The Psychology of Sleep

Appendix D 293

APPENDIX E 297

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 not 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

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

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 will 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.

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