the sciences, every one has so much as he really knows and comprehends: what he believes only and takes upon trust, are but shreds, which however well in the whole piece, make no considerable addition to his stock who gathers them. Such borrowed wealth, like fairy money, though it were gold in the hand from which he received it, will be but leaves and dust when it comes to use.’—Page 80. In treating of the origin of our ideas, Mr. Locke labours to prove that men think not always:—thinking, according to him, being to the soul what motion is to the body; not its essence, but one of its operations. In this opinion he may, as far as I know, be right: but I think his proof of it drawn from the effects of sleep fails. The reason why I think so is that I was never awakened suddenly but I found myself dreaming, though in the interval required to awake gradually from sleep we frequently forget our dreams before we are quite awake, the impressions which objects have time to make upon our bodies taking place of and obliterating the faint traces of our sleeping thoughts. The common notion that the mind is then most awake when the body is asleep, deserves the contempt with which Mr. Locke treats it. It is one of the absurdities of _common sense_, which is not entirely free from them any more than philosophy. Those who can find any argument in favour of the immaterial nature and independent powers of the soul in the sublime flights which it takes when emancipated from the intrusion of sensible objects must have finer dreams than I have. It would be well for this opinion if we could regularly forget the next morning the smart repartees, magnificent sentiments and profound remarks we so often dream we make. The singular significance which in sleep we attach to absolute nonsense seems to arise from the very impotence of our efforts, as we fancy that we can fly because we cannot move at all. In sleep, indeed, the forms of imagination assume the appearance of reality, but this advantage they seem to owe chiefly to what Hobbes calls the silence of sense. That sleep, however, consists wholly in this silence of sense (not affecting the mind itself) is so far from being true, that it is not even necessary to it. Persons who walk in their sleep, as I know from experience, get out of bed with their eyes open, see and feel the objects about them, open the window, and leisurely survey the opposite trees and houses, long before they recollect where they are, or before the fresh air and the regular succession of known objects dispel the drowsy phantoms of the night. The only essential difference between our sleeping and waking thoughts I believe is, that in sleep the comprehensive faculty flags and droops; so that being unable to consider many things at once or to retain a succession of ideas in mind, we confound things together, and pass from one object to another without order or connexion, any single circumstance in which they agree being