NewThoughtLibrary.com / DivineLibrary.org

the middle of a dream. The recollection of this dream was not always equally vivid. On some occasions, I was able to trace it back until the train was lost at a remote distance; on others I was hardly aware of more than one or two of the latter links of the chain; and sometimes was scarcely certain of more than the fact, that I was not awakened from an unconscious state."

One more fact remains of very general prevalence confirmatory of those now given. The mind is found to exercise a certain measure of watchfulness over the body in hours of sleep. We sleep, as popular speech has it, with one eye open. Anything unusual, though slight in character, arouses us, while familiar sounds pass unheeded. There is evidently a sentinel posted, who reports at once anything alarming, while he suffers ordinary events to pass unchallenged. We see something of this even in the torpor of intoxication. The mind makes an unsuccessful effort to arouse the body on the approach of danger, and, if the danger is extreme, sometimes sobers the man at once. We assign the mind a specific duty. We lay upon it as a task, that it shall awaken the body at a given moment. The mind is frequently disturbed and made nervous by the imposition, and arouses the vexed body in a tentative way half a dozen times before the hour arrives; or, better trained and more familiar with its service, it leaves the repose unbroken till the moment has fully come.

These and kindred facts of observation seem sufficiently to establish the constant activity of the mind, and to render it certain, that this invisible agent of invisible phenomena has a continuous and manifested existence, whatever the condition of its factor, the body, may be.