, unwishing, motionless, powerless, as in trance or catalepsy; an absolute apathy of body and complete oblivion of mind. And yet life is there!
In the dream of night-mare, you remember, there is a will, but no power. In the absolute senselessness of trance, all sympathy between the brain or spinal marrow, or the influence of the nerves of motion, or of the will on muscle, altogether cease.
I will not fatigue you with varieties, such as carus, catalepsy, and the like, or with mere medical definitions, as syncope or fainting, epilepsy, apoplexy, and their analogies.