Those, at least, who do at
any time sleep without dreaming, can never be convinced that their
thoughts are sometimes for four hours busy without their knowing of
it; and if they are taken in the very act, waked in the middle of that
sleeping contemplation, can give no manner of account of it.
14. That men dream without remembering it, in vain urged. It will
perhaps be said,- That the soul thinks even in the soundest sleep, but
the memory retains it not. That the soul in a sleeping man should be
this moment busy a thinking, and the next moment in a waking man not
remember nor be able to recollect one jot of all those thoughts, is
very hard to be conceived, and would need some better proof than
bare assertion to make it be believed. For who can without any more
ado, but being barely told so, imagine that the greatest part of men
do, during all their lives, for several hours every day, think of
something, which if they were asked, even in the middle of these
thoughts, they could remember nothing at all of? Most men, I think,
pass a great part of their sleep without dreaming. I once knew a man
that was bred a scholar, and had no bad memory, who told me he had
never dreamed in his life, till he had that fever he was then newly
recovered of, which was about the five or six and twentieth year of
his age.
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