When we are forcibly waked at midnight from profound sleep, our eyes are much dazzled with the light of the candle for a minute or two, after there has been sufficient time allowed for the contraction of the iris; which is owing to the accumulation of sensorial power in the organ of vision during its state of less activity.  But when we have dreamt much of visible objects, this accumulation of sensorial power in the organ of vision is lessened or prevented, and we awake in the morning without being dazzled with the light, after the iris has had time to contract itself.  This is a matter of great curiosity, and may be thus tried by any one in the day-light.  Close your eyes, and cover them with your hat; think for a minute on a tune, which you are accustomed to, and endeavour to sing it with as little activity of mind as possible.  Suddenly uncover and open your eyes, and in one second of time the iris will contract itself, but you will perceive the day more luminous for several seconds, owing to the accumulation of sensorial power in the optic nerve.

Then again close and cover your eyes, and think intensely on a cube of ivory two inches diameter, attending first to the north and south sides of it, and then to the other four sides of it; then get a clear image in your mind’s eye of all the sides of the same cube coloured red; and then of it coloured green; and then of it coloured blue; lastly, open your eyes as in the former experiment, and after the first second of time allowed for the contraction of the iris, you will not perceive any increase of the light of the day, or dazzling; because now there is no accumulation of sensorial power in the optic nerve; that having been expended by its action in thinking over visible objects.

This experiment is not easy to be made at first, but by a few patient trials the fact appears very certain; and shews clearly, that our ideas of imagination are repetitions of the motions of the nerve, which were originally occasioned by the stimulus of external bodies; because they equally expend the sensorial power in the organ of sense.  See Sect.  III. 4. which is analogous to our being as much fatigued by thinking as by labour.

6.  Nor is it in our dreams alone, but even in our waking reveries, and in great efforts of invention, so great is the vivacity of our ideas, that we do not for a time distinguish them from the real presence of substantial objects; though the external organs of sense are open, and surrounded with their usual stimuli.  Thus whilst I am thinking over the beautiful valley, through which I yesterday travelled, I do not perceive the furniture of my room:  and there are some, whose waking imaginations are so apt to run into perfect reverie, that in their common attention to a favourite idea they do not hear the voice of the companion, who accosts them, unless it is repeated with unusual energy.

This perpetual mistake in dreams and reveries, where our ideas of imagination are attended with a belief of the presence of external objects, evinces beyond a doubt, that all our ideas are repetitions of the motions of the nerves of sense, by which they were acquired; and that this belief is not, as some late philosophers contend, an instinct necessarily connected only with our perceptions.