III.

REST IN SLEEP

How do we misuse our nervous force?  First, let us consider, When should the body be completely at rest?  The longest and most perfect rest should be during sleep at night.  In sleep we can accomplish nothing in the way of voluntary activity either of mind or body.  Any nervous or muscular effort during sleep is not only useless but worse,—­it is pure waste of fuel, and results in direct and irreparable harm.  Realizing fully that sleep is meant for rest, that the only gain is rest, and that new power for use comes as a consequence,—­how absurd it seems that we do not abandon ourselves completely to gaining all that Nature would give us through sleep.

Suppose, instead of eating our dinner, we should throw the food out of the window, give it to the dogs, do anything with it but what Nature meant we should, and then wonder why we were not nourished, and why we suffered from faintness and want of strength.  It would be no more senseless than the way in which most of us try to sleep now, and then wonder why we are not better rested from eight hours in bed.  Only this matter of fatiguing sleep has crept upon us so slowly that we are blind to it.  We disobey mechanically all the laws of Nature in sleep, simple as they are, and are so blinded by our own immediate and personal interests, that the habit of not resting when we sleep has grown to such an extent that to return to natural sleep, we must think, study, and practise.

Few who pretend to rest give up entirely to the bed, a dead weight,—­letting the bed hold them, instead of trying to hold themselves on the bed.  Watch, and unless you are an exceptional case (of which happily there are a few), you will be surprised to see how you are holding yourself on the bed, with tense muscles, if not all over, so nearly all over that a little more tension would hardly increase the fatigue with which you are working yourself to sleep.

The spine seems to be the central point of tension—­it does not give to the bed and rest there easily from end to end; it touches at each end and just so far along from each end as the man or woman who is holding it will permit.  The knees are drawn up, the muscles of the legs tense, the hands and arms contracted, and the fingers clinched, either holding the pillow or themselves.

The head, instead of letting the pillow have its full weight, holds itself onto the pillow.  The tongue cleaves to the roof of the mouth, the throat muscles are contracted, and the muscles of the face drawn up in one way or another.

This seems like a list of horrors, somewhat exaggerated when we realize that it is of sleep, “Tired Nature’s sweet restorer,” that we are speaking; but indeed it is only too true.