PHYSIOLOGICAL 269 



of relieving bladder-strain appears to afford a main stimulus to 

 arousal ; indeed, physiologists have traced the steps of the process 

 in due detail. Again, that organic time-sense, often so clear in our- 

 selves, and dawning in our domestic animals at least, by which we 

 can suggest to ourselves overnight even a very early waking without 

 help of an alarum-clock, no doubt also plays its part, as indeed every 

 day in habitually ordered life, on which regular sleep and active 

 life alike so much depend, and health and long life accordingly. In 

 fact, is not longevity very largely, if not mainly, the reward of such 

 well- acquired habits, with that regular succession of good nights 

 and good days which it is the fundamental essence of personal 

 hygiene and self-education to acquire, as of all education worth the 

 name to train into ? When we again learn to think of life concretely 

 as of old, in terms of days instead of years, we shall thus have more 

 of each, and better also. 



The Psychology of Awakening. — Yet we need to go farther; 

 for sleep is more than mere neural and cerebral repose, no mere 

 arrest of consciousness, but frequently — and to many normally — 

 a period of renewal of the mental life no less than a freshening of 

 the organic. For the latter, are not the active katabolisms of the 

 previous day made up for, and often richly, by the anabolic process 

 of the night ? — for not merely do children grow during sleep, but 

 the adult stature is restored as well; so that a recruit just below the 

 limit of acceptance in the afternoon or evening may reach it when 

 measured next morning (as indeed the story goes of the late Lord 

 Roberts). At any cheerful breakfast-table, each notices how many 

 of the circle are "looking well", i.e. better than they did the night 

 before ; and are they not often mentally brighter also ? And this not 

 simply by removal and repair of the previous day's tear and wear, 

 but by a real advance beyond its depressing difficulties, which can 

 now be faced anew and often more readily overcome. "La nuit 

 porte conseil" is a very common French saying; and it plainly 

 corresponds to "sleep over it" in English. The psalmist's line — 

 translated in the Authorised Version as "He giveth his beloved 

 sleep" — has been revised and extended into the yet fuller saying 

 and richer promise — "He giveth to His beloved in sleep" — on 

 which we have heard, in an at first expectation unpromising little 

 country church, an admirable psychologist's sermon. Too many, 

 no doubt, may say they lack this happy and fruitful experience ; yet 

 not a few of these, when questioned, can remember how in school- 

 days the solution of the problem one had failed to puzzle out over- 

 night was simply there next morning on awakening and standing 

 out clear, without any conscious reflection at all. Here even is an 

 extenuation of the law's delays; for what better help for the tired 

 judge — after conflicting evidence and contradictory partial plead- 

 ings, to each of which he has given fair-minded hearing, and reflec- 



