The Mystery Of Sleep

Originally published in New York in 1897.. Excerpt:. .....I wish to disclaim any pretension to have given in the following pages a solution of all the mysteries of sleep, or even a precise and scientific exposition of any of them. When, if ever, that shall be possible, they will cease to be mysteries. What I have aimed to do is, first to unsettle, if not dispel, the popular delusion that sleep is merely a state of rest; of practical inertia of soul and body, or at most, a periodical provision for the reparation of physical waste in the sense that a well, exhausted during the day, fills up in the hours of the night. Second, to set forth some of my reasons for the conviction that no part of our lives is consecrated to nobler or more important uses than that usually spent in sleep; none which contributes more, if so much, to differentiate us from the beasts that perish; that we are developed spiritually during our sleeping hours as distinctly and exclusively as we are developed physically and intellectually during our waking hours, and finally that it is as much the part of wisdom to order our lives so as to avoid everything apt to interfere with or impair either the quality or quantity of our sleep, as in our waking hours it is to avoid whatever tends to interfere with the growth or impair the health or perfection of our bodies. . .....Were the mysteries of sleep studied with like incentives and by the same class of minds as the mysteries of electricity are now studied, the former would seem to us no more mysterious than the latter, and the results would be no more surprising. . Contents:. Chapter I Why Do We Spend One-third of Our Lives in Sleep? The Common Theory Fallacious - Neither Soul, Mind, nor Body has any Attribute of which Fatigue can be Predicated - Recreation from Labor Found in Change of Employment. Chapter II Sleep Interrupts all Conscious Relations with the Phenomenal World - Induces a State of Absolute Unworldliness - Analogy of Sleep with One of the Fundamental Processes of Spiritual Regeneration - Nocturnal Darkness an Ally of Sleep - Our Transformation in Sleep - Grindon - The Morning Watch. Chapter III The Morning's Prophetic Visions - Pliny - Lucretius - Voltaire - Dante - Ovid - Parsons - Dreams - Imperfect Sleep - Somnambulism - Artificial Sleep - Hypnosis - Why Different Amounts of Sleep are Required by the Human Race at Different Ages. Chapter IV Changes Wrought During Sleep Psychical, not Physical - Seclusion from the World most Perfect in Sleep - Indescribable Importance of Events in which Sleep was a Factor as Recorded in the Bible - Mohammed's Dream. Chapter V Privation of Sleep - Its Effects - How Availed of by Toussaint L'Ouverture in Defense of the Independence of Hayti - Causes the Death of the Last King of Macedonia - Lunacy - Difference in Sleeping Habit between Domestic and Predatory Animals - Low Average of Longevity among Savages Explained - Habits of Venomous and Non-venomous Serpents Contrasted - Prominence of Sleep in the Machinery of Shakespeare's Plays - Tendency to Sleep in Houses of Worship Explained - Dr. Wilkinson - External and Internal Respiration. Chapter VI The Need for Sleep Diminishes as the Organization of Life Becomes More Complex - Buffon - Repose No More the Final Purpose of Sleep than the Gratification of our Palate the Final Purpose of Hunger - The Statue of Sleep in Honor of Æsculapius - Letter of lamblichus. Chapter VII Swedenborg's External and Internal Memory - Coleridge's "Body Terrestrial" and "Body Celestial " - The Operations of our Non-phenomenal Life Presumably as Important as Those of our Phenomenal Life. Chapter VIII Why We Are not Permitted to be Conscious of the Experiences of the Soul in Sleep - How We Should Order our Lives to Reap the Utmost Benefit from Sleep