Читать книгу The psychology of sleep онлайн

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It is a well-known fact that those who live near the cataracts of the Nile cannot sleep if they get beyond the sound of the pounding. Soldiers, who are wearied after a hard day’s march or fighting, will sleep soundly beside twenty-four pounder guns steadily firing; or even sleep on the march, their legs moving mechanically though their senses are steeped in sleep.

Country people coming to the city are kept awake by the unusual street noises, while city-dwellers, accustomed to the roar of elevated or subway trains, are unable to sleep in the country because of the intense silence which Nature’s noises often emphasize.

Unreflecting man is a creature of habit: if any change occurs in his routine, he finds it difficult to adapt himself to it. He seldom comes to understand that it is chiefly insistence upon his own needs as apart from the needs or interests of others that makes him require certain conditions for sleeping. In either case the cause of wakefulness is easily found; but nobody other than the individual most concerned can remove it.