oh sleep! it is a gentle thing,
beloved from pole to pole.
coleridge.
if life be a succession of ideas, says dr. binns, then sleep is the interval; “consequently, we may say that sleep is the art of escaping reflection.” if one could follow the chinese advice, divest the mind of all unpleasant images, “the secret of sleep at will,” dr. binns thinks, “would be in the possession of all men.” this accords in its essence with the very modern theory of dr. henry hubbard foster of cornell university, that sleep results from the absence of stimulations. it is conceivable that things that stimulate, or rouse us, may come from inside as well as from outside. a sudden thought, a new, delightful, or horrible mental picture will arouse us and send sleep flying as effectually as a sudden noise or an exciting commotion from without.
we might amend the chinese advice thus: put out of the mind all images, pleasant or un85pleasant, or, as dr. gardner puts it, “bring the mind to a single sensation.” it has long been known that monotony will induce sleep. not merely the monotony of silence, but sometimes even the monotony of great noise, such as the ceaseless firing of heavy guns which have lulled the wearied soldiers into rest. there is a sleepy sound in “the distant boom of a random gun which the foe was sullenly firing.” it is the sudden, irregular noise which disturbs. if anyone listens for several hours to soft, flowing music, he will have great difficulty in keeping awake, no matter how great a lover of music he may be, particularly if he has to sit in the same position all the time. let a musical number with strongly marked staccato movement be introduced, let the drum throb loud at intervals, the horns blare, then the sleeper will awake and find renewed enjoyment, not because he loves noise, but because the monotony has been broken. the mind has responded to the new stimulus.
professor boris sidis, of the harvard physiological laboratory, says that “the fundamental conditions of sleep are monotony and limitation of voluntary movements. sleep,” adds sidis, is not so much due to cutting off impressions through the senses, be they intense or faint, as to the monotony of the “impressions that reduced the organism to the passive state which we experience in sleep.” in other words, monotony has such a benumbing, deadening effect upon the mind that sleep naturally ensues.
although binns did not know foster’s and sidis’ modern views, yet accepting gardner’s theory of “bringing the mind to a single sensation,” he worked out a plan for inducing sleep which he said nearly always succeeded. during his long practice he had known of only two instances where it failed when faithfully and intelligently tried.
the method is simple, yet it includes putting out of the mind all images pleasant or unpleasant, and restricting voluntary movements. it is this: “turn on the right side, place the head comfortably on the pillow, let the head fall naturally, using the pillow only to support the neck, slightly close the lips,—though this is not absolutely essential,—take full inspiration through the nostrils, drawing in as much air as possible, then leave the lungs to their own action, neither hastening nor checking exhalation. think of the breath as passing from the nostrils in one continuous stream, and, the very instant the person so conceives, consciousness and memory depart, the muscles relax, the breath comes regularly, he no longer wakes but sleeps. it is all the effort of but a moment.”
another method in common use is counting up to a hundred on an imaginary string of beads. often one will have lost consciousness before the hundredth bead is reached, but sometimes they have to be counted over and over, and sometimes the plan fails altogether. the immediate reason for this is undoubtedly that we have not brought the mind to a single sensation, nor succeeded in cutting off the impressions that come through the senses.
everybody has at some time used some such device for inducing sleep to visit him. the practice of imagining sheep jumping over a gate and counting them as they go is but another way of bringing the mind to a single sensation, of deliberately securing monotony and shutting out all stimuli, as scientific men call the various causes that arouse sensation in us. such simple devices are never harmful, and are so frequently followed by sleep that they continue from generation to generation.
if the impressions received through the channels of sense cannot or will not be shut off, it is useless to continue counting beads or sheep, or seeing a stream of breath. it becomes necessary to discover what it is that is back of the stimulation—what impression is so vivid and so insistent that it will not down. as frederick palmer says in his delightful book, “the vagabond,” we should “take a good look at a thing before we run away from it.”