REST AND SLEEP
O Happy Sleep! that bear’st upon thy breast
The blood-red poppy of enchanting rest.
ADA LOUISE MARTIN.
One of the main purposes of sleep is to secure rest to men. But
intelligence will find rest in many other ways independent of sleep or
of promoting sleep. We are just beginning, under the leadership of such
people as Miss Eva Vescelius, to make a full use of music as a soother
of the nerves: yet, as long ago as the time of David, some persons knew
its value. Browning’s magnificent poem, “Saul,” recounts its force.
As David exorcised Saul’s evil spirit by the skillful harp and voice,
so those who are studying the therapeutics of music are now helping
the physically and mentally ill. Miss Vescelius and those working with
her claim that “music is capable of great life-awakening energy....
The use of music for healing the sick is therefore a natural use of a
natural power. Music, like medicine, has been divided into classes as
stimulants, sedatives, and narcotics. It is now admitted that music
can be so employed as to exercise a distinct psychological influence
upon the mind, the nerve centers and the circulatory system, and that
by the intelligent use of music many ills may be cured.” For almost all
of us “music hath charms to soothe.” Others again find in some form of
massage a sweet though artificial sedative; some even in the combing
of the hair, which is possibly connected with an electric effect, for
we know little definitely as yet of the principles of the possible
curative force of electricity.
Others again rest by a mere mental change in their ordinary avocations.
My wife was once talking with Mr. Stiegler, a well-known riding teacher
in New York, and he said that he was in the saddle every day from six
or seven in the morning till eleven at night, with only short intervals
for meals. “It’s a hard life,” he said.
“But Sundays?” the lady asked.
“Oh, Sundays! I have Sundays to myself.” “And what do you do on
Sundays?” “Oh!” he said, “I take a ride in the Park.” The relief from
the strain of watching the pupils and their horses was rest to him.
When Weston had won his first six days’ walk in Madison Square Garden,
he went out to take a walk on Fifth Avenue on the Sunday.
To find harmony with our own natures, to act in accordance with our
natural or acquired tendencies, is rest. A peaceful surrounding is rest
in itself, though sleep may not be wooed. One may be rested by a walk
in a country lane, when a walk in the bustle of Broadway would only
tire him the more.
And this peaceful surrounding may be interior just as well as exterior.
Mrs. Elizabeth Burns Ferm, who has a playhouse for children on the
East Side in New York, and does a great deal of other work, recently
said: “I could never accomplish what I do if I did not sleep so well.
That rests me completely. I do not dream nor stir. I drop into the
homogeneous, forgetting myself and becoming just a part of life. In
this way I rest.” The oldest books show that, ever since there have
been any records of man, he has been seeking happiness and rest, yet he
has not attained either happiness or rest. But the seeking has helped
in his growth upward and progress has been his reward. As Browning says:
“Progress is man’s distinguishing mark alone;
Not God’s; not the beasts’: He is; they are;
Man partly is and wholly hopes to be.”
Even though man seeks in wrong directions, he is sure to move onward
so long as he continues to seek, for, if we sufficiently desire any
goal, we shall eventually find it. “What d’ye lack? quoth God,”
says Emerson, “take it and pay the price.” Jesus put the same thing
in another form. Said he, “Ask and it shall be given you; seek and
ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you.” Those who
misunderstand life and its purposes apply this only to what are called
religious matters, but those who see farther into life know that it
applies in every way. It all depends upon what we feel that we lack. If
we feel we lack pleasure, or happiness, or rest, we seek them along the
lines we think they may be found. And we pay the price that is asked.
We cannot avoid this so long as cause and effect follow each other.
If we seek happiness through selfish gratifications, we pay the price
of disappointment and pain, if we are at all enlightened. Of course, if
a man lives the life of the animal merely, cutting himself off from any
recognition of the claims of his fellows, he may get all the happiness
he can understand through self-seeking. But the price he pays is that
he is not able to understand or to appreciate more than this lesser
happiness. As Walter Scott says:
“For him no minstrel raptures swell.
Proud though his title, high his fame,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power and pelf,
The wretch, concentered all in self,
Living shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.”
This is the price he pays.
If we seek happiness through the happiness of all; if we forget self,
understanding that all are One, seeking that wisdom which comes only
from seeing all life as one, we, in like measure, get the reward.
Men, mere animal men, who understand nothing but self-seeking, may
speak evil of us, they probably will, but even that cannot “hurt” us.
We shall understand that such evil speaking is the best they know, and
that, therefore, it is not evil to their minds. Moreover, the further
premium to us will be a broader understanding, a deepening love, an
increase of happiness, an influx of peace, a pervading sense of rest,
and quiet sleep.
This is a premium most of us would be willing to work for, did we but
see it. And we may see it if we will. If we ask of life that we get
into harmony with its purposes; if we seek diligently even into our own
hearts for those purposes; if we knock at the door of man’s full life,
we shall find our asking answered, our search rewarded, and the door
wide open. What a man desireth most, that, somehow, somewhere, shall be
gain. Desire creates function.
And, when the soul has gained what it sought, we shall find beauties
and virtues hitherto unsuspected in every human being; we shall learn
that, above the turmoil and noise of our rushing, jarring, modern
civilization, we can hear the morning stars sing together for joy, the
music of the spheres, that which shall yet soothe man’s fear and teach
him to find restful sleep.