Sleeping and Thinking

Brillat-Savarin in Anne Drayton's translation of the The Philosopher in the Kitchen (La Physiologie du goût) offers the following words in the midst of a meditation upon sleep.

What of the mind in the meantime? It lives its separate life; it is like the pilot of a ship becalmed, a mirror in the night; a lute which no one touches; it awaits some new stimulation.

Our author does concede that certain psychologists "maintain that the mind is never inactive" and he goes on in the next meditation to examine dreaming. And leaves all metaphors of inactivity behind.

And so for day 921
21.06.2009