Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 by Various

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Thus, everywhere, through all realms, do the opposite principles of Rest
and Motion depend upon and reciprocally empower each other. In every
act, mechanical, mental, social, must both take part and consent
together; and upon the perfection of this consent depends the quality
of the action. Every progress is conditioned on a permanence; every
permanence _lives_ but in and through progress. Where all, and with
equal and simultaneous impulse, strives to move, nothing can move, but
chaos is come; where all refuses to move, and therefore stagnates, decay
supervenes, which is motion, though a motion downward.

Having made this general statement, we proceed to say that there are two
chief ways in which these universal opposites enter into reciprocation.
The first and more obvious is the method of alternation, or of rest
_from_ motion; the other, that of continuous equality, which may be
called a rest _in_ motion. These two methods, however, are not mutually
exclusive, but may at once occupy the same ground, and apply to the same
objects,--as oxygen and nitrogen severally fill the same space, to the
full capacity of each, as though the other were absent.

Instances of the alternation, either total or approximative, of these
principles are many and familiar. They may be seen in the systole and
diastole of the heart; in the alternate activity and passivity of the
lungs; in the feet of the pedestrian, one pausing while the other
proceeds; in the waving wings of birds; in the undulation of the sea; in
the creation and propagation of sound, and the propagation, at least,
of light; in the alternate acceleration and retardation of the earth's
motion in its orbit, and in the waving of its poles. In all vibrations
and undulations there is a going and returning, between which must exist
minute periods of repose; but in many instances the return is simply a
relaxation or a subsidence, and belongs, therefore, to the department of
rest. Discourse itself, it will be observed, has its pauses, seasons of
repose thickly interspersed in the action of speech; and besides these
has its accented and unaccented syllables, emphatic and unemphatic
words,--illustrating thus in itself the law which it here affirms.
History is full of the same thing; the tides of faith and feeling now
ascend and now subside, through all the ages, in the soul of humanity;
each new affirmation prepares the way for new doubt, each honest doubt
in the end furthers and enlarges belief; the pendulum of destiny swings
to and fro forever, and earth's minutest life and heaven's remotest star
swing with it, rising but to fall, and falling that they may rise again.
So does rhythm go to the very bottom of the world: the heart of Nature
pulses, and the echoing shore and all music and the throbbing heart and
swaying destinies of man but follow and proclaim the law of her inward
life.

The universality and mutual relationship of these primal principles
have, perhaps, been sufficiently set forth; and this may be the place to
emphasize the second chief point,--that the perfection of this mutuality
measures the degree of excellence in all objects and actions. It
will everywhere appear, that, the more regular and symmetrical their
relationship, the more beautiful and acceptable are its results. For
example, sounds proceeding from vibrations wherein the strokes and
pauses are in invariable relation are such sounds as we denominate
_musical._ Accordingly all sounds are musical at a sufficient distance,
since the most irregular undulations are, in a long journey through the
air, wrought to an equality, and made subject to exact law,--as in
this universe all irregularities are sure to be in the end. Thus, the
thunder, which near at hand is a wild crash, or nearer yet a crazy
crackle, is by distance deepened and refined into that marvellous bass
which we all know. And doubtless the jars, the discords, and moral
contradictions of time, however harsh and crazy at the outset, flow
into exact undulation along the ether of eternity, and only as a pure
proclamation of law attain to the ear of Heaven. Nay, whoso among men is
able to plant his ear high enough above this rude clangor may, in like
manner, so hear it, that it shall be to him melody, solace, fruition,
a perpetual harvest of the heart's dearest wishes, a perpetual
corroboration of that which faith affirms.

We may therefore easily understand why musical sounds _are_ musical, why
they are acceptable and moving, while those affront the sense in which
the minute reposes are capricious, and, as it were, upon ill terms with
the movements. The former appeal to what is most universal and cosmical
within us,--to the pure Law, the deep Nature in our breasts; they fall
in with the immortal rhythm of life itself, which the others encounter
and impugn.

It will be seen also that verse differs from prose as musical sounds
from ordinary tones; and having so deep a ground in Nature, rhythmical
speech will be sure to continue, in spite of objection and protest, were
it, if possible, many times more energetic than that of Mr. Carlyle. But
always the best prose has a certain rhythmic emphasis and cadence: in
Milton's grander passages there is a symphony of organs, the bellows of
the mighty North (one might say) filling their pipes; Goldsmith's flute
still breathes through his essays; and in the ampler prose of Bacon
there is the swell of a summer ocean, and you can half fancy you hear
the long soft surge falling on the shore. Also in all good writing,
as in good reading, the pauses suffer no slight; they are treated
handsomely; and each sentence rounds gratefully and clearly into rest.
Sometimes, indeed, an attempt is made to react in an illegitimate way
this force of firm pauses, as in exaggerated French style, wherein the
writer seems never to stride or to run, but always to jump like a frog.

Again, as reciprocal opposites, our two principles should be of equal
dignity and value. To concede, however, the equality of rest with motion
must, for an American, be not easy; and it is therefore in point to
assert and illustrate this in particular. What better method of doing so
than that of taking some one large instance in Nature, if such can
be found, and allowing this, after fair inspection, to stand for all
others? And, as it happens, just what we require is quite at hand;--the
alternation of Day and Night, of sleep and waking, is so broad, obvious,
and familiar, and so mingled with our human interests, that its two
terms are easily subjected to extended and clear comparison; while also
it deserves discussion upon its own account, apart from its relation to
the general subject.

Sleep is now popularly known to be coextensive with Life,--inseparable
from vital existence of whatever grade. The rotation of the earth
is accordingly implied, as was happily suggested by Paley, in the
constitution of every animal and every plant. It is quite evident,
therefore, that this necessity was not laid upon, man through some
inadvertence of Nature; on the contrary, this arrangement must be such
as to her seemed altogether suitable, and, if suitable, economical.
Eager men, however, avaricious of performance, do not always regard it
with entire complacency. Especially have the saints been apt to set up
a controversy with Nature in this particular, submitting with infinite
unwillingness to the law by which they deem themselves, as it were,
defrauded of life and activity in so large measure. In form, to be
sure, their accusation lies solely against themselves; they reproach
themselves with sleeping beyond need, sleeping for the mere luxury and
delight of it; but the venial self-deception is quite obvious,--nothing
plainer than that it is their necessity itself which is repugnant to
them, and that their wills are blamed for not sufficiently withstanding
and thwarting it. Pious William Law, for example, is unable to disparage
sleep enough for his content. "The poorest, dullest refreshment of the
body," he calls it,... "such a dull, stupid state of existence, that
even among animals we despise them most which are most drowsy."
You should therefore, so he urges, "begin the day in the spirit of
renouncing sleep." Baxter, also,--at that moment a walking catalogue
and epitome of all diseases,--thought himself guilty for all sleep he
enjoyed beyond three hours a day. More's Utopians were to rise at very
early hours, and attend scientific lectures before breakfast.

Ambition and cupidity, which, in their way, are no whit less earnest and
self-sacrificing than sanctity, equally look upon sleep as a wasteful
concession to bodily wants, and equally incline to limit such concession
to its mere minimum. Commonplaces accordingly are perpetually
circulating in the newspapers, especially in such as pretend to a
didactic tone, wherein all persons are exhorted to early rising, to
resolute abridgment of the hours of sleep, and the like. That Sir Walter
Raleigh slept but five hours in twenty-four; that John Hunter, Frederick
the Great, and Alexander von Humboldt slept but four; that the Duke of
Wellington made it an invariable rule to "turn out" whenever he felt
inclined to turn over, and John Wesley to arise upon his first awaking:
instances such as these appear on parade with the regularity of militia
troops at muster; and the precept duly follows,--"Whoso would not be
insignificant, let him go and do likewise." "All great men have been
early risers," says my newspaper.

Of late, indeed, a better knowledge of the laws of health, or perhaps
only a keener sense of its value and its instability, begins to
supersede these rash inculcations; and paragraphs due to some discreet
Dr. Hall make the rounds of the press, in which we are reminded that
early rising, in order to prove a benefit, rather than a source of
mischief, must be duly matched with early going to bed. The one, we are
told, will by no means answer without the other. As yet, however, this
is urged upon hygienic grounds alone; it is a mere concession to the
body, a bald necessity that we hampered mortals lie under; which
necessity we are quite at liberty to regret and accuse, though we cannot
with safety resist it. Sleep is still admitted to be a waste of time,
though one with which Nature alone is chargeable. And I own, not without
reluctance, that the great authority of Plato can be pleaded for this
low view of its functions. In the "Laws" he enjoins a due measure
thereof, but for the sake of health alone, and adds, that the sleeper
is, for the time, of no more value than the dead. Clearly, mankind would
sustain some loss of good sense, were all the dullards and fat-wits
taken away; and Sancho Panza, with his hearty, "Blessings on the man
that invented sleep!" here ekes out the scant wisdom of sages. The
talking world, however, of our day takes part with the Athenian against
the Manchegan philosopher, and, while admitting the present necessity of
sleep, does not rejoice in its original invention. If, accordingly, in a
computation of the length of man's life, the hours passed in slumber are
carefully deducted, and considered as forming no part of available time,
not even the medical men dispute the justice of such procedure. They
have but this to say:--"The stream of life is not strong enough to keep
the mill of action always going; we must therefore periodically shut
down the gate and allow the waters to accumulate; and he ever loses more
than he gains who attempts any avoidance of this natural necessity."

As medical men, they are not required, perhaps, to say more; and we will
be grateful to them for faithfully urging this,--especially when we
consider, that, under the sage arrangements now existing, all that the
physician does for the general promotion of health is done in defiance
of his own interests. We, however, have further questions to ask. Why is
not the life-stream more affluent? Sleep _is_ needful,--but _wherefore_?
The physician vindicates the sleeper; but the philosopher must vindicate
Nature.

It is surely one step toward an elucidation of this matter to observe
that the necessity here accused is not one arbitrarily laid upon us _by_
Nature, but one existing _in_ Nature herself, and appertaining to the
very conception of existence. The elucidation, however, need not pause
at this point. The assumption that sleep is a piece of waste, as being a
mere restorative for the body, and not a service or furtherance to the
mind,--this must be called in question and examined closely; for it is
precisely in this assumption, as I deem, that the popular judgment goes
astray. _Is_ sleep any such arrest and detention of the mind? That it is
a shutting of those outward gates by which impressions flow in upon the
soul is sufficiently obvious; but who can assure us that it is equally
a closing of those inward and skyward gates through which come
the reinforcements of faculty, the strength that masters and uses
impression? I persuade myself, on the contrary, that it is what Homer
called it, _divine_,--able, indeed, to bring the blessing of a god; and
that hours lawfully passed under the pressure of its heavenly palms are
fruitful, not merely negatively, but positively, not only as recruiting
exhausted powers, and enabling us to be awake again, but by direct
contribution to the resources of the soul and the uses of life; that, in
fine, one awakes farther on in _life_, as well as farther on in _time_,
than he was at falling asleep. This deeper function of the night, what
is it?

Sleep is, first of all, a filter, or sieve. It strains off the
impressions that engross, but not enrich us,--that superfluous
_material_ of experience which, either from glutting excess, or from
sheer insignificance, cannot be spiritualized, made human, transmuted
into experience itself. Every man in our day, according to the measure
of his sensibility, and with some respect also to his position, is
_mobbed_ by impressions, and must fight as for his life, if he escape
being taken utterly captive by them. It is our perpetual peril that
our lives shall become so sentient as no longer to be reflective or
artistic,--so beset and infested by the immediate as to lose all
amplitude, all perspective, and to become mere puppets of the present,
mere Chinese pictures, a huddle of foreground without horizon, or
heaven, or even earthly depth and reach. It is easy to illustrate this
miserable possibility. A man, for example, in the act of submitting
to the extraction of a tooth, is, while the process lasts, one of the
poorest poor creatures with whose existence the world might be taunted.
His existence is but skin-deep, and contracted to a mere point at that:
no vision and faculty divine, no thoughts that wander through eternity,
now: a tooth, a jaw, and the iron of the dentist,--these constitute, for
the time being, his universe. Only when this monopolizing, enslaving,
sensualizing impression has gone by, may what had been a point of pained
and quivering animality expand once more to the dimensions of a human
soul. Kant, it is said, could withdraw his attention from the pain of
gout by pure mental engagement, but found the effort dangerous to
his brain, and accordingly was fain to submit, and be no more than
a toe-joint, since evil fate would have it so. These extreme cases
exemplify a process of impoverishment from which we all daily suffer.
The external, the immediate, the idiots of the moment, telling tales
that signify nothing, yet that so overcry the suggestion of our deeper
life as by the sad and weary to be mistaken for the discourse of life
itself,--these obtrude themselves upon us, and multiply and brag and
brawl about us, until we have neither room for better guests, nor
spirits for their entertainment. We are like schoolboys with eyes out at
the windows, drawn by some rattle of drum and squeak of fife, who would
study, were they but deaf. Reproach sleep as a waste, forsooth! It is
this tyrannical attraction to the surface, that indeed robs us of time,
and defrauds us of the uses of life. We cannot hear the gods for the
buzzing of flies. We are driven to an idle industry,--the idlest of all
things.

And to this description of loss men are nowadays peculiarly exposed.
The modern world is all battle-field; the smoke, the dust, the din fill
every eye and ear; and the hill-top of Lucretius, where is it? The
indispensable, terrible newspaper, with its late allies, the Titans and
sprites of steam and electricity,--bringing to each retired nook,
and thrusting in upon each otherwise peaceful household, the crimes,
follies, fears, solicitudes, doubts, problems of all kingdoms and
peoples,--exasperates the former Scotch mist of impressions into a
flooding rain, and almost threatens to swamp the brain of mankind. The
incitement to thought is ever greater; but the possibility of thinking,
especially of thinking in a deep, simple, central way, is ever less.
Problems multiply, but how to attend to them is ever a still greater
problem. Guests of the intellect and imagination accumulate until the
master of the house is pushed out of doors, and hospitality ceases from
the mere excess of its occasion. That must be a greater than Homer who
should now do Homer's work. He, there in his sweet, deep-skied Ionia,
privileged with an experience so simple and yet so salient and powerful,
might well hope to act upon this victoriously by his spirit, might hope
to transmute it, as indeed he did, into melodious and enduring human
suggestion. Would it have been all the same, had he lived in our
type-setting modern world, with its multitudinous knowledges, its
aroused conscience, its spurred and yet thwarted sympathies, its new
incitements to egotism also, and new tools and appliances for egotism
to use,--placed, as it were, in the focus of a vast whispering-gallery,
where all the sounds of heaven and earth came crowding, contending,
incessant upon his ear? One sees at a glance how the serious thought and
poetry of Greece cling to a few master facts, not being compelled to
fight always with the many-headed monster of detail; and this suggests
to me that our literature may fall short of Grecian amplitude, depth,
and simplicity, not wholly from inferiority of power, but from
complications appertaining to our position.

The problem of our time is, How to digest and assimilate the Newspaper?
To complain of it, to desire its abolition, is an anachronism of the
will: it is to complain that time proceeds, and that events follow each
other in due sequence. It is hardly too bold to say that the newspaper
_is_ the modern world, as distinct from the antique and the mediaeval.
It represents, by its advent, that epoch in human history wherein
each man must begin, in proportion to his capability of sympathy and
consideration, to collate his private thoughts, fortunes, interests with
those of the human race at large. We are now in the crude openings of
this epoch, fevered by its incidents and demands; and one of its tokens
is a general exhaustion of the nervous system and failure of health,
both here and in Europe,--those of most sensitive spirit, and least
retired and sheltered from the impressions of the time, suffering most.
All this will end, _must_ end, victoriously. In the mean time can we not
somewhat adjust ourselves to this new condition?

One thing we can and must not fail to do: we can learn to understand and
appreciate Rest. In particular, we should build up and reinforce the
powers of the night to offset this new intensity of the day. Such,
indeed, as the day now is has it ever been, though in a less degree:
always it has cast upon men impressions significant, insignificant, and
of an ill significance, promiscuously and in excess; and always sleep
has been the filter of memory, the purifier of experience, providing a
season that follows closely upon the impressions of the day, ere yet
they are too deeply imbedded, in which our deeper life may pluck away
the adhering burrs from its garments, and arise disburdened, clean, and
free. I make no doubt that Death also performs, though in an ampler and
more thorough way, the same functions. It opposes the tyranny of memory.
For were our experience to go on forever accumulating, unwinnowed,
undiminished, every man would sooner or later break down beneath it;
every man would be crushed by his own traditions, becoming a grave to
himself, and drawing the clods over his own head. To relieve us of these
accidental accretions, to give us back to ourselves, is the use,
in part, of that sleep which rounds each day, and of that other
sleep--brief, but how deep!--which rounds each human life.

Accordingly, he who sleeps well need not die so soon,--even as in the
order of Nature he will not. He has that other and rarer half of a good
memory, namely, a good forgetting. For none remembers so ill as he that
remembers all. "A great German scholar affirmed that he knew not what
it was to forget." Better have been born an idiot! An unwashed
memory,--faugh! To us moderns and Americans, therefore, who need
above all things to forget well,--our one imperative want being a
simplification of experience,--to us, more than to all other men, is
requisite, in large measure of benefit, the winnowing-fan of sleep,
sleep with its choices and exclusions, if we would not need the offices
of death too soon.

But a function of yet greater depth and moment remains to be indicated.
Sleep enables the soul not only to shed away that which is foreign,
but to adopt and assimilate whatever is properly its own. Dr. Edward
Johnson, a man of considerable penetration, though not, perhaps, of a
balanced judgment, has a dictum to the effect that the formation of
blood goes on during our waking hours, but the composition of tissue
during those of sleep. I know not upon what grounds of evidence
this statement is made; but one persuades himself that it must be
approximately true of the body, since it is undoubtedly so of the soul.
Under the eye of the sun the fluid elements of character are supplied;
but the final edification takes place beneath the stars. Awake, we
think, feel, act; sleeping, we _become_. Day feeds our consciousness;
night, out of those stores which action has accumulated, nourishes the
vital unconsciousness, the pure unit of the man. During sleep, the valid
and serviceable experience of the day is drawn inward, wrought upon by
spiritual catalysis, transmitted into conviction, sentiment, character,
life, and made part of that which is to attract and assimilate all
subsequent experience. Who, accordingly, has not awaked to find some
problem already solved with which he had vainly grappled on the
preceding day? It is not merely that in the morning our invigorated
powers work more efficiently, and enable us to reach this solution
immediately _after_ awaking. Often, indeed, this occurs; but there are
also numerous instances--and such alone are in point--wherein the work
is complete _before_ one's awakening: not unfrequently it is by the
energy itself of the new perception that the soft bonds of slumber are
first broken; the soul hails its new dawn with so lusty a cheer,
that its clarion reaches even to the ear of the body, and we are
unconsciously murmuring the echoes of that joyous salute while yet the
iris-hued fragments of our dreams linger about us. The poet in the
morning, if true divine slumber have been vouchsafed him, finds his
mind enriched with sweeter imaginations, the thinker with profounder
principles and wider categories: neither begins the new day where
he left the old, but each during his rest has silently, wondrously,
advanced to fresh positions, commanding the world now from nobler
summits, and beholding around him an horizon beyond that over which
yesterday's sun rose and set. Milton gives us testimony very much in
point:--

"My celestial patroness, who deigns
Her nightly visitation unimplored,
And dictates to me slumb'ring."

Thus, in one important sense, is day the servant of night, action the
minister of rest. I fancy, accordingly, that Marcus Antoninus may give
Heraclitus credit for less than his full meaning in saying that "men
asleep are then also laboring"; for he understands him to signify only
that through such the universe is still accomplishing its ends. Perhaps
he meant to indicate what has been here affirmed,--that in sleep one's
personal destiny is still ripening, his true life proceeding.

But if, as the instance which has been under consideration suggests,
these two principles are of equal dignity, it will follow that the
ability to rest profoundly is of no less estimation than the ability to
work powerfully. Indeed, is it not often the condition upon which great
and sustained power of action depends? The medal must have two sides.
"Danton," says Carlyle, "was a great nature that could rest." Were not
the force and terror of his performance the obverse fact? I do not
now mean, however true it would be, to say that without rest physical
resources would fail, and action be enfeebled in consequence; I mean
that the soul which wants the attitude of repose wants the condition of
power. There is a petulant and meddlesome industry which proceeds from
spiritual debility, and causes more; it is like the sleeplessness and
tossing of exhausted nervous patients, which arises from weakness, and
aggravates its occasion. As few things are equally wearisome, so few are
equally wasteful, with a perpetual indistinct sputter of action, whereby
nothing is done and nothing let alone. Half the world _breaks_ out with
action; its performance is cutaneous, of the nature of tetter. Hence is
it that in the world, with such a noise of building, so few edifices are
reared.

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