The psychology of sleep

by Bolton Hall

Most advances that we accomplish are forced upon us by circumstances with which we are discontented, and our happiness consists in recognizing that there is, in effect, no such thing as misfortune. There is no chance in the world: everything is the result of Energy; nothing ever happens by accident. I said once to a woman standing beside the coffin of her husband, trying to comfort her and trying to teach myself, “You know, this did not happen by chance.” “No,” she said, “I know that; if one chance got loose, it would wreck the world.” So it would.

You toss up a coin and it seems to you to be chance whether it comes down heads or tails. It isn’t chance at all. If one thing happened by chance, you would know that it was the end of natural law. Suppose that the thing to be tossed were an iron plate, ten feet across by two feet thick, then the engineer could figure out just how many pounds of powder would turn it once and how many would turn it twice or three times; and, if you told him when he had adjusted his charge that it was chance which side would come up, he would say that you did not understand dynamics. He knows that there is no chance about it; that the number of turns depends exactly upon the amount of force, and how it is applied. So it is with the tossing of the penny; it may seem to be chance to us because we cannot measure or perceive the causes, but its fall is as directly and fixedly due to causes as the sinking of an ocean-liner.

It is not likely that Charles Dickens would have chosen the hard childhood he had if he could have arranged his own life, but there is little room to doubt that much of his understanding and sympathy, much of the power that made him the novelist of the masses, was due to those experiences. Even though he may never have seen during his life how necessary those experiences were, nor accepted them philosophically, that did not alter their use. The work of the “evildoers” in giving Socrates hemlock to drink did not destroy Socrates’ usefulness; the death by the cross did not check the spread of the good news the Nazarene brought to man.

Men have always stoned the prophets and killed those who would bring deliverance. This is an expression of the conservatism which is the balance-wheel of the race: if it were not for that, the leaders of the people would get so far in advance as to be clear out of sight. But the prophecies have been fulfilled, and, step by step, deliverance has been won. Moreover, whom one generation destroyed, succeeding generations have honored; it is impossible to get the rear rank in line with the vanguard. But wherein has evil triumphed or the law of good been set aside?

In the study of history we see the persistent progress of the race. However slow the march, it has always been from darkness into light, from low aims and small ideas to higher purposes and larger thoughts. Each nation has contributed something to the sum of that progress. Not only have they had glimpses at their best of better things, but even at their worst they have caused other nations to see and avoid like errors or cruelties. In this way the civilized and the savage have both helped to advance civilization. And, if the blind works of evildoers do not triumph over the plans of Good, if they do not even hinder the working of the law of universal Good, why should we fret ourselves because of them?

But the unrest may be caused by our lack of that worldly success which we think would bring us happiness. Of course, if the real desire be worldly success, and there is no other way in which we can learn that it will not bring happiness, then we must attain worldly success. To-day, this demands a resolute will, concentration, a steady nerve, and a lack of human sympathy. It is difficult for us to see this in our own case when we make worldly success our aim, but, if we examine the career of any “successful” man, we shall see how true it is.

Nothing is truer of modern business life than that the success of one involves the failure or seeming failure of many. We have but to look around at the few who are acclaimed by the world as successful business men and the many who toil for a bare subsistence, to find the proof of this. To succeed, a man must first resolve to succeed, and must concentrate all his powers to that end. He must have iron nerves so that unexpected good-or ill-fortune may not upset him, and he must so steel his heart that he may not see the needs or hear the groans of his suffering fellows, if to hear or heed would interfere with his purpose.

After men have attained worldly success, they sometimes give liberally to charity and public purposes. Nobody has yet revealed how much of that giving is atonement for the half-remembered times when some heart was hardened, some ear deafened, and some hand tight closed against the cry of the needy. Some rich men unhappily become so hard of heart, so bound by the habit of refusing, that giving becomes an impossibility.

Now worry and unrest upset the nerve, disturb the concentration, and keep alive at least one phase of human sympathy—that which we call irritation. We do not usually regard irritation as an expression of sympathy, but that is just what it is. Irritation towards our fellows is an indication that we cannot rid ourselves of the knowledge that they have claims upon us. It is an evidence that we do not understand them, or that we are not in harmony with them. That may be because their aims are so different from ours that they are a standing rebuke to our selfishness, or because their aims are so similar to ours that they become a threat to us. In either event they are forced upon our attention, and we are unable to forget them. We are not able to crush them ruthlessly if they stand in our way, for to do so causes us pain and dissatisfaction, and prevents our joy in our success. Sometimes, when the pain and dissatisfaction become keen enough, they may even turn us from our purpose, and thus destroy our chance of worldly success.

Thus worry and unrest defeat the very thing we are aiming at, and leave us out of harmony with the laws governing the accomplishment of our purpose. Even in business and in matters of health, that rest which comes from a cool, steady purpose, undisturbed by fretfulness or impatience, is the main factor of success.