Читать книгу The psychology of sleep онлайн

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It is after a bad night that we rise oppressed with fear for what the day may bring us; overwhelmed in advance with shadowings of evil. This, in itself, makes us unequal to the demands of the day. If any seeming strain is put upon us that day, we are apt to make errors in meeting it; if we find anyone has failed to do just what seemed to us best, we upbraid him roundly and unlovingly, making him and ourselves unhappy.

At the close of such a spoiled day, when we review its happenings, we say: “I knew this morning that this would be an unlucky day. I felt it as soon as I got up.” But we may not realize that that very attitude of fear and apprehension may have caused all that we call ill-luck. Remember this, then, lest the one bad day should spoil another night.

Often after a night of sound, wholesome, refreshing sleep we are surprised to find that what looked like a mountain at midnight is now scarcely a hillock. We find that we can see around it on all sides, and the prospect of surmounting that difficulty fills us with peculiar delight. We are no longer apprehensive of anything. The things we see in our work in the world are no more terrible than what we see in that unknown world which we enter nightly through the gate of sleep. We long to pass that gate, yet we know nothing of where we go, how far we travel, or by what means we come back.