22 definitions
The book's index
On Sleep and Sleeplessness
14 concepts · 22 definitions
Sleep (n.) is like epilepsy, and in a sense actually is a seizure of that sort.
Sleep (n.) is powerlessness born of too much waking: no creature can keep actualizing its powers forever.
Sleep (n.) is not the senses each shutting down, but their master sense being seized — which is why all of them go dark at once.
Sleep (n.) is a tie laid on the senses; waking is its loosening.
Waking (n.) is the animal's highest end, not sleep: we sleep for the sake of being awake.
Waking (n.) consists in nothing else than the exercise of perception: to be awake is to be noticing something, outside or within.
Common sense (n.) is the power by which we perceive that we see: not sight itself, but what knows that sweet differs from white.
Growth (n.) goes better in sleep: the nourishing part works best when the perceiving part is off duty.
A Plant (n.) can neither sleep nor wake, because it never perceives anything to stop perceiving.
The Brain (n.) is the body's coolest part, condensing the rising vapours like clouds into rain.
A Dream (n.) is in a certain way a sense-impression — the sleepwalker acts not blindly but from a phantasm.
Drowsiness (n.) after a meal is a tide in a narrow strait: the vapour of food rises to the head, stalls, and weighs the head into nodding.
Fatigue (n.) is the law of every working organ: the eye that sees too long must give up seeing, and so must the sense itself.
Melancholy (n.) temperaments sleep little and eat much yet stay lean, as if they drew no benefit from their food.