As already stated, at the first approach of sleep we are conscious of inability so to control our thoughts as to keep them in the orderly train they had been pursuing previously. Ideas come uncalled for. Pictures rise before the mental eye and vanish instantly. Other pictures intrude, having no apparent association with their predecessors. They enter and pass before us unbidden. The mind falls into confusion. There is entanglement of the threads of thought. Even while the eye is yet open, the objects on which it gazes fade and vanish. Sounds fall faintly upon the ear and die away. The vision of the mind grows dim or is eclipsed by other unsummoned pictures, often altogether incongruous, which blend with the picture present, then melt into it, then usurp its place, and then are in their turn displaced. We are conscious that we can no longer control the movements of the mind. Momentary resistance to the influence but provokes its more vigorous return. For an instant we wake with a start to consciousness of the external world. If we desire to resist the coming on of sleep, we exert the Will fitfully, start into waking life for a few moments, contract the relaxed muscles, open the drooped eyelids, stare with a peculiar expression of imbecile amazement, strive to look as if we had _not_ been surprised by sleep, and for a while the mind resumes its normal action. But soon again the thoughts are dislocated and replaced by a swarm of yet more dissevered ideas. We feel again the dropping lid, the relaxing muscle, the nodding head. Strive as we may, we are unable to note the moment when unconsciousness begins. We remember _falling asleep_, but we do not remember, and no human being has ever yet remembered, the very act of _going to sleep_. The mental condition of _falling asleep_ resembles very closely the dissolving views at exhibitions. So do the pictures of the mind steal into the field of view and mingle and melt away; nor can we discover where one ceases and the other begins, so imperceptibly do they glide in and blend. We sleep. What is then our _mental_ condition?