We human beings drowse through thirty years of our threescore and ten, but the ant is awake and working all the time.
If the ant has managed to live without sleep, if he has acquired the faculty of lifelong wakefulness, why should we not do as much in time? We take it for granted that sleep is essential, as we take everything else for granted. We used to take it for granted that the earth was flat, but we have stopped that. Sleep was at one time forced upon man and other animals.
The earth in its rollings turned away from the sun once in every twenty-four hours. In the darkness of the beginning man said to himself: "If I go walking around, I shall fall into a hole, so I shall lie down and wait until the sun comes again."
He did as all the animals did before him for millions of years. Since that time, man has conquered darkness. Why should he not ultimately conquer sleep?
We know that thin men, nervous, highly organized, do with far less sleep than others. We know that old age requires less sleep than youth.
Can we not cultivate and develop the characteristics which make sleep less necessary? Higher races of apes have abolished tails.
Can't we abolish sleep? ——
As old age needs less sleep than babyhood, so in our maturity as a human race we shall probably demand less sleep than now in our racial babyhood. Perhaps none at all will be needed.
If that happens our lives will be doubled in value, they will be complete. The hours of sunlight will be devoted to examination and admiration of nature's beauties on this earth.
The hours of darkness, given up to sleep no longer, will be devoted to the study of space, to investigation among other worlds.