My Little Table 



He confesses to me that he sleeps soundly. 

 This advantage I do not possess. It is not 

 in my power to pass the sponge over my poor 

 brain even as I pass it over the blackboard. 

 The network of ideas remains and forms as it 

 were a moving cobweb in which repose 

 wriggles and tosses, incapable of finding a 

 stable equilibrium. When sleep does come at 

 last, it is often but a state of somnolence 

 which, far from suspending the activity of the 

 mind, actually maintains and quickens it more 

 than waking would. During this torpor, in 

 which night has not yet closed upon the brain, 

 I sometimes solve mathematical difficulties 

 with which I struggled unsuccessfully the day 

 before. A brilliant beacon, of which I am 

 hardly conscious, flares in my brain. Then 

 I jump out of bed, light my lamp again and 

 hasten to jot down my solutions, the recollec- 

 tion of which I should have lost on awaken- 

 ing. Like lightning-flashes, those gleams 

 vanish as suddenly as they appear. 



Whence do they come? Probably from a 

 habit which I acquired very early in life : to 

 have food always there for my mind, to pour 

 the never-failing oil constantly into the lamp 

 of thought. Would you succeed in the things 

 of the mind? The infallible method is to be 



301 



