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.
CHAPTER XXI
NATURAL LIVING
Sleep, the saint that evil thoughts and aims
Takest away, and into souls dost creep,
Like to a breeze from heaven.
Wordsworth.
He who would get the benefit of sleep must look after health.
Health, after all, is merely that condition where all parts of the human organism work together without friction. We think of health as something that is bestowed upon us from without; something over which we have no control and almost no influence. Perhaps this queer idea is partly responsible for the general lack of health to-day.
It seems incredible that it is necessary that human beings endowed with tremendous capacity for enjoyment, with everything at hand to enjoy, should be hindered by a mere lack of that harmony that we call health from fully enjoying life. It seems only reasonable that there must be some explanation of lack of health and some way of escape from it.
It is now generally admitted that most of the diseases to which man thinks himself heir are due to improper, unnatural living. It could safely be added that the remainder of our ill-health and distress comes in large part from improper, unnatural thinking.
The common man may laugh at the idea that we make our own ill-health; if you were not more intelligent than the common man, you would not read this book, so that you will probably see at once that your own experience has taught you the truth of it. You will discover that you have learned for yourself, albeit for the most part unconsciously, that what a man thinks about, that he becomes. So it would seem that the natural and proper thing to do, if we find ourselves suffering from sleeplessness and ill-health, is to look after our way of living and thinking.
Medical science was once the attempt to cure disease; as Dr. Woods Hutchinson says, it is now coming to be the science of preventing disease, and everything that tends to that end is properly a part of the science of medicine, though it have no connection with the myriad drugs of the pharmacopœia.
Until we compare conditions to-day with those of even fifty years ago, we can form no idea of our rapid strides toward natural living. If we walk the streets of the city or the roads of suburban towns and villages very early in the morning, at any season of the year, we shall find the vast majority of the houses with open windows. It is true that the opening may not always be very wide, but they are open. Fifty years ago all would have been closed.
Within the recollection of those whose memories go back a quarter of a century, we were taught that night air was dangerous to breathe and was to be completely shut out from our houses. Now we know that the organism needs fresh air by night as well as by day, and that the most dangerous thing about night air is the lack of it.
We now treat the most dreaded diseases, pneumonia and tuberculosis, almost wholly by fresh air and nourishing food, administering drugs only to check the symptoms until the system gets into condition to throw them off. More than that, we know now that consumption, at least, is not a mysterious dispensation of Providence visited upon certain people without regard to individual responsibility. Rather it is always the result of improper living or thinking, or both, and, when it is the scourge of a district, as in thickly settled city slums, it is the direct result of monopoly and oppression that deny the common interests of all mankind.
In 1865 Dr. W. W. Hall of New York published his book, “Sleep,” in the preface of which he said: “It is the end and aim of this book to show that as a means of high health, good blood, and a strong mind to old and young, sick or well, each one should have a single bed in a large, clean, light room, so as to pass all the hours of sleep in a pure, fresh air, and that those who fail in this, will in the end fail in health and strength of limb and brain, and will die while yet their days are not all told.” That this physician with a large practice should find it necessary to write a book to set forth the necessity of fresh air during sleeping-hours, goes to show how little the mass of our people knew even fifty years ago. We hear so much about fresh air in these days that we forget that the preceding generation was in deadly terror of it.
All things point to a marked advance during the past decades, in the understanding of conditions necessary for health, but, after all, we have come but a very little way along the road we must travel to get the most out of life.
We owe a good deal of our advance in this direction to physicians and others who have broken loose from traditions and have not feared to put their ideas and discoveries to the test. Nature has provided all things for “the healing of the nations,” if we but trust her. As Dr. Shattuck, a famous Boston surgeon, used to say in making his rounds in the Massachusetts General Hospital, “There is one inestimable gift God has given to man—an abundance of fresh air.” It was his method of announcing that he did not think the ventilation of room or ward was sufficient, and the nurses understood that, and immediately admitted more air into the room.
In the wards of that great institution were dozens of persons who had never before heard of the value of fresh air: being compelled by evil social conditions to live in districts where sunshine and air were rarities, they had never heard of any relation between health and fresh air. They frequently learned that lesson there.
A little device which we call “the Perfect Gift of Sleep” is a great help in excluding the light without excluding the air, and especially valuable in that most delightful change, sleeping out of doors. A bag is made of dark green or blue or black silk or satin, about four inches wide and eight inches long, and very loosely filled with sweet pine needles. It is laid lightly over the eyes.
This may seem too trivial to bother about, but the increased comfort and the better quality of sleep which it brings is astonishing.
CHAPTER XXII
FRESH AIR AND REFRESHING SLEEP
Somnus, that walks the world from twilights’ wane
All the night long till day be born again.
Edgar Fawcett.
It is not so necessary now as when Dr. Hall wrote to urge the importance of large, airy sleeping-rooms. But it is amazing to find how many, even among the so-called “better classes,” neglect to open their windows wide at night. I have known people out in the country whose bedroom windows could hardly be made to open, so seldom did they admit the air. Indeed, they were also heavily shaded so that they might not admit the sunshine.
That such people have been able to live at all is due to the patience of Nature, or to the fact that so much of the day is spent in the open air that it helps to counteract the effect of the closed-up night. Even then they do not escape early wrinkles, bent shoulders, and a look of age long before their time. We used to attribute these to the hard work of the farmer’s life, but we might more properly attribute it to improper living.
Besides an abundance of fresh air day and night, summer and winter, personal cleanliness immensely aids to health and the ability to sleep. In the old days we bathed to clean ourselves when dirty. It was an advance on that when someone said he took a bath every spring and fall, whether he needed it or not. In those days once a week was considered frequent. To-day we bathe to keep clean.
Someone, probably Joseph Fels, has said that the civilization of a people may best be estimated by the amount of soap and water it consumes. If we start out well-groomed in the morning—fresh from the bath with clean linen, clothes brushed and all our personal needs duly attended to—we carry our heads higher, feel an uplift of body and mind that is impossible to the careless or untidy person.
The same influence applies to going to bed at night. If we retire soiled and worn from the day’s experiences, we may toss and turn with discomfort whose source we may not understand, or we fall into heavy, unrefreshing sleep. The body does most of its breathing during sleeping-time. You know how the moisture from the breath shows on a mirror when you breathe on it: well, the skin gives off about three times as much moisture as the breath, and, unless the pores of the skin are free from all obstructions such as dust, old, dried perspiration, and similar soil, it cannot perform its work properly and to the advantage of the sleeper. If you don’t like water, use oil as the Easterns do. Even dry rubbing, if the skin is moist, will keep the pores open.
The little trouble entailed is more than offset by the refreshed feeling, the lightening of the mind as well as of the body, the more restful sleep, and the better health resulting from the practice.
One of the advantages of the night bath is that it reminds us to change all the clothes we have worn during the day. If they must be worn again the next day, they should be spread out on the backs of chairs or on hangers, that they may be thoroughly aired before morning. If we feel that we must have something more than the pajamas or night-robe, then there should be separate sets of underclothes kept for that purpose alone—old, thin, partly-worn ones may be reserved for this use.
Whether baths should be hot, warm, or cold must depend upon the individual. There is no set rule that applies equally to all persons. Many persons find the cold plunge or shower most invigorating in the morning,—it is too stimulating to be taken at night—and others cannot stand the shock of contact with cold water at any time. There is but one wise thing to do—to experiment for yourself and adopt the sort of bath that seems best suited to your needs. Most people will find the warm bath more satisfactory than the hot or cold.
And remember that it is not only the lungs that need fresh air: the skin needs it too, and, next to overeating, the quickest way to “catch” cold is to bundle up in heavy perspiration-holding flannels. Linen mesh is excellent, but, whatever underclothing is worn, it should not suffocate the millions of pores of the skin.
An airy room, free from hangings, carpets, street clothes, and all other dust-gatherers; a clean body; a contented mind—these are important factors both in sleep and in general health, and, best of all, they are inexpensive enough to be within the reach of nearly everybody.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE BREATH OF LIFE
In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer, quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.
I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people’s feet
Still going past me in the street.
And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?
“Bed in Summer.”
Robert Louis Stevenson.
One of the most common causes of ill-health and sleeplessness is improper breathing. Breathing is the fundamental function of life, the first at birth and the last at death, and when it is badly performed we are sure to have trouble. The great majority of people never use the whole of their lungs in breathing. By this neglect the blood is never sufficiently oxygenated to burn out all impurities.
But you may say, “I am not responsible for the way I breathe; I do that “automatically,” and you would be in a degree correct. It is true that we are not conscious of the act of breathing. It would be an intolerable burden upon the mind if every breath required conscious attention. We could hardly attend to anything else.
That is no reason, however, why we should not regulate our breathing for our own benefit. Breathing, though an habitual organic act, is under the indirect control of the higher centers of the nervous system. We must, as Dr. Worcester says, re-educate the lower centers to breathe, and to do this it is necessary to give conscious attention to it for a time. If we wish to replace bad breathing by good breathing, we must fix our attention regularly upon drawing the breath, practice the right sort of breathing, and impress upon the vital mechanism that this new order of breathing is to be adopted, for the way to be rid of a bad habit is to replace it with a good one. If we persevere in this course, the right method can very easily be established.
By the right method is meant breathing from the diaphragm. If you will watch the act of breathing among your friends for even one day, you will discover for yourself how few do it well. The great majority breathe with the upper part of the lungs only, so that the chest visibly rises and falls in time with the inhalations and exhalations. Such persons may be unconscious of their own breathing, but they make all who observe them conscious of it. They are not only injuring themselves, but making a claim upon the attention of others that is scarcely justifiable.
Quick, short breathing is one of the signs either of excitement or of depression, some pleasurable or painful emotion or sensation, but it is not a means to health. If we have this habit, we may find in it an explanation of many of the trifling ills and discomforts from which we suffer, and of not a few of the more serious ones.
Emily M. Bishop, who has given much study to the effect of our habits of mind and body upon our health and spirits, says, in her latest book, “Daily Ways of Living,” that we may change the whole current of our thought by a change in breathing. She wisely advises her readers the next time they feel depressed or worried, “blue,” or “miserable,” to try drawing deep, full breaths. If you are not in good spirits, try that now: “spirit” means the breath.
Open the windows and let in fresh air, if within doors; inhale deeply, hold it, and then exhale rather quickly. After only four or five such inhalations you will find that the miserable feeling has disappeared or is greatly lessened. The “blues” cannot live while good red blood is circulating rapidly through the veins and arteries. It is only when the blood is sluggish or not sufficiently purified by the indrawn oxygen that worry and depression can hold us in their thrall. Deep breathing is a simple remedy for the blues, but its effectiveness makes it worth trying.
Proper breathing will often ward off a cold, especially a cold due to chill. As soon as you feel yourself getting chilly, act. The feeling of chilliness is a proof that the resistance of the body is below normal. The cause may be interior, due to the presence of some poison in the system, or it may be due entirely to external causes. In either event, to purify the blood and improve its circulation is the best sort of “first aid to the injured.” Inhale until you can feel it in your fingers and toes, exhale quickly, and repeat the operation until you feel all aglow. Mlle. Marie de Palkowska, whose special work is teaching correct breathing, says: “The nerve centers are directly affected by the condition of the blood, and they are enfeebled, contracted, or irritated by an excess of carbon and nitrogen in it, producing depression of spirits; but, if the blood is circulating freely, the nerves are quieted and well-nourished by the supply of oxygen, through the process of correct breathing, and the result is perfect health of mind and body and a happy optimism.” Worry, sleeplessness, and disease do not easily lay hold upon one who has “perfect health of mind and body and a happy optimism.” If these may be secured through intelligent attention to breathing, there is no reason why they should not be as common as they are natural. The more we look into the question of health, whether physical, mental, or moral, the more clearly we see that poise is only possible through conformity to universal law. It could not be otherwise.
Earlier in this inquiry we have traced the interdependence, the unity of man’s three natures—the physical, the mental, and the spiritual,—and the value of correct breathing to the whole man is in perfect keeping with that interdependence. In the process of digestion, upon which physical health so largely depends, we create poisons within ourselves and accumulate waste matter. The organism must be momently purified of these wastes, or putrefaction quickly follows. Autotoxins form, as the doctors say. The function of breathing, when properly controlled, affords the quickest and best method of cleansing the blood of these impurities. If we have not this proper control, the poisons are not eliminated and the supply of blood to the brain is vitiated.
Just as the body cannot perform its functions well if we are compelled to live upon tainted food, so the brain cannot do its work well if the blood—its food—is impure. Breathing which expands the diaphragm so purifies the blood as it passes through the lungs, that it becomes an important factor in maintaining health and poise in body and mind, which in their turn react upon the spirit.
This sort of breathing is more common among men than among women, due in part to natural physical differences and in part to dress. Man breathes largely from the abdomen, while woman breathes chiefly from the chest, expanding only the upper portion of the lungs. This is partly a natural and partly an artificial necessity, due to the pressure of the corset upon the diaphragm. Both men and women would find their physical health improved and their outlook on life broadened and brightened by proper control of the function of breathing. If we are sleepless, nervous, too alert, as well as if we are heavy, dull, and inactive, we will find it worth our while to try conscious breath control. It takes but a comparatively short time to re-educate the automatic centers into correct breathing and the result is always good.
It no less behooves the man who is trying to live largely on the rational plane, than the man who is living wholly on the physical plane, to make his efforts both easier and more effective by such simple attention to natural laws. The next time you are worried, depressed, or sleepless, change the air of the room and try deep and correct breathing for a few minutes. You will be surprised at the complete change wrought in you, if you are not suffering from some serious organic breakdown which needs skilled attention. And even that condition may be helped by proper breathing.
But we are not to forget that, like calisthenic and gymnastic exercises, the training of the breathing is really little more than a device for correcting the results of wrong living and only a substitute for right living. The man or the woman who does plenty of healthful, normal work, who often pants and gets “out of breath,” naturally expands the lungs and has as little use for breathing exercises as for tight clothing.
A buck-saw, a spade, or even a broom is better than a teacher of breathing and a better corrector of sleeplessness.
CHAPTER XXIV.
EATING AND SLEEPING
For his sleep
Was aery light, from pure digestion bred.
Milton.
We do not have to depend upon mere irresponsible guesses for the new faith in the possibility of longer life for man. Scientists have been experimenting along this line for some years, and Metchnikoff assures us that the average human life should exceed “three-score years and ten” by four decades.
He points out that the greatly increased number of persons who remain physically and mentally active past the age of seventy-five and eighty years is itself a proof that life may be prolonged. He recognizes that merely to extend existence is not a sufficient end to work for—it must be an active, worthwhile existence, and he has experimented toward this end.
All of us can recall instances of “old people” who have preserved their physical and mental faculties until their last years. We have been in the habit of regarding these people as exceptions and have perhaps not noticed that these “exceptions” are already almost frequent enough to prove that there is no such rule for longevity.
Whenever we investigate a new and wonderful thing, we find that its causes are simple and ordinary. So Metchnikoff and kindred experimenters are beginning to show us that prolonging life is a comparatively simple matter. It comes back again to diet and sleep on the physical side and to understanding of the universal laws on the mental and the emotional side of life.
All scientific men agree that nearly all of us eat too much, or eat improper food. Most of them say that we sleep too much, or try to sleep too much. They advise simple diet, varied but not heavy. It is probable that the early human being ate as the wild animals do, to appease hunger, and had to eat whatever he could find without regard to taste. As civilization advanced and he learned ways of getting increased returns from Nature, he began to select and choose what he should eat. In this way he developed “appetite” as apart from natural hunger, and as his knowledge increased, and his taste became more and more refined, appetite gradually took the place of hunger.
People ordinarily seldom know the pleasure of satisfying real hunger. Because of habit, the appetite stirs as often as three or five times a day and we gratify it. We must have certain foods prepared in a certain way. Eating becomes an end in itself, rather than merely a means to an end. If appetite is fully indulged, he becomes heavy, suffers from indigestion and sleeplessness, talks of stomach trouble and consequent “loss of appetite.” He seeks a physician to restore what he is really better without. Not every physician is as wise as the one to whom a cook once applied. She told her story of inability to eat her meals, of uncertain and unrestful sleep, increased weight, and shortness of breath. The physician heard her tale of woe and asked her the size of the family for which she cooked and about their mode of living. He learned that the family consisted of five, and that they entertained lavishly. “Do you taste all the food you prepare?” was the next question.
“Yes, sir; I must taste it to be sure it is just right.” “Ah!” replied the doctor; “put on a plate exactly the same quantity of everything that you take to taste—no more, no less—and send it to me to-morrow evening.”
Much to the cook’s astonishment, at the close of the next day, which had included a dinner-party, there was a heaping platter of food, more than she would have thought it possible to eat even at three meals.
“It is not a tonic you want,” said the physician. “You already eat too much, which accounts for your loss of appetite, shortness of breath, and sleeplessness. It may be necessary for you to taste all the food you cook, but take smaller ‘tastes’ and eat nothing else on cooking days. I cannot help you; you must help yourself.” (Being an ignorant woman, she went to another doctor and got some ill-tasting drug.)
And such is, after all, the decision of all the scientific investigators into the life and health of men: We must help ourselves by understanding the laws of life and observing them.
Most rich persons are really like the man who applied to his physician about “loss of appetite.” “Try beginning dinner with raw oysters,” said the doctor. In a few days the patient returned, to say that the oysters did no good.
“Maybe you didn’t eat enough?” said the doctor.
“Well,” said the man, “I ate four dozen.”
CHAPTER XXV
SLEEPING AND EATING
Man’s rich restorative, his balmy bath
That supplies, lubricates and keeps in play
The various movements of this nice machine.
Young.
“There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of” in anybody’s philosophy or understanding of living; it is not strange that the great mass have not dreamed of eating as a cause of sleeplessness and ill-health, though they may dream in consequence of it. It is generally believed that a hearty meal of any indigestible food immediately before bed is bad for sleep: yet animals and primitive men always sleep after they are gorged. But few recognize that the whole plan of eating may be responsible for sleeplessness or excessive sleepiness. For, like fatigue, food may either bring or prevent sleep.
In these days not even the most fastidious will object to a discussion of the ethics and æsthetics of feeding. It is no longer “the gratification of a vulgar necessity,” but a matter of keen scientific interest. Colleges give courses in the chemistry of food that we may know what combinations it is wise to make, while some of the leading universities have made severe practical tests of some of the new “fads in eating.” There are so many theories of eating to-day that one may take his choice, and, if the quality of both health and sleep is not improved, he can run through the list and then take what is best of each.
When Dr. W. W. Hall wrote his book on fresh air in the sleeping-room, he added, in a casual sort of way, this piece of advice to the would-be sleeper, “Always eat slowly and in moderation of well-divided food.” That is advice that will bear infinite repetition. It is really the keynote of all the present-day theories of eating. It applies equally well to omnivorous and vegetarian peoples.
Horace Fletcher says, “You may eat anything you like, if you eat it at the right time and in the right way,” and, when one has learned what Mr. Fletcher thinks is the right time and way, one has grasped the whole of “Fletcherism.” It consists in eating only when one is hungry—so hungry that “the mouth waters and one could stand and whinny like a horse at the smell of bread”—and then chewing just as long as there is any taste left to the food. I have known children to get the habit of eating too fast, with indigestion and restlessness as a consequence, because the nurse stood beside the table with a spoonful always ready and waiting while the last was being swallowed. We may avoid that habit for ourselves or cure ourselves of it by always laying down the knife and fork or spoon after each mouthful. This insures some time to chew.
It is the opinion of all those who have special theories on “what to eat and how to eat it” that civilized man scarcely knows what true hunger is. We are so in the habit of eating at fixed and customary hours that we create “habit hunger,” which has but slight connection with Nature’s demands for sustenance. In accordance with this idea, fasting is again becoming popular and all sorts of good results are claimed for it. The “devil of unrest and disease” is now being reckoned among “those that go not out but by fasting and prayer.” Fasting and prayer meant the physical and the spiritual treatment together.
Fasting has long been imposed upon man as a religious rite, generally as penance for some “sin,” but now it is being advised and self-imposed for the sake of its physical advantages. It may well be that the habit of fasting for health’s sake originated with prehistoric man and was diverted into religious channels and its original significance forgotten. So many “religious rites” have come about in this way that it is fair to assume that fasting may have, also.
However that may be, the practice is coming into scientific prominence, and Charles C. Haskell in his book, “Perfect Health: How to Get it and How to Keep it, by One Who Has It,” made much of the importance of fasting. If one is ill, fasting will make him well, according to Mr. Haskell. He gives numerous instances of the benefits that have followed fasts extending from one to nine or even more days. Mr. Upton Sinclair has written of his happy experience of abstinence in “The Fasting Cure.” As soon as the system is ready for food, true hunger will appear, says Mr. Haskell, and, like Mr. Fletcher, he regards “watering at the mouth”—the free flow of saliva—as the best index of real hunger.
But, unlike Fletcher, Haskell is a vegetarian pure and simple, as that word is generally understood. Haskell says, “Nature has provided a natural food for man, and it is the vegetable kingdom.” He also strongly urges upon the seeker for sound health, which means sound sleep, to give up the habit of taking breakfast, thus conquering appetite and restoring real hunger. This is, indeed, the first precept he lays down; and the second is much like it. It runs, “Never eat except at the call of Natural Hunger.” Third, “Enjoy to the full every mouthful of food as long as any taste remains in it.” Fourth, “Do not drink any liquids with your meals.” The rules are simple enough to follow if you have any cause to suspect that your mode of life is the cause of “poor sleep.” This book has no special brand of food to recommend, nor does it intend to say what any man should or should not eat. Sir Henry Thompson is about right when he says that “No man can tell another what he can or ought to eat, without knowing what are the habits of life and work—mental and bodily—of the person to be advised. One rule cannot apply to all.”
All that the writer aims to do is to set forth the best theories of how to insure sound sleep and good health, and to leave it to the individual reader to try whichever he thinks fits. It is what he will do, anyway, if he is a wise man; for only by following the course he most desires can he learn whether these desires are to be trusted as guides to happiness and well-being.
But—most persons eat too much or too often or too fast. Maybe you do, too.
CHAPTER XXVI
SOME MODERN THEORIES OF SLEEP
I have an exposition of sleep come upon me.
Shakespeare.
There have been almost as many theories of sleep and its causes as there have been investigators, but these theories may be grouped under a few main heads:
Physiological, or that which has to do with some bodily conditions only, and which made men think that sleep was dependent upon the circulation of the blood or upon decreased consumption of oxygen, was an early one of these theories. It has had many advocates and has led to many interesting experiments that have increased the sum of general knowledge, although they have not explained sleep.
Delicate instruments, with formidable names, have been invented and successfully used to measure the intensity of sleep and to note its phenomena. Two of the experimenters—C. E. Brush, Jr., and R. Fayerweather of the Physiological Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University—through long, intricate and exhaustive experiments, have found that sleep is most intense and the pressure of blood in the arteries lowest during the first half of the sleeping period. After we have completed the first half of our sleep, the intensity or soundness of sleep becomes less, and the pressure of blood in the arteries continues to increase up to the moment of awaking.
It is interesting to learn that the moment when we are most soundly sleeping is at the end of the first hour of sleep, and that the blood-pressure has at that time reached its very lowest point. Messrs. Brush and Fayerweather report that, during the first few hours of sleep, the blood-pressure continues to fall and then begins a gradual rise. The tendency is to more and more rapid flow of the blood, but this rise is not steady or regular, because it is broken by long waves when the force of the circulation falls and the pulse is weaker than it was a moment or two before. The rapidity of the blood-flow is greater on the moment of awakening than just before dropping to sleep. This increase is not sudden, but is the culmination of the rise that begins a few hours after we fall asleep. (See Appendix B.)
The intensity or depth of sleep is shown by a curve that looks like a pile of sand with the top scooped off. It increases rather slowly, in most cases, for the first quarter-hour: then quickly, so that half an hour later the person is most “sound asleep.” He stays so, on the level top, for about half an hour. That is the time that wise burglars and late husbands choose to steal into the house, about an hour after everyone is asleep. After that time the sleeper reverses the process of falling into deep sleep by getting nearer to waking for half an hour and then getting, at first rapidly, nearer to waking for two or three hours. In the last three or four hours healthy and normal persons reach about the same proportions of time and intensity of sleep, so that the Indian-bow-shaped curve fairly represents how long it takes everybody to deepen his sleep. Kohlschütter found how great an intensity of sound was needed to awaken a sleeper at different periods throughout the night. His curve thus made tallies very exactly with that of Brush and Fayerweather, obtained in quite a different way.
Some other investigators have pointed out that, interesting as this theory is, it proves one thing about as completely as it does the other. For, while it is plain that sleep and the great fall in blood-pressure exist at the same moment, it is not conclusively shown which is cause and which is effect. Does sleep cause the fall in blood-pressure, or does the fall in blood-pressure cause sleep? The two are coexistent, but who can say which begins first?
It looks as if sleep might be more justly considered the cause, if one takes the sleeping-position, and maintains the attitude of mind suitable to induce sleep, blood-pressure grows less, even though the patient does not actually fall asleep.
Under this physiological view must come also the chemical theory based on the fact that we consume more oxygen during the day, thus forming carbon dioxide and other poisons which cause sleepiness. During the night we absorb oxygen, building up the tissues, and eliminating the poisons of the waking hours.
The poisons which are the result of the consumption of oxygen cause fatigue, and according to Preyer, a European authority, “sleep is the direct consequence of fatigue, or rather of the fatigue products in the blood.” His contention is that, if lactic acid and other chemical products of the consumption of oxygen in the body were injected artificially, sleep would follow. Experiments in this direction made by Preyer, Fisher, and L. Meyer have yielded such contradictory results that the theory is not proved thereby.
The idea that sleep is the result of poisons in the system takes us into the pathological theory of sleep, which regards it as a sort of disease like epilepsy or auto-intoxication. We produce by our own activities the poisons which cause insensibility until the system cleanses itself. Professor Leo Errera of Brussels says that “work in the organism is closely bound up with a chemical breaking down.” Among the products of this breakdown are “leucomaines,” the scientific name for poisons formed in living tissue, and just the opposite to “ptomaines,” which, however, are also virulent poisons.
Professor Errera tells us that, during our waking hours, we produce more leucomaines than the oxygen we absorb can destroy. This excess is carried along by the blood and held by the brain centers, and in time produces sleep, just as any poisonous anæsthetic, such as morphine, would produce sleep.
While we are sleeping we absorb much oxygen and we recover from the effects of our self-intoxication. Errera maintains that work, fatigue, sleep, and repair are not merely successive events, but phenomena chained together in a regular and necessary cycle. He explains sleeplessness due to overfatigue on the theory that small doses of poisons induce sleep and large doses induce excitement and even convulsions.
Manacéïne points out that this theory is good from a purely physical standpoint, but does not explain our power to postpone sleep or the faculty of waking at a fixed hour. We can do both, and any adequate theory of sleep must explain why we can control the tendency to sleep, but cannot control the symptoms of ordinary poisoning.
CHAPTER XXVII
EARLY THEORIES OF SLEEP
Balm that tames all anguish.
Wordsworth.
Mr. Edward Binns of London, as early as 1842, published a book called “The Anatomy of Sleep”—with the subtitle, “The Art of Procuring Sound and Refreshing Slumber at Will.” The subtitle makes one think of the three-volume novels of that time, but the book is fairly concise and worth careful review. Moreover, it is in advance of many works on sleep both before and after. (For ancient surmises see Appendix C.)
One of the favorite medical theories of sleep is that it is caused by fatigue, and is, therefore, purely passive in its nature. Binns did not accept this theory. He said, “Sleep is an active and positive faculty, not a negative and passive result of fatigue or weariness.” Some of the more modern writers, notably Manacéïne, agree with Dr. Binns that sleep is not the result of physical fatigue or weariness. Dr. Binns thinks that one proof that fatigue can in no sense be said to be the cause of sleep is that, if we prolong “the state of wakefulness after the usual period of retiring to rest, it is more difficult to induce sleep than if we went at the usual hour.” This is especially true of children, yet the patient may be much more fatigued at the later hour than at the usual bedtime.
Binns’ theory is that physiological sleep is in antagonism to intellectual activity, being the active process of nutrition, assimilation of food, or of the repair of the waste of the body; that it concerns the nerve centers: that is, “the ganglionic system.” It is a generally admitted theory that man’s activity, whether physical or mental, “uses up” tissue and nerve force, and that it is only when repair exceeds this waste that life is maintained at a high standard. If the activities of life be many and varied, much sleep according to this theory would be needed to repair the waste of force. Experience has shown that those who live purely physical lives, doing hard manual labor with little mental exercise, need the most sleep. Those whose activities are mostly mental generally sleep fewer hours, though the desire for sleep may be as intense when it comes as is that of the manual laborer. (See Appendix, Questionnaire.)
Regarding sleep as a necessity, in itself an “active and positive faculty,” Binns says of it that “it is the true ‘vis medicatrix naturæ’ —the healing force of nature—to whose vigilance we are indebted for that condition of mind and body called ‘health.’” However, he is not an advocate of long hours of sleep for everybody. He thinks individuals differ widely in the amount of sleep needed. He makes the general statement that, “the lower the cerebral organs in the scale of organization, the greater the power of sleep.” On this point all the authorities agree, and even in our own experience we learn that. The animals nearest to man in point of development sleep more than man sleeps; and, among men, those who live the most sluggish mental and emotional lives sleep longer than those whose brains are more active.
There may, of course, be exceptions to this rule, and yet those exceptions would not disprove that there is a rule. Much depends, says the good doctor, upon the peculiarities “of the individual; the culture of his mind; his amusement, his food, his occupation, and the temper with which he wooes sleep. General Elliot never slept more than four hours out of twenty-four, and his food consisted wholly of bread, vegetables, and water.” This seems like one more link in the chain that binds up our habits of eating with our power to sleep. Just as heavy eating late at night may so disturb our slumber as to leave us practically sleepless, so general heavy eating may render us so incapable of mental activity that sleep may take possession of us. General Elliot’s slight need of sleep was probably due, in large measure, to his light diet, and Dr. Binns seems to be of that opinion. We notice that flesh-eating animals, especially serpents, gorge and then sleep long.
A modern medical authority, Sir Henry Thompson of London, in his book, “Diet in Relation to Age and Activity,” takes somewhat similar ground, although careful to state that he is not “a vegetarian.” He says: “I have been compelled by facts to accept the conclusion that as much mischief in the form of actual disease, impaired vigor and shortened life accrues to civilized man, so far as I have observed in our own country and throughout almost every part of Europe, from erroneous habits in eating as from the habitual use of alcoholic drink, considerable as I know the evil of that to be.”[9]
CHAPTER XXVIII
MORE THEORIES
To Sleep I give my powers away
My will is bondsman to the dark;
I sit within a helmless bark.
Tennyson.
There is another class of investigators who aim to explain what might be called the nervous mechanism of sleep rather than its causes. These are the histologists, and theirs is the “histological” theory of sleep. There is a vast literature on this one phase of sleep theorizing alone, and it is deeply interesting to those who, in order to understand this theory, are willing to wrestle with the difficult and technical terms.
The general reader, unfamiliar with physiological terms, is bewildered by such a word as “neuroglia.” He wonders what sort of a fossil that is, when in fact it is merely a particular sort of tissue found in the central nervous system; a substance without any nervous property serving a purpose merely similar to cement. So that, after all, like much science, it is simple enough when put in plain words.
Some histologists hold that the neuroglia is able to contract or expand; that, when expanded, it takes or receives impressions from without, and, when it contracts, it shuts out such impressions, thus inducing sleep. Dr. J. Leonard Corning, of New York, says that “Sleep may be defined as that state of the central nervous system in which the higher centers are, to a great extent, in a condition of physiological quiescence, with all the consequences thereby implied.” Dr. Corning means that the nervous centers of the brain are inactive, as a result of contraction, and that this state results in drowsiness and in consequent loss of the consciousness. He recognizes, however, that this purely physical condition does not always produce sleep; that there may be disturbing causes within. He says: “Those who suffer from sleeplessness are, almost without exception, beset by a variety of disagreeable mental symptoms during the day, dread of impending evil, irritability, depression, dread of society, etc.” Although these are often the result of wrong states of mind or heart, he recommends for such cases warm baths, Turkish baths, massage, and for obstinate cases he even suggests the use of drugs, because he regards the formation of habits of insomnia as more likely than the formation of the drug habit. This suggestion is not generally favored by the investigators of sleep, the most of whom discountenance the use of drugs. Almost everyone has known somebody who contracted the “drug habit,” or has heard of somebody who died from the effects of an overdose of some poison taken to induce sleep. Nobody should dose himself with drugs, hoping to get good results from sleep thus secured. It is wiser by far to discover the cause of sleeplessness and remove it, rather than merely to stupefy ourselves for the time being.
It was as a worker along histological lines that Henry Hubbard Foster of Cornell University became convinced that sleep is induced by the absence of stimuli: that is, of things that attract and hold our attention. It may be that the individual withdraws from all stimulating conditions and creates conditions to cause sleep, as we do when we prepare for bed; or it may be that, because of fatigue, our senses do not respond to the things that would otherwise stimulate us. In either event, the result is the same—there is an absence of stimuli.
Foster believes that the present state of our development is not sufficient to meet the demands of continuous activity of the senses and the brain. “If it were not for fatigue,” he says, “the development of the nervous system might be carried to such a point that consciousness could be present continuously.” He finds the reason for sleep in “a temporary derangement of the nervous system.” According to Boris Sidis of Harvard, who has experimented extensively on frogs, cats, birds, dogs, children, and adults, the cells of the central nervous system, by expanding and contracting, connect themselves with, or cut themselves off from the whole nervous system, and induce “waking-states and sleeping-states.” The purely scientific man is forever aiming to reduce all the phenomena of human life to a simple formula. But no formula has yet been discovered which includes all phases of life to the satisfaction of all its students. Hence we have so many different theories of so natural and universal a function as sleep, none of them perfectly satisfactory even to their discoverers or inventors, and none affording any great help to those who want to know how to sleep.
This whole neuron theory, as it is called, of dilating and contracting is really no more complete an explanation than any of the others. No perfect explanation of any natural function can be given until we can fully explain life. That has not yet been done. The most advanced biologists can say, “Here life appears,” but they cannot absolutely define life any more than they can create it out of inanimate things.
We know, however, that in sleep, sight, nearly useless to man in the gloom of night, goes first to rest. Next taste goes. Then smell, still so useful to animals, deserts us. Then touch is dulled. Last of all, the hearing relaxes its guard, though with some persons it stays long awake. Noise will arouse us quicker than a touch; and last the light.
As you drop off to sleep you can notice the decreased sensation in the long-serving feet which feels as if it slowly climbs to the muscles in the head and neck.
CHAPTER XXIX
STILL MORE THEORIES
Sleep sits upon his brow;
His eye is closed; he sleeps, nor dreams of harm.
Longfellow.
We have not yet exhausted all the theories, nor shown how much too much some of them and how far too little all of them prove.
The two remaining scientific theories of sleep are the psychological and the biological. The best modern exponent of the psychological theory is Marie de Manacéïne, who defines sleep as “the resting-time of consciousness.” Persons whose consciousness is but little developed, young children, and those of weak intellect, usually require a great deal of sleep, while persons whose minds are active, alert, responsive, get along with comparatively little sleep.
For a long time it was believed that living creatures devoid of consciousness would not sleep at all, but recent experiments have apparently weakened that conclusion. Dogs, pigeons, and other animals deprived of brains in the interest of scientific discovery, appear to sleep, that is, they have periods of inactivity, just as those with brains and consciousness. Belmondo, after repeated experiments, drew the conclusion that sleep is not a purely cerebral function, as some believe, but that the whole organism sleeps; and the brain sleeps only because the organs of sense sleep. This, however, is doubtful.
And this is in sum and substance the biological theory of sleep, that the whole organism sleeps, but even here there are exceptions. It is true that the heart beats less rapidly; that we breathe less frequently; that the brain cells cease their functioning because the neuroglia contracts and shuts off or lessens their joint activity; the motor consciousness rests; the nerves of sensation refuse to be stimulated, we sleep. Yet we know that the spinal cord never sleeps, that certain functions of the body continue uninterruptedly in the sleeping-state as in the waking-state, and, after all these years of theorizing and experimenting, we do not know definitely what sleep is. We know the mechanism of sleep, its manifestations and its effects; we know that continued sleeplessness means madness and death; that sleep is essential to the physical and mental well-being of the human organism, but we do not know what sleep is any more than we know what life is. There is a limit to what material science can know.
Heubel, who is one of the recent supporters of the psychological theory of sleep, says that “Mental activity depends on the incoming peripheral sensory stimulations; when such peripheral sensory stimulations are absent, mental activity is in abeyance and sleep results.” This is, in effect, to say that, when things about us no longer give us any sensation, when they do not attract or hold our attention, we fall asleep. But we all know of exceptions to this rule. We have seen others fall into “a brown study,” and have probably done so ourselves, and become perfectly lost to all about them; absorbed in their own reflections, they neither hear nor see the things happening around them. For the time being “peripheral sensory stimulations” are absent, and yet mental activity continues and sleep does not result.
The biological theory of sleep considers all the other theories, while formulating its own, because biology considers the whole organism and not only one organ or function of the body. From a different point of view Binns’ theory is confirmed by Claperède, who points out that, “biologically regarded, sleep has its significance not as a passive state, but as an active instinct, like all the other instincts of animal life.” There is a degree of satisfaction to be found in this theory. It might be stated in this way, that, when man has had during any period all the sensations and experiences he can digest, the instinct to sleep takes possession of him. It is not that he becomes helpless in the hands of those experiences, but that his whole nature, like his stomach, knows when it has had food enough, and desires time for digestion and assimilation before it takes in more. Obviously, “utter separation from the phenomenal world,” as John Bigelow expresses it, becomes necessary.
In his lectures on Botany at the Royal School of Medicine in Great Britain, Professor Leo H. Grindon said: “Man is captured in sleep not by death but by his better nature; to-day runs in through a deeper day to become the parent of to-morrow, and to issue every morning, bright as the morning of life, and of life-size, from the peaceful womb of the cerebellum.” This is the result not of a passive state, but of an active instinct; it accepts sleep as a time of growth, not merely a time of rest. Bigelow says, “Something goes on during sleep which is a preventive as well as an antidote to mania,” and, in furtherance of this same idea, Dr. J. J. G. Wilkinson of the Royal College of Surgeons of London, argues that it seems “as if a reason more perfect than reason, and uninfluenced by its partialities, had been at work when we were in our beds.” Even “biologically regarded,” Bigelow is not far astray when he claims that “our desire for sleep is manifestly designed to promote in us the growth and development of spiritual graces.” In other words, we desire to sleep, that we may relate the experiences of our every-day active life to the sum of knowledge we already possess by inheritance and past experience, that we may thereby get a fuller understanding of life and its purposes.
“It is not uncommon for those who have no habit or inclination to sleep during the morning hours of secular days, to be overcome with somnolency in church soon after the devotional exercises are begun, and to find it impossible to derive any edification from them until they have lost themselves for a moment or two in absolute unconsciousness. Then they have no difficulty, sometimes a lively pleasure, in attending to the exercises which follow. The worshiper is then withdrawn from the familiar excitement of customary avocations. It is idle to suppose that in these few moments of repose, upright in his pew, he has rested enough, in the common acceptation of that word, to repair any waste of tissue that would explain the new sense of refreshment that ensues. He has received, in that brief retirement from the world, some reinforcements which manifestly are not dependent upon time or space for their efficacy—spiritual reinforcements, and spiritual reinforcements only. He has removed himself, or been removed, further away, out of sight or hearing or thinking, so to speak, of his phenomenal life, and nearer to the Source of all life.” This explanation may or may not be true. He adds:
“It was quite a common impression among the ancients that sleepers in temples of religion were more apt to receive divine communications there than elsewhere.” (“Mystery of Sleep,” John Bigelow, pp. 94-95.)
CHAPTER XXX
WE LEARN TO DO BY DOING
Sleep winds us up for the succeeding dawn.
Young.
Good health and good sleep are so interdependent that it is as difficult to separate them into cause and effect as to determine “which came first, the hen or the egg?” If it be true that life may be wonderfully prolonged as soon as we have learned to avoid disease and exhaustion, and that we may learn to avoid both by avoiding excess, then it is as much within our power to live long and well as to sleep long and well, if we so wish. Senility, the disease of old age, is now believed to be caused by germs which flourish in the waste matter left in the system through improper or excessive eating.
Metchnikoff, the noted bacteriologist, alleges that the large intestine is the breeding-place of these destructive germs. A Dr. Hall arrived at the same conclusion earlier and combated his germs with copious water-flooding of the bowels. So far, Metchnikoff’s experiments point to the conclusion that lactic acid destroys them. That is why he recommends the use of pure buttermilk and has invented a tablet that, dropped into milk, will convert it into a wholesome drink for adult man. Discoveries and inventions of this sort are of great interest to all who enjoy and seek to prolong life. But purely physical things cannot take the place of the mental attitude. The youngest woman of seventy-nine that I have ever known is one who says, “Tell me more; I must not get into such a rut that I cannot grow.” No discovery or invention will do us much good if we allow habit to cramp our thought and custom to stale it.
Science may show us how to avoid disease and to prolong life, but, if we turn a deaf ear to her teaching, we shall get no benefit from it. It is the alert, open mind that profits from discovery or experience. The sun may shine with life-giving power, but, if the house be shuttered and darkened, it will not benefit the dwellers. So with the mind. If we resolutely shut it against new ideas, if we refuse to take even the gift of life and health from an unaccustomed hand, then we must expect to suffer.
If we would rid ourselves of sleeplessness, of disease, and dissatisfaction, we must be willing to let go of every habit, every thought, every feeling that may injure us. To hug them to us is merely to invite further suffering, to lessen our own vigor and our own enjoyment.
Nevertheless, we must hug our habits to us, if we can see or understand nothing better. No one can help us beyond what we are willing to receive: anyone can lead a horse to the water, but no one can make him drink. If the end in view seems to us worth the price we must pay, we pay it. We have no choice; for our desires push us that way. We often take credit to ourselves for things for which no credit is due us. However self-denying an act may seem, it is, after all, the thing we want most to do, else we would not do it.
In the same way, if we refuse to profit by the discoveries and experiments of others, if we prefer to go on in our old way of suffering, nobody can really prevent us. It is all a matter that we must decide. This book does not pretend to cure any ill. It intends merely to show what investigation and experience have proved; to point to possible ways of escape from the ills with which men now suffer. If it looks desirable to you, you will only read it; but, until you have tried it, you cannot say whether it is good or not.
CHAPTER XXXI
VAIN REGRETS
Thou hast been called, O Sleep! the friend of woe;
But ’tis the happy that have called thee so.
Southey.
Sometimes we lie awake at night to regret some action of our own because the result has not been what we desired or expected. “John the Unafraid” says that “if your misfortune is not your own fault, you have much to be glad of. If it is your own fault you have more to be glad of, since you can prevent that misfortune from occurring again.” In either case, therefore, you may follow the advice given so many years ago, “Rejoice evermore.” At least it is evident that in neither case need you lose sleep over it: for, according to your light, you did what seemed to you at the time best for you to do.
For, to quote Epictetus again, it is not possible “to judge one thing to be best for me and seek another.” The thing you did, you did because it seemed best to do that, and to regret now and wish you had done something else is, in reality, to wish that you had been a different person from what you were, which is a foolish regret, or, that you had done something different from what seemed best to do. That would be a mild form of insanity. You don’t really regret that you were not insane?
It has no bearing on the case that the outcome has proved that you were mistaken. You might never have learned that your course was not best for you or for others, except by doing just as you did. Now you have that much more knowledge than you had before, and you can use it to help you another time. A man can’t do any better than he can. You cannot do more than you know, and you only know what you have learned by experience. The great majority of us learn only in the school of personal experience; the few wise ones learn some things through the experience of others, by relating or applying their own experience to the events in the lives of others. Comparing and reflecting, they come to see the close relation of act and consequence, and thus recognize the universal laws in operation.
Such wisdom may be yours, but it will not come through regretting that you did not possess it ready-made. Besides, no misfortune, whether we are ourselves directly responsible for it or not, is ever in vain. No matter how hard and almost unendurable the “misfortune” may have seemed at the time, we shall find in looking back that it was no unmixed evil. The terrible calamity has often been the turning-point in our lives. It made us pause and think, and, through the thinking, we have achieved development of which we were otherwise incapable.
Even when we do not always see this for ourselves, partly because we are not always good judges of our own development or progress, we see it plainly in the lives of others. A friend of mine once said to me of a woman who was doing a tremendous work in the world, “I remember when she was just a selfish society woman.” “What changed her?” I asked.
“Oh, she lost her only daughter very suddenly. It was a terrible blow, and her friends thought she would never recover. But she did, and those who love her best know that that heavy sorrow was really a blessing in disguise. Think what she is now!” I smiled appreciatively, for my friend was herself still smarting from a keen disappointment which she had not yet recognized as a blessing in disguise. But recognizing it in another’s life must eventually help her to see it in her own.
If our misfortune has come from a selfishness that we might have overcome, and did not, we shall not better matters by wasting time in regret. “Repentance”—which is the only emotion such a misfortune should arouse—“is to up and act for righteousness, and forget that you ever had relations with sin.” Unless we “bring forth fruits meet for repentance,” our repentance is lost, and we are indeed worse off than if we had felt none.
Spinoza, the Jewish philosopher, has spoken almost the last word on the uselessness of regret. He says: “One might perhaps expect gnawings of conscience and repentance to help to bring him on the right path, and might thereupon conclude (as everyone does conclude) that these affections are good things. Yet when we look at the matter closely, we shall find that not only are they not good, but on the contrary hurtful and evil passions. For it is manifest that we can always get along better by reason and love of truth than by worry of conscience and remorse.” It is an old Hebrew idea that we should repent in sackcloth and ashes, making ourselves miserable that we may make God happy. We forget that love cannot enjoy anyone’s misery. It were indeed a perverted mind, whether human or divine, that could derive pleasure from the discomfort or sorrow of another.
Plants grow better when the sunshine warms them, and human beings expand and develop under the sunshine of joyous reflection and effort. If you are losing sleep through dreary or hopeless regret, purge your mind of such folly, and, after a sound sleep, you will find that things look brighter.
There are, of course, exceptions to the rule that sleep brings mental quiet, for some sorts of nervous sufferers are prone to depression in the morning, but it is not common among active, healthy persons. They, like well-nourished children, awake to find each day a fresh delight.
Dr. M. Allen Starr, the distinguished nerve specialist of New York, writes me that there are several explanations of the cause of such depression. He is of the opinion that those who are depressed from melancholia when they wake in the morning, are probably suffering from a toxic condition of the blood which originally produced the melancholia. This toxin, or poison, is resisted by the nervous system when it is well nourished, but has a greater effect when the nervous system is poorly nourished. He says that there is a general consensus of opinion that, during sleep, the blood vessels of the brain are contracted slightly so that the amount of blood going into the brain during sleep is less than during the waking hours. This was proved many years ago by Professor Mosso of Turin, by a series of experiments which are conclusive. When blood vessels are contracted, and less blood is going to an organ, the nutrition of that organ is less actively maintained. Hence, if a person has poison in the system, it is less restricted during sleep, has a greater opportunity to attack the nerve-cells, and thus to prevent the nutrition which is essential to the feeling of general comfort. That is the theory on which we physicians explain depression on awaking after sleep in melancholia. What is true of melancholia is probably true also of fatigue conditions and irregular conditions of health, many of which are dependent upon the existence in the blood of substances detrimental to health, either the products of indigestion or the poisons of disease. This theory explains the conditions in which a person not actively ill may awake from a sleep in a state of depression. (See Appendix A.)
Prof. Edward M. Weyer in reading the sheets of this book suggests another tentative explanation of depression upon waking: if we consider the nerve cell as stored with energy, then, if the store is maintained at normal, it is in a healthful state. The supply fluctuates somewhat during the day, but in the melancholic person it does not rise to normal even after good sleep: the less amount of carbonic acid gas eliminated during sleep leaves the system on waking at the mercy of that poisoned gas and of the chronically low nervous energy.
CHAPTER XXXII
THE LOVE THAT IS PEACE
Sweet gate of life, sweet type of death—
Come, Sleep!
Dora Read Goodale.
Many persons lose sleep because of their love for others, as the lover who sighs and tosses, dreaming, asleep or awake, of the beloved. The mother loses sleep thinking of the child with its little worries and problems, its willfulness or its frail health. There is always some cause that seems to her reasonable ground for worry. The father, too, plans for the future of his son, and lies awake to map out a life for another human being, as if that being were a puppet and his father held the strings by which it could be moved in his hands.
Dickens showed the futility of such planning in “Dombey and Son,” and we have all seen it in actual life. Yet we go on doing as our fathers did, and suffering, as we say, “because of our love.” It is really only because we do not understand what love is.
What we usually call love is largely self-love; that is why we hear so much of the pangs of love. Love, being the essence of godlikeness, ought to bring us the joy of the gods, and love would bring only joy if we could forget ourselves. We understand ourselves so little that we do not know when our love is self-love. We are always seeking some return upon our affection, as if it were an investment that must pay dividends to prove its profitableness. The price of our love is generally the right to criticise, to influence, to control; or, if we forego these seeming advantages, we expect at least consideration from those whom we have blessed with our love. No relation of life seems too sacred to escape the contamination of the selfish demands of self or narrow love.
The mother loves her child, cares for it in its helpless years, gladly risks even her life for it, and yet may be unwilling that that child shall live its own life, follow its own yearnings, think its own thoughts. The great stumbling-block of the parent is the unconscious demand for gratitude, the claim made upon the child of a return for the effort and affection so freely bestowed. It may be that the parent does not look for material returns, such as money or position, nevertheless a price is exacted every time that the parent is surprised, disappointed, or angered by the child pursuing some course contrary to his teaching. The love that cared for the helpless child becomes the tyranny that would control its thoughts and action.
We say “This is natural,” but we seldom say, even to ourselves, “This is selfishness.” We would not desire to compel another to think as we think, if we were not sure that we could not be mistaken. It is a conceit of ourselves which makes us quick to thrust upon another “ready-made” opinions because they are our opinions.
But there is a still more subtle selfishness than this that may be at the bottom of things. If we have earnestly advocated anything which the world has been slow to accept, we feel that it is a sort of attack upon us and our views when our children do not support those views. We say, “How can we expect others to heed us, if our own children don’t heed us,” and so we are hurt or angered. We think of their opposition as disloyalty, and it does not occur to us that it might be no advantage if others did heed us; that the very opposition of our children may be the best means of preventing us from doing harm to our fellows.
Besides, if we cared more that men should see the right and love it, than that they should heed us, it would not hurt or vex us whether they listened or not. If we have a message, it will find hearers and followers. “There can never be one lost good,” says Browning, and, if what we would teach is good, it will find its own. It is self-love, not love for others, which makes us sore or angry when they will not listen.
It is a narrow love that makes us fail our friends because they have not fulfilled the ideal we had of them. We never really loved them. We loved something that we thought they should be, and were unwilling to find them something different. We get pain out of our relations with our fellow-beings because our love is not big enough to exclude self.
We make in our minds a model of what our friends should be, and it takes up so much room that we cannot accommodate so much as a mental photograph of what they really are. And just there lies not only the possibility but the absolute assurance of “disappointment” in them, and consequent “pain” for ourselves.
If we knew our friends for what they really are, and were willing that they should be themselves, we could not possibly be disappointed in them. We really insist upon our friends being in “our own image and likeness.” Just so the Hebrews, in the efforts to present God to the world, made of him simply a man like themselves—big and strong, to be sure, with sentiments of love and pity and justice, but with a lust of anger and revenge which almost blotted out his tenderness. Many people still cling to this idea of God, but they are mostly those whose love is so full of self that even the Supreme Being must conform to their standard or they cease to believe in him.
The “disappointment” that so often follows marriage, even between the fondest lovers, is mainly caused by this narrow or self-love. Most married misery is due to each trying to improve the other instead of himself. “Because I love him,” says the wife, “he should do as I ask him, but he refuses. He does not love me as I love him. I am almost broken-hearted with disappointment.” “Any wife who loved her husband would find it a pleasure to be and to do what he asks. My wife does not conform to my wishes, but insists upon doing as she herself prefers. If a man is not the head of his own house, how is happiness possible? Marriage is indeed a lottery, and I have drawn a blank,” says he.
But there is one thing certain, if we find ourselves suffering through our love in any relation of life, whether as husband or wife, mother, daughter, lover, friend, we may be sure that it is because our love is not broad enough; because we believe in ownership, or desire gratitude, or are confident of our wisdom and ability to control the life of another. In short, that we love self best. “Love suffereth long and is kind; ... seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil.” The largest love embraces, understands, and forgives everything, and knows no disappointments and no end.
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE SPECTER OF DEATH
Often we are anxious and sleepless only because we are afraid of what is not in itself frightful. Like the little child in the picture who mounts the dark stairs in deadly terror of an imaginary bear, we are afraid lest we should see a vague something that might terrify us still more.
But perhaps there is a real specter in our path? Let us attack the most terrible foe; having overcome him, we shall find that the lesser ones have no power over us.
A man was once walking alone a lonely road on a dark, misty night, fearing every sound and looking for danger. He had been told that the road was haunted and this was the terror that possessed him. As he neared the haunted spot, he saw a white form rise from the earth. It was barely discernible through the mist as it waved thin arms and made soft moaning sighs. His hair rose on his head, but his going forward was imperative, so he took heart of grace, and determined to face his adversary.
“Spirit or human,” said he, “I shall settle you before I leave this place to-night.” With this he dashed forward, and found that it was merely a slender birch with white under-leaves upturned in the wind, as the breeze sighed through its branches.
The rest of the road held no terrors for him. The specter he had most dreaded proved to be nothing at all. In conquering his first emotion of fear he had vanquished all terror.
Maybe we fear the possible death either of ourselves or of some other dearer than ourselves. Are we afraid of that? Let us look calmly at it. Changes have taken place, and are even now in progress in our bodies, yet we do not fear them. For the most part we are even unconscious of them: a change is not terrible in itself, no matter how great it is. Death is but another change, one that has not yet come.
A pious man once appealed in distress to the late Rev. Dr. John Hall: he said he knew his soul was saved, but he was afraid of dying. Dr. Hall asked him, “But you are not dying now, are you?” “No,” he said, “but I know that I must die some day.” “Ah, well!” replied the doctor, “we hardly need dying grace until our dying day.” “As our day so shall our strength be”—the bravest soldier may be nervous contemplating the battle, but in the action he finds not only courage but exhilaration. So, if we learn to live from day to day, we may well put off fear of death or dying until our dying day has come, and then we may find that there is nothing to fear. For the present, what we have to consider is life, and what it may mean.
There are two ways of looking at life: one regards life as the changes that take place in the body from birth to death. The body is always changing, being almost all renewed at least every seven years. Old hair is constantly falling out, to be replaced by new; we cut the excess growth of the nails, and rarely stop to think that the nails we have to-day are not the same nails we had a few weeks or months ago. We get rid of dead skin, and our skin constantly renews itself, and so we feel no worry if we cut or scratch it. We say quite complacently, “Oh! it will heal up and new skin grow.” The whole body fades and is renewed. It is not, then, the changes in the body that we fear.
We accept this series of physical changes as physical life, for we know that, if the changes stopped, life would stop also; but we must also recognize them as death, for the beginning of each new stage is the death of the previous stage. Thus death is steadily going on in ourselves, at the same time that life continues, and we not only have no fear of it, but are unconscious of the process: our body is constantly passing from death to life, as well as from life to death, and we are not afraid of that; in fact, we never give a thought to it.
Even from the physical standpoint man need not spend his best years fearing death. When we live so that death shall round out a long life, we shall have lost all fear of it. When we say that a person did not die a “natural death” we usually mean that he died suddenly and violently. But death from disease is not “natural” either, and in as far as we learn how to live aright, harmonizing the physical, mental, and spiritual natures, realizing that the perishing body is not all of us, we can avoid most of the fruitful sources of disease. As we learn what true life is, and how natural the eventual dissolution of the body is, we shall cease to tremble at it.
Metchnikoff, the eminent philosopher and student who has devoted years of study and research to the life and death of man, says: “When diseases are suppressed, and the course of life regulated by scientific hygiene, it is probable that death will come only at extreme old age. When death comes in its natural place at the end of the normal cycle of the physical life, it will be robbed of its terrors, and be accepted gratefully as any other part of the cycle of life.” He thinks, in fact, that the instinct of life may be replaced by an instinct of death. “It is even possible,” he says, “that the approach of natural death is one of the most pleasant sensations in the world.” Perhaps the most striking evidence of the truth of this so far recorded is the case of Brillat-Savarin’s aunt—who, at ninety-three, said to her famous nephew, “If you ever reach my age you will find that one wants to die just as one wants to sleep.” All of us know of cases where the very aged, having lived their lives to the best of their perceptions, awaited death willingly and almost joyfully. As Browning says, “Thou waitedst age; wait death, nor be afraid.” Fear of the approach of death disturbs us because we feel further possibilities of life. We do not want to be cut off in the flower of our existence; we think of death, not as a change of existence, but as the end of it, and we think there is no sure way of avoiding that. All of us have felt the truth of Dickens’ idea of the bells which toll almost gladly for the aged, but seem to weep when the young die. We are sure we should not fear death, nor be unwilling to die if we had the privilege of living to a “ripe old age.” For time is not measured by the clock or by the calendar; those measure only the revolutions of the earth and of the sun. Time is measured by thought and act, and, more than all, by feeling. And we can ordinarily prolong our own lives to the time when we shall willingly and gladly lay them down.
This willingness is by no means the same feeling that prompts the useless and unmeaning exclamation, “Oh, I wish I were dead!” The average person gets into such an unreasoning state over every little happening that he cannot see any connection between the events in his daily life. He becomes discouraged, and thinks for the moment that he would like to quit it all. No matter how many years such an one has lived, he has not attained a “ripe old age.” Ripeness has no part in petty impatience; it implies mellowness, soundness, and general wholesomeness of character.
As man is learning more and more about his life, he is finding that sickness, premature old age, and untimely death are, in a large measure, due to his own misunderstanding of the purposes of life. It is this misunderstanding that gives the mysterious air to life. We fear the mysterious, for our ingrained habit of regarding things that we do not yet understand as insoluble mysteries is a relic of the days when savage man found mystery and danger in everything.
So, if we are making ourselves unhappy, losing sleep, and suffering physical and mental distress because of the possible approach of death, we may dismiss that cause of worry. As soon as we begin to consider the purposes of life and our relation to them, we shall naturally avoid excesses in eating; live as hygienically as possible; harbor cleanly, uplifting thoughts, helpful to others and to ourselves, and so reach out spiritually for a fuller understanding of the purposes of all life. And what we cease to fear for ourselves, we soon cease to fear for our other selves.
Living thus, we shall not fear death, but shall move toward it without thinking of it, knowing that it is natural, merely the long sleep of the objective consciousness.
Sleep till the end, true soul and sweet!
Nothing comes to thee new or strange.
Sleep full of rest from head to feet;
Lie still, dry dust, secure of change.
Tennyson.
O’er each vain eye oblivious pinions wave,
And quench’d existence crouches in a grave.
What better name may Slumber’s bed become?
Night’s Sepulcher, the universal Home,
Where Weakness, Strength, Vice, Virtue, sunk supine,
Alike in naked helplessness recline;
Glad for a while to heave unconscious breath,
Yet wake to wrestle with the dread of death,
And shun, though day but dawns on ills increased,
That Sleep, the loveliest, since it dreams the least.
Byron.
CHAPTER XXXIV
A NATURAL CHANGE
Through generations, perhaps for hundreds of thousands of years, custom has ordained grief for the dead, we have come to feel that it is a proof of affection or of sensitiveness or a sort of virtue: we indulge in the luxury of woe, we nurse our grief until, like a spoiled lap-dog, it becomes a burden. But we know that the unselfish dead would only be distressed at our grieving.
When we look upon the change called death as no more mysterious than any of the other changes in our bodily or mental development, which we either welcome or are unconscious of, we shall lose our terror of it either for ourselves or for others.
Our terror for others is not really for those others so much as for ourselves. The sense of “our great loss” is really a piece of selfishness. For life cannot mean one thing for us and another for our brother; as we see our own lives, so must we see the lives of those we love. The purposes of life are the same for all men, for all men are in the plan of the Spirit.
If for any reason our brother has passed from our earthly cognizance, we cannot say that we have really lost him. It is true that we do not see him with our eyes or touch him with our hands, but we have a remembrance of him in the form of a mental picture down to the minutest details of how he looked and moved, and we also have a remembrance of his spiritual character.
For the character—that sum of the abilities of those we love—remains with us after the physical form has passed away. We are affected by it just as we were when the loved one lived. We can feel the appeal that that character makes to us, its effect upon our thoughts and actions, as strongly as if the absent one stood beside us and claimed our attention. How, then, can we say he is lost?
The dead whom we have loved hold us as securely as they did when they were living; it is only that we do not see how. It has come within the experience of many that the death of father, mother, or some dearly loved one has led to the awakening of some wayward or misguided one who seemed to be wasting all the opportunities of life. We know that it was not the mere death which worked this seeming miracle. That simply woke the dormant love in the one who had hitherto desired only his own way. As soon as he became conscious of his love for the beloved one who has passed out of his earthly life, he longed to be what his beloved would have had him be, and so he turned his attention to using the opportunities of life, to the end that he might grow and develop. Thus in death the loved one held the wayward friend even more securely than he ever had in life.
We shall not fear death, even for those we love, when we have realized that it is but a passing from life to life—just as the falling leaves do not mean the annihilation of the life of the tree, but merely the end of one phase of that life. Somewhere, some time, that which was really our loved one will blossom again in the world’s experience, and even now is continuing to live through its influence upon our lives. “There is no death; what seems so is transition.” The bodily companionship with all that it implies, that we have lost: yet, if our beloved had gone to be Viceroy of India, we should miss him, but we should not put on mourning for that, nor “grieve” that we had lost his companionship.
“But we could write and hear from him and so keep in touch with him.” True: it is then for your own loss that you mourn.
Nearly all the suffering that death causes us is for ourselves. It is our feeling of helplessness, the emptiness of the earth that is left, the changed world that we look at in the sleepless hours of the night, or, when we awake in the morning, our pity for our own loss and the seeming uselessness of what remains of our existence. This consciousness of our loss numbs us so that we cannot get a realizing sense of the joys of the spirit set free from the limitations of the body. Our love is still so earthy that it demands fleshly as well as spiritual communion.
So real is our suffering when those we love best are torn from us that for a time we are inconsolable. Philosophy, religion, the affectionate ministrations of those about us, avail not to bind up the broken heart. There is but one cure for such grief—to minister to others. Unselfish devotion to a great cause—the cause of our fellows, whether in the mass or individually—is a sovereign balm for a bleeding heart.
When we understand life we know this, for we have learned that neither in joy nor in sorrow can any man live to himself. Action of any sort relieves tension and suffering. If we bottle up all our sympathy for ourselves, it becomes so tainted with selfishness and narrowness that it loses its healing qualities. But if we let that sympathy go out freely to others, forgetting our “personal” needs, it blesses them and blesses us.
A friend of mine lost a son and daughter by drowning, just as they had entered young manhood and womanhood, and for a time his grief threatened to crush him. He found no relief until he had his attention called to the sorrow of another who, through a train wreck, had lost his only child. Although a stranger to this stricken father, he sought him out and, because of his own double loss, was able to comfort him as no one else could. Moreover, the restlessness went out of his own heart; he realized his kinship with all sufferers as never before.
There is a story in “The Light of Asia” that Buddha, to comfort a mother broken-hearted over the death of her only child, sent her to get black mustard seed from a house where death had never been. The mother carried her dead babe about the village, and in each house she was offered mustard seed, but each giver said, “Death has been here.” At last she realized that she was not the only sufferer, that death was a necessary accompaniment of life as shadow is a necessary accompaniment of light. Her grief, she saw, was but a part of the common sorrow. The recognition that either joy or sorrow is common to all increases the healing sense of unity, it is a “touch of nature” that “makes the whole world kin.” There is no wrong in our grieving, if it comforts us: but to look thus each for himself dispassionately at the cause and the nature of his grief, will surely give so clear a view of it that it will no longer deprive us of sleep.
Then why lose sleep worrying about what we know to be merely a change?
CHAPTER XXXV
THE DISTRUST OF LIFE
Come Sleep, O Sleep! the certain knot of peace,
The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe:
The poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release,
Th’ indifferent judge between the high and low.
Sir Philip Sidney.
If there is no cause to fear death, even when one views life as purely physical, there is still less cause to fear it when one holds the second possible view of what life is—the view that life is the Unseen Consciousness and is within one’s self. These are two opposing views; it is only when we try to combine them that we find ourselves filled with fears. When we reason about our bodily life, thinking of ourselves as animals, and apply the conclusions to our lives as men, we find confusion, uncertainty, and fear: for our minds reach conclusions that our hearts tell us cannot be true.
What man fears is not death—as an animal he does not know or see death. As long as a man is mainly animal he suffers only as an animal. The deer that flees before the dogs is not afraid of death, for it is not possible that it could conceive of death: that is possible only to the reflecting and comparing mind. He fears the suffering that must follow from an attack from creatures of superior strength and fierce appetites. So man fears that his animal existence, which he does know,—with all its changes,—may be painfully cut off. As a rational being, man knows that death is only a natural and never-ending change. He knows that life is only that which he recognizes as humanness in himself when he meditates upon it. He says to himself, “I feel my life, not as I have been or as I shall be, but I feel it thus: that I am, that I never began anywhere, that I shall never end anywhere.” According to this view, death does not exist.
His animal view of life, as the changes in his body, differs so much from the spiritual view of life as Unseen Consciousness, that he cannot reconcile them. They lead to “warring in his members,” a conflict between the limitations of the mind and the intuitions of the soul. This causes fear.
There is, of course, a merely physical shrinking from death, the result of race inheritance. In the early days of our race, before man had learned to control the forces of material life, those men or races of men that did not love life, feared death and avoided it, made less effort, and took less care of their lives, and, accordingly, soon ceased to exist. Only the hardy survived. The fear of death helped to preserve the race.
But this inherited shrinking from death is not what tortures man. What causes the uneasiness is rather that superstitious fear of death, which is really fear of a life after the throes of death. We have made this present life so unreasonable and so inconsistent with our own nature that we feel as if any life after death must be just as incomprehensible and inconsistent as this one, so we fear it. We fail to see that all life goes on developing and improving, and so we think our future life may be much worse than what we have now; then, like Hamlet, we ask is it really “better to endure the ills we have than fly to others that we know not of?” Because we hold these two views of life, the animal’s view and the spirit’s view, we seem to hear two voices crying in our hearts when we consider things: the voice of the Body and the voice of the Soul. The Body says, “I shall cease to be, I shall die, all that I set my life in shall die.” The Soul cries, “I am, I cannot die, I ought not to die,” and, as if from still deeper depths, comes an appalling whisper, “Yet I am dying.” (Tolstoy.)
It is because of this contradiction that terror seizes the mind when we think of the death of the flesh. Man has so long assumed that his fleshly life is the same as himself that he cannot easily rid himself of the idea. Yet, if a man lose a hand or an arm or a leg by accident, he does not think that part of his consciousness or self is gone. He knows that a part of his body—through which himself is made manifest to other men—is gone, but he does not for a moment think that he, the human being, is any less. And he is not.
It is true that the automatic processes of his mind refuse for some time to accept the loss of the members of his body, he misses that way of expressing his will. But that is not so strange as it may at first seem. All voluntary motion arises from desire, and is sent out from the directing mind by means of the nerves to the part of the body fitted to perform that motion. We are not conscious of sending an order to any nerve center when we wish to put one foot before the other in walking or to use our fingers in writing.
Yet such an order is given, and the desire and the nerve center have both learned from repeated experiences just how properly to direct that message to the foot or to the tips of the fingers. If, for any reason, we miscalculate, we find ourselves walking haltingly or stumblingly along; or our fingers do not move the pencil fairly so as to get the right results. So, too, when we have lost a foot or a hand, the nerve centers send out their messages with the same force as before, but the messages find no way of being delivered. But at no time does a man think that he is less himself because of the missing member. For myself and my body are not one and the same. Myself is that which lives in my body, and neither that body nor the years it exists in any way determine the life of myself. This self of mine, which thinks and feels, is older than recorded time; why, then, should we think that it will end with the century? It would not be possible, within the few years that the body exists, for the intelligence or consciousness of the individual to begin at nothingness and attain the degree of development of a human being.
This self or consciousness is really the outcome of the impressions, experiences, and conclusions of my ancestors for thousands upon thousands of years back, and this self began to be shaped even by that from which man sprang. It is continuous; just as it began before my body was formed, so it must go on after the body ceases to exist; it cannot be a mere part of the body which will change with it or end with it.
We do not know, as yet, how we shall continue to live after the body is laid away: whether in the thoughts and feelings and deeds we have done in the flesh; or in our unending, though unconscious, influence; or in the lives of the children of our bodies or of our minds and hearts. But we do know that the world will never be the same as if we had never been here. We do know that what has existed through unnumbered ages will not end in this.
Life does not cease with sleep nor end with death. “I never was not,” says the Bhagavad Gita, “nor shall I hereafter cease to be.”
CHAPTER XXXVI
REST AND SLEEP
O Happy Sleep! that bear’st upon thy breast
The blood-red poppy of enchanting rest.
Ada Louise Martin.
One of the main purposes of sleep is to secure rest to men. But intelligence will find rest in many other ways independent of sleep or of promoting sleep. We are just beginning, under the leadership of such people as Miss Eva Vescelius, to make a full use of music as a soother of the nerves: yet, as long ago as the time of David, some persons knew its value. Browning’s magnificent poem, “Saul,” recounts its force.
As David exorcised Saul’s evil spirit by the skillful harp and voice, so those who are studying the therapeutics of music are now helping the physically and mentally ill. Miss Vescelius and those working with her claim that “music is capable of great life-awakening energy.... The use of music for healing the sick is therefore a natural use of a natural power. Music, like medicine, has been divided into classes as stimulants, sedatives, and narcotics. It is now admitted that music can be so employed as to exercise a distinct psychological influence upon the mind, the nerve centers and the circulatory system, and that by the intelligent use of music many ills may be cured.” For almost all of us “music hath charms to soothe.” Others again find in some form of massage a sweet though artificial sedative; some even in the combing of the hair, which is possibly connected with an electric effect, for we know little definitely as yet of the principles of the possible curative force of electricity.
Others again rest by a mere mental change in their ordinary avocations. My wife was once talking with Mr. Stiegler, a well-known riding teacher in New York, and he said that he was in the saddle every day from six or seven in the morning till eleven at night, with only short intervals for meals. “It’s a hard life,” he said.
“But Sundays?” the lady asked.
“Oh, Sundays! I have Sundays to myself.” “And what do you do on Sundays?” “Oh!” he said, “I take a ride in the Park.” The relief from the strain of watching the pupils and their horses was rest to him.
When Weston had won his first six days’ walk in Madison Square Garden, he went out to take a walk on Fifth Avenue on the Sunday.
To find harmony with our own natures, to act in accordance with our natural or acquired tendencies, is rest. A peaceful surrounding is rest in itself, though sleep may not be wooed. One may be rested by a walk in a country lane, when a walk in the bustle of Broadway would only tire him the more.
And this peaceful surrounding may be interior just as well as exterior. Mrs. Elizabeth Burns Ferm, who has a playhouse for children on the East Side in New York, and does a great deal of other work, recently said: “I could never accomplish what I do if I did not sleep so well. That rests me completely. I do not dream nor stir. I drop into the homogeneous, forgetting myself and becoming just a part of life. In this way I rest.” The oldest books show that, ever since there have been any records of man, he has been seeking happiness and rest, yet he has not attained either happiness or rest. But the seeking has helped in his growth upward and progress has been his reward. As Browning says:
“Progress is man’s distinguishing mark alone;
Not God’s; not the beasts’: He is; they are;
Man partly is and wholly hopes to be.”
Even though man seeks in wrong directions, he is sure to move onward so long as he continues to seek, for, if we sufficiently desire any goal, we shall eventually find it. “What d’ye lack? quoth God,” says Emerson, “take it and pay the price.” Jesus put the same thing in another form. Said he, “Ask and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you.” Those who misunderstand life and its purposes apply this only to what are called religious matters, but those who see farther into life know that it applies in every way. It all depends upon what we feel that we lack. If we feel we lack pleasure, or happiness, or rest, we seek them along the lines we think they may be found. And we pay the price that is asked. We cannot avoid this so long as cause and effect follow each other.
If we seek happiness through selfish gratifications, we pay the price of disappointment and pain, if we are at all enlightened. Of course, if a man lives the life of the animal merely, cutting himself off from any recognition of the claims of his fellows, he may get all the happiness he can understand through self-seeking. But the price he pays is that he is not able to understand or to appreciate more than this lesser happiness. As Walter Scott says:
“For him no minstrel raptures swell.
Proud though his title, high his fame,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power and pelf,
The wretch, concentered all in self,
Living shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.”
This is the price he pays.
If we seek happiness through the happiness of all; if we forget self, understanding that all are One, seeking that wisdom which comes only from seeing all life as one, we, in like measure, get the reward.
Men, mere animal men, who understand nothing but self-seeking, may speak evil of us, they probably will, but even that cannot “hurt” us. We shall understand that such evil speaking is the best they know, and that, therefore, it is not evil to their minds. Moreover, the further premium to us will be a broader understanding, a deepening love, an increase of happiness, an influx of peace, a pervading sense of rest, and quiet sleep.
This is a premium most of us would be willing to work for, did we but see it. And we may see it if we will. If we ask of life that we get into harmony with its purposes; if we seek diligently even into our own hearts for those purposes; if we knock at the door of man’s full life, we shall find our asking answered, our search rewarded, and the door wide open. What a man desireth most, that, somehow, somewhere, shall be gain. Desire creates function.
And, when the soul has gained what it sought, we shall find beauties and virtues hitherto unsuspected in every human being; we shall learn that, above the turmoil and noise of our rushing, jarring, modern civilization, we can hear the morning stars sing together for joy, the music of the spheres, that which shall yet soothe man’s fear and teach him to find restful sleep.
CHAPTER XXXVII
THE NEED OF REST
The bliss of an unbroken sleep.
Thos. W. Parsons.
To go in the wrong direction delays our journey and brings fatigue, but that fatigue may teach us needed lessons.
Man seeks happiness through outer things, hoping to find it in wealth, excitement, travel, self-gratification, and in countless other ways that the age-long experience of men have proved to be ineffectual; but he usually forgets that the wellspring of happiness is within. Long before Solomon had announced that “this also is vanity and vexation of spirit,” men had observed that riches do not bring happiness; that excitement wearies us, that travel is unsatisfying, and that gratification of the senses ends in exhaustion.
At last, in despair of satisfaction in the world, we have accepted the teaching that there is no rest on this side of the grave. We have even learned to glorify strain and the strenuous life as natural and desirable. At best, men have thought of rest as something that concerned the body, and have confounded it with sleep and inaction.
If we think we have important work to do, we say, “We have no time to rest,” as if any work would be laid upon us that ought to prevent us having rest. Draught horses have been bred for centuries for the sole purpose of work, yet a wise driver never overloads nor overworks his horse. He sees that it is comfortably housed, well fed, and has its needed rest. Shall we think that the Spirit of Life has less consideration for man than man has for the horse? That were in effect to say that man were greater and wiser than that which caused man, and which man has spent the ages trying to understand.
When we stop to think of this we can see how foolish it is, but we seldom stop to think until something “happens” that stops us. We go on from day to day thinking that we have no time to rest. This state of mind, which leads to trouble, is possible only because we do not understand what rest is, nor how easy it is to have it. We ordinarily seek rest only after we have become exhausted.
When we have wearied ourselves with worry, useless exertion, and fretting, or with envy, hatred, or malice; when we have bent all our energies to some low aim or selfish purpose; when we have broken nearly all of Nature’s laws and are called upon to pay the penalty, we seek a physician. A man sets a shifting standard of wealth as his goal, and strains to attain it; he eats improperly and in great haste, his thoughts filled with the problems of the market; he is forever on the alert for any advantage that he may take of his fellows; he cannot endure to have another reap an advantage that is denied him; he is envious of every bit of success that, passing him by, goes to another; he makes of his life one fierce round of money-getting. Then, perhaps before attaining his goal, perhaps after reaching it, he discovers himself a physical wreck, and hastens to his physician, seeking external means to cure that which has its root in internal conditions; asking the man of drugs to “minister to a mind diseased.” To the nervous, worried, hurried person, from whatever cause, the physician’s advice is generally the same—“Take a complete rest,” meaning thereby that all work be given up and inaction take the place of activity. When circumstances allow it, we try to follow this advice, but it usually results in boredom and impatience at the lost time; when circumstances do not allow the inactivity, we get discouraged and complain of life as a series of mysterious, unjust happenings. The physician’s advice proves a mockery and we become listless and discouraged.
We hardly ever seek our rest from moment to moment; for we continue to look upon it as something we shall find after our work is done. The laborer, the merchant, and the professional man think of the end of the day as resting-time, just as the busy housewife does. It matters not how much we may love our work, we expect to be exhausted by our efforts before the day is over. We feel hurried, anxious, fretted, and overworked all day long, and comfort ourselves with the prospect of rest at night. And all the time we might rest and never find the day so short as to cause worry, nor the hours so long nor the work so hard as to tire us.
It is only when we are burdened with distracting cares that we get tired by what is a joy to us. The true artist wants no eight-hour day; he laments only that daylight fades so soon. When we are doing only what we love to do, and doing it well, we run and are not weary, we walk and do not faint.
Of late years the trainers of athletes have recognized this—they think it more important to keep the men buoyant and fresh than to increase the muscles at the risk of bringing them “stale” to the day of contest. They insist that the men shall not exhaust themselves at any time before the race.
Exhaustion shows either that we have been doing the wrong thing or doing it wrong, and kindly Nature reproves us with the loss of Sleep.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
SAVING OF EFFORT
Rocked in the cradle of the deep
I lay me down in peace to sleep.
Emma Willard.
The unsatisfied longing for rest in all mankind will be attributed to different causes according to the way we look at life. The physical or animal man desires rest because of the relief it will bring to nerves and muscles wearied by the strain of activities; he feels that to relax will bring him some ease and that relaxation will help him to forget the bodily weariness. Recovering from weariness or pain is a pleasure in itself. The sigh of relief is really a sigh of pleasure.
When the mind reigns, it instinctively recognizes that rest would restore the balance disturbed by feverish exertions. Our whole lives seem passed in a struggle to attain something, and the law of rhythm, which is the law of action and reaction, requires that, after struggle, effort should cease. One implies the other; neither effort nor true rest can continue steadily. Effort is the breaking of rest; shadow is only the relative absence of light.
It is contrast that makes sensations; the shadow serves to make the light brighter; the night makes the day more fair; and noon makes the night darker. Tennyson recognized this in the line, “Sorrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.” He might have said, with equal truth, that the present joy has a warmer flush because of forgotten pain.
Wagner understood that, and so we find crash and seeming inharmony so often a prelude to the softest, tenderest strains. The mind first wearies of monotony, even of harmony, and then ceases to be able to perceive it. Wagner saw this, and introduced clashing sound that seems like discord until we feel its connection with the emotion and the context of the piece. These relieve the emotions and throw the harmonies into relief. Says Hobbes: to have one sensation and to have it continually would be to have none.
The mental man feels and knows all this, and to him rest becomes necessary to restore that balance of things that contrast suggests—rest after effort, peace after turmoil.
The spiritual man goes still deeper into true conditions in his longing for rest. Rest carries with it the idea of attainment. He who has attained has peace: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you.” The unity of all three desires—that of the body, that of the mind, and that of the spirit—cannot fail to strike the thinker. To cease to strain is the keynote of ease. Why? Because man sees, however dimly, that agonizing, like antagonizing, is really futile, and that the only thing that is necessary is to put one’s self in harmony with the Universe.
Herbert Spencer has shown that grace of movement consists in the economy of effort, in doing every act with the least possible waste of power. The same thought is the basis of the teaching of the great Delsarte. As Ruskin says: “Is not the evidence of ease on the very front of all the greatest works in existence? Do they not say plainly to us, not ‘there has been a great effort here,’ but ‘there has been a great power here’? It is not the weariness of mortality, but the strength of divinity, which we have to recognize in all things; and this is just what we now never recognize, but think that we shall do great things by the help of iron bars and perspiration. Alas! we shall do nothing that way, but lose some pounds of our own weight.” The best way to attain anything is to move towards it with the least possible jarring or friction. In every struggle we lose force, because we are sure to make unnecessary motions. Men do not learn this from their daily work as unconsciously as they once did, because machinery has so largely displaced handwork. But, even in using machinery, he is the best workman who has learned to run his machine and get good results with the least expenditure of physical effort. Such a workman remains fresh for a longer period, and accomplishes more in a given time. The machine itself is constructed upon the principle of saving effort—it cuts out all unnecessary motion and reduces friction as much as possible.
If you watch a skilled typesetter at his case, you will find that apparently he is never in a rush. The beginner, especially if he is one of the more nervous type, looks anxious, pauses with hand fluttering above the case while he considers in which box he will find the letter he seeks; then, when he has made a decision, he will pounce upon it and deposit it in the stick with breathless haste. Not so the seasoned compositor. There is no haste, no fluttering, no waste motion. His hand goes unerringly to the box where he will find the letter he wants, in a twinkling it is in place in the stick, and another letter disposed of in the same way, and you are scarcely conscious of motion. The perfect workman is he who has learned to accomplish most with the least expenditure of effort. It is toward this perfection that Frederick W. Taylor and others are striving in the new “Business Efficiency.” Every day we are surprised to learn that what we gained by hard struggle has been gained with scarcely an effort by another. It does not always make us happy to learn it. We often feel as if we had been tricked, and we think that effort spent in what we now see was not the most effective way, was wasted. This leads us sometimes to persist in a mistaken course, because we are unwilling to believe that we have lost so much time and missed so much result. But no effort is ever wasted: it is only by the effort to do well that we can learn to do better.
Nothing is commoner than to hear our friends say, “I don’t sleep—the work is so hard and exacting I get dead tired and then toss about all night.” But it is not the work, rather it is the worker that is exacting.
CHAPTER XXXIX
ANTAGONISM
Lord of the Darkness, Master of the Sun,
Strip me of all my strenuous life has won,
But let Sleep’s sweet oblivion o’er me sweep,
Closing Night’s leering eyes—oh, give me sleep!
Anonymous.
Though you want rest, peace, sleep—the opposites of strife—yet people will oppose you and want you to go their impossible ways. That need not arouse opposition, nor break your rest, nor disturb the even tenor of your way. One disadvantage of allowing ourselves to be disturbed is that we cannot be angry with one person without being angry with all about us. Or at least the harmony of our relation is broken, because, despite our effort, we cannot succeed in separating ourselves from our brothers. The next time you are angry or impatient with someone who has opposed you, take note how it affects your tone and your feeling toward those who are innocent of any offense.
One such investigation into our own condition when annoyed will help to cure us of being angry; for there is no use in trying to correct all the mistakes or worrying over the neglects of others, even of the children of our own bodies. Other people, “the same as us,” have to learn by their mistakes, and often do learn by some success that we considered manifestly impossible.
As we could not be wisdom and conscience to the whole world, Providence has kindly given us enough to do in taking care of our own actions.
When Mosenthal was organist at Calvary Church, the brides used to give him directions about just what pieces they wanted played at their weddings; Mosenthal would say, “Ah! that is a beautiful selection,” or “A magnificent march!” As he said, “I listen to all the lovely ladies’ orders—then I play what I think best—and it always goes all right.” He did not make rows by trying to convince excited girls that the “Mikado” would not be just the thing for the church, or to persuade nice mammas without musical education that “Traumerei” would not do for a wedding. It was not necessary to lie, only to give what approval could be given and then to “gae his ain gait.” Most people are not really much set in their own ways, they only seem to be. They have an idea (or they think they have one—an idea is a rare and precious possession) and they want to “get it off.” Let them; why should you make the explosion dangerous by confining it? Maybe they were only trying to argue with themselves, and, having got rid of the idea, they are content, if their self-love is not roused in defense of it. Like the codfish which deposits her eggs and has no more care about them, they are quite content to leave the results to Nature.
There was a tract called the “Oiled Feather,” which was very popular in England forty years ago. Sam, a wagoner, has a bottle of oil with a feather stuck in the cork, and, when a barn-door sticks or harness creaks or a king-bolt binds, instead of using force, he always brings out his oil bottle and feather. His friend has not learned the usefulness of gentle methods and gets into all sorts of trouble, until he sees that the Oiled Feather principle applies to horses and to people and to difficulties, as well as to things.
“Est modus in rebus”—which means that “there is a way in things” just as much as in people: get into key with it and all will go smoothly. Did you ever try to split trap-rock with a hammer? You may batter all day at one side and you will only knock off chips, spoil your hammer, and hurt your hands: but, when you have found the right spot, a tap knocks it in pieces. That tap is the “open sesame” to which alone the stone will yield. You may storm at it all day with your “open millet” or “open wheat,” but its heart can be reached only by its own word. So the stony heart of the world can be broken only by the Master Word of Love.
Now, if you have made what is said in Chapter XXVII your own, you do not need all this; for you know that, as long as you arouse antagonism in others, you can be annoyed and irritated by others, but not one moment longer. The punching-bag can neither dent nor be dented: if it is so made that it injures no one, it turns out that no one injures it, no matter how roughly he strikes it.
When your lovelight shines in darkness, not only will your own path be bright, but you will be a guide and a comforter to others, and they will follow you.
CHAPTER XL
STRUGGLE IN THE FAMILY
How happy is that balm to wretches, sleep!
Beaumont.
If all that we have learned were that some persons “naturally” work harder than others to achieve anything, we might say that this was unavoidable; and there would be a degree of truth in it. It is true that the intelligence of some people is so sluggish that they learn little from experience. They continue to work towards any end in the same way that they have always worked, wasting both strength and time. For them there is nothing but repeated experiences and patient guidance until they learn to apply their knowledge practically.
But the intelligent man learns that, often where he has worked in the hardest possible way, he has had the most unsatisfactory return for his effort. The good housekeeper, for instance, wishes above all things to make her family comfortable; she has inherited a feeling of the requirements of healthy living, and decides that she must have a scrupulously clean house to protect her loved ones from the dangers of germs and microbes.
So she sweeps, scrubs, cleans from morning until night; carefully removes every trace of dust, follows her family with dust-pan and brush, and at least looks reproachfully at the offender who does not remove every trace of street or garden dirt from his shoes before entering the house. She cleans so hard that she forgets that the real object of cleaning is to make her family safe and comfortable. They may be safe, but they are a long way from being comfortable, and she knows no more comfort than they; cleanliness has become a fetich with her, and some day, perhaps, she comes to her senses, finding herself chasing the motes in a sunbeam, lest by chance they should rest upon her sacred furniture.
If she then sits down to take stock of things, she finds that husband and children almost dread to come home. However serene and happy they may be before reaching the garden gate, or the apartment door, they then become nervous and distrait. They look themselves over, to be sure that nothing is amiss, for “mother is so particular.” An anxious expression settles upon their faces, for, with their best endeavors, they may have overlooked something that mother’s trained and suspicious eye may note. The joy of life abates, and a sort of painful hush falls upon things.
The average child cannot see that this condition grows out of misdirected love and care; he sees no connection between it and his well-being, but, if he thinks of it at all, he concludes that “the house” counts for more with mother than anything else. Husband and children unconsciously come to regard her as mainly a housekeeper, with interests bounded by the four walls of the home. The very gifts they make her are of a useful nature—“something for the house”—as if the “house” were some special thing in her personal life but meant nothing to them.
When the hungry heart of this woman pains her, she resents the condition that she herself has created, but does not see the correct remedy. Her husband and children have put her out of their inner lives; they take their pleasures away from home, they find their confidantes among outside friends. Who should share their thoughts and their pleasures? she asks. Who has worked day and night for their comfort and happiness as she has? And the chances are that she considers them ungrateful and herself a martyr, when all the time she herself builds the barrier between them and herself by striving to make them happy in her way. That it is not their way, and so could not be in harmony with the natural trend of things, does not once occur to her. As the French say, “Madam costs herself too much.” She has not learned, and may never learn, that the only way to make others happy is to love them sincerely and unselfishly enough to allow them to be happy in their own way.
Sometimes it is the father who destroys the joy of home. A many good men think that their duty is done when they provide food, clothes, shelter, and education for their children, and insist upon obedience from them. They are so busy attending to these things that they have no time to get acquainted with their children, to know or be known by them.
There is too much truth in the newspaper joke on the suburbanite. A mother found her little boy crying bitterly on the doorstep quite early on a Monday morning.
“What is the matter, Freddie?” she asked, anxiously.
“Why,” sobbed the child, “I was just running down the street when the man who stops here on Sundays spanked me and sent me home.” There are many children who have no cause to welcome “the man who stops here on Sundays,” even though he may be counted “a good father.” Very often he “takes a nap,” and all noise must cease for his benefit; or, he cannot read his Sunday paper while they are playing about. He speaks testily to his wife, blaming her that she does not quiet the children. “They have all the week to play,” he complains, “I should think they could keep quiet on Sunday. It is the only day I have to rest, and you ought to see that I am not disturbed.” And the mother, who hasn’t even Sunday to rest, quiets the children in the only way she knows, and everybody is wretched.
As fast as the children grow up they leave home gladly for college or business, and, though they respect and fear “the Head of the Family,” they have no real love for him; they never consult him on their intimate, personal worries or problems, and he many times carries a sore heart behind his seemingly stern manner. He wonders why his children are so ungrateful, when he has spent his whole life toiling for them. In his bitter moments he may even call them monsters of ingratitude; forgetting, as Dickens says, that he is really looking for “monsters of gratitude.” These parents, like everyone else, have it in their power to attract to themselves the affection and the surroundings that they need, and to create a center of repose even in the midst of strife; rest we may attain even amid turmoil; but true repose means that quiet shall spread from us to others.
CHAPTER XLI
UNNATURAL LAWS
So many Gods, so many creeds,
So many paths that wind and wind,
When just the art of being kind
Is all this sad world needs.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
But the harmony of the home does not depend upon the parents alone. If it did, it would forever disprove the statement that it is only by a working together of all parts of any organization that its real purpose may be accomplished. A clock is intended to tell the time, and its mechanism is so constructed that, by its working together, the hands and chime will mark the hours. But, if we could imagine the hands of the clock refusing to move in the direction that the springs, wheels, and pendulum required, and insisting upon going their own way, the usefulness of the clock would be destroyed.
So, in the matter of family harmony, it may be merely some self-willed son or daughter, even a child, that causes the discord. And he is not necessarily a “bad” child, either. He may be endowed with special gifts, and be particularly adapted to give joy to those about him. He loves his parents, his brothers and sisters, and also that intangible “home” that counts for so much in life—yet, because he loves his “own way” more than all else, he makes “home” impossible. He is so sure of his infallible judgment that he opposes every suggestion that does not come from himself; he offers free advice on every possible and impossible occasion; he “takes sides” on every question that arises, and considers any opposition as a personal attack or affront. He is not conscious of these or of any other faults, yet every remark, every act is tested by its possible reference to himself. He looms so large in his own foreground that he cannot see how he could be unimportant to anybody’s life or thought. He broods over fancied wrongs and thinks himself the most ill-used of mortals. Everybody is unhappy where he is, and he is most unhappy of all.
For it is a well-established fact, one which we may find proved every day both in our own experience and the experience of other people, that he who makes another unhappy generally makes himself still more wretched.
If our experience shows us any exceptions to this rule, it is, after all, only in seeming. He who can make another unhappy and not be conscious of it, is among those whom Epictetus calls blind in that knowledge which distinguisheth right from wrong. He has not felt his close relation, or, indeed, any relation to his fellows. He cannot know any of the joys of fellowship, and he will not find the pleasure he expects even in his own pursuits. For it matters little, so far as seeing is concerned, whether a man be born blind, or whether he keeps his eyes tightly bandaged all his days. In either case he gets none of the sensations of pleasure that come from being able and willing to see. If we persist in having “our own way,” we must pay the price. Most of the miseries of life are caused by failure to get in harmony with the laws of life. This is as simple and self-evident as walking up the street. If we persist in keeping to the left on a busy sidewalk, we shall be jostled and pushed until we are sore and out of breath and make but little headway withal. But, if we are careful to walk with the crowd going in our direction, if we remember always to keep to the right, we shall find it easy to get along even at the “rush” hour. Those who do not observe this rule of harmonious progress not only find walking on a busy street hard work, but they also make it harder for others. One man walking the wrong way may compel twenty more to violate the sidewalk customs to overcome his opposition. But, when everyone observes the rule, it leads to a saving of time and temper and makes life safer for all who are in the crowd.
Generally speaking, we recognize no law but that of our own will, which is by no means the same thing as the far-wider law of our being. We cannot separate our lives from the greater life. While we follow the law of our own will, self-will, we never know real happiness or rest. Like many another man-made law, our antagonistic wills are a perversion of the natural law which governs our lives.