Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1893-01-09
WAKING UP AT WILL.
WHY is IT THAT MANY PERSONS
WAKE AT A CERTAIN HOUR?

Discussion of Peculiar Phnsc of the
Sleeping Mind - True, 1t Is Beyond
Ooubt That Many There Are Who Can
Set Themselves for a Certain Period.
A discussion has been going on in the
Society for Psychical Research as to the eX-
! istence and the nature of the power by
which so many people manage to wake
themselves precisely at the hour at which
they have resolved to awake on the pre-
vious night. There is no question as to the
fact. 1t is a matter On which probably the
greater number of people can convince
themselves You may fix time when no
clock strikes. so that it cannot be half
heard sound which wakes you.
You may fix five minutes before the hour
in a house in which no clock strikes the
quarters, or even in a house in which there
is no striking clock at all and no church
clock within q couple of miles, and yet not
one person only, but n great many-we
might perhaps say the majority of persons
past middle aegean wake themselves at
the right hour if on the previous night
they go to bed with the resolve to do so
strong on their minds. 1t is power which
belongs to all sorts of persons-not only
persons who have been in the habit of get
ting up at given hours, but to persons who
have not
Most nurses have Il. most servants. most
laborers, most professional men. Yet it is
very difficult to account for for when you
wake you have TO distinct, nor indeed in
distinct recognition Of the time on you
You only know what time YOU ought to
have been awake, but not in the least con-
sciously that this time has arrived, though
when you look at your watch in a fright
you find IS matter OF fact that it has ar
rived, and only just arrived. We believe
that the same power would apply to the
daytime under the same coudiiiCns-uame-
ly, that you tx firmly in your mind some
hours, or at least some considerable time
earlier, that you are to do something spe-
citic and to be reused to a sense of the time
| at specific minute; only people notice
| tins less, since there are SO many things in
the daytime which warn us and thus put
us on the watch as to how time is flying
The curious thing is that, though you
can arrest your attention and wake up at
the required time, you never seem to have
the least assurance that it is the right time
without consulting your watch. If you do
really diving the time, you have no
power of recognizing that you have "di-
vined" it. You feel as if you had merely
guessed it,. and very probably guessed it
wrong, until your watch confirms the guess.
1t is not by a keen sense of duration that
YOU compute the hour, for that would i'm
ply that you knew at what time you made
the resOlve-at what time you went to
sleep with the resolve on your miud-aud
this is often just what you do not know
If you measured time by the organic
| processes which so on within you, by a
| general sense Of the number Of pulSations
of your heart, or the number of breatbs
drawn, then You would require to know
H..
| resolved to awake, and you would measure
only by the length Of the thread suisse
| Quently drawn out Not only would that
| be very complicated process, hut it is al
! most certainly not the actual process, for
| you may be quite unconscious AZ what
| hour exactly tSIc resolve is formed 1t
seems to be a sense Of time, as quite dis
| tinct from 2 sense of the duration of your
sleep or OF the length Of any organic proc
| ess which has gone on since the resolve was
| made.
Yet it is extremely difficult to imagine
| that the individual mind can be so closely
| identified in feeling with the revolution Of
| the earth on its axis as would enable it to
| say at what hour "A. N. or p. IN. you have
| arrived. The mind measures duration chief
| ly by the succession of its own thoughts,
| but, as we have seen, it j. not duration, but
| something quite different from duration,
| of which 1t appears to he conscious Thus
| 1t can wake the body at any given hour
| without even knowing consciously at
| least how much time has elapsed since
| the resolve to wake was first formed.
| The present writer may assign the pres
| ent article as Il consequence Zone of very
| many of the power of waking at the exact
| hour desired, an hour which Is often varied
| in accordance with the urgency of the case,
| so that it cannot be ascribed to the habit of
waking at exactly the same hour 1t is a
| very curious power, for which we can as
| sign no parallel. We certainly have no
similar power Of waking ourselves on
| journey at any exact point in space on
which we may previously determine. If
| we resolve to wake up at the moment the
| express train in which we are travelling
| passes particular point from which, sup
| pose, striking landscape is visible, we
| should not manage it unless the train were
| so punctual that we could effect it by de-
! termining to wahen at the precise minute
| when the train was due there, though in
| that way we believe it might occasionally
| be effected
But there certainly are multitudes of
persons who appear to carry some kind of
| clock about with them in their inner mind,
| though whether it be the clock of the
house or the clock of the neighborhood it
| would be well to find out
In the present writer's case it is not the
| clock of the house, which is kept fast, but,
as near as he can judge, what he believes
| to be right time-i. e., railway time, though
| if he were, say, five minutes wrong in his
| impression of what right time is it is prob
able that he would awaken by the time of
his impression, ard not by railway or
Greenwich time.-London Spectator.
| Mistaken Impression.