MIschievous stories are told about the ability of great men to do
without sleep.
The foolish young man reads that Napoleon slept only three or
four hours at night--and he cuts down his hours of sleep. He
might better open a vein and lose a pint of blood than lose the
sleep, which is life itself.
Most of the stories told about great men doing without sleep are
mere lies. Some of them are true. For instance, it is
undoubtedly true that Napoleon--an inconceivably foolish,
reckless man in matters affecting his physical welfare--did
deprive himself of sleep in his early years. But he paid for it
dearly. In his last battles his power of resistance was so
slight that he actually went to sleep during the fighting.
Chronic drowsiness weakened his brain, weakened his force of
character. The foundation of his final ruin was laid in Russia,
when lack of sleep, and unwise living generally, had taken away
his mental elasticity and deprived him of the power to form and
carry out resolutions. ----
It is mainly the young man who needs the lecture on sleep, for
the experience of years soon proves to every human being the
folly of cheating nature by adding a few hours of drowsy
consciousness to the day.
You begin life with a certain amount of vitality, a certain
initial vital VELOCITY, which carries you through life and
makes possible certain accomplishments. When you deprive
yourself of sleep you squander this original capital. Just as
surely as the young spendthrift ruins himself financially when he
throws away his money, just so surely you bring irreparable loss
upon yourself when you go without sleep.
THE FOOD WHICH YOU EAT IS DIGESTED AND TRANSFORMED INTO NEW
TISSUE, INTO BLOOD, NERVE, MUSCLES AND BRAIN WHILE YOU ARE
SLEEPING.
Look at the men who engage in the atrocious six-day walks and
bicycle races. They eat enormously, absorbing in one day five
times as much as the ordinary man can possibly swallow. But the
end of their task finds them extremely emaciated. Lack of sleep
has made it impossible for them to TRANSFORM THE FOOD INTO NEW
TISSUE.
Any man or woman who has suffered from insomnia will confirm this
statement, that lack of sleep decreases weight and diminishes
vitality more quickly than anything else. ----
Remember this when you brag foolishly about going without sleep!
A man can go forty days without solid food. He can live seven
days, or even longer, without food or water. He cannot live
seven days without sleep. The Chinese, ingenious in torments,
discovered no worse death than killing their victims by
depriving them of sleep.
Of course, every young man can go without sleep for a whole night
occasionally and go on with his work. He can do this because,
from his father and mother, he has inherited a certain amount of
vitality, which, if he knows no better, he can squander stupidly,
just as he can squander, if he will, what money is left to him.
But no man can deprive himself of sleep, or sleep irregularly,
without suffering permanently, without diminishing his chances of
success in the world. ----
Many a woman among those called "fashionable" looks at the
healthy child of a gardener, and wonders that her child is so
different.
The reason is simple. The gardener's wife did not cheat her
child by giving to balls and late hours the vitality needed by
her babies.
The woman who loses sleep will make a failure of her children.
The man who loses sleep will make a failure of his life, or at
least diminish greatly his chances of success.