THE SCIENCE OF HAPPINESS 



widening the mental view, and giving background or 

 comprehensiveness to the dream. 



Other things being equal, then, dreams will not only 

 be more frequent during the morning hours, but such 

 dreams will more nearly approach the range of ideas 

 of waking consciousness than the dreams of earlier 

 hours. That this is the fact, almost anyone can dem- 

 onstrate to his own satisfaction by allowing himself 

 to fall asleep again after his usual time for arising. 

 He will then sleep very lightly, and the images that flit 

 before his mind will be so wide in range, so similar to 

 the images of a waking reverie, as sometimes to make 

 him uncertain, when he again awakens, whether he has 

 really been asleep. At such a time there is little dan- 

 ger of the appearance of those grotesque and dis- 

 proportionate images without background so-called 

 "nightmares" which sometimes intrude themselves 

 upon the deep sleeper. 



But whether it conies early or late, and whether vivid 

 or vague, painful or pleasurable, the dream must be 

 looked upon as a discordant element in the mental 

 cycle. Anyone who dreams habitually is not sleeping 

 to the best advantage. The brain which is partially 

 active when it should be everywhere quiescent is not 

 being repaired as rapidly as might be. Of course a 

 certain amount of disturbance is unavoidable under 

 ordinary conditions of living. Nature kindly withdraws 

 the light, and with it visual stimuli, but noises are not 

 so readily suppressed. Fortunately, however, the 

 brain soon learns to adjust itself to noises that are con- 

 stant or that recur regularly. The passing of trains, 



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