Weekly Trinity journal., 1876-09-30
PHENOMENA OF SLEEP.
BY JUNIUs HENRI BROWNE.

vi Dedln u HIter tlJle would De the SIS
ter of Life. 1t is nothing like death, if
we mean by the term the suspension of
animation, the extinction of conscious
ness. Sleep is as much part of, as es-
sential to life, as wakefulness is. The
chief difference is that in the former con-
dition the action Of the will seems inter-
rupted, and the organs Of sense less read :
ly affected. During slum ber sight and
taste are necessarily closed but smell,
hearing and feeling may he so Influenced,
through sensation, as to start and direct
thought in the form of dreams. Sleep is
merely another phase OF being, and its
effect, both direct and indirect, upon our
highest faculties can hardly be overesti-
mated. 1t is something more than rest /;
1t has intellectual and spiritual not less
than physical consequence. We know
nothing oft absolutely Qife and death
being the sole subjects we are vitality in
terested in, are likely to be perpetual
mysterieS), albeit we are acquainted with
its phenomena and they are so curious
that their observation and study are nat
urally alluring.
the deeper we go into science and
philosophy the more clearly we trace the
analogy running through the universe
Limited rs our positive knowledge is as
yet, it has grown SO rapidly OF late,
promising to grow still more rapidly,
that for the thoughtful life has come to
have n new value, and the future flatters
US with the hope Of solving innumerabe
enigmas.
Sleep is the complement of life, and
death is likewise. They belong essen
TALLY to one another; cannot diSsociate
except metaphysically. We have II bet
ter understanding OF wakefulness than of
slumber, and of slumber than of the
thing we designate As death, One hep>
to explain another; and slumber, as an
intermediate, sheds ligh; both ways. Per-
haps the main distinction between sleep
and death is their duration. To pro
nounce death nm eternal sleep has been
styled by the evangelical the expression
of atheism, though why it should be it is
hard to discover. Sleep has its pleasures
and IFS pains, its happiness and wretch
edneSs, even as wakefulness, and the
man doomed to everlasting dreams might
enjoy or suffer sufficiently to satisfy Aug
ustine or Calvin. We may not realize
after waking all that we have felt but
most of us must remember that many of
the visions of the night are as beautiful
or terrible as the acttAlities of the day
The awfGlness, the horror of sleep is fire.
gnently heightened by The exaltation of
the imagination and the dormancy of the
will. Its joys, too, may be intensified.
not only through the freed Imagination,
but through the absence of common and
cumbersome things inseperable from or
dinary life. To be secure against the
future we should have an immunity from
dreams, which have in them all the ele-
ments ascribed to Elysium and Hades. -
We can lie but once" is a phrase
more familiar than phiosophic. How do
we know, how can we know, that we
shall not die many times We have no
conception whence we come or whittier
we go. If life, as we call it, consists of
n dav instead of the average thirty or
forty years, with sleep instend of death
at the end, should we not shrink from
sleep exactly as we now shrink from
death We have no fear Of, no dsncl-
nation to sleep. May not the reason be
that we are accustomed to it May we
not in time become equally accustomed
to dying or may not rememb brance of
past deaths disarm, even render welcome,
the deaths that are to come When we
seek our pillows at night we cannot fore
cast our immediate future can form no
idea of wnat is in store for us. Eden or
Gehenna may open to US we may be /
lifted to ecstasy or plunged in despair
We enter another world, in which we see .
with spiritual eyes and hear with spirit
ual ears. We speak; we reason we
walk we travel we fly time and /
space no longer limit US the dead come |
back; the unborn live; we breathe the .
of enchantment as 1T were
the oxygen of our native planet the
becomes the actual the mi,
raculous the commonplace. And all the /
while we lie there, still, silent, apparent
lv almost inanimate. We do this once
in every twenty-four hours think moth
ing of it; and yet talk of mysteries, rs il
anything we're or could be more myste-
rious than this.
We rarely recall with accuracy or with
rational consistency all that has passed .
through our minds during slumber.-
Much of what we do recall seems tantas-
tic, abnormal, absurd. 1t was not so in .
our dream on the contrary, it was clear,
natural. We bad another
mode ofjudging it then and the differ .
pnce between the judgment in sleep and
the judgment in waking may be as great
MS the difference between the impressions |
received. 1t is not impossible that the
soul, emancipa pated from the outward sem
ses by dreams. NAV have visions and ex-
periences, which, when ologged by the
senses again, cannJt be apprehended or
explained. The dream may be revel-
alton, higher altitude, something alto
gether beyond the common state that we
regard rs reality. That we do not com
prehend, awake, the mood and mind of
sleep should not count against it; for the
fact may be in its favor. Who shall de- .
eide when the dream ends or begins
When we fancy ourselves asleep we may