'For I am sure if any man were to wake that night in which he saw no dreams, and put it beside all the other days and nights of his whole life and compare them and say how many of them all were better spent or happier than that one night - I am sure that not the ordinary man alone, but the King of Persia himself, would find them few to count" - Plato, The Apology, XXXII.

Sleep, says Boris Sidis, is not an abnormal condition, but a normal state; sleep and sleep conditions are a part and parcel of the individual.

Memory, the cardinal function of consciousness, is intensified during sleep, while the will power is comparatively nil. In this condition the external world bears no interest for the dreamer and those external stimuli that impress themselves upon the consciousness are transformed into totally different effects. The slamming of a door becomes a mighty thunderclap, the crackling of a log fire assumes the horror of a battle, the hum of a mosquito vibrates into the rhythm of an orchestra. Despite certain phases of memory abnormally developed in the dream state, this faculty itself becomes erratic and unaccountable, and proportionately few dreams are recalled by the dreamer upon awaking. And although normal sleep has been established as a condition of perpetual dreaming, the majority of dreams, formed as they are in the crypts of deepest slumber and dragged from the depths of the subconsciousness, or the soul, do not rise to the shallows of the waking consciousness. The dreams that are remembered by the average dreamer are those which come immediately before rousing, when consciousness is strengthening in the crepuscular light of returning physical faculties. These are the so-called normal dreams which can, as a rule, be traced either to outer stimuli, to half obliterated memories or to suppressed desires.

Papus divides the dream state into two conditions, one the result of natural slumber, the other produced by artificial sleep induced by artificial methods. Inspired dreams, visions, prophecy and certain phases of clairaudience and of clairvoyance are attendant upon specific conditions of natural slumber, while sleep induced by drugs, hypnosis, etc., produces trance, mediumistic susceptibility, clairvoyance and clairaudience in the ordinary acceptation of these latter terms.

Clairvoyance and clairaudience during natural sleep are not unusual. In many cases they are traceable to mental telepathy, which Bacon defines as "sympathy between two distant minds, sympathy so strong that one communicates to the other without reference to the ordinary channels."

Izaak Walton compares this same sympathy to the strings of two lutes that are strung to such precise harmony that when one instrument is struck the other sounds.

These faculties come and go as they will and thus far science has been unable either to account for them or to twist them to its purposes. In these cases a super-terrestrial sense of sight and of hearing is developed while the physical body lies apparently locked in sleep. Keen, far-reaching faculties are exercised of which the waking mind, cribbed and confined by its material body, has no conception. High medical authorities acknowledge the existence of this condition without furnishing a satisfactory explanation for it. The occult theory of the astral body, a semi-physical essence which may and frequently does leave the material body under certain conditions and wander abroad, is perhaps the explanation that taxes credulity most lightly.

The Society for Psychical Research contains many cases which have thus far baffled explanation. The instance of clairvoyance on the part of the son of Dr. Lee, the late Bishop of Iowa, is authenticated beyond question. A tender and sympathetic affection existed between the father and son; the latter was greatly distressed one night by a vivid dream of seeing his father fall down stairs. He sprang to catch the Bishop and in doing so awoke both himself and his wife, to whom he related his dream. He looked at the time; it was two fifteen a. m. Unable to sleep, he rose early and tele-graphed his father to know if all were well. The letter in reply informed him that on the night of and almost within the minute of his dream, the Bishop had fallen down a flight of steps and was seriously injured.

An independent confirmation of this incident was sent to Dr. Hodgson by the Bishop of Iowa. (Records of the S. P. R., Vol. VII, p. 38.)

A volume published in 1879 under the title of "X Y Z, or the Sleeping Preacher of North Alabama," gives a well authenticated account of the clairvoyant faculty in a highly respected Presbyterian minister, the Reverend Sanders. Professor James, Dr. Hodgson, Chief Justice Brickell and Dr. Thach, who attended the Reverend gentleman when he became entranced, unite in corroborating the incidents set forth in this volume.

In the trance condition Dr. Sanders would ignore his own named and designate himself X Y Z. His sleep would last from fifteen minutes to as many days, during which time he could direct his consciousness to events transpiring at any distant spot to which his attention was called.

Sixty-nine witnesses, all of unimpeachable character and many of them persons of education, testify to having seen the Reverend Sanders in these conditions of trance and to having heard him describe incidents that he could not have known in a waking state. One of these is given herewith.

"I hereby certify that one day about the middle of the month of February, 1866, while Brother Sanders was confined to his bed from a dislocated thigh, I was at his house, and he was lying in his bed in one of his so-called 'sleeps.' He attracted my attention by a hearty laugh. I asked him the cause of his amusement. He replied: 'I was laughing at De Witt.' I asked what De Witt was doing. He said: 'He was having a hard scuffle to keep from falling off the fence, for the top rail was turning with him and he was trying to keep from falling over it.' Nothing more was said until De Witt arrived, which was in ten or fifteen minutes.