THE SCIENCE OF HAPPINESS 



of dazed half-consciousness. He performs no mental 

 operation that presupposes more than the slightest 

 neural activity. 



Similarly, a normal person whose mental life is 

 listless, shifting lightly from one field to another, and 

 fixing intently nowhere, may so little exhaust his brain 

 that it does not demand rest with the imperativeness 

 of a well-used brain. Such a person's prescription for 

 sleeping is to use the mind more actively during the 

 day. 



But again there are cases of exactly the opposite 

 kind, in which the brain becomes so wrought up through 

 active exertion that it refuses to become quiescent 

 when the hour for sleep has come. It should be said 

 that this is likely to result from emotional over-activity, 

 rather than from strictly intellectual; and that when it 

 occurs habitually from the latter the organism is bor- 

 dering closely upon disease. An obvious remedy is 

 to devote the later hours of the evening, before retiring, 

 to light and recreative mental operations, such as 

 ordinary conversation or " light" reading, physical 

 measures being attended to as a matter of course. 

 Of the latter, taking a warm bath at bed-time, or drink- 

 ing a glass of warm milk are often efficient. 



Numberless mental expedients have been suggested 

 as aids to sleep for the active mind ; such as imagining a 

 flock of sheep passing through a gate; counting indefi- 

 nitely; repeating a phrase over and over. The radical 

 defect of most of these suggestions is that they imply a 

 focalisation of attention upon something, even though 

 it be a very uninteresting something, and that such con- 



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