The psychology of sleep

by Bolton Hall

The weary mourner soothe.

Mrs. Tighe.

We believe in a ruling Principle of Order in the Universe, in accordance with which everything lives and moves—planets, plants, and man.

We call this “God,” “the Spirit,” the “Nature of Things,” or by some other name, but we find that, in crystal, vegetable, or animal, it always works: and we see that it tends forever toward a more harmonious arrangement and better relations of the whole system.

There are seeming lapses, where we cannot yet see, in this instance or in that, how it will work out; but in the arrangement of the stars, the growth of knowledge through experience, and in the history of man, we see in the broad view that it does so work out well. Probably Mary, certainly the disciples, thought at the time that the death of Jesus was a horrible mistake and misfortune. Now we see that it was “needful that this one man should die for all the people” and that to him, even then, it was no misfortune. The sacrifice of one for many is a great principle of life. The development of the earth from chaos to fruitfulness, the development of man from brutality to the rule of mind, the development of ourselves from single selfishness to the wider love, shows that there is a beneficent Force and that “all things work together for good.” If each of us considers himself alone, as having separate interests, this truth will be obscured; but when we recognize that each of us is a part of the whole, as the tongue is a part of the body, we see that no part can be favored without injuring the entire system.

If we unduly gratify the taste, the tongue is the very first to show that the stomach is “out of order,” and this disharmony is felt in the whole body.

Sometimes we have done wrong, or have seen others do wrong apparently with profit; but the wider view will always show that the way of the transgressor is as hard as his heart, that the wicked man is in truth the fool. We know that any attempt that man makes to disturb the right order for the sake of any separate interest must react upon himself, destroying his own happiness as well as the happiness of those about him.

Similarly we see that the prophet, the cultivator, the inventor, the martyr, the benevolent man, each doing what he is inspired to do, is working just as much for all mankind as for himself, that he cannot reap the benefit except as others share it. For our good, we are joined together in one connected whole, so that no man liveth, or so much as dieth, to himself.

We see how the Spirit makes “even the wrath of men to praise him” that the tyranny of a king was necessary to drive out colonists to proclaim liberty, and the fierce rivalry of nations in armament is needed to usher in a Court of International Peace. Since that is so, since we know that in great or universal affairs the eternal purposes cannot be interfered with, why should we think that it fails to work in our own little interests?

We see beautiful, symmetrical shells and well-adapted organs in creatures so small that we know of their existence only through high-power microscopes. In them we find the same rule of law, the same adaptation to supreme ends that we find in the measureless suns and in the measureless souls of men.