SLEEP.
THE doctors have been discussing once again the eternal question of sleep, and on Monday the St. James's Gazette gave some remarkable facts as to the ability possessed by cer- tain men to do without sleep. The interest which the subject of sleep always excites in men and women is curious, though in reality most natural. Sleep, though in the strictest sense an every-day affair, is still the strangest and most wonderful of the phenomena of existence. Next to death it is the great mystery. Not only is it surrounded by a hundred unsolved physical problems, but psychologically it is fall of haunt- ing doubts and difficulties. Is the intelligence that dreams the same intelligence that directs the waking body ? It is difficult to suppose otherwise, for a dreaming mind seems so often to remember accurately and vividly what was done by the self of daylight and consciousness. Yet if that is so, why are we sometimes such different people in sleep,— the brave man a coward, the coward a hero, the unhappy man a creature of joyous impulse, the misanthrope an optimist ? But to decide either that a new mind occupies us while we dream, or that the waking mind continues at work, is not sufficient, for whichever way the problem is settled, no explanation is given of the dreamless sleep. Where is the mind of him who, as far as he can tell, is absolntely uncon- scious in sleep ? The man who has been dreaming can say : ' While my body was lying inert on the bed my mind ranged through the whole field of thought, and was as active as in my waking hours.' The man who does not dream can only say : Mentally I was dead while I slept; the time, as far as my memory serves me, was an absolute blank,—a gap in the course of existence.' It may be argued, no doubt with some show of reason, that
both the dreaming and the dreamless states are really the same, or rather, that the only difference is that in the dream- ing state the tablets of memory are impressionable, while in the dreamless state they will take no impressions. That is, A goes to sleep and his mind begins, or continues, to work. He has an active memorial apparatus in his brain, and this apparatus records the dreaming as it does the undreaming thoughts, and therefore when he is awake he can remember the dream thoughts just as he remembers his day thoughts. B, on the other hand, has a dull or unsensitive memorial machinery, and hence his dreaming thoughts are not registered with sufficient force and accuracy to make them memorable. It is only a question of registration. A's physical machinery registers so well and so easily that it will work even when the bodily functions are at rest. B's works "hard," and therefore does not act unless the full bodily steam is up. But this theory, though ingenious, will not account for all the facts. There is a great deal more in dreams than can be accounted for by registration or non-registration. Even in the most coherent dream the dreamer feels less than, or at any rate something different from, himself. Some controlling force has been relaxed, and the mind wanders off, as it were, on its own track and under its own guidance, or rather, in the direction indicated by some external power. As a rule, when we dream we feel ourselves actors in a pageant. We do not do what we would but what we must. There is no choice, no free will. Rather, we are com- pelled to take action by some sense of external pressure or direction. Every dreamer is a necessitarian. It is clear, then, that on entering the dream state we lose something which belonged to us in our waking hours. We have lost the power to direct and control our thoughts. The rider is out of the saddle, and the horse is browsing around by himself. There comes, however, a sudden alarm, a sudden warning, and in an instant the rider has leaped into the saddle and regained con- trol of the horse. The man is awake. What happens to the rider while the horse is wandering free ? What has become of him ? Is he asleep with the body P Assuredly not that, for this controlling power in the mind has less, not more, to do with the body than the mind, which wanders off in sleep. The dreaming mind takes colour, as it were, from the body during sleep, and acts in greater, not less, sympathy with it than when awake. The tympanum of the ear is struck by the vibrations caused by a bell, and straightway the dreaming brain registers a wild romance, which, had the controlling power been 'present and awake, would have been instantly rejected. Most assuredly, then, that self-controlling power which we call consciousness is not a sort of bodily function which depends on the activity of flesh and blood. Let us for a moment recall, as far as we can, the phenomena of sleep. If we try to remember what happened last night we cannot
get beyond a statement of this kind I remember that before I went to sleep I was thinking of the Sugar question Then I lost consciousness. The next thing I remember is the housemaid coming in with the hot water. As I woke, too, I remembered that I had been dreaming how a great red dragon with Bounty-fed' inscribed in letters of gold on his tail was raging through a cane-brake tearing down and destroying the tall sugar-canes.' Now, the essential facts in this statement are (1) the loss of conscious- ness on falling asleep ; (2) the regaining of consciousness on awakening ; (3) the wandering of the mind at its own sweet will, the controlling power having been suspended. From this we may infer that consciousness is not compatible with sleep and that consciousness, or that power which we lose when we fall asleep, is the controlling power of the mind. But may it not be argued from this that this consciousness, this controlling power of the mind, this true soul, this rider of the mental horse, is unable to be present except in a waking body ? When the body enters into the temporary death of sleep the consciousness is dethroned. The moment the body reawakens, the soul, which can only animate a waking body, returns to its seat. This consciousness, this soul, is, again, dethroned by death, or by some grave injury to the body. Death is the condition from which the body cannot recover itself and resume activity. Hence in the case of death the soul does not return. Madness, or a terrible concussion, or some grievous injury to the body also dethrones the soul, but in such cases there is still the possibility of return, and if the body recovers its full functions the controlling conscious soul returns. Thus sleep seems to point us to the fact that the
highest and the strongest part of the mind, the control- ling power, is no way material. It can only be the tenant of a living body,—i e., a body which is neither in that state of temporary inanimation which we call sleep nor of that perma- nent inanimation which we call death, nor in that impaired con- dition which we call madness. The soul waits, where and how we do not know, but somewhere ready to re-enter the body at waking or recovery, if waking or recovery there is. That is a fact, not a guess. Why should we conclude from this fact that if and when the body is unable to wake again or to recover, the soul dies ? Is it not more reasonable to suppose that, since the consciousness is able each day to leave the body and return to it, it can, when the body is no longer tenantable, live elsewhere ? We know that it can and does leave the body and yet return. Is that not proof that it can keep alive without the aid of the body ? No doubt the materialist might say that it was a new consciousness that was born with the daily reanimation of the body ; but is not that a juggle with words ?—the " Iliad " was not written by Homer, but by a person of the same name who lived in the same place at the same time and wrote the same poems. For most men, at any rate, this materialist argument will fail. They will say they know that it is not another, but the same John Smith who wakes each morning. Bat .since there is no such thing as nnpremised reasoning, and since we can only argue from admitted premises, we are quite willing to confine our appeal to those who will admit that he who goes to bed John Smith rises John Smith in the morning. Those who are willing to make that admission will certainly find in the mystery of sleep not a little .physical proof that the highest part of the intelligence, the mind within the mind, has a life apart from that of the body. It is true that a consciousness is not apparent to other consciousnesses who are occupying bodily tenements unless it is itself inhabiting that clay cottage we call a man; but that does not prove it does not exist. A's house tumbles down, and he is obliged to leave it, and therefore the in- 'habitants of the street see him and his house no more. Is that to be called a proof that A no longer exists P Surely a better inference from the termination of the lease, or from the destruction of the house, is that A has gone to live in another town.
Whatever may be the value of these arguments, there is a remarkable fact connected with sleep which must not be overlooked. The sleep of a human being, if we are not too busy to attend to the matter, always evokes a certain feeling of awe. Go into a room where a person is sleeping, and it is difficult to resist the sense that one is in the presence of the central mystery of existence. People who remember how constantly they see old Jones asleep in the club library will smile at this ; but look quietly and alone at even old Jones, and the sense of mystery will soon develop. It is no good to say that sleep is only " moving " because it looks like death. The person who is breathing so loudly as to take away all thought of death causes the sense of awe quite as easily as the silent sleeper who hardly seems to breathe. We see death seldom, but were it more familiar we doubt if a corpse would inspire so much awe as the unconscious and sleeping figure — a smiling, irresponsible doll of flesh and blood, but a doll to whom in a second may be recalled a proud, active, controlling consciousness which will ride his bodily and his mental horse with a hand of iron, which will force that body to endure toil and misery, and will make that mind, now wandering in paths of fantastic folly, grapple with some great problem, or throw all its force into the ruling, the saving, or the destruction of mankind. The corpse is only so much bone, muscle, and tissue. The sleeping body is the house which a quick and eager master has only left for an hour or so. Let any one who thinks sleep is no mystery try to observe in himself the process by which sleep comes, and to notice how and when and under what conditions he loses -consciousness. He will, of course, utterly fail to put his finger on the moment of sleep coming, but in striving to get as close as he can to the phenomena of sleep, he will realise .how great is the mystery which he is trying to fathom.
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