Hence it is probable that Thinking is the Action, not the Essence of the Soul.
This difference of intention, and remission of the mind in thinking, with a great variety of degrees between earnest study and very near minding nothing at all, every one, I think, has experimented in himself.
Trace it a little further, and you find the mind in sleep retired as it were from the senses, and out of the reach of those motions made on the organs of sense, which at other times produce very vivid and sensible ideas.

I need not, for this, instance in those who sleep out whole stormy nights, without hearing the thunder, or seeing the lightning, or feeling the shaking of the house, which are sensible enough to those who are waking.

But in this retirement of the mind from the senses, it often retains a yet more loose and incoherent manner of thinking, which we call dreaming.

And, last of all, sound sleep closes the scene quite, and puts an end to all appearances.

This, I think almost every one has experience of in himself, and his own observation without difficulty leads him thus far.