SLEEP"
" My bleFiing on that same man who first invented sleep ; for it wraps one all
round as with a cloak." SANCHO PANZA.
Meexisx wrote a book entitled the "Anatomy of Drunken- ness," some time ago ; a book on Sleep was the natural folower of such a precursor. "Wine," says the porter of Macbeth's castle, "provoketh three things ;' and the first in the enumeration is that which forms a title to our article and Mr. MAcensn's vo- lume. Mr. MACNISH has divided his subject into twenty-three chapters. There is one on night-mare, and one on day-mare ; one on sleep-walking, and one on sleep-talking ; one on death, which when we had reached, we imagined must be a finisher; but we were deceived, for there is a second last, on the sleep of the soul, and a last of all, on the general management of sleep. The subject of sleep is a curious one,—not quite so curious or so complicated, indeed, as waking ; but it has enough in it to furnish out a pretty little essay. We opened Mr. MACNISH'S book in the hope of finding something in the shape of fact or spe- culation that would deserve to be quoted ; but he proses about "tired Nature's nurse" as drowsily as the most tired nurse that • ever Nature formed. Monotony, he observes, is favourable to slum- ber; and he seems to have been determined to try its effects. We shall give a few of his facts. The sleep of health, he tells us, is full of of tranquillity. This is important. When a man wakes from a sound sleep, he is very like Adam when he was first created. Mr. MACNISH lives in the West of Scotland: the men there, on getting up, very much resemble Adam ; the women too have a mighty resemblance to Eve. "Night is the time for sleep." The author hesitates to adventure this last announcement on his own unsupported word ; he gives for it the authority of the author of the World before the Flood. In cases of so much
• Rhilos Sleep. By Robert llacnlehi. Glasgow, 1830.
difficulty, it is well to fortify our assertions by a .great nante , when we can get one. " All Nature," Mr. MACNISH goes on, " awakes with the rising sun." This we deny: we never woke with the rising sun in our lives—we have gone to bed with his rising. " From the position of man in society,i toil is a necessary concomitant of his nature—being essential to healthy sleep." Men who have no position in society may, of course do as they please. Children sleep a great deal ; so-- do people who are growing fat. Sleep and stupor are not the same, although some people have been pleased to say so. Life is an appropriation of fore40 matter. This explains why the moment an alderman ceases to appropriate turtle, he dies. People breathe when they sleep, and their pulses beat—when the breath or the circulation is stopped, they die as effectually as if they had ceased to appropriate. Bodies, however, may live without thought. We have met with numerourexamples both of bodies and souls that lived very comfortably without thought. Sleep does not prevent people from growing old. Methuselah and PARR (not the Doctor) slept as sound as tops ; the latter was indeed a notable sleeper ; but they both died for all that—vide book of Genesis, and Hume's History of England. " Death," says Mr. MACNISH, " is omnivorous"—tough and tender are alike to him, The Cartesians held that the functions of the soul were not sus- pended in sleep ; but this notion Mr. MacNiser deems ex- ceedingly unsalisthctory : there is no doubt that the soul does not act in apoplexy, and why should it act in sleep ? Let the Cartesians answer; have no doubt that the soul caa take a nap as well as bet' companion. Heat makes men sleepy, especially if assistAl by a dull sermon ; indeed, so powerful-is their joint influence, that very few men can withstand it. A piece of argumentation also is inure apt to set the auditor a nod- ding than a story. So says Mr. Macwisn: from our own expe- rience, we should be inclined to think the story the more somnife- rous of the two ; unless it were our own or our host's-that does make a difference. Cold produces sleep as well as heat. This has been exemplified in very northern and southern latitudes. Our geography does not extend to this particular description of latitude, but we have no doubt of the fact. " If the mind is at- tached to a single sensation, it is brought very nearly to the state of total absence of impression." This, by time by, explains very satisfactorily the difficulty which writers and speakers have expe- rienced in impressing the Duke of NEWCASTLE; his Grace's mired is "attached to a single sensation." " If a man lie flat on a mill-stone"—the upper one, observe—" while it is performing its evolutions, sleep is soon produced, and death without pain." Our readers must take this on the author's word ; we have no experience in the case. Before people fall asleep, they feel weary; they yawn, their eyes get heavy, they care little about surrounding objects. We have felt all this. "The lying position," says Mr. MACNISH, "is best adapted for sleep ;" and, generally speaking, we think it is. "People that fall asleep tin a current of air, are much more apt to catch cold than those who skin it when awake." We have sometimes imagined that this might be explained by the fact thatpeople when awake have a trick of getting out of a current of air when it begins to be disagreeable, whereas those who are asleep lie still and 'endure it; but Mr. MACNISH assures us it arises solely from "the irritability of the frame, and the relaxed state of the cutaneous vessels during sleep." The pupil is con- tracted during sleep, "although, a priori," saiih our author, "we should have expected to find it .expanded." We confess we don't see the force of this a priori argument: the pupil expands in order to enable its owner to see more clearly, but it is seldom that in his sleep a man cares about seeing at all. Some men sleep sound, and some do not ; nay, filo same man will at one time snooze for a dozen of hours undisturbed, and at another time not one hour. Other animals have not the advantage of this happy variety; their slumbers have a fixed character. We think, however, we have seen an inclination to slumber in individuals of the lap-dog kind, When fat and stricken in years, which was not in strict conlOrmity 'with the habits of the species. " Old artillerymen sometimes sleep while the cannon are thundering round them ; and an engi- neer has been known to fall asleep in a boiler, while his fellows were hammering the outside of it." We can digest the artillery- man, but the engineer gives us the day-mare : what, in the name of wonder, had an engineer to do in a boiler? Some men can sleep when they like: NAPOLEON, BARCLAY of Uric, and Qum the player, were examples of this kind. QUIN could sleep for four-and-twenty hours together. The time that men pass in sleep is various : General ELLIOT waked twenty hours and slept four, DE MOIVRE waked four, and slept twenty. There is one common feature, however, in all sleepers—" after continuing a certain time asleep, they awake."
But we have been sleeping long enough ; let us get to Dreams. Men who do not pretend to be philosophers have attempted to ex- plain the phmnomena of dreams in this way—They have observed that ideas are divided into two classes, ideas of reflection and ideas of perception ; that the former succeed each other in a certain order, varied in different individuals, but not without its laws, called the order of association; that the chain of succession—an end- less one, as they conclude, inasmuch as if one link were dropped, it is not easy to see by what means it could be taken up again—is in progress from the moment that a man is born into the world, to the moment that he quits it. In our waking moments, they have remarked, this chain of ideas is quite as observable as in our sleep- ing ; but, by a law of our nature, ideas of perception are more vivid than ideas of reflection; and therefore; under ordinarrehm. cnmstances, it is impossible to confound them. In certain states,' however, the ideas of perception may be rendered so faint, or the ideas of reflection so lively, that the orle may be mistaken for the other. Sleep, in which the ideas of sight are altogether, and those of hearing, feeling, smelling, mid tasting, almost altogether shut out, is an exemplification of the one state ; delirium, under whose influence the images of memory and imagination become as vivid as those of the senses, is an example of the other. Thus, they contend, the phenomena of dreaming and the phwnomena of madness are analcigous-: dreaming is sleeping insanity, and insanity a waking dream ; and the proximate cause in both is the same, —namely, the vividness of the reflected compared with that of the perceived idea. This is, we say, the theory of men who are not philosophers. Mr. MACNISH has a somewhat different theory. "Dreaming," says he, "takes place when the repose is broken, and consists of a series of thoughts and feelings called into existence by certain powers of the mind, while the other mental powers which control these thoughts or feelings are inac- tive." " It cannot take place," he adds, "in complete repose, for then all the faculties of the mind are inactive.- Dogs dream ; so do horses, sheep, and cows. The causes of dreams are unas- signable. Dr. BEATTIE had once a terrible dream, after riding thirty miles in a high wind. BEATTIE was a poor timorous crea- ture; he was afraid to go to Edinburgh lest some of DAVID HUME'S followers should burke him for his essay on Truth. A ride for thirty miles would reduce our mental faculties to a state of complete inaction for a dozen of hours, were we tumbling off the Girdle-ness in a close-reefed topsail north-easter.
The most singular combinations, every one knows, are exhi- bited in dreams. "It is not uncommon," says our author, "to see Alexander the Great, Julius Cwsar, and the Duke of Marlbo- rough, in close conversation." We can believe this and stranger things—what would the author think of Mr. ALEXANDER, Sir ROBERT PEEL, and Mr. JOSEPH HUME playing at skittles, and passing a pot of porter from one to another as lovingly as three brothers? Mr. MACNISH scouts the idea of prophetic dreams. They imply, he observes, a miracle, and miracles now-a-days are out of the question. When we are asleep, we have fewer of our faculties in operation than when we are awake ; how then can our dreaming thoughts be prophetic, when our wakinr, ones are not ? "This is the dilemma," triumphantly exclaims Mr. MACNISH, "into which the believers of the prophetic powers of dreams are brought—they virtually admit the existence of miracles. Now, miracles are in their very nature opposed to the laws of creation." This settles the question. . On the subject of miracles, indeed, the author is very hold. He quotes with approbation the testimony of an eminent writer, who says he would not believe a miracle if it Were performed in open day before tie Royal Society—Mr. DAVIES GILBERT in the chair. For an honest Presbyterian, this is .un pew fort. If we will not believe such things when occurring in the year 1830, how are we to ma- nage with respect to those that occurred in the year 30? Dreams depend very much upon suppers. FUSELI and DRYDEN, when they aimed at magnificent images, used to sup on raw steaks. Mrs. RADCLIFFE, who sought for terrible images, ate, the most indigestible substances. Mr. COLLEY GRATTAN, during the gestation of a "headachy" novel, may sup on devils, with tumblers of poteen. It is of some importance to have a rule by which sleep may at any time be procured, for every man is not a NAPOLEON or a QUIN. Mr. MACNISH gives one that is infallible—" If a man, as soon as he lays his head on his pillow, can manage to get rid of his ideas, he is morally certain to fall asleep." This explains most satisfactorily how men who have few ideas are ready sleepers. Early rising has been practised by almost all men who have dis- tinguished themselves by science, literature, or the arts. HOMER, VIRGIL, HORACE, FREDERICK the Great, and CHARLES the Twelfth were all early risers, so is the Duke of WELLINGTON. It is more wholesome to sleep single than double ; but if more than one sleep in a single bed, they should take care not to breathe in one another's face.
We must conclude with Death, though Mr. MACNISH will not. "Death is," he observes, "very like sleep: sleep is the torpitude of some functions :—death is the torpitude of them all ;" and further, "when death takes place, the principle of life is extinguished." If our readers want any more facts, we would recommend them to a perusal of the Philosophy of Sleep; where they will find five hundred as true and as new as those we have extracted.
Previous page
