There are few sayings which deserve better to be brought continually before our minds than that of Franklin: 'You value life; then do not squander time, for time is the stuff of life.' Of all the things that are bestowed on men, none is more valuable, but none is more unequally used, and the true measurement of life should be found less in its duration than in the amount that is put into it. The waste of time is one of the oldest of commonplaces, but it is one of those which are never really stale. How much of the precious 'stuff of life' is wasted by want of punctuality; by want of method involving superfluous and repeated effort; by want of measure prolonging things that are pleasurable or profitable in moderation to the point of weariness, satiety, and extravagance; by want of selection dwelling too much on the useless or the unimportant; by want of intensity, growing out of a nature that is listless and apathetic both in work and pleasure. Time is, in one sense, the most elastic of things. It is one of the commonest experiences that the busiest men find most of it for exceptional work, and often a man who, under the strong stimulus of an active professional life, repines bitterly that he finds so little time for pursuing some favourite work or study, discovers, to his own surprise, that when circumstances have placed all his time at his disposal he does less in this field than in the hard-earned intervals of a crowded life. The art of wisely using the spare five minutes, the casual vacancies or intervals of life, is one of the most valuable we can acquire. There are lives in which the main preoccupation is to get through time. There are others in which it is to find time for all that has to be got through, and most men, in different periods of their lives, are acquainted with both extremes. With some, time is mere duration, a blank, featureless thing, gliding swiftly and insensibly by. With others every day, and almost every hour, seems to have its distinctive stamp and character, for good or ill, in work or pleasure. There are vast differences in this respect between different ages of history, and between different generations in the same country, between town and country life, and between different countries. 'Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay' is profoundly true, and no traveller can fail to be insensible to the difference in the value of time in a Northern and in a Southern country. The leisure of some nations seems busier than the work of others, and few things are more resting to an overwrought and jaded Anglo-Saxon nature than to pass for a short season into one of those countries where time seems almost without value.
On the whole there can be little doubt that life in the more civilised nations has, in our own generation, largely increased. It is not simply that its average duration is extended. This, in a large degree, is due to the diminished amount of infant mortality. The improvement is shown more conclusively in the increased commonness of vigorous and active old age, in the multitude of new contrivances for economising and therefore increasing time, in the far greater intensity of life both in the forms of work and in the forms of pleasure. 'Life at high pressure' is not without its drawbacks and its evils, but it at least means life which is largely and fully used.
All intermissions of work, however, even when they do not take the form of positive pleasure, are not waste of time. Overwork, in all departments of life, is commonly bad economy, not so much because it often breaks down health—most of what is attributed to this cause is probably rather due to anxiety than to work—as because it seldom fails to impair the quality of work. A great portion of our lives passes in the unconsciousness of sleep, and perhaps no part is more usefully spent. It not only brings with it the restoration of our physical energies, but it also gives a true and healthy tone to our moral nature. Of all earthly things sleep does the most to place things in their true proportions, calming excited nerves and dispelling exaggerated cares. How many suicides have been averted, how many rash enterprises and decisions have been prevented, how many dangerous quarrels have been allayed, by the soothing influence of a few hours of steady sleep! 'Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care' is, indeed, in a careworn world, one of the chief of blessings. Its healing and restorative power is as much felt in the sicknesses of the mind as in those of the body, and, in spite of the authority of Solomon, it is probably a wise thing for men to take the full measure of it, which undoctored nature demands. The true waste of time of the sluggard is not in the amount of natural sleep he enjoys, but in the time idly spent in bed when sleep has ceased, and in misplaced and mistimed sleep, which is not due to any genuine craving of the body for rest, but simply to mental sluggishness, to lack of interest and attention.
Some men have claimed for sleep even more than this. 'The night-time of the body,' an ancient writer has said, 'is the day-time of the soul,' and some, who do not absolutely hold the old belief that it is in the dreams of the night that the Divine Spirit most communicates with man, have, nevertheless, believed that the complete withdrawal of our minds from those worldly cares which haunt our waking hours and do so much to materialise and harden our natures is one of the first conditions of a higher life. 'In proportion,' said Swedenborg, 'as the mind is capable of being withdrawn from things sensual and corporeal, in the same proportion it is elevated into things celestial and spiritual.' It has been noticed that often thoughts and judgments, scattered and entangled in our evening hours, seem sifted, clarified, and arranged in sleep; that problems which seemed hopelessly confused when we lay down are at once and easily solved when we awake, 'as though a reason more perfect than reason had been at work when we were in our beds.' Something analogous to this, it has been contended, takes place in our moral natures. 'A process is going on in us during those hours which is not, and cannot be, brought so effectually, if at all, at any other time, and we are spiritually growing, developing, ripening more continuously while thus shielded from the distracting influences of the phenomenal world than during the hours in which we are absorbed in them.... Is it not precisely the function of sleep to give us for a portion of every day in our lives a respite from worldly influences which, uninterrupted, would deprive us of the instruction, of the spiritual reinforcements, necessary to qualify us to turn our waking experiences of the world to the best account without being overcome by them? It is in these hours that the plans and ambitions of our external worldly life cease to interfere with or obstruct the flow of the Divine life into the will.'[75]
Without, however, following this train of thought, it is at least sufficiently clear that no small portion of the happiness of life depends upon our sleeping hours. Plato has exhorted men to observe carefully their dreams as indicating their natural dispositions, tendencies, and temptations, and—perhaps with more reason—Burton and Franklin have proposed 'the art of procuring pleasant dreams' as one of the great, though little recognised, branches of the science of life. This is, no doubt, mainly a question of diet, exercise, efficient ventilation, and a wise distribution of hours, but it is also largely influenced by moral causes.
Somnia quæ mentes ludunt volitantibus umbris,
Nec delubra deum, nec ab æthere numina mittunt,
Sed sibi quisque facit.
To appease the perturbations of the mind, to live a tranquil, upright, unremorseful life, to cultivate the power of governing by the will the current of our thoughts, repressing unruly passions, exaggerated anxieties, and unhealthy desires, is at least one great recipe for banishing from our pillows those painful dreams that contribute not a little to the unhappiness of many lives.
An analogous branch of self-culture is that which seeks to provide some healthy aliment for the waking hours of the night, when time seems so unnaturally prolonged, and when gloomy thoughts and exaggerated and distempered views of the trials of life peculiarly prevail. Among the ways in which education may conduce to the real happiness of man, its power of supplying pleasant or soothing thoughts for those dreary hours is not the least, though it is seldom or never noticed in books or speeches. It is, perhaps, in this respect that the early habit of committing poetry—and especially religious poetry—to memory is most important.