Note 82 — Chapter V

Dugald Stewart argued that there is loss of control over the muscular system during sleep, and the body, therefore, is not subject to our command; volition is present but it cannot influence the limbs. Hammond argued, on the contrary, that Stewart was quite wrong; the reason why voluntary movements are not performed during sleep is, he said, that volition is suspended. 'We do not will our actions when we are asleep. We imagine that we do, and that is all' (Treatise on Insanity, p. 205). Dugald Stewart and Hammond, though their phraseology may have been too metaphysical, were, from the standpoint I have adopted, both maintaining tenable positions. In one type of dream, we imagine we easily achieve all sorts of difficult and complicated actions, but in reality we make no movement; the ease and rapidity with which the mental machine moves is due to the fact that it is ungeared, and is effecting no work at all. In the other type of dream we make violent but inadequate efforts at movement and only partially succeed; the machine is partially geared, in a state intermediate between deep sleep and the waking condition.