In the middle of last night I found myself suddenly and quite acutely
awake. It is an unusual experience for me. I knew the disturbance had
not come from without myself, but from within--from some low but
persistent knocking at the remote door of consciousness. Who was the
knocker? I ran over the possible visitors before opening the door just
as one sometimes puzzles over the writing of an address before opening
a letter. Ah, yes, the disquieting discovery I had made
yesterday--that was the intruder. And, saying this, I opened the door
and let the fellow in, to sit upon my pillow and lord it over me in the
darkness. I had succeeded in suppressing him before I went to
bed--burying him beneath talk about this and that, some variations of
Rameau, a few of those Hungarian songs from Korbay's collection, so
incomparable in their fierce energy and passion, and so on; the mound
nicely rounded off with Duruy's "History of France," and the headstone
of sleep duly erected. Now, I thought, I shall hear nothing more of
him until I face him squarely to-morrow. And here, up from the depths
he had come and taken his seat upon the headstone itself.
It is with sleep as with affairs. One cracked bell will shatter a
whole ring; one scheming, predatory power will set the whole world in
flames. And one disorderly imp of the mind will upset the whole comity
of sleep. He will neither slumber forgetfully nor play with the others
in dreams, turning the realities and solemnities of the day into a wild
travesty of fun or agony, in which everything that is incredible seems
as natural as sneezing, and you stand on your head on the cross of St.
Paul's or walk up the Strand carrying your head under your arm without
any sense of surprise or impropriety. Nor is he one of those obliging
subjects of the mind who obey their orders like a sensible house-dog,
sleeping with one eye open and ready to bark, as it were, if anything
goes wrong. You know that sort of decent fellow. You say to him
overnight, "Now, remember, I have that train to catch in the morning,
and I must be awake without fail at seven." Or it may be six, or four.
And whatever the hour you name, sure enough the good dog barks in time.
If he has a failing, it is barking too soon and leaving you to discuss
the nice question whether you dare go to sleep again or whether you had
better remain awake. In the midst of which you probably go to sleep
again and miss your train.
This control of the kingdom of sleep by the apparently dormant
consciousness can be carried far. A friend of mine tells me that he
has even learned to put his dreams under the check of conscious or
sub-conscious thought. He had one persistent dream which took the form
of missing the train. Sometimes his wife was on board, and he rushed
on to the platform just in time to see the train in motion and her head
out of the window with agony written on her face. Sometimes he was in
the train and his wife just missed it. Sometimes they were both
inside, but saw their luggage being brought up too late. Sometimes the
luggage got in and they didn't. Always something went wrong. He
determined to have that dream regularised. And so before going to bed
he thought hard of catching the train. He saturated himself with the
idea of catching the train. And the thing worked like a charm. He
never misses a train now, nor his wife, nor his luggage. They all
steam away on their dream journeys together without a hitch. So he
tells me, and I believe him, for he is a truthful man.
You and I, and I suppose everybody, have had evidences of this
sub-conscious operation in sleep. That it is common enough is shown by
the familiar saying, "I will sleep on it." I have gone to bed more
than once with problems that have seemed insoluble, have fallen to
sleep, and have wakened in the morning with the course so clear that I
have wondered how I could have been in doubt. And Sir Edward Clarke in
his reminiscences of the Bar tells how, after a night over his briefs
he would go to bed with his way through the tangle obscure and
perplexing, and would wake from sleep with the path plain as a
pikestaff. The phenomenon is doubtless due in some measure to rest.
The mind clears in sleeping as muddy waters clear in standing. But
this is not the whole explanation. Some process has taken place in the
interval far down in the hinterlands of thought. You may observe this
even in your waking hours. Lord Leverhulme, who I suppose has one of
the biggest letter-bags in the country, once told me that his habit in
dealing with his correspondence is to answer at once those letters he
can reply to off-hand, and to put aside those that need consideration.
When he turns to the latter he finds the answers have fashioned
themselves without any conscious act of thought. This experience is
not uncommon, and as it occurs when the mind is at the maximum of
activity it disposes of the idea that rest is the complete explanation.
More goes on in us than we know. At this moment I am conscious of at
least six strata of thought. I am attending to this writing, the
shaping of the letters, the spelling of the words; I am thinking what I
shall write; I am sensible that a thrush is singing outside, and that
the sun is shining; this pervades my mind with the glow of the thought
that in a few days I shall be in the beechwoods; through this happy
glow the ugly imp who sat on my pillow last night forces himself on my
attention; down below there is the boom of the great misery of the
world that goes on ceaselessly like the deep strum of the double bass
in the orchestra. And out of sight and consciousness there are, I
suspect, deeper and more obscure functions shaping all sorts of things
in the unfathomed caves of the mind. The results will come to the
surface in due course, and I shall wonder where they came from. It is
a mistake to suppose that we can only think of one thing at a time.
The mind can keep as many balls circulating as Cinquevalli. It can
keep some of them circulating even without knowing that they exist.
But these profound functions of the mind that know no sleep, and yet do
not disturb our sleep, are not to be confused with that imp of the
pillow. He is a brawler of the day. He brings the noisy world of fact
into the cloistered calm or the playground of sleep. He is known to
all of us, but most of all to the criminal who has still got a
conscience. Macbeth knew him--"Macbeth hath murdered sleep, the
innocent sleep." Eugene Aram knew him:
And a mighty wind had swept the leaves
And still the corpse was bare.
I know him ... And that reminds me. It is time I went and had it out
with my imp of the pillow in the daylight.