The passage from waking to sleeping is momentary. The closest observer of his own mental action fails to note it. But what a change is made in that moment! A complete mental revolution has been effected. The man himself has changed entirely. He has ceased to be a rational being! He is almost wholly severed from the external world, which exists for him no longer! His _Will_ (which is the name we give to the _expression_ of the Conscious Self) is paralysed. He has ceased to command his thoughts and his emotions. He has no control over his limbs. With the sole exception that he dreams, he is but a breathing clod. Of the forces that move his Mechanism, Life alone is active, working steadily and harmoniously as before. As we shall presently see, the other forces that move and direct the mechanism—the forces of _Mind_ and _Soul_—are not inactive. But they have withdrawn from their waking work. They exist and their existence is manifest. But they have ceased to control and the mechanism has ceased to obey. Some proof this—is it not?—that these Psychic Forces are distinct from the vital force and from the physical forces and have another origin. These phenomena of sleep supply further and most cogent evidence of the fallacy of the contention of the Materialists, that the vital force alone governs the mechanism of Man, and that all the forces that direct the mechanism are generated within the machine. In sleep the vital force continues to do its normal work. At the same moment some other force or forces are engaged in doing abnormal work, thus establishing the fact that some force or forces, other than the vital force or the physical forces, are employed in moving the mechanism of Man. Pause to think for a moment what is this wonderful mental change that in a moment converts _the Man_ into something less than a mere animal—into little more than a senseless vegetable! What, then, is the _mental_ process of sleep? The first perceptible signs of its coming are what are well called “wandering thoughts.” The Will resigns its control, at first fitfully, then at intervals continually diminishing. Nevertheless the Will strives to retain its hold upon the brain, then relaxes, then seizes it again, but with ever lessening power. “_Attention_” to the subject before the mind wanders—is recalled—wanders again—and then ceases altogether.