206 ZENO'S TEST OF VIRTUE. and therefore the propensities indicate the greatest excess;-memory furnishing a variety of incidents either read or spoken of, whilst fancy aids in fanning the overstrained energy of the feelings-manifest their blind and impulsive condition, as when acting from the stimulation of real occurrences. These explanations furnish satisfactory data to explain the whole phenomena. 'In saying these things we may still admire the wisdom of Zeno, which induced him to regard a dream as a test of virtue. For he thought (according to Plutarch) that if, in a dream, a man's heart did not recoil from vicious suggestions, there was an immediate neces.sity for self-examination and repentance. 'If our explanation is correct-and numerous facts could be cited to render this obvious-we demur at anything like actual responsibility for any thoughts which may actually occur in our dreams under the circumstances indicated. Even should our normal mental condition be shocked or disgusted that any such notions should have been entertained with all the vividness of reality, and though we repudiate any criminal responsibility from these visions of sleep, yet we, nevertheless, think that such dreams should be heeded. And if they occur involuntarily, we should begin to ascertain the cause, and endeavour to regulate in a better way both our mental faculties and the functions of the body. We should study the profound laws of God, by which we TEMPERANCE IN ALL THINGS. 207 should ensure corporeal health and sanity of mind. We should recognize the importance of "being temperate in all things," and therefore avoid giving way to excess, even in sustaining the most elevated and spiritual thoughts; that the exercise would then be natural, and in every instance invigorating and beneficial; for it is an indisputable truth that when we regulate our varied powers, without excess of any kind, we ensure refreshing sleep, undisturbed by dreamy visions of any kind, and our lives would then be useful to others, agreeable to ourselves, and ensure a lasting satisfaction.'-Journal of Psychological Medicine; vol. x., January, 1857. CHAPTER V. STATE OF THE MIND IN SLEEP AND DREAMS. THE MIND NOT ALWAYS ACTIVE. JOHN LOCKE. § 11. 'I GRANT that the soul in a waking man is never without thought, because it is the condition of being awake: but whether sleeping without dreaming be not an affection of the whole man, mind as well as body, may be worth a waking man's consideration; it being hard to conceive that any should think and not be conscious of it. If the soul doth think in a sleeping man without being conscious of it, I ask, whether during such thinking it has any pleasure or pain, or be capable of happiness or misery? I am sure the man is not any more than the bed or earth he lies on; for to be happy or DUALITY OF PERSON. 209 miserable without being conscious of it seems to me utterly inconsistent and impossible. Or if it be possible that the soul can, whilst the body is sleeping, have its thinking, enjoyments, and concerns, its pleasure or pain, apart, which the man is not conscious of, nor partakes in,-it is certain that Socrates asleep and Socrates awake is not the same person; but his soul when he sleeps, and Socrates the man, consisting of body and soul when he is waking, are two persons: since waking Socrates has no knowledge of, or concernment for that happiness or misery of his soul which it enjoys alone by itself, while he sleeps, without perceiving anything of it; any more than he has for the happiness or misery of a man in the Indies, whom he knows not. For if we take wholly away all consciousness of our actions and sensations, especially of pleasure and pain, and the concernment that accompanies, it will be hard to know wherein to place personal identity. § 12. "The soul, during sound sleep, thinks," say these men. Whilst it thinks and perceives, it is capable certainly of those of delight or trouble, as well as any other perceptions. But it has all this apart; the sleeping man, it is plain, is conscious of nothing of all this. Let us suppose the soul of Castor, while he is sleeping, retired from his body, which is no impossible supposition for the men I have here to do with, who so liberally allow life without a thinking soul to all other animals. VOL. I. P 210 CASTOR CASTOR AND POLLUX. These men cannot then judge it impossible, or a contradiction, that the body should live without the soul; nor that the soul should subsist and think without the body. Let us then, as I say, suppose the soul of Castor separated, during his sleep, from his body, to think apart. Let us suppose too that it chooses for its scene of thinking the body of another man, e. g. Pollux, who is sleeping without a soul; for if Castor's soul can think whilst Castor is asleep, what Castor is never conscious of, it is no matter what place it chooses to think in. We have here then, the bodies of two men with only one soul between them, which we will suppose to sleep and wake by turns, and the soul still thinking in the waking man, whereof the sleeping man is never conscious, has never the least perception. I ask then, whether Castor and Pollux, thus, with only one soul between them, which thinks and perceives in one what the other is never conscious of, nor is concerned for, are not two as distinct persons as Castor and Hercules, or as Socrates and Pollux were? And whether one of them might not be very happy and the other very miserable? Just by the same reason they make the soul and the man two persons, who make the soul think apart what the man is not conscious of. For, I suppose, nobody will make identity of person to consist in the soul's being united to the very same numerical particles of matter; for if that be necessary to identity, it will be impossible, |