Читать книгу The psychology of sleep онлайн

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Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth

Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.

Milton.

We must not forget that it is easy to miss the good results of any natural function, and, through misuse, get only poor results. As in the matter of eating, we should get only good from satisfying our hunger, but the acquired habit of eating more than we need or can digest does incalculable harm. In the same way we may misuse sleep, and so lose its best benefits.

“Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care,” may be made, as Shakespeare says, a repairing time as well as a resting time, for as Iamblichus, the Neo-Platonic philosopher saw, “The night-time of the body is the daytime of the soul.” With some insight into the best uses of this natural habit, Iamblichus further said that, during sleep, “the nobler part of the soul is united by abstraction to higher natures and becomes a participant in the wisdom and foreknowledge of the gods.” Dr. Thomas J. Hudson’s claim made a very popular appeal, that there is a subjective mind made up of our inner knowledge, our own intuitions and mental processes. He alleged it to be a part of our being that is able, in some instances—as in the case of “lightning calculators,” of mind-readers and of some clairvoyants—to perceive the relations of things without reasoning them out, and to perceive the fixed laws of Nature without the aid of the senses.[3] He concluded that this mind or this faculty of mind is an inheritance from experiences and conclusions of the race in its upward growth.