A monograph on sleep and dream: their physiology and psychologyCox, Edward W. (Edward William)
Science
A monograph on sleep and dream: their physiology and psychology
Cox, Edward W. (Edward William)
Dreams; Sleep
In the waking and normal state, the whole brain is awake, all its parts
acting in concert and preserving strict co-ordination. The reasoning
faculties correct the senses; the senses correct the imagination; the
intelligence controls the emotions; the emotions give vigour to the Will;
the Will commands the entire mechanism of the body and expresses upon the
external world the results of that combination of intelligent actions and
emotions which we term “_the mind_.”
In sleep this relationship is changed. The reasoning faculties cease to
correct the senses; the senses no longer correct the imagination; the
emotions are unable to influence the Will; the Will loses its command of
body and mind alike.
However it may be in dreamless sleep, in the condition of dream the
entire mechanism certainly does not sleep. Some part of it is awake and
active. What is that waking part?
It is undoubted that the cerebral hemispheres are wholly or partially
awake in the process of dream. In deep sleep the sense-ganglia are
wholly asleep. In all sleep the senses sleep, only sometimes not so
profoundly as completely to exclude cognizance, by the Conscious Self, of
the sense-borne impressions. Sleep affects also the ganglia at the base
of the brain that control the actions of the body. This, indeed, would
appear to be the primary purpose of sleep. Sleep is obviously designed
to give rest to the _material structure_—time for growth and renovation.
It is for this reason that the Will, which in the waking state directs
the motions of the structure, ceases to control it during sleep. The
Will itself wakes—for we are self-conscious in dream—but in sleep the
material mechanism does not obey the command of the Will, because itself
is sleeping.
The central and basal portions of the brain are, therefore, the seat of
sleep. Unless they sleep we do not sleep. If they sleep we sleep, even
although both brain hemispheres are at the same time wide awake.
And this raises the question, so important in the Psychology of Dream;
do the brain hemispheres, that duplex organ of the intelligence,
sleep wholly or partially, or do they continue to be awake while the
sense-brain and the body-moving brain are sleeping?
This problem can be solved only by careful examination of the phenomena
of dream. Suppose that Professor FERRIER could do with us as he did
with the monkeys and dogs—take out a portion of the brain—and it were
possible to remove altogether the middle and basal sections, leaving
the hemispheres alone in the skull, would they sleep wholly or in part
or, if awake, would they exhibit the phenomena of dream as they are now
experienced?
Contemplate, then, if you can, a duplex intelligent brain, in a state
of activity, but cut off from all communication with the external world
through the media of the senses and from all control over the body;—in
fact, an isolated, self-acting, self-contained mechanism, the organ of
intelligence and emotion.
How would it work?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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