Sleep

Use in the book

The Hermetic account presents sleep as a gift preserving bodies through rest. It then insists on sleep’s powerful activity: the joined limbs relax and incoming material is apportioned into bodily constituents. The Timaeus passage gives another mechanism, in which the closing eyelids confine the power of fire and quiet internal movements. Great quiet produces sleep with few dreams.

Places to read

1. I.41.8.4Rest preserves bodies.
2. I.41.8.5Sleep actively distributes material within the body.
3. I.52.19.5Quiet internal movements produce sleep with few dreams.

Translation in this edition

The English distinguishes “few dreams” from short sleep. Rest and activity can coexist because the descriptions concern different operations.

Use in the book

The early mechanical image gives the bodily machine slackened springs and describes animation as pausing. The later comparison makes mental sleep as conceivable as bodily sleep while fully alive. Death itself can become a deeper sleep when resurrection is understood as awakening. These are comparisons that make discontinuity imaginable; the first passage’s assertion that life’s functions stop must remain a historical claim, not a clinical definition.

Places to read

1. I, p. 61, entry 11, ¶1Sleep slackens the springs of the living machine.
2. I, p. 437, entry 3, ¶2Mental and bodily sleep provide parallel absences.
3. I, p. 295, entry 6, ¶1Awakening from deeper sleep explains the idea of resurrection.

Translation in this edition

The English translation keeps suspension, pause, and awakening distinct. The ellipsis after preservation in the first witness remains; the lexicon does not finish the account.

Use in the book

The first Aëtian notice explains sleep as moderate cooling of the heat in blood, with complete cooling causing death. The second describes sleep through separation of the fiery constituent and death through a more comprehensive separation of the compound. Cooling and separation are related possible descriptions, but they are not identical words or necessarily interchangeable mechanisms. The report does not explain how the fiery material returns on waking, where it goes during sleep, or why cooling remains within a recoverable range. Those gaps should not be filled with modern brain physiology or with an unsupported assertion that the soul literally leaves the body each night. What is explicit is a graded relation between the conditions of waking life, sleep, and death, together with a constituent-based account that a doxographer sets beside it.

Places to read

1. A 85 (testimony)Aëtius, first notice. Makes sleep moderate cooling of blood's heat and death complete cooling.
2. A 85 (testimony)Aëtius, second notice. Makes sleep separation of the fiery constituent and contrasts compound dissolution at death.

Translation in this edition

The first notice depends on variant readings for cooling and for “complete.” In the second, the full list of non-fiery constituents is supplied by Diels. The edition's assertion that both reports simply describe withdrawal of fire from blood is a synthesis beyond their exact wording.

Use in the book

V.15.23 raises involuntary sleep as a possible analogue for a deterioration of soul into body. Ficino answers that bodily slackening does not imply loss of the mind’s own power. What produces sleep acts in and upon the body, closing the bodily senses. The soul’s yielding “with will” is connected to the change’s natural restorative purpose, even though sleep can overtake someone against an immediate wish.

V.15.24 then supplies a more discriminating dream example. A person may seem to debate and, by true reasoning, learn something. On waking, the mathematical or rational truth remains true even if the alleged place, interlocutor and spoken words were fictitious. The reality of the rational content is therefore separable from the sensory scene.

Ficino also notes the vivid likeness of sensible images during sleep: at the time they may be indistinguishable from their objects. This is not an endorsement of every dream as revelation. The point is that sensory seeming can be false while intelligible validity remains unchanged.

The conclusion concerns the soul’s power as distinguished from the bodily life and organs serving its operations. It does not establish a modern sleep physiology or justify ignoring medical effects of sleep deprivation.

Places to read

1. V.15.23Involuntary sleep is proposed and rejected as a model of ontological degradation.
2. V.15.24A dreamed argument distinguishes stable truth from false setting, person and words.

Translation in this edition

The edition retains both the involuntary opening and the later willingness, instead of hiding their difference. Praesentia at the close is lasting presence, contrasted with passing sensory events, not merely an unusually long duration.

discernere

discernere. Printed forms: discernantur; discernat; discerni; discernimus.

To distinguish or discriminate between appearances or kinds. Vivid dream images may at the time be indistinguishable from their objects, unlike the later recognition of false scenery. References: V.15.24. See Sleep and dreams.

To distinguish contents or properties from one another. The verb marks what mere coexistence of impressions does not explain, and what knowing bodily proportion still fails to reveal about soul. References: VII.1.1, VII.12.1. See Memory, rigidity and fluidity.

disputare

disputare. Printed forms: disputando; disputare; disputari; disputatio.

To argue or conduct a discussion. A dreamed debate may contain valid reasoning even when its interlocutor, location and words never occurred as waking events. References: V.15.24. See Sleep and dreams.

dormire / vigilare / expergefieri

dormire / vigilare / expergefieri. Printed forms: dormienti; expergefacto; vigilanti; vigilantibus.

Sleeping, waking and being awakened. A truth grasped through valid reasoning remains true across these states despite the dream's fictitious scene. References: V.15.24. See Sleep and dreams.

opprimere / marcescere

opprimere / marcescere. Printed forms: marcescunt; opprimit.

To overwhelm and to grow slack. Sleep overtakes people and relaxes limbs, but Ficino denies that this by itself weakens the mind's essential power. References: V.15.23. See Sleep and dreams.

persona / verba

persona / verba. Printed forms: persona; verba.

The interlocutor and words within the dream scene. They are distinguished from rational truth, which survives the falsity of the surrounding sensory narrative. References: V.15.24. See Sleep and dreams.

reficere

reficere. Printed forms: refici; reficit.

To restore or refresh after exertion. Sleep's natural restorative role explains the soul's yielding to the bodily change in this account. References: V.15.23. See Sleep and dreams.

To fashion afresh. A new shape resembling the former one is made in new flesh, rather than the old shape migrating numerically. References: VI.13.9. See Stable craftsman and the river reflection.

sentire / sensus

sentire / sensus. Printed forms: Sensibilia; sensibilium; sensibus; sensum; sensus; sentiendi; sentit.

Sense and sensing, sensation exercised through bodily organs, contrasted with instrument-free intellection. Sleep closes bodily senses while images persist; irrational life is drawn by presented sensible objects. References: V.6.1, V.14.8, V.15.23, V.15.24. See Sleep and dreams.

somnus

somnus. Printed forms: somno; somnum; somnus.

Sleep, a bodily change introduced as an apparent model of involuntary mental weakening. Ficino distinguishes inhibition of bodily sensation from loss of psychic power or conversion into body. References: V.15.23, V.15.24. See Sleep and dreams.

sopire / claudere

sopire / claudere. Printed forms: claudit; sopit.

To lull and to close, descriptions of the bodily senses in sleep. The change is located in the body and its sense organs rather than an extinction of the soul's power. References: V.15.23. See Sleep and dreams.