FOREWORD
 This book is intended no less for those who do sleep well than for those who do not. It is just as important to be able to teach others to act well as to be able to do so ourselves. To teach we must analyze and comprehend our own action and its motives: for being able to do a thing well is far different from being able to teach it. In order to teach anything we must know how we do it and why others cannot do it. We never know anything thoroughly until we have tried to teach it to another.
 
Many persons sleep well only because they are still, like little children and animals, in the unreflective stage of life. That is the stage of the Natural Man, and it is good in itself; but later the mental life awakes, when consciousness of one’s self begins, and examination of one’s own desires develops. If not rightly understood or if not at least accepted, that development brings anxiety, unrest and disturbance of sleep, and breaks the harmony of the whole nature.
 
The highest stage of development is the spiritual, the all-conscious state which includes and harmonizes the other two. In that we do notxiv lose the ready, overflowing enjoyment of our bodily exercises and functions; rather they are intensified; the physical and the mental are united in the complete life.
 
In order to attain this harmony we must examine the means that we and others use to gain rest and peace; some of these are instinctive and some prudential, and we must perceive why it is that these means work or fail to work in different cases. When, with all our getting, we have gotten this understanding, then, and not till then, all action becomes natural and joyful, for then we understand it all, and follow willingly the leading of the Spirit that is in Man.
 
 
Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night,
Brother to Death, in silent darkness born.
Samuel Daniel.
CHAPTER I SLEEP
 Sancho Panza says: “Now, blessings light on him who first invented sleep! Sleep which covers a man all over, thoughts and all, like a cloak; and is meat for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, heat for the cold, and cold for the hot. Sleep is the current coin that purchases all the pleasures of the world cheap, and the balance that sets the king and shepherd, the fool and the wise man, even.”—“Don Quixote.”
 
Sleeping is the one thing that everyone practices almost daily all his life, and that, nevertheless, hardly anyone does as well as when he began. We have improved in our walking, talking, eating, seeing, and in other acts of skill and habit; but, in spite of our experience, few of us have improved in sleeping: the best sleepers only “sleep like a child.” It must be that we do not do it wisely, else we should by this time do it well.
 
Even the race of mankind as a whole does not seem to be able to use sleep, to summon it, or to control it any better than primitive man did. We talk much of the need of sleep, and sagely discuss its benefits, but we know neither how to use the faculty of sleep to the best advantage nor how to cultivate it.
 
Yet for ages men have studied the mystery of sleep. We have acquired many interesting facts concerning its variation, and have formulated a number of theories concerning its cause and advantages; nevertheless, science has given us little real knowledge of sleep, and less mastery over it.
 
Mankind has had idols ever since consciousness began. Advancing knowledge has changed the nature and number of the idols, but it has not destroyed them. The idol of the present age is “Science,” and men worship it in the degree that it seems to fit their needs. They forget that Science is merely the knowledge of things and persons, arranged and classified, so as to make it available. In its nature it is fallible, for some new phase discovered to-day may show that yesterday’s conclusion was formed from a theory which itself was based on a mistaken premise. Man has caught a glimpse of something that resembled truth, has stated it, reasoned about it, and finally either established its authority or disproved it utterly through the discovery of the real thing he was seeking. Either result was progress, because man grows, as Browning says, “through catching at mistake as midway help, till he reach fact indeed.” So there is no need to be disturbed by the conflicting opinions of men of science touching the purpose or method of sleep. Even the rejected theories have added to the sum of our knowledge, and the field for investigation is still open to all who are faithful in noting and comparing the manifestations of Nature, which the scientists call phenomena.
 
Most of what we call science has to do with physical or material things. Consequently, we find scientists dealing mainly with what may be called tangible phenomena, those which may be measured or weighed or held in the hand or, at least, pinned down by pressure of thumb or finger.
 
Material Science’s estimate of man is largely gauged by
 
“Things done, that took the eye and had the price;
O’er which, from level stand,
The low world laid its hand,
Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice.”
This is the almost inevitable result of looking upon life as purely material or physical. We must view life as physical, but not physical only; as mental, but not mental only; as spiritual, but not spiritual only.
 
In studying sleep and its attendant phenomena all these things must be taken into consideration. So slight a thing as fancy may profoundly influence our acts; fancies not attributable to any material source, so fleeting and evanescent that the clumsy net of language cannot hold them, may induce sleep or destroy sleep.
 
A review of the theories and conclusions of physicians, both scientific and unscientific, as well as of others who have found the study of sleep of absorbing importance, will find a place in our examination of this vital function of organisms.
CHAPTER II HOW MUCH SLEEP
 Six hours in sleep, in law’s grave study six,
Four spend in prayer, the rest on Nature fix.
(Translation.)   Sir Edward Coke.
Man is the highest expression yet discovered of the “living organism,” and sleep has always taken more of his time than any other function. Marie de Manacéïne of St. Petersburg, in her great book called “Sleep,” says: “The weaker the consciousness is, the more easily it is fatigued and in need of sleep; an energetic consciousness, on the contrary, is contented with periods of sleep that are shorter, less deep, and less frequent.” Although the consciousness of the race has developed and strengthened enormously, and is steadily strengthening itself, the old-fashioned idea that one-third of our time should be spent in sleep holds the average mind as strongly as ever. We insist upon it for the young, impress it upon everybody, and look distrustfully upon him who is so daring and unreasonable as to say that he requires less than eight hours of sleep. When an idea is intrenched in the mind it is next to impossible to drive it out by reason or even by repetition.
 
It is the popular belief that Alfred the Great—who is also Alfred the Wise and Alfred the Good (being dead so long)—divided time into three equal parts, and taught that one part should be given to sleep. If he had said this, it would not follow that it is the last and wisest word on the best way to divide our time, but he did not say it. What he said was that one-third of each day should be given to sleep, diet and exercise: that is, that a man should devote eight hours to sleeping, eating and whatever form of exercise or recreation he desired.
 
There is nothing to show that Alfred spent even six hours in sleep, although there is plenty of proof that he recognized the difference between rest and sleep, for he gave the second division of the day—eight hours—to study and to reflection, while the remaining eight hours were to be for business. In those days kings worked hard. Sir Henry Sumner Maine says that the list of places where King John held court shows that even he was as active as any commercial traveler nowadays. (“Early Law and Custom,” p. 183.)
 
But the superstition that Alfred recommended eight hours for sleep will not down, and no amount of argument or proof will7 change the opinion of the average man on this point. “Our forefathers slept eight hours,” they say; “so should we.” We forget that probably the rushlight and the candle had much to do with the long hours of sleep in olden times. As artificial light has improved, sleeping-time has been shortened.
 
There is an old English quatrain which runs:
 
“Nature requires five,
Custom gives seven,
Laziness takes nine
And wickedness eleven.”
But sleep is a natural need, and, like any other natural need, varies in degree in different persons. Dogs, cats and other animals generally sleep more than we do, and their young ones sleep still more. Generally speaking, the infant, whose mental powers have barely awakened, who is, so far as we can tell, merely a human animal, needs more sleep than it will ever need again in its existence. In this great need of sleep the human animal resembles other animals.
 
It frequently happens that, as a man waxes older, he requires less and less sleep than in his growing and most active years. But old people who have outlived their mental life come to a time when they sleep and perform merely the physical functions like the infant; so also with those whose energy so far exceeds their physical strength that the mere effort of living exhausts them. This condition may be in part due to overstrain of the powers of youth and middle age, but it also follows the fixed idea that years diminish strength and lessen energy. It is easy to fall into this notion, for it accords so well with the general idea that rest must come only after the period of activity, whether that period be a day or a lifetime.
 
All of us have had periods when we have needed fewer than our average hours of sleep. People who sleep out of doors or in thoroughly ventilated rooms, under warm but light clothing, find that they need less sleep than when they occupy poorly ventilated rooms and wrap themselves in heavy, unhygienic clothing. Fresh discoveries are being made almost daily by those who give intelligent consideration to these things.
 
Even babies differ in their need of sleep. I know one healthy, happy, beautiful baby who has never slept the average sixteen hours that babies are supposed to need. This child is now between three and four years of age, and has never gone to sleep before nine or half-past nine at night. Her parents had the common idea of long hours of sleep for infants, and the child had a hard struggle for a while to convince them that she had no such need: such struggles are often called “naughtiness.” She was regularly put to bed at seven o’clock, and all the usual devices for enticing a baby to sleep were practiced. Sometimes she was left severely alone, sometimes she had gentle lullabies sung to her, but, whether alone or in company, this particular baby played and enjoyed herself until between nine and nine-thirty, when she quietly dropped to sleep. She awoke as early as the average baby wakes, happy and refreshed, and her parents finally learned that there is no sleeping rule that has no exceptions, whether applied to infants or adults.
 
Drowsiness is a sign that we ought to sleep, just as hunger is a sign that we ought to eat. Natural wakefulness means that we ought not to sleep. The child tries to obey the promptings of nature, but we think these promptings are wrong, if not wicked, and force him into all sorts of bad habits. Says Michelet, “No consecrated absurdity could have stood its ground if the man had not silenced the objections of the child.” We are slowly learning that there is no need or function of the body or of the mind that is exactly the same in all individuals, or that is always the same even in the same individual.
 
But, in spite of this dawning knowledge, we still view with alarm any disregard of the rule, either in ourselves or another; so true it is, as Thomas Paine says, that “It is a faculty of the human mind to become what it contemplates.” We have looked upon ourselves as having certain, unvarying, imperative needs until we have almost become subject to them.
CHAPTER III THE TIME OF SLEEP
 “Women, like children, require more sleep normally than men, but ‘Macfarlane states that they can better bear the loss of sleep, and most physicians will agree with him.’”
 
H. Campbell.
 
The amount of sleep, like the amount of food, required by an individual varies greatly, depending largely upon the conditions at the time. Edison, for instance, can go days without sleep when engrossed in some invention, and he has been quoted as saying that people sleep too much, four hours daily being quite sufficient.
 
In answer to my inquiry, Mr. Edison’s secretary wrote, “Mr. Edison directs me to write you that the statement is correct, that for thirty years he did not get four hours of sleep per day.” Evidently, experience taught him that an average of four hours per day, if taken rightly and at the right time, is enough for him. He keeps a couch in his workroom so as to sleep when he is sleepy. He does not need a clock to tell him when to go to bed, any more than you need a thermometer to tell you when to pull up the blankets.
CHAPTER IV WHAT SLEEP MAY MEAN
 O Sleep, we are beholden to thee, Sleep,
Thou bearest angels to us in the night,
Saints out of heaven with palms.
Jean Ingelow.
We know so little about sleep, positively, that anyone may assume one thing or another about it, so long as what he assumes accords with what we do know positively.
 
It has been surmised that, during sleep, the subconscious mind is busy with the day’s impressions of the objective mind,[2] fitting and relating them to past experiences, the sum of which makes up the man himself. The subconscious mind is, in a sense, man’s attitude to life. It receives suggestions more easily than the objective mind receives them, and has more effect upon man’s understanding of life. If our last conscious thought is a loving thought toward all living things, we have aided the latent mind in its effort to get in tune with the infinite harmony of life. Alice Herring Christopher,16 the metaphysician, once told me that every night as she drops off to sleep she says to herself that she is going to have a lovely time, and as a consequence she does; and that, on waking, she tries to realize how delightful her sleep has been.
 
There is an old saying that, when a baby smiles in its sleep, it is because the angels are whispering to it, and, if we kept ourselves in communion with the substance of things, “angels” might bring us sweet messages, too. They surely will, if we drop to sleep as lovingly and peacefully as a little child.
 
Another friend of mine, who has the faculty of wearing herself out with the excitement of each day’s experiences, is learning to offset this unnecessary drain upon her strength by suggesting to herself each night, “I shall wake rested and refreshed in the morning.” By this means she is gaining in nervous poise, and averting the numerous “break-downs” from which she used to suffer. Having made this much progress,—which brings her “not far from the kingdom,”—it only remains for her to make the full claim for the fulfillment of the promise, “Ye shall find rest to your souls,” to secure it.
CHAPTER V HOW TO GO TO SLEEP
 Sleep sweetly, tender heart in peace!
Tennyson.
 
Man craves sleep. If we know of a friend who is suffering in body or mind we wish him sleep; mothers soothe their pain-racked or terrified children to sleep with every gentle art known to them; if, for any reason, man is out of harmony with his life as he sees it, he instinctively turns to “Nature’s sweet restorer.” It is a sovereign balm for many ills, yet we seldom recognize wherein its virtue lies. During his waking hours man is frequently at odds with his surroundings. He is out of tune with the real things of life and is apt to mistake the material side of his life for the whole of his being. But when sleeping he is less hampered with the impressions of the workaday world, less resistant, and, therefore, more harmonious. It is in this mental relaxation that the true benefit of sleep consists.
 
We have as yet no conception of the immense import of suggestion to ourselves or others as a cure for body or mind. Suggestions may often be made to a person sound asleep, but they are most effective just at the time when the reason and the will are losing control of the mind, although consciousness has not yet lost its grip.
 
Accordingly it helps our growth to relax the whole nature before going to sleep and to drop into the mind the thought of peace and harmony; the assurance that all is and must be well. To do this is to get the best sort of sleep, the sleep that binds us closer to our fellows and makes us feel the oneness of all life. This is the sleep from which we awake refreshed, ready to take up the day’s duties cheerfully. It is an old country saying, when a person seems what is called “out of sorts” in the morning, that “he got out on the wrong side of the bed.” But it is much more likely that he went to sleep in the wrong way: that is, in an unloving frame of mind.
 
“Let not the sun go down upon your wrath” has a wider significance than we usually realize. As a matter of mere physical well-being, if we have allowed the lack of knowledge or the selfishness of our brother to annoy or irritate us, it is well to wipe away all traces of that irritation before lying down to rest. It is well, when possible, to seek the “little one” we have offended, through our own ignorance or selfishness, and make our peace by confessing the fault; while, if we are still self-centered enough to feel that our brother has dealt harshly with us, we may remove all the sting by thinking lovingly of him. As the soft answer turneth away wrath, so the soft attitude turneth out wrath, both from ourselves and from him. Each day should complete itself. Sufficient unto the day is the good and the evil thereof, and to attempt to carry over the evil through resentment until another day is but to lay up trouble for ourselves.
 
For, after all, it is lack of knowledge or understanding that makes our brother unkind to us or us to him. Each is doing the best he can, being such a man as he is. Each of us has still some of that separateness which makes us regard our own interests as apart from other interests, or hostile to them. What our brother does, therefore, he does because it seems to him the best thing for himself. As soon as he sees that one cannot truly prosper at the expense of another, because we are all one, he will give up his stupid ways—as we shall give up our stupid ways when we see that same truth. Until then it is useless to be angry or upset, for that is only to show that we, too, are unable to see the oneness of all. As it is bad for our brother that he is so blind, it were more consistent that we should feel sorrow than anger at his self-injury.
 
Epictetus understood that, nineteen hundred years ago, and we have not become so stupid as to deny it; we only forget. He saw that there is only one kind of motive in all men—they are moved by what they think is right and best for themselves. Said he, “It is impossible to judge one thing best for me and to seek a different one, to judge one thing right and be inclined towards another.” We all know this about ourselves, but we do not see it so plainly about others.
 
If we felt this about all men, we should not have “indignation with the multitude.” For what are all their wrongdoings? Is it not that they are “mistaken about the things that are good and evil? Shall we then be indignant with them, or shall we only pity them?... Show them the error and we shall see how they will cease from it when they really see it. But, if they do not see the error, they have naught better than the deceptive appearance of the thing as it looks to them.” For, argues Epictetus, “this man who errs and is deceived concerning things of the greatest moment is blinded, not in the vision that distinguished black and white, but in the judgment which distinguished Good and Evil.... If it is the greatest misfortune to be deprived of the greatest things, and the greatest thing in every man is a Will such as he ought to have, and if one be deprived of this, why are we still indignant with him?... We need not be moved contrary to Nature by the evil deeds of other men. Pity them rather, be not inclined to offense and hatred.... When someone may do us an injury or speak ill of us, remember that he does it or speaks it, believing that it is meet and best for him to do so. It is not possible, then, that he can do the thing that appears best to you, but the thing that appears best to him. Wherefore, if good appears evil to him, it is he that is injured, being deceived. For, if anyone takes a true consequence to be false, it is not the consequence that is injured, but he is injured who is deceived. Setting out, then, with these opinions, you will bear a gentle mind toward any man who may injure you. For, say on each occasion, ‘so it appeared to him.’” Forgive: and if you must blame somebody, blame yourself—you can forgive yourself so easily.
 
So we shall find sleep more restful if we leave behind us all the shortcomings of ourselves and of our fellows, and approach that season of seeming forgetfulness with love towards all. Calm as an infant’s sleep will be the slumber of the all-loving man, and for him the new day will dawn with increased brightness; his strength shall be renewed, and his joy be more abundant.
 
If we always lie down to sleep with this attitude, regarding the darkness not merely as the time when the physical man should rest, but25 also as a growing time for the spiritual man, it will not be long before we adjust our daily life to more harmonious relations with the universe. The more lovingly we live, the sweeter and sounder will be our slumber, for so it is that “He giveth his beloved sleep.”
CHAPTER VI SLEEP IS NATURAL
 Sleep is the joy of life.
Wu Ting Fang.
 
Man has not gone so far beyond the animal stage of development as to have cast aside all the weights that hinder him in his further progress. He has considered three substantial meals daily necessary to his health, and if, for any reason, his system refused to take that quantity of food, he has worried himself almost into a fever over it. Or, he has consulted a physician who has usually given him a tonic; a tonic is something to stimulate the jaded appetite, or compel the surfeited stomach to do more work than it should.
 
Recent research has shown that this overworking of the digestive organs is a fruitful source of physical disease, that it dulls the mind and chills the spirit. Our loving Mother Nature punishes each excess, because pain quickest draws our attention to our wrongdoing. The flesh strives with us as well as the Spirit, for we reap in our own bodies the fruit of our ways; still man looks everywhere but within for advice and counsel. His feelings may warn him that he is pursuing the wrong course, but, until some authority has assured him that he is doing wrong, he rarely pays heed to his inner warnings.
 
Gluttony is one of the evils which Nature tries to save man from. The stomach rebels when it is made to dispose of too much material, and calls in the rest of the body to assist in making a protest. The head aches, the heart works uneasily, the liver and bowels become inactive, the limbs grow heavy, and the whole abused man is ill at ease. A bad breath is worse than an evil spirit, and a bad digestion is a surer sign of ill-doing than a bad conscience. Nature has done her best to show the foolishness of overeating; it is not her fault if man persists in this course in spite of her warnings, but she takes care that he pays the price of his wrongdoing, sometimes in sleeplessness, often in even more serious ways.
 
Overeating has been the fashion for centuries. We have thought that, the more we eat, the stronger we should become, and mankind has followed that fashion despite the ills that it has caused, forgetting that it is what we digest, not what we eat, that nourishes. The effects of overeating are both direct and indirect. The direct effects are those that dog the heels of the offense. These effects, when acute, have even caused death in a few hours or days, as with King John and his “dish of lamprey eels,” but some of the indirect effects are more direful. Much of the use of alcoholic liquors is due to overeating. When we have eaten too much, and the digestive organs are so overloaded that they cannot work, we take alcohol in some form to stimulate them to greater action. As we continue the wrong practice, it requires more and more liquor to stimulate us, usually ending in stupor, a parody of sleep. In a short time that which we used to cure or offset one evil has created a habit, in itself a greater evil.
 
It took us a long time to see the connection between illness, drunkenness, and overeating. We now know that drink becomes a habit and after that a disease. If we look at mankind in the mass, drunkenness appears plainly as the result of two general causes, overstimulation of the indulgent classes, and the malnutrition that craves stimulants in the masses of the underfed.
 
Like every other faculty, consciousness becomes dulled through lack of exercise. It follows that oversleeping inclines to dullness and stupidity. Further, the body will readily accommodate itself to the physiological conditions that prevail during sleep, to a changed blood circulation, and breathing. The oversleeping may come to resemble the hibernation of some animals. For those inclined to drowsiness or to unnaturally long sleep, real interests in life29 are helpful, also amusements, pleasant society in the evenings, and even tea and coffee or other mild stimulants are useful.
 
Meanwhile, some people, at least, think they suffer from insomnia, who in fact suffer from going to bed too soon or lying abed too late—in the struggle to sleep more than they need.
CHAPTER VII THE DUPLEX MIND
 Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth
Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.
Milton.
We must not forget that it is easy to miss the good results of any natural function, and, through misuse, get only poor results. As in the matter of eating, we should get only good from satisfying our hunger, but the acquired habit of eating more than we need or can digest does incalculable harm. In the same way we may misuse sleep, and so lose its best benefits.
 
“Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care,” may be made, as Shakespeare says, a repairing time as well as a resting time, for as Iamblichus, the Neo-Platonic philosopher saw, “The night-time of the body is the daytime of the soul.” With some insight into the best uses of this natural habit, Iamblichus further said that, during sleep, “the nobler part of the soul is united by abstraction to higher natures and becomes a participant in the wisdom and foreknowledge of the gods.” Dr. Thomas J. Hudson’s claim made a very popular appeal, that there is a subjective mind made up of our inner knowledge, our own intuitions and mental processes. He alleged it to be a part of our being that is able, in some instances—as in the case of “lightning calculators,” of mind-readers and of some clairvoyants—to perceive the relations of things without reasoning them out, and to perceive the fixed laws of Nature without the aid of the senses.[3] He concluded that this mind or this faculty of mind is an inheritance from experiences and conclusions of the race in its upward growth.
 
Swedenborg also, who was at least a noted scientist, divided the mind into the Interior, corresponding to the subjective mind, and the Exterior or reasoning memory.[4]
 
The objective mind, as it may be called, is what we all know as mind or intellect, that part which deals with external objects, getting its impressions and reaching its conclusions from observation. It is differently affected in different individuals by such purely physical things as sight and hearing. For a proof of this, ask any two persons who have seen and heard and been affected by something you have seen and felt, to describe its effect upon them, and the mental picture they have of it. Not only will they not agree in detail with each other, but you will find that neither has seen it in the same way that you have.
 
Modern science cannot accept the statement that foreign, mysterious agencies control the mind during sleep; but may not some such experience as that which Iamblichus describes, come to us in sleep by the spirit working, not from without, but from within us? Our spiritual nature is freed at night from the incessant calls that beset us during the day. In the calm that comes over it in the night-time the doors of the storehouses of memory may stand wide open before it, and it may lead perhaps a broader, fuller life.
 
Professor William James has shown that in our waking hours, each of us is not so much a single self as a cluster of separate selves—a business self, social self, the material self, and so on—all making up the man as his casual acquaintances know him. Professor James found that in every individual there is rivalry and sometimes discord among these partial selves. Now may it not be that in the silence, these warring factions lose their identity in a state of broader conscious life, and merge themselves into a harmoniously acting “Spiritual Me”?
 
From the standpoint of this spiritual self, then, the waking state shows only the objective aspects of the mind. It is that understanding which shows us all men working, whether willingly or unwillingly, for the common good, and each receiving what he needs or has power to use. It is a recognition that all men are comprehended in the Spirit’s plan, that nothing can be for the common harm; that even mistakes work out for good, and that life gives to each the experience from which he will get most development and the power which he can best use and relate to his whole life. From the spiritual standpoint the subjective mind is the indwelling life of the soul; and its growth a matter of gradual self-attainment. At its highest stage it is the realization of that which we have in common with everyone—that understanding and that consciousness of the law of harmony which makes us love all mankind, and live in communion with the love that is the substance of all things. The separate self does not appear at all on the horizon of such thought and purpose.
 
We have all had a consciousness of this love at some time in our lives, no matter how the cares of the world may have choked it out. It was this consciousness that made a little boy say, in a burst of happiness, “I love everything, and everything loves me.” When we “become like a little child” in this sense, we, too, recognize the love that binds all life in one.
 
When we can harmonize these two—the sub34conscious, that knows no separate self, with the objective, that can see all men as one because it sees all men as working for the same end—we shall have rest and harmony instead of worry, the insanity of the spiritual mind.
 
The objective mind which is active during waking hours, apparently rests during sleep; the subconscious mind is ever busy. Like the heart or the digestive organs, the subconscious mind carries on its work during that break in our usual consciousness which we call sleep. How this is done we do not know, any more than we know how the physical organs carry on their work while we are wrapped in slumber and unconscious of all about us. There are very few, though, who have not had some proof of the activity of the latent mind during sleep. That somehow this under-mind does work in an “uncanny” way—that is to say, in an unknown way—is shown by the fact that most persons can wake up at any hour that they fix in their minds without being called and without the abominable alarm clock.
 
It is a common enough thing to hear people say, “I do not know how I knew that; I never remember hearing it; it just came to me.” Or, “I tried and tried to think of that yesterday, and could not, but, when I woke this morning, it was the first thing that came to my mind.” Such incidents show that some process of which we are not objectively conscious is going on all35 the time; that no mental experience is destroyed or wholly dissipated. The common wish is “to sleep over” any perplexing matter. After a good sleep our ideas are often better arranged than when we fell asleep.
 
I have a friend who drops all her problems into her subconscious thought, refuses to be “exercised in her mind” about them, and leaves them for the latent mind to answer. So long as she views them from the objective, conscious point of view only, she finds herself worrying and losing sleep. The sleep-won mind, the “all-knowing Self,” as it were, is not touched by worry, perhaps because, in communion with the substance of all experience, it perceives that there are few “problems” in life, when she does not persist in regarding as a “problem” each separate experience.
 
We must learn to connect each experience with what we know of our life up to that point and with what we think it is meant to be. This effort will often show us, or itself prove to be, the key to the “problem.” But it is only the scientific expert, one who has a perfect conception of the workings of all the parts of the frame, who can take one bone and reconstruct from it the entire structure of the extinct animal. That would be impossible for the tyro, and most of us are tyros in the science of living.
 
CHAPTER VIII WAKEFULNESS
 And Sleep will not lie down but walks
Wild-eyed and cries to time.
“Ballad of Reading Gaol.”
Oscar Wilde.
The fact that we confound rest and sleep makes us regard wakefulness as an evil. We go to bed to sleep, and, if sleep does not come at once, we begin to fret and to toss and we try by every means that we know to force ourselves to sleep. We never accomplish anything that way, because it is essentially opposed to the nature of sleep. Sleep, to be refreshing, must be complete relaxation of mind and body, and that is not gained by striving. Natural sleep is merely “letting go,” which is just what so many find hard to do. The course is so simple and plain that “the wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein,” but he often does err in spite of its simplicity; and sometimes, perhaps, even because of its simplicity.
 
Naaman, captain of the host of Syria, went to the Israelitish prophet, Elisha, to be cured of his leprosy. As he was a great man with his master, he expected some special ceremony done for him. Imagine his surprise and wrath when bidden to wash in the River Jordan.
 
At first Naaman went away in a rage; such advice ill-befitted his ideas of his needs. If it were enough that he should bathe in a river, why in Jordan? “Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?” Why not wash in them and be clean? And Naaman turned and went away.
 
But his servants questioned him and said: “Had the prophet bid thee do some great thing, wouldst thou not have done it? How much rather then when he saith to thee ‘wash and be clean’?” Then Naaman yielded and was made whole.
 
This story is a picture of our own ways. We despise the remedy that is simple, and we feel sure that, had it been some great thing, we should have found it easier to do. We are unwilling to accept simple, natural explanations of our difficulties. We feel so because we think so highly of ourselves. We forget that the greatest things are often the simplest, and, if the natural things are too hard for us to do, it is because we lack that true greatness which sees and welcomes directness.
 
If man understood his life better, he would cease to think of anything as an “accident” without a cause. He would know that nothing can occur to him that does not signify something to him in relation to his share in the plan of the Universe. He would understand that so simple a thing as whether or not he shall fall asleep as soon as he lies down to rest, or whether he shall find that “sleep has forsaken his eyes and slumber his eyelids,” may be an experience of great importance to him.
 
Every incident of life is subject to law; yet many of the most important functions of the body are performed without any consciousness of their relation and dependence one upon another: as, for instance, breathing upon the circulation of the blood, which in turn depends upon the heart’s pumping, and that upon the digestion, and that upon the food, and so on; the same is true of mental activities, and must be true of spiritual activities, for the same law runs through all of life. The wakefulness surely has some cause and some significance, else it had not been.
 
When something “goes wrong,” we are forced to look into our case, and note the relation of one state of mind or body to other states. It is then, if ever, that we learn which is cause and which is effect; how mistakes result in pain and pain warns us of mistakes, and how one necessarily follows the other. If it were not for the pain that follows the violation of some natural law, man might go on in his unwise course until he had altogether destroyed his physical body.
 
 
It is the pain from the burn on the tiny hand that warns the infant not again to touch what he is told is “hot.” If fire did not pain the body, we might be destroyed by flames without making any effort to escape. In fact, the chilliness and numbness of the African “sleeping sickness” often lead patients actually to burn off their hands or feet in the effort to get warm. It is quite possible that, if there were no pains in child-birth, women would bear children continually until they were themselves exhausted or their progeny overran one another. It is pain that tells us that a tooth is decayed, so that even toothache may be a blessing.
 
Therefore, if we are wise, instead of rebelling against pain, we should accept it gratefully as the helper and the possible preserver of our lives, and we should accept the wakefulness quietly as the sign of something that needs correction, or else as an opportunity for quiet thought and reflection.
 
When we have found what is wrong, and do our best to correct it, not only is the attention drawn from the pain to the remedy, but the effort to relieve it lessens the effect of the suffering.
CHAPTER IX SIMPLE CAUSES OF WAKEFULNESS
 Where care lodges, sleep will never lie.
Shakespeare.
 
We all know the blessing of sleep, but it is hard to show the sufferer that wakefulness is useful.
 
Wakefulness always has some cause, and, if we truly wish to be cured of it, it will be well to seek the cause rather than to grumble at the wakefulness itself. It is not enough to know what is the matter, we must find out why it is the matter. To find the cause of any condition simplifies matters; it makes the course we must follow clearer. If the cause can be removed, we should bend all our energies to removing it; to paraphrase Stephen Pearl Andrews’ saying—we are not to be subject to circumstances, but rather to make ourselves center-stances. But, if the matter be something over which we have no control, there are two courses open to us: the first is to accept the condition and adapt ourselves to it; the second is to devise some method by which we may gain control over it.
 
A childish story will illustrate this:
 
41
 
Once there was a squirrel that did not like its home, and it used to scold and find fault with everything. Its papa squirrel had long gray whiskers, so he was wise. He said to the squirrel: “My dear, as you do not like your home, there are three sensible things you could do:
 
Leave it,
or Change it,
or Suit yourself to it.
Any one of these would help you in your trouble.” But the little squirrel said, “Oh! I do not want to do any of those; I had rather sit on the branch of a tree and scold.” “Well,” said the papa squirrel, “if you must do that, whenever you want to scold, just go out on a branch and scold away at someone you do not know.” The little squirrel blushed so much that he became a red squirrel, and you will notice that to this day red squirrels do just that thing.
 
Whatever course we pursue, we find something to do in connection with the underlying principle or cause; this doing prevents us from wasting energy and patience upon mere effects. That is an advantage, for any action relieves mental pain, and often relieves physical pain, too. The victim writhes not only in its effort to escape, but in the effort to express its feeling, to respond to the excited nerves, just as we dance about or hop up and down when we hit our finger with the hammer. We often hear people deplore that their suffering is increased because they can do nothing to remedy the trouble. We frequently exclaim, “It would be easier to bear, if only I could do something.” A knowledge of what to do and how to do it always helps toward peace of mind.
 
When yellow fever was one of the “mysterious dispensations of Providence,” men of science fought only its symptoms, with very indifferent success. The people in the district where the fever broke out were panic-stricken; those who could fled from the place; those who were compelled to remain went about in fear of their lives. Now that we believe that the bite of an infected mosquito is the once “mysterious dispensation,” we no longer allow the infection to spread. Fear and unreason might have continued to treat outbreaks and epidemics of yellow fever for centuries to come without lasting advantage to the plague-ridden spots, but the knowledge of what to do and how to do it has made yellow fever a preventable evil. It has no terrors for an intelligent community.
 
So with wakefulness. If we find ourselves wakeful when we should be sleeping, the first thing to do is to find the reason.
 
Sometimes we cause our own sleeplessness unsuspectingly, but none the less deliberately,43 by the false requirements that we lay upon ourselves. People often say, “I could not go to sleep in a room like that.” If there is time and opportunity to put the room in order, why do it; but, if not, we can resolve, as the boys say, to “forget it.” Many a woman frets and disturbs herself continually by putting things in what she considers order, which things are no better for being rearranged and which generally cannot stay in order—endless pushing in of chairs and placing pamphlets or books with the little ones on top and the big ones at the bottom; a constant and wearisome struggle to keep all the shades in the house in a line. The labor of Sisyphus, who had forever to roll a great stone up a sand hill, would be restful compared with that. I knew a man once who would be entirely upset, and would upset all the people about him, if his stockings that came from the wash were not placed below those in the drawer so that they would surely be used in rotation.
 
Some persons cannot sleep after dawn if the light shines on their faces, yet are so possessed by the idea of order that they will not move the bed, disarrange the furniture to make a screen, or even sleep with their heads at the foot of the bed.
 
Another person insists always on being waked up by the last person to come home in order to be sure that the house was closed up. Still another cannot go to sleep till he has balanced up every cent of petty cash spent that day.
 
Many persons spend the most of their thought and exhaust themselves over things that are just as trivial and inconsequent as these; though they seem important to them. When anything has become such a habit, even though reasonable in itself, that you cannot sleep without it, you are paying too dear for it and it is time to change it. There is danger even in good habits—they may master us.
 
It may be that we have had some stimulating mental experience which has not yet relaxed its grip upon our attention. In such case even bodily weariness is apt to be forgotten, for, after all, every physical sensation is dependent upon some mental condition, whether fleeting or permanent. It is this interdependence of physical feeling and thought which makes it possible to recall emotions of pain or sorrow, of comfort or joy. The sight, the touch, or the smell of certain things will bring back sensations that once accompanied them, whether those sensations be painful or pleasant.
 
If the mind has been so stimulated that it cannot relax, there is little likelihood that sleep will come quickly, but we cannot relax by impatience. Tossing and turning will not quiet the mind; we must either accept the condition calmly and follow out the train of thought that has started or deliberately side-track the exciting cause. This may be done by setting up a counter activity in the mind along quieting lines. For instance, if one had walked the streets late on some such occasion as a New Year’s Eve celebration in New York, and had become stimulated by the lights and the crowds, he might deliberately recall the most peaceful day in the country that it had been his fortune ever to know.
 
A typical scene of this sort is a warm Sunday in late spring, when all the usual activities of country life have ceased; the air is heavy with the scent of clover and field flowers, the apple blossoms, and the thousand odors of the fresh country field; the air moving so lazily that it scarcely stirs the trees; the cow chewing the meditative cud; the bees buzzing dreamily; the very horses, standing under the shed of the little white country church, whinnying softly to each other, as knowing that a spell of peace is over all, a spell that must not be broken; while from the church itself comes the drone of the preacher,—each little stir a part of the peace that broods over the day. Think of some such thing as that, recall it in all its details, and the chances are that the drowsiness induced at the time, whether one were of the congregation or a mere onlooker, will again steal over the eyelids and, before one is aware of any change, he is well on the way to the land of dreams.
 
 
In the same way if one has read an exciting book, or has seen a thrilling play, one may either live them over until the feelings exhaust themselves, because no longer new, or one may deliberately divert one’s self from thinking of them and devote the attention to more soothing things. Either course removes all cause for impatience with the fact of wakefulness and leaves the mind quieted. This tends to drowsiness, even if it does not really induce sleep.
 
Sometimes it may help us if we rise and read some quieting book, not “a thriller.” Such a volume as Thoreau’s “Walden,” or that more modern little volume, “Adventures in Contentment,” by David Grayson, or we may repeat some soothing poem like Tennyson’s “Sweet and Low,” or Burroughs’ “My Own Shall Come to Me” and similar verses.
 
Any of these will help to relax tension, and put us in a more restful frame of mind, and, as minds differ, so some persons will find books and verses of other sorts to have the desired effect upon them.
 
When we cannot sleep, to rise, throw back the bed-clothes so as to cool the bed, walk about the room, go to the window and fill the lungs with oxygen often tend to quiet the body and mind. We must learn to know our own needs and to find out each for himself what meets them. To “know thyself” is only the first step to control thyself.
CHAPTER X “LIGHT” SLEEPERS
 He sleeps well who knows not that he sleeps ill.
Publius Syrus ( b.c.).
 
Someone may say that such things as stimulation of the mind are simple causes of wakefulness, and so easily overcome that it is hardly necessary to consider them; yet, simple as they are, they frequently make the wakeful one impatient. The more complex causes are really as easily dealt with as these simple ones, when once we have learned to control the mind. Take, for instance, the complaining “light sleeper” who cannot sleep if anybody else makes a noise, or if anything out of the ordinary occurs. He is in a steady state of apprehension lest something will happen to disturb his rest; and generally something does happen. A baby cries, a dog barks, a heavily-laden team lumbers by, an automobile honks, a locomotive shrieks, or a steamer whistles, and sleep forsakes him for the night.
 
He pronounces anathema on the offending cause; he pities himself for his sensitiveness,48 at the same time that he almost despises his fellows who are so “dead and unresponsive that they can sleep through such a racket” he suffers at the thought that he may get no more sleep, yet he enjoys the prospect of rehearsing to a sympathizing audience in the morning the tortures of such a delicate organization as his. This sort of sleeplessness is made up of so many contributing causes that it is difficult for any but the most perfectly honest man to decide what makes him so susceptible to noise. But it is undoubtedly true that some of these causes are due to fear, to training, and, most of all, to self-interest.
 
It is always difficult to make the super-sensitive person realize that his suffering is due chiefly to self-consideration and a desire to control others. It is an undue recognition of one’s own claim upon the very circumstances of life that makes one offer so many surfaces which may be “hurt.” We may be disturbed in our sleep by the ordinary pursuits of our fellows because we have an exaggerated idea of the importance of certain conditions that appeal to us and make for our comfort. We wish to sleep at a certain time, and we should like to regulate all our neighbors so that they, too, should suspend all activities at that same time. We accustom ourselves to quiet; and then insist that we cannot do without it.
 
There is a story told of a man working in a foundry who formed a part of two “shifts” of workmen and betweenwhiles slept for some hours in the foundry. When released from that strain, he found that he could not sleep at home because it was so quiet, and it became necessary for the members of his family to unite in making ringing, pounding noises to lull him to slumber.
 
It is a well-known fact that those who live near the cataracts of the Nile cannot sleep if they get beyond the sound of the pounding. Soldiers, who are wearied after a hard day’s march or fighting, will sleep soundly beside twenty-four pounder guns steadily firing; or even sleep on the march, their legs moving mechanically though their senses are steeped in sleep.
 
Country people coming to the city are kept awake by the unusual street noises, while city-dwellers, accustomed to the roar of elevated or subway trains, are unable to sleep in the country because of the intense silence which Nature’s noises often emphasize.
 
Unreflecting man is a creature of habit: if any change occurs in his routine, he finds it difficult to adapt himself to it. He seldom comes to understand that it is chiefly insistence upon his own needs as apart from the needs or interests of others that makes him require certain conditions for sleeping. In either case the cause of wakefulness is easily found; but nobody other than the individual most concerned can remove it.
 
If we are living in selfish disharmony with our fellows; if we are indulging feelings of envy, malice, uncharitableness or hatred towards those about us, we are not likely to sleep refreshingly. All such emotions do more harm to the one who feels them than to those against whom they are directed. They may undermine the health, destroy the mental poise, and blot out the sense of kinship with mankind. The Hebrews understood that so well that he who would offer a sacrifice is reminded that, if he have aught against his brother, he must leave his gift at the altar and make his peace before he can offer an acceptable sacrifice to God.
 
If wakefulness be the result of impatience with our brother, there is only one cure for it: that is, to replace it with loving patience. It is the lack of love, or the possession of very narrow love, that causes us pain in our relations with other people.
 
CHAPTER XI THE GIFTS OF WAKEFULNESS
 But,” you say, “I am not full of uncharitableness towards my fellows and I am willing they should live their own lives; I am greatly worried about my own affairs and all my cares come trooping back to me as soon as I lie down. I cannot sleep for worry.” Yes; but is not that only another form of selfishness? A subtle form, but none the less disturbing. Moreover, it is shortsighted, as is all selfishness, for it is a boomerang. If the worry is about business, we shall need a clear brain and a steady nerve to face the condition that is causing the uneasiness; and worry at night will not give us these. On the contrary, it will destroy what remnant of poise we may have.
 
The solution of trouble is not found in worry. Just recall how often you have said yourself, or heard somebody say, “After all my worrying it came out all right; it is strange that I never once thought of that way.” Worry prevents clear thinking, or, indeed, thinking of any sort. We go around and around in a circle un52til we grow giddy and faint with apprehension, while all the time we might have peace if we but looked at life aright, to see that, in the words of the old Book, “it is all very good.” When a mechanic is putting a machine together and finds that the parts do not fit, that they do not “go right” or harmonize, he will reach one of two conclusions. Either the maker did not know his business, and so did not make the parts to fit, or else he, himself, is putting them together in the wrong way. If he wants to put that machine together so that it will work well, he will look into the matter carefully, examining each part, all the time keeping in his mind a conception of the complete machine. He will probably find that he has been trying to fit two unrelated parts together, or has reversed their position, misunderstood or only partially understood their uses, or has done something through carelessness that may easily be corrected. Of course, if he is a stupid or foolish workman, and not a skilled mechanic, he may persist in his wrong course and fail to get the machine into working order. But that is not the fault of the maker, nor does it prove that the machine would not do perfect work if it were rightly understood and intelligently controlled. So it is with the Cosmos, the orderly world, which will go right for us if we do our part right.
 
The first step towards knowing how to get anything is to have a clear idea of what it is that we want; for development is not thrust upon us, nor dropped upon us by our parents. It is desire that creates function; the creature that wants to swim is the creature that learns to swim; the bird that does not want to fly will lose the power; before we can rise higher, we must look higher.
 
“When the ideal once alights in our streets,” says Edward Carpenter, “we may go home to supper in peace, the rest will be seen to.” But, if we enjoy worry as the countryman’s wife “enjoys poor health,” we shall continue to have it, for we always get what we most want, if we set about it in the right way. And if we do not want worry, we need not worry. If the trouble is unavoidable or unchangeable, it were wise to use our powers to adjust ourselves to the inevitable. If it be a curable trouble, the only thing is to discover or devise a cure. As soon as we start to work we cease to worry, because worry and effective activity cannot exist at the same time. Man, at least, is such a creature that any real action looking towards a definite end brings him pleasure; and, though the action may have been stimulated by pain, yet the pleasure he finds in the action mitigates, if it does not destroy, the pain.
 
If the original cause for the worry lies in our own ignorance, selfishness, or thoughtlessness, the anxiety may teach us to repair the ill so that we may not have to get the same lesson again. But worrying will teach us less than a cheerful acceptance of the facts—or than that courage which says,
 
“And still the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid”—
and one of the best aids to cheerfulness is sound, refreshing sleep. If we should put off all worrying until the morning, there would be very little worrying done by the normal, healthy person, for, after a good night’s sleep and in the clear light of day, things look much better than they did in the darkness and solitude of the night, with mind and body worn from the activities of the day.
 
If we feel that our affairs are too important to be left to the care of the Providence that keepeth Israel, and slumbers not nor sleeps, then at least we may wait until morning to give our attention to them. It is unfair to bring exhausted faculties to bear upon matters of so great weight. If our troubles can be helped by worrying, we should worry when we are in the best possible trim. To do less were to underestimate their importance and to prove that, anyway, they are not worth losing sleep over.
 
But there is still another way of looking at wakefulness, when we cannot trace the cause of it. It may be the time sent to us by the Spirit for quiet thought. The ancients believed that God spoke in visions of the night. We may not always be able to sleep, but we can always lie in the arms of our Great Mother Nature. There is a real philosophy as well as devotion in the old prayer we teach our children, “Now I lay me down to sleep.” A still older form of the almost instinctive recognition of the fact that sleeping is but intrusting ourselves to the Universal love was, “He committed himself to God in sleep.” Like sleep, a wakeful night may be a growing time. It affords the quiet, the time, the seclusion to think over the meanings of things, or even to seek the cause of the wakefulness itself. For that is the first thing to do if we find ourselves wakeful; if the cause be so obscure that we cannot find it, then the best thing to do is to accept the fact.
 
Either we do not need the sleep we are seeking,—the reclining position being all the rest the body needs,—or else we do need the wakefulness to teach us something that we can learn or will learn in no other way. It is a time when, free from the watchful eyes of those who love us, or those who do not love us, we need not fear to look at ourselves, our motives, our relations to our fellows.
 
It may be only at such a time that we can feel the closeness of the tie that binds all mankind, only in such a time that a life-giving sense of oneness can renew life and joy. Some persons are so acutely conscious of the surge around them during the day that it is difficult, if not impossible, for them to get any large view of it. They are so beset and bewildered by each little detail of life that they cannot see any relation among things as a whole, cannot “see the wood for the trees.” Or, it may be that a lack of poise, a false estimate of the relations of things, makes them find “their own affairs” so interesting or exhausting that the observing mind gets no large or deep impressions to be added to the sum of the knowledge the inner self possesses.
 
For either of these classes the wakeful night may prove more restful and helpful than hours of sleep. It may be made to bring a breadth of view that will lift one out of the narrow limits in which daily life is passed. It may do as much as this for any of us, and, if we reject the receptive mood, and insist upon objecting to the wakefulness, we may thereby deprive ourselves of some of the most illuminating experiences.
 
Someone has said: “Sleep, like drink, may drown our sorrows, yet it also drowns our joys. What could we not accomplish if we did not require sleep?” It may be comforting to think of this when we are lying awake, that at least we are wasting no time. The gift of wakefulness is often as desirable as is the gift of sleep, and, if we welcome the one as what must be—with as much cheerfulness as the other—each will bring us equal blessings. It often happens that what we regard as evil is but Life’s left hand outstretched with a gift whose use we did not recognize when presented by her right hand.
CHAPTER XII THE PURPOSE OF SLEEP
 Sleep is a life giver as well as a life saver.
Willard Moyer.
 
But none of these things lessens the benefits of real sleep, nor are they intended to show that sleep is unnecessary, for although it may be true, as Dr. Charles Brodie Patterson says in “The New Heaven and the New Earth,” that man will some day get along without sleep, no one is yet able to do that.
 
Although our troubles make us lose sleep, we could lose all or nearly all our troubles if we got natural sleep. Forgetfulness of daily frets, of the wear and tear of contact with the sharp edges of our own temper and the temper of others—these are the things that sleep blots out. “Go to sleep,” says Mother Nature, “and forget your troubles.” And to blot them out even for a time means surcease of sorrow and worry for that time at least, and a new way of looking at them when we have awakened. That is what sleep is for. It is the use of it.
 
Pat took Mike to church for the first time, and, when the ceremony was over, he said, “Well, Mike, what do you think uv it?” “Think uv it, Pat? The candles, the bowings, the incinse, and the garmints,—it do bate the divil.”
 
“Sure,” replied Pat, “thot’s the intintion.” And so it is the intention of sleep to “beat the devil” of unrest and dissatisfaction. Nothing makes us feel better than a good night’s sleep. It soothes the aching muscles, quiets the jangling nerves, brushes away the cobwebs of the mind, and leaves us rested and refreshed, strong to meet the events of the new day.
 
It is after a bad night that we rise oppressed with fear for what the day may bring us; overwhelmed in advance with shadowings of evil. This, in itself, makes us unequal to the demands of the day. If any seeming strain is put upon us that day, we are apt to make errors in meeting it; if we find anyone has failed to do just what seemed to us best, we upbraid him roundly and unlovingly, making him and ourselves unhappy.
 
At the close of such a spoiled day, when we review its happenings, we say: “I knew this morning that this would be an unlucky day. I felt it as soon as I got up.” But we may not realize that that very attitude of fear and apprehension may have caused all that we call ill-luck. Remember this, then, lest the one bad day should spoil another night.
 
Often after a night of sound, wholesome, refreshing sleep we are surprised to find that what looked like a mountain at midnight is now scarcely a hillock. We find that we can see around it on all sides, and the prospect of surmounting that difficulty fills us with peculiar delight. We are no longer apprehensive of anything. The things we see in our work in the world are no more terrible than what we see in that unknown world which we enter nightly through the gate of sleep. We long to pass that gate, yet we know nothing of where we go, how far we travel, or by what means we come back.
 
If we can trust Life for what the night brings, we can trust it further and gladly accept what the day brings. We feel this, even if we are not conscious of it, and after a good sleep (this is what sleep is for), we accept it much as the child accepts his mother’s care.
 
A little boy was riding in a trolley car with his parents and persisted in standing up, to the terror of his mother, who begged him to sit down lest he get hurt.
 
Turning to his father he whispered, as he reluctantly took his seat, “What a ’fraid-cat mother is.” “Oh, well!” replied his father, “she is nervous, but you know she has to take care of her little boy.” “Yes,” said the child, “that’s what she is for.”61 So that is what sleep is for—to take care of us, but we cannot compel sleep; and the advantage of recognizing the possible gifts of wakefulness is that we thus get around to the frame of mind where we drop into natural sleep. Impatience not only delays the coming of sleep, but it robs us of any benefit we might receive from lying peacefully in the dark.
CHAPTER XIII THE SLEEP OF THE INVALID
 Sleep, O gentle Sleep,
Nature’s soft nurse—
Shakespeare.
We should not think that, because we are ill, it is natural that we should not sleep. The invalid needs more and better sleep than the robust person—and the invalid can have it.
 
It is true that, as more and better sleep comes, the invalid will cease to be an invalid—at least that is the beginning of the end of invalidism. For Nature provides sleep as the “balm of hurt minds”—a cure for body or mind that needs restoring.
 
In the case of severe illness the physician in charge feels relieved when he learns that his patient is sleeping well. The professional idea of sleep is that nutrition goes on most perfectly during sleeping hours; that is, that Nature repairs all the waste that results from the use of brain and muscle during our waking hours. The more prolonged and undisturbed the sleep is, the more opportunity Nature has to make good the extra demands made upon the system by disease. It opens the way for the “Vis Medicatrix Naturæ”—the healing power of Life.
 
Take, for example, the fever patient. Anyone who has watched beside a loved one slowly consuming, with the fever raging in his blood, will remember the sigh of relief that has gone up from physician and nurse when the patient falls into a natural sleep after the turn of things. During dreadful nights and anxious days we wait breathlessly for the “crisis”; we hang upon the physician’s word, scan his face for every fleeting expression, because we may be deceived by the disease, but his practiced eye should know. But we do not need his assurance when the moaning and restlessness pass, when the stertorous breathing quiets, when the skin becomes moist, and the gentle, regular breathing tells us that natural sleep has come. If we can be spared, we go out under the stars and, whether Christian or pagan, up from the depths of our souls wells a prayer of thankfulness to “whatever gods there be” for the incomparable blessing of sleep. We feel as if we could “go softly all our days” before the powers who have decreed that sleep shall gently steep the eyelids of the one we love.
 
Nourishment, in the form of food, is desirable, but more important still is the sleep when Nature busies herself building new tissue and64 blood to make good the ravages of fever’s siege. We are careful to keep even good news from the patient, if we have cause to fear that it will prove too stimulating, and everything depressing or alarming is absolutely withheld, because sleep is the paramount need of the depleted body.
 
We all recognize the value of sleep to the person just past the crisis of a severe illness, and the next thing to learn is that to the person invalided through some less active cause, it is as necessary, and that it may be had.
 
It may seem an extravagant statement to say that the invalid should be able to summon sleep at will even better than an active, healthy person. But we may see the truth of this statement if we accept Dr. Edward Binns’ assurance that “in no sense can fatigue be said to be the cause of sleep,” so that the usual claim that the sick do not get an opportunity to weary themselves, and so cannot expect sound sleep, cannot be accounted a reason for sleeplessness of the invalid.
 
To be sure, lying abed is not always restful. A friend of mine was kept in bed for some weeks by a broken ankle. It was necessary to remain in the one position day and night, which so wore upon her nervous organization that she grew restless and “lost” much sleep. In this condition, she said the hardest thing to bear was the well-meant congratulations of her friends that at least she was “getting a much-needed rest.” But the real reason why an invalid should learn to sleep at will is because sleep alone can do what Macbeth asks of the physician:
 
“Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?”
Yes, sleep can do this; and illness has need of just such comfort. The enforced idleness leads to much reflection and the nervous system is then ill-adapted to endure emotional strain. If pain be added there is still greater need for sleep. Nor is pain absolutely hostile to sleep: the writer can often go to sleep while the dentist is drilling and filling his teeth, and Dr. J. Howard Reed says that this is not very uncommon.
 
Pain is Nature’s strong protest against overstimulation or overexertion and the exhaustion which it occasions is itself conducive to sleep. It would be better for us to heed that protest and use our intelligence to secure sound, refreshing sleep, that Nature might perfect her cures.
 
CHAPTER XIV THE SLEEPLESSNESS OF PAIN
 He kisses brows that ache from earthly care;
He soothes to peace the indignant souls of slaves.
Edgar Fawcett.
Sometimes we are kept awake by pain. Some persons suffer pain that has no remission, except the temporary deadness that comes from nervous exhaustion—and sleep.
 
But sometimes the hardest torture is the thought that the pain is unnecessary or useless. I went once to visit a friend, whom I found suffering from the worst abscesses on the back of the neck that I ever saw, so frightful that the sight of them made me, who am a strong man, feel faint. I asked sympathetically what was the matter. “Oh,” he said, “I’m getting some experience.” That consciousness that such pain was useful helped to make the agony less unendurable. In fact, though he did not see it all then, he was getting just what he and those about him needed. He was a vigorous man, who took to rural work in a place where the food was excellent; he was naturally gluttonous67 and overate, hence the boils. This he learned; and also how to bear pain.
 
There are ways of bearing pain more easily. We must consider the pain philosophically, and treat it from all three sides—the bodily, the intellectual, and the spiritual.
 
However advanced we may be, it is foolish to deny that, in common with the rest of mankind, we are more or less in what Paul called the bonds of the flesh. To try to treat an aching tooth without physical means is like trying to grow a new leg instead of getting an artificial one. There was a stage in man’s Pre-Adamite progress from the amœba when, like the crab, he could grow new legs. Possibly, by discarding all other faculties, men might again be able to grow new legs: but it would not pay.
 
A man who makes hammers may at one time have made his own files, had a shop for that. But, as trades became specialized, he found it better and cheaper to buy his files. Perhaps the supply is suddenly cut off. Now he could reassemble from the scrap-heap the file machinery and make files again, but it would be at the cost of putting so much time and energy into that branch as to paralyze the hammer factory.
 
So, Nature found that men rarely lost their legs and that it was more economical to divert the organization and the energy that reproduced legs into the brain, which enables men to supply themselves and their fellows, when occasion arises, with artificial legs. Accordingly we have lost much of the power of automatic self-healing and have gained much power of deliberate self-healing.
 
While distrusting crutches and drugs, therefore, because we see the immediate effect of them, but cannot know the remote effects of them, we cannot refuse a hot-water bottle or an anæsthetic when the pain, the symptom of the disorder, becomes dangerous in itself. The fever of typhoid represents a battle within which must be fought out to a conclusion—successful or not. But, when the patient is in danger of dying from the high temperature, it is no inconsistency for a mental or spiritual healer to cool the room or sponge the patient with alcohol.
 
Before we resort to the dentist for the aching tooth, we may reduce the inflammation by abstaining from food and starving the blood corpuscles, which hasten to the diseased part, until, perhaps, they feed upon the weaker and obnoxious tissues. This abstinence will go far toward removing the restlessness that is so torturing an accompaniment of the pain. These are the physical remedies.
 
The mental ones consist mainly in trying to isolate the aching member, to realize that it is the tooth, not you, that aches, and to watch it as if it were a separate person. A little boy was asked how he felt after a feast of green apples. “I have a pain in the middle of my stomach,” he said, “but the rest of me feels fine.” A further mental remedy is to send to that separated part, the nerve, the assurance that you have already its message, which is that there is inflammation in the tooth and that you will attend to it as speedily as possible. The nerve gets tired, as it were, of repeating a message that gets no attention just as it gets tired of reporting the ticking of a clock so that we become unconscious of it; although, if we suspected that it was the knocking of a burglar’s tool, we should be kept awake by it night after night.
 
And we must not complain. The Japanese think it rude to complain. If you are miserable, why make others miserable, too? Better not even let it be known, if you can help it without creating unpleasantness, that you suffer. To solicit sympathy is weakening and the constant inquiry, “How are you now?” concentrates your attention on yourself and on your feelings. If we complained to everyone of the ticking clock, we would never forget it; it would become less and less endurable.
 
The spiritual treatment is harder to make clear. It is the unwillingness to have pain that makes it hard to bear. To illustrate again from the dentist, because that experience is still common to nearly everyone: We go to the operating chair, not gladly, but willingly, believing that it is wise and necessary and we bear the pain without complaining, knowing that it is the common lot of man. But suppose you were seized, strapped into the chair, and then your teeth were drilled and sawed to no good purpose, how much more frightful would be the pain. That would be because you believed it to be unnecessary and useless. It would be quite different if you trusted the operator. We must realize, then, that, if there is a controlling and benevolent Power in the Universe, which we all, rightly or wrongly, believe in our hearts, we never can have any pain that is useless or needless to ourselves, or to others, our other selves.
 
We may not see it at the time, but, if we look for it, we usually shall see it. While writing this the author was attacked with a violent toothache: he had exercised ordinary prudence in attending to his teeth, so that it did not seem as if the pain were needed to teach care. But when the toothache came he remembered that, seldom having pain himself, that subject had been overlooked among the many chapters of the book. That was a reason; but, notwithstanding the efforts of an excellent dentist, the torture continued. Why?
 
Why, that he might try these things; and he did practice them so as to lose no sleep. In addition he concluded that it was needful just then that he should feel just such pain in order to revive his sympathy and patience with those whose harassed nerves account for so much of their unreasonableness.
 
With that sense, that one is in a manner suffering for men, comes something of the exaltation of the martyr, even with prosaic toothache. With that certainly disappears all impatience with the pain.
 
Perhaps he will be accounted superstitious in adding that, when these lessons were learned, the dentist found the trouble and the pain melted away. But he has had exactly similar experiences before: a new lesson or a renewal of it was needed. When the pain was no longer necessary it ceased. Why should it continue?
 
SWEET AND LOW
Sweet and low, sweet and low,
Wind of the western sea;
Low, low, breathe and blow,
Wind of the western sea!
Over the rolling waters go,
Come from the dying moon, and blow,
Blow him again to me;
While my little one,
While my pretty one,
Sleeps.
Sleep and rest, sleep and rest;
Father will come to thee soon.
Rest, rest on Mother’s breast;
Father will come to thee soon.
Father will come to his babe in the nest,—
Silver sails all out of the west
Under the silver moon!
Sleep, my little one;
Sleep my pretty one,
Sleep.
Tennyson.
CHAPTER XV OPIATES
 ne of the most common signs of something at fault either with the body or the mind is headache. Now headache, like wakefulness or nervousness, so often associated with headache, is an effect of some error, not a cause of it, and the wise sufferer will seek the cause even before he treats the effect.
 
We call ourselves the most enlightened nation of the earth to-day, and it is true that a little knowledge has been more generally diffused among our people than among other peoples of the world. But we should not forget that “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing” largely because a little knowledge frequently proves to be no real knowledge at all. For example, the “little knowledge” generally possessed in regard to opiates.
 
Coal-tar was once a waste product, but toward the end of the last century a German chemist discovered that from it could be derived a drug, acetanilid, which would greatly lower temperature in fever. This discovery was hailed as a boon to humanity, and many other by-products of coal-tar were soon placed on the market, and regarded as of equal value with acetanilid. Physicians used them for a time without questioning, and the people took to them gladly. Wherever there was a persistent headache, some one of the coal-tar products was used, and “headache powders” multiplied.
 
But a little further knowledge led physicians to question the expediency of using acetanilid, phenacetin, antipyrin, or any of the coal-tar preparations in other than exceptional cases. Heart-failure and other dangerous results so frequently followed their use that the wisdom of using them at all became doubtful. As our knowledge increases, we are likely to find both the wisdom and necessity entirely disappearing.
 
In the meantime, those who have heard that temporary relief from pain may be had by using these drugs will go on using them, often in patent medicines, ignorant of what these nostrums contain, and the number of deaths resulting from their use continues to increase. The only way to protect such people from the result of their little knowledge, which is really ignorance, is by making it illegal to sell these drugs, except by prescription from a physician, who, in turn, should be held responsible for results.
 
This is, of course, an interference with the individual’s right to do as seemeth best to him, and to get his experience in his own way. Herbert Spencer says, “The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.” But it is the same sort of interference that makes us hold a man by main force from throwing himself on the track before an approaching train, and not the sort that would forcibly put an overcoat on him when he did not care to wear it. One may be no more justifiable than the other, but it seems more excusable.
 
All sleeping doses are to be viewed with distrust; most of them contain opium or morphine, some still more deadly drugs: Nature “sets up a tolerance” for them so that, to obtain the effect, the dose must be increased, until, if the sufferer does not retreat in time, an almost incurable drug habit is formed, often more terrible than the liquor habit, which it sometimes supplants. Nor do they bring true sleep.
 
R. Clarke Newton, in his treatise on “Opium and Alcohol,” says “Sleeplessness means not merely unrest, but starvation of the cerebrum. The only cause for regret in these cases is that the blunder should ever be committed of supposing that a stupefying drug which throws the brain into a condition that mimics and burlesques sleep can do good. It is deceptive to give narcotics in a case of this type. The stupor simply masks the danger. Better far let the sleepless patient exhaust himself than stupefy him. Chloral, bromides, and the rest of the poisons that produce a semblance of sleep are so many snares in such cases. Sleeplessness is a malady of the most formidable character, but it is not to be treated by intoxicating the organ upon which the stress of the trouble falls.” The late Dr. Alonzo Clark, who for years stood at the head of his profession as a consulting physician in New York City, is quoted as saying, “All curative agents, so called, are poisons, and, as a consequence, every dose diminishes the patient’s vitality.” I doubt whether this view of drugs would be seriously contested by any of his professional brethren of good standing.
 
The venerable Professor Joseph M. Smith, M.D., said: “All medicines which enter the circulation poison the blood in the same manner as do the poisons that produce the disease. Drugs do not cure disease.” John Bigelow, in the “Mystery of Sleep” , adds: “With drug-poisons should be classed nearly, if not quite, all fermented drinks—the most costly part of some people’s diet who indulge in them at all—coffee, tea, tobacco, spices, and most of the constantly multiplying tonics and condiments of the table. All of them have a tendency, directly or indirectly, to discourage or impair sleep, and, as such, are77 ‘hostes humani generis’ (enemies of the human race). Their interference with sleep, though perhaps the most serious, is very far from being their only pathogenetic influence.”
 
Mr. Bigelow then cites from Jahr’s “Manual of Medicine” the fearful disturbances of sleep caused by fifteen drugs, all taken as samples from the list in their order under the single letter “A.” Contrary to the general belief, sleeplessness is more often a consequence of insanity than a cause of it. (See Appendix A.)
 
CHAPTER XVI DEVICES FOR GOING TO SLEEP
 Southey, in “The Doctor,” thus summarizes some of the chief devices to attain sleep by monotony: “I listened to the river and to the ticking of my watch; I thought of all sleepy sounds and of all soporific things—the flow of water, the humming of bees, the motion of a boat, the waving of a field of corn, the nodding of a mandarin’s head on the chimney-piece, a horse in a mill, the opera, Mr. Humdrum’s conversations, Mr. Proser’s poems, Mr. Laxative’s speeches, Mr. Lengthy’s sermons. I tried the device of my own childhood, and fancied that the bed rushed with me round and round. At length Morpheus reminded me of Dr. Torpedo’s Divinity Lectures, where the voice, the manner, the matter, even the very atmosphere and the streaming candle-light, were all alike soporific; when he who, by strong effort, lifted up his head and forced open the reluctant eyes, never failed to see all around him asleep. Lettuces, cowslip wine, poppy syrup, mandragora, hop pillows, spider’s web pills, and the whole tribe of narcotics would have failed—but this was irresistible; and thus twenty years after date, I found benefit from having attended the course.”
 
Frequent impressions on the mind, or calls on the attention, tend to make us sleepy; thus looking at pictures, the attempt to study, driving in a carriage. In extreme cases this is very marked. A boy named Caspar Hauser was shut up alone in a gloomy little room until he was about eighteen years old;79 then he was brought to Nürnberg and abandoned in the street; this was in 1828. He was to all intents a baby and could not walk, nor speak, nor see clearly, as he had never known any of the common objects of life—men or animals or plants, or the moon or sun or even the sky.
 
He would go to sleep instantly on being taken outside the house, because the number of new sensations instantly tired his consciousness.
 
For the same reason that the consciousness is quickly exhausted, many old or delicate persons readily fall asleep. Marie de Manacéïne says that Moivre, the French mathematician, used to sleep twenty hours a day during his old age, leaving only four for science and the other occupations of life.
 
Monotony naturally fatigues consciousness and is often successfully used to produce sleep; the regular dropping of water, the sound of a brook will put those to sleep whom it does not make nervous. Lullabies and slumber songs and dull lectures all come under the same head of devices to tire the consciousness.
 
Narcotic drugs do not weary consciousness; they simply destroy it. They stupefy us instead of inducing sleep. Those who would wisely learn about this by experiments upon others rather than upon themselves, will find it all in the article by Ringer and Sainsbury on “Sedatives” in Tuke’s “Dictionary of Psychological Medicine.” It is enough for us to be assured that narcotic sleep is less like real sleep than the hibernation of the animal is like repose. (But see “Remedies” in Appendix A.)
 
Henry Ward Beecher used to get up when he was sleepless and take a cold bath, a good device for a full-blooded, vigorous person: but a weak person would not “react” and get warm again. For such an one it would be better to sponge off and restore the circulation by rubbing. Some physicians have prescribed, with good success, blood-warm baths, beginning at a temperature of about 98 and heated up to 110 or 115 Fahrenheit. When the moisture has been absorbed by wrapping one’s self in a blanket, throw it off and get quickly into a warm bed. Mark Twain used to get to sleep by lying down on the bathroom floor after the bath.
 
Some, when other means fail, find it effective to place a cold-water bag at the back of the neck, or to rub the feet with a rough towel: with others, a hot-water bottle at the back of the neck works better. A warm footbath helps some persons. At the sanitariums they sponge with warm water, rub with wet salt, gently sponge it off, and dry the body—all of which helps the blood to the surface. It is always well to see that the bowels are emptied. Only trial and judgment will show whether any of these will effect a cure: they all aim at the same mark, to abstract the blood from the brain.
 
That drinking milk produces sleep in some persons may probably be due to the lactic acid in the milk, which is a soporific like morphine. Perhaps its use is to help young animals to the long sleeps they need.
 
Willard Moyer, in an entertaining essay, tells us that it is often advisable for the stomach to have sufficient work for the blood to do so as to call it from the brain. This does not mean that a meal that will overload the stomach is a cure for insomnia, but that something light, such as a cup of warm milk and a cracker, may often “send one comfortably to sleep like a drowsy kitten or a well-fed baby.” A. Fleming, following Durham, the author of the “Psychology of Sleep,” showed that to deprive the brain of blood by pressing the carotid arteries for thirty seconds brought immediate and deep sleep, but it only continued while all pulsation of these arteries is stopped.
 
It has been found by cruel experiments on young puppies that sleep is more necessary to them than food, as they die after being kept awake four or five days, but may live ten or fifteen days without food. They easily go to sleep when their heads are level with their bodies, and they will not go to sleep with their82 heads lower than their bodies: of course, the raised head drains some blood out of the brain.
 
This is the reason that heat or extreme cold, both of which bring the blood to the surface and drain it away from the brain, will often produce sleep. That is why the cowboy likes to sleep with his feet to the fire. On the other hand, the demand on the heart of cold hands or feet for more blood to keep them warm may make the heart pump so strongly that it sends more blood to the brain and keeps one awake. So also joy, anger, or anxiety cause a flow of blood to the brain and hinder sleep.
 
Becker and Schuller have treated insomnia by wrapping the entire body in wet sheets and also by applying cold compresses to the head. This last device is used by students, with doubtful success, “to keep the brain cool”; it is sometimes affected because it looks like working hard. Sometimes an ice cap, a double rubber cap filled with cold water, will bring sleep.
 
The Russian nobles used to make servants scratch their heels for a long time; our ladies have their hair brushed; and A. H. Savage-Landor says that Corean mothers put their babies to sleep by scratching them gently on the stomach. I have tried this rubbing, rather than scratching, with great success. Spanish women rub the children’s upper spine to put them to sleep. Light exercise before lying down is often a good expedient.
 
Sometimes a pillow of heated hops or of balsam pine needles will induce sleep. To change the hour of going to bed occasionally, yielding to apparently untimely drowsiness, often helps, as it accustoms us to gain sleep at irregular times.
 
To “relax,” to let the muscles become perfectly loose, is an art, though it should be natural to one going to sleep. Mrs. Richard Hovey recommends shaking the fingers, letting them hang loose like a bunch of strings of beads, and extending the movement to the wrist, arms, feet, and legs. This is the best form of calisthenic exercise for sleeplessness. It aids us in getting limp so as to lie at ease.
 
CHAPTER XVII MORE DEVICES FOR GOING TO SLEEP
 Oh Sleep! it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole.
Coleridge.
If life be a succession of ideas, says Dr. Binns, then sleep is the interval; “consequently, we may say that sleep is the art of escaping reflection.” If one could follow the Chinese advice, divest the mind of all unpleasant images, “the secret of sleep at will,” Dr. Binns thinks, “would be in the possession of all men.” This accords in its essence with the very modern theory of Dr. Henry Hubbard Foster of Cornell University, that sleep results from the absence of stimulations. It is conceivable that things that stimulate, or rouse us, may come from inside as well as from outside. A sudden thought, a new, delightful, or horrible mental picture will arouse us and send sleep flying as effectually as a sudden noise or an exciting commotion from without.
 
We might amend the Chinese advice thus: put out of the mind all images, pleasant or un85pleasant, or, as Dr. Gardner puts it, “bring the mind to a single sensation.” It has long been known that monotony will induce sleep. Not merely the monotony of silence, but sometimes even the monotony of great noise, such as the ceaseless firing of heavy guns which have lulled the wearied soldiers into rest. There is a sleepy sound in “The distant boom of a random gun which the foe was sullenly firing.” It is the sudden, irregular noise which disturbs. If anyone listens for several hours to soft, flowing music, he will have great difficulty in keeping awake, no matter how great a lover of music he may be, particularly if he has to sit in the same position all the time. Let a musical number with strongly marked staccato movement be introduced, let the drum throb loud at intervals, the horns blare, then the sleeper will awake and find renewed enjoyment, not because he loves noise, but because the monotony has been broken. The mind has responded to the new stimulus.
 
Professor Boris Sidis, of the Harvard Physiological Laboratory, says that “the fundamental conditions of sleep are monotony and limitation of voluntary movements. Sleep,” adds Sidis, is not so much due to cutting off impressions through the senses, be they intense or faint, as to the monotony of the “impressions that reduced the organism to the passive state which we experience in sleep.” In other words, monotony has such a benumbing, deadening effect upon the mind that sleep naturally ensues.
 
Although Binns did not know Foster’s and Sidis’ modern views, yet accepting Gardner’s theory of “bringing the mind to a single sensation,” he worked out a plan for inducing sleep which he said nearly always succeeded. During his long practice he had known of only two instances where it failed when faithfully and intelligently tried.
 
The method is simple, yet it includes putting out of the mind all images pleasant or unpleasant, and restricting voluntary movements. It is this: “Turn on the right side, place the head comfortably on the pillow, let the head fall naturally, using the pillow only to support the neck, slightly close the lips,—though this is not absolutely essential,—take full inspiration through the nostrils, drawing in as much air as possible, then leave the lungs to their own action, neither hastening nor checking exhalation. Think of the breath as passing from the nostrils in one continuous stream, and, the very instant the person so conceives, consciousness and memory depart, the muscles relax, the breath comes regularly, he no longer wakes but sleeps. It is all the effort of but a moment.”
 
Another method in common use is counting up to a hundred on an imaginary string of beads. Often one will have lost consciousness before the hundredth bead is reached, but sometimes they have to be counted over and over, and sometimes the plan fails altogether. The immediate reason for this is undoubtedly that we have not brought the mind to a single sensation, nor succeeded in cutting off the impressions that come through the senses.
 
Everybody has at some time used some such device for inducing sleep to visit him. The practice of imagining sheep jumping over a gate and counting them as they go is but another way of bringing the mind to a single sensation, of deliberately securing monotony and shutting out all stimuli, as scientific men call the various causes that arouse sensation in us. Such simple devices are never harmful, and are so frequently followed by sleep that they continue from generation to generation.
 
If the impressions received through the channels of sense cannot or will not be shut off, it is useless to continue counting beads or sheep, or seeing a stream of breath. It becomes necessary to discover what it is that is back of the stimulation—what impression is so vivid and so insistent that it will not down. As Frederick Palmer says in his delightful book, “The Vagabond,” we should “take a good look at a thing before we run away from it.”
CHAPTER XVIII STILL FURTHER DEVICES
 The sleep of a laboring man is sweet.
Ecclesiastes.
 
“The Witchery of Sleep” records for us some interesting mechanical devices for inducing sleep, more common in Europe than in this country. Their inventors hope to perfect them so that they may take the place of drugs and “sleeping potions.” This is an end devoutly to be wished by all who know the steady increase of the “drug habit.” Among these sleep-inducing instruments the newest is the “vibrating coronet.” This coronet has three metal bands which encircle the head and two strips extending to the eyelids. By means of a spring these strips vibrate the eyelid gently and induce drowsiness. All the mechanical devices are constructed on the plan of inducing eye-weariness, whether by vibration or by fixity. Either effect is in accordance with the modern theories of sleep. Sleep may be induced by monotony also of sounds; by concentration either of the attention or the hearing on one point, or by more numerous impressions89 than the eye can comfortably receive; thus, when riding in a train, the succession of views will often induce sleepiness.
 
The “Alouette,” a collection of little mirrors attached to the ebony panels of a box, is so placed that a ray of light falls on the mirrors in such a way as to fatigue the eye of the beholder. Both this and the “Fascinator,” a highly polished nickel ball attached to a flexible wire depending from a metal band similar to the “Coronet,” work on the plan of concentrating the vision. In a similar way a light-house or a miniature flashlight, with its appearing and disappearing light, induces drowsiness, possibly hypnotic, through incessant change. It is needless to say that these devices might be injurious to the sight and certainly would not work where the cause of sleeplessness is eyestrain. That is a case for the oculist.
 
But when it is impossible to obtain mechanical devices, there are many simple schemes of inducing sleep. Any light work, mental or physical, is helpful. To start writing letters, particularly if one is not fond of letter-writing, will sometimes induce sleepiness very quickly. Sorting and arranging old papers will have the same effect, unless one is of a nature to find such an occupation exciting.
 
Of course, a drawback in any of these light occupations is that by the time one has undressed drowsiness may have fled. That possibility makes it desirable that all preparations for bed shall first be made and a warm robe with comfortable bedroom shoes shall constitute the only extra clothing. Warmth of body, especially of the feet, is essential to sleep. Sometimes so simple a thing as a hot-water bottle at the feet, or even woolen bed-socks, will make all the difference between wakefulness and refreshing slumber.
 
Then there is the matter of deep breathing, which seems especially adapted to feeble or run-down physiques. That is a large subject more familiar to the people of the Orient than to us. Some Orientals are able to put themselves into trance-like sleep by their knowledge of deep breathing. Numerous books have been written treating of this subject, among the best of which are “The Science of Breath,” by Ramacharaka, and “The Law of Rhythmical Breath,” by Ella A. Fletcher, though the “Rhythmical Breath” seems fanciful to Western readers.
 
Sleeplessness is sometimes due to lack of physical exercise, and, when that is so, no device is so effective as work—real physical effort. A great many persons take calisthenic exercises and go in for physical culture to develop muscles and also to regulate circulation so that sleep will come more readily. These are good makeshifts for persons who have no opportunity to work, but, where circumstances make actual labor possible, no substitute can satisfactorily take its place. Gardening, shoveling snow, sawing or chopping wood, all give a variety of motion and a zest of exertion superior to any gymnastics. Even a small amount of some such labor daily will often work a complete cure for insomnia.
 
Everybody knows of some plan or device for inducing sleep, and all of them are more or less successful—sometimes. Indeed, this is so true that it leads to the belief that, after all, the expectation of sleep helps to bring it, and here suggestion and auto-suggestion come in.
 
Of late, a number of persons have tried the starvation cure—fasting for several days. This is frequently successful with robust, hearty people, who may unconsciously be eating too much or eating too stimulating food. Many who feel unequal to a complete fast might cut down the amount of food as much as one-half, with happy results. A vegetarian diet undoubtedly helps, too, although among the lower animals carnivora sleep more than herbivora. The success of vegetarianism, both in insomnia and other diseases, may well be due to the diminished temptation to overeat and the less concentrated diet.
 
In any event, it is well for the sufferer from sleeplessness to study his own case and experiment with any or all the known devices to see whether, by this means or that, he can lure sleep to his pillow again.
 
And, speaking of pillows, it is well to remember that one pillow is better than two, and that the one should not be too high, too hard, too soft, or too warm, and that it should be thoroughly aired every day. It should be odorless and cool and have the cover changed frequently. Clean bed linen is in itself an effective device for inducing sleep, just as perfect ventilation adds an hundredfold to the refreshment we get from our slumbers.
 
The best way to learn to sleep is to practice putting others to sleep. Thy gifts will be unto thyself when thy benefits are to another.
 
We never know anything thoroughly till we try to teach it. All these plans and devices may be suggested one by one to any sleepless person. select what you think most suitable and most likely to be accepted, and let the suggestion be that this is a good plan or something just called to your attention that seems sensible. If you do not succeed in one or two, it is difficult to secure trial of more at that time.
 
Every temperament is different and may respond to different methods: for instance, a ticking clock or dropping water, which make some persons drowsy, will make others inexpressibly nervous.
 
The trained nurse will tell you that, when you are trying to get the patient to sleep, whispering must not be allowed: the sibilant sound is irritating and the patient unconsciously strains to catch what is said. Speak in a quiet, even, ordinary tone. Do not fuss, putting the shade a little higher and lower, stealing across the room, and so on. If anything is to be done, to walk quietly and naturally will disturb the sleeper much less than tiptoeing about.
 
That mysterious thing that we call “personality” has much to do with the power to bring sleep to others. Some persons can put almost anyone to sleep by quietly holding the hand, but nearly everyone has some of this power. Some persons, especially children, are readily got to sleep by lying down beside them.
 
Reading aloud slowly and in a uniform voice will bring sleep to most persons. When drowsiness comes, the voice may be lowered a little and continued until slumber closes the eyes. (Concerning the varieties and causes of Insomnia, see also Appendix A.)
 
CHAPTER XIX HYPNOTIC SLEEP
 What would we give to our beloved?
The hero’s heart to be unmoved,—
The poet’s star-tuned harp to sweep;
The patriot’s voice to teach and rouse,—
The monarch’s crown to light the brows?
“He giveth His belovèd sleep.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
The nature of hypnotic sleep has not yet been fully determined, which is not wonderful when we remember our ignorance of natural sleep. We may call the active hypnotic state a condition of excessive attention to the main idea presented and complete oblivion to other ideas. But this state is preceded by a passive condition resembling sleep. The use and value of hypnotic sleep is now occupying the attention of scientific men and it bids fair to be an important curative agent. Where once the patient suffering from insomnia was treated by drugs, he is now more successfully treated through suggestion. The change is a most desirable one and in line with that newer thought95 which recognizes the power of regeneration within the soul of the individual. For, the main things in the development of hypnosis and suggestion as curative agents is the recognition that an appeal can be made to the subconscious mind, which, as Dr. Worcester says, “is more sensitive to good and evil than our conscious mind.” To appeal to our latent powers to overcome our own weaknesses or limitations is greater and better than to combat these weaknesses through drugs. Many physicians who formerly employed hypnosis have adopted a substitute for it, the so-called hypnoidal state, mere passivity with closed eyes. Hypnotizing is in many cases needless and dangerous.
 
Insomnia, like any other trouble not due to the breakdown of a physical organ, is more a moral than a material lapse, and can best be cured by moral means: that is, by the aid of the will and its associated faculties. Sleeplessness, nervousness, excitability, and irritability have their rise in mental and emotional states more often than in physical states, and, under such conditions, treatment by drugs is of little real use. In the disease hysteria, mental trouble may masquerade as physical defect, for instance paralysis or even blindness, while the physical parts concerned are in no wise impaired. The dependence placed upon merely extraneous things does not assist in the development of our own inner powers. Even when drugs seem to relieve96 the outward symptoms, they fail to strengthen the moral nature, so greatly in need of strength. The man of drugs only is at a disadvantage as compared with the suggestionist in treating such disorders. Dr. J. D. Quackenbos says, “The suggestionist invokes the better subliminal self—invests it with control, and seldom fails to effect the desired purpose.” He further maintains, what all investigators are now coming to admit, that, when the patient wakes from hypnotic sleep, during which helpful, curative suggestions have been made to him, he is “constrained to obey the impulses of his own superior self.” The power of suggestion, whether during waking or sleeping hours, is only beginning to be recognized, although its use in one form or another is centuries old. The thoughtless, as well as the thoughtful, use it more or less every hour of the day, while all of us may know that we are occasionally the victims of auto-suggestion when we suffer from functional ailments.
 
Auto-suggestion is merely the suggestion of the self to the self, and from ill-advised suggestions spring nearly all the little impediments to sleep and health. Such a suggestion to ourselves as that we need certain favorable conditions for sleeping will keep us awake when those conditions are not possible. We say, “I cannot sleep with a clock ticking in the room with me,” and so we lie awake and suffer nervous tortures if we hear a clock tick. Or we say of something our friends do, or of some natural habit they have, “That makes me so nervous I almost fly out of my skin” thus we inflict upon ourselves suffering that we need not endure.
 
The strong soul will call his “superior self” to his aid to conquer this tendency. He will suggest to himself that he is able to sleep without regard to clocks or other disturbance; that the peculiarities of other people have no power to irritate, annoy, or otherwise upset his nervous system; that even in the midst of alarums he may have peace, if he so wills, and can sleep under ordinary conditions without fear or annoyance.
 
But, to be able to do this, one must have faith in himself, in his purpose, in his own desire to overcome his fears, for, as Dr. Worcester remarks, “the value of suggestion lies in its character and in the character of the man who makes it.” If we say these things to ourselves, feeling all the time that it is useless, we are not likely to impress the subconscious mind or rouse it to activity. Self-deception is not often beneficial in its effects. No more shall we make headway if we merely repeat such suggestions in parrot-fashion. You remember the story of the old woman who heard that faith would remove mountains: so she determined98 to try it on the hill in front of her bedroom window. All night she repeated to herself that the mountain would be removed. In the morning she awoke to see the hill still in front of her. “There,” she said, “I knew it would be.” Anyhow, the faith that removes most mountains is the faith that gets a shovel. It is essential that we concentrate our minds upon the matter in hand, excluding from our thoughts anything that might distract us and that we fix our attention upon removing the fault. It is for this reason that the hypnoidal state, or the wakeful night or the moment when one is nearly dropping to sleep is the best time either for suggestion to a patient or for one to indulge in helpful auto-suggestion. As objective consciousness fades, it is easier to impress the subliminal self-consciousness and invoke its aid.
 
Those who do not know themselves well enough to be able to respond to their own suggestion, may be helped by another in whom they have faith. If they submit themselves willingly to suggestion, they may find themselves so strengthened that they will shortly be able to control themselves by auto-suggestion. Like almost all upward tendencies, this power is a matter of development.
 
As we come to understand hypnotism better, we learn that we need not fear ill results from thus yielding ourselves for a good purpose99 to another, for one’s subconscious self is always on watch and will not be compelled to do that which is contrary to one’s own nature or habit of thought. Hypnotic sleep differs from natural sleep in that the hypnotized person usually preserves a degree of intelligence and invariably a moral sense which are not conspicuous in normal sleep and dreaming. Scientific investigators are quite well agreed on this point, and Dr. Worcester’s experience has convinced him of its truth.
 
So, if all other means of securing sleep should fail, we may have recourse to this newest method of curing nervous and other functional disorders. It is merely one way of getting into closer touch with the Infinite and Universal and coming into line with life’s underlying laws.
 
The use of auto-suggestion is not limited to inducing sleep: it may rid us of evil habits, disturbing thoughts, and all hatred, malice, and uncharitableness—which in their turn interfere with sleep.
 
 
THE LAND OF NOD
From breakfast on through all the day
At home among my friends I stay;
But every night I go abroad
Afar into the land of Nod.
All by myself I have to go,
With none to tell me what to do—
All alone beside the streams
And up the mountain-sides of dreams.
The strangest things are there for me,
Both things to eat and things to see,
And many frightening sights abroad
Till morning in the land of Nod.
Try as I like to find the way,
I never can get back by day,
Nor can remember plain and clear
The curious music that I hear.
Robert Louis Stevenson.
CHAPTER XX “PERCHANCE TO DREAM”
 We are such stuff as dreams are made on,” as Shakespeare says, and yet no one even to this day knows what that “stuff” may be. We separate man’s life into intellect, feeling, will; or, like the Hindoos, into seven phases; we subdivide these, recognizing special powers and functions belonging to each; we dissect man’s frame; we dissolve his body into its component parts, and yet, when all is done, we know as little about life, the essence of man, as our father Adam knew. As Omar says, we hear “much talk about it and about” and yet we get nowhere. It is much the same with dreams. We need, therefore, only summarize and review the talk.
 
Dreams occupied their most important place in the thought of man at its beginning. His action has frequently been directed by a dream and the fate of nations has hinged upon its interpretation. Even in the present day of matter-of-fact science, at some time in his life following the racial bent, almost every human being has paid some attention to his dreams. The superstitious—which includes the most of us—still put faith in their dreams, though they know not whence they come, nor their relation to the most mutable of physical conditions. And this though ages ago Sirach uttered this warning, “Dreams deceive many and fail those who build upon them.” Scientific investigation has made known many of the causes of dreams and shown us what slight incidents may determine their direction. For instance, dreams involving hearing often take their rise in noises made by the processes going on in the body. What we eat and the state of our digestion greatly affect the character of our dreams.
 
This has long been recognized by those who try to decipher special significance in dreams. Twenty-five centuries ago Pythagoras believed that the gas-generating beans destroyed the chance of having enlightening or important dreams, and so forbade their use. In similar fashion interpreters of dreams were warned by Artemidorus to inquire first whether the dreamer had eaten heartily or lightly before falling asleep; while Philostratus maintained that skillful interpreters always refused to expound dreams following the use of wine.
 
Thus we see that even in ancient times the relation between eating and sleeping was recognized. In more modern days it is recorded that poets and writers had visions from eating raw flesh, while Mrs. Radcliffe, author of “The Mysteries of Udolpho,” is said to have deliberately induced horrid dream phantoms by supping late on indigestible food as a means of getting “printer’s copy.” De Quincey’s “Confessions” is a monument to the beauty and the horror of the dreams from drugs. There is also reason to think that the terrors of delirium tremens are true dreams. John B. Gough described from fearful experience the agony of seeing and feeling that which is dreadful, mainly because the sufferer knows that it, nevertheless, does not exist and could not exist. This can be explained, in our present state of knowledge, only by the supposition that the subconscious mind, uncorrected and unrestrained by the senses, alone is awake. Boris Sidis shows that we have no waking remembrance of many of our dreams, even of most harassing ones.
 
It is probable that perfect sleep is undisturbed by dreams, pleasant or otherwise. Dreams are an evidence of the semi-conscious condition of some of the senses; the objective mind is no longer in control, but is passive, and the subjective mind is active. Yet while dreaming, the objective mind is not so completely unconscious (as it would be if wrapped in profound slumber) but that it gets glimpses of the workings of the subjective mind, often very distorted glimpses. This frequently leads to horrible or impossible situations in dreams.
 
It is an interesting question how far we are responsible for our dreams. It is true in dreams, as in waking, that from the same sensations individuals will evolve different results, just as nasturtiums, drawing nourishment from the same soil, will put forth blossoms of different color and odor. The factor that changes these same elements into different results is something inherent in the individual person or plant.
 
So that we are not entirely responsible for what we dream, yet the mental habits, the real tone of mind maintained during waking hours, has its effect upon dreams. They constitute an index of the mind. So far as sleep is concerned, of course, “subjective” mind is simply our remembered experiences, our mental capital, and can be used in waking hours and is constantly so used: we get traces of these in our dreams. Age, sex, and temperament also affect the nature of dreams.
 
If then our sleep is disturbed by unpleasant dreams, it becomes necessary to investigate the causes. Have we eaten too much or too hurriedly? Are our innermost thoughts clean and wholesome, fit for the light of day? Roman philosophers held that he who wished to obtain knowledge of the will of any of the gods, must fast and lie down to sleep beside the shrine of the god, his thoughts filled with longing and desire for such knowledge. There is more than mere superstition in that. If we abstain from all excesses and are filled with desire to know the will of the gods, dreams, when they come to us, will not disturb or distress us.
 
Dreams are admittedly sometimes prophetic, or have at least an indirect significance touching events not yet come to pass. Galen tells of a man who dreamed that his leg had turned to stone, and a few days later found his leg paralyzed, perhaps an instance of auto-suggestion. Gessner died from a malignant growth which developed in his breast in the exact spot where, a few nights previously, he had dreamed that a serpent bit him; while Aristides, dreaming that he was wounded in the knee by a bull, awoke to find a tumor there.
 
These and many better authenticated cases of dream warnings are not so strange as they seem at first hearing. They may be explained largely by the fact that remote and vague sensations of suffering and disease are able to make deeper impression upon the mind when the interests and activities of the waking life are submerged in sleep.
 
The duration of dreams is another matter of great interest. Most persons feel and say that they “dreamed all night long,” and will proceed to support their statement by relating various incidents of their dreams; their prolonged sensations of pleasure or horror; the events that perhaps covered years. Yet, in reality, the dream may have occupied less than a minute. The dreamer cannot measure the time spent in dreaming, for the unconscious condition of the objective mind obliterates the sense of time, space or material limitations. This accounts for the prodigious feats, the marvels and impossible achievements of dreams that seem to the dreamer in no way disproportionate.
 
What we do know is that some of the most wonderful dreams have occupied but a few moments, and so far scientific research seems to limit them to an hour or two at most. Mohammed’s dream was completed within the time occupied by a falling vase; and it is on record that a man fell asleep just as the clock struck the first stroke of twelve and awoke in a cold sweat on the last stroke, having dreamed that he had spent thirty years in prison, suffering tortures of mind and body.
 
All this makes it easy to understand how, to an infinite mind, a thousand years may be as one day and one day as a thousand years, and how, in our degree, the quiet, self-controlled mind may be unmoved by time.
 
It is the vivid impression made by such dreams that makes us feel that they must have lasted a long time. Then, as George Trumbull Ladd says, the recital of our dreams is often colored, unconsciously, “by our self-conscious and rational waking life when we bring the scene before the awakened mind.” In other words, many sensations that we think we experienced are heightened by the idea in the objective mind of what such sensations ought to be.
 
It may be that when the time comes that
 
“No one shall work for money
And no one shall work for fame,”
we shall find light and help in our dreams that is undreamed of now.