but the existence of which is indicated in cases like those now described? That this is the true explanation, I by no means affirm; I make the suggestion merely to indicate what, it seems to me, may be a _possible_ solution of the problem. _Possible Modes of accounting for the Facts._--Evidently there are only these four possible solutions. 1. To deny the facts themselves, _i. e._, that any such dreams occurred, or at least, that they were verified in actual result. 2. To call them accidental coincidences. 3. To admit a supernatural agency. 4. To explain them in the way suggested. Our choice lies, as it seems to me, between the second and the last of these suppositions. § III.--SOMNAMBULISM. _Relation to the magnetic State._--Somnambulism or sleep-walking, is called, by some writers, _natural magnetic sleep_. They suppose it to differ from the state ordinarily called mesmeric, chiefly in this, that the former is a natural, and the latter an artificial process. _Resemblance of this to other cognate Phenomena._--We shall have occasion, as we proceed, to notice the very close resemblance between dreaming, somnambulism, mesmerism, and insanity, all, in fact, closely related to each other, characterized each and all by one and the same great law, and passing into each other by almost imperceptible gradations. _Method proposed._--It will be to the purpose, first to describe the phenomena of somnambulism, then to inquire whether they can be accounted for. _Description._--The principal phenomena of somnambulism are the following: The subject, while in a state of sound sleep, and perfectly unconscious of what he does, rises, walks about, finds his way over dangerous, and, at other times, inaccessible places, speaks and acts as if awake, performs in the dark, and with the eyes closed, or even bandaged, operations which require the closest attention and the best vision, perceives, indeed, things not visible to the eye in its ordinary waking state, perhaps even things absent and future, and when awakened from this state, is perfectly unconscious of what has happened, and astonished to find himself in some strange and unnatural position.