t we may continue to misuse them
without their crying out? They will cry out sooner or later; for
Nature, who is so quick to help us to the true way of living, loses
patience at last, and her punishments are justly severe. Or, we might
better say, a law is fixed and immovable, and if we disobey and
continue to disobey it, we suffer the consequences.

III.

REST IN SLEEP

HOW do we misuse our nervous force? First, let us consider, When should
the body be completely at rest? The longest and most perfect rest
should be during sleep at night. In sleep we can accomplish nothing in
the way of voluntary activity either of mind or body. Any nervous or
muscular effort during sleep is not only useless but worse,--it is pure
waste of fuel, and results in direct and irreparable harm. Realizing
fully that sleep is meant for rest, that the only gain is rest, and
that new power for use comes as a consequence,--how absurd it seems
that we do not abandon ourselves completely to gaining all that Nature
would give us through sleep.

Suppose, instead of eating our dinner, we should throw the food out of
the window, give it to the dogs, do anything with it but what Nature
meant we should, and then wonder why we were not nourished, and why we
suffered from faintness and want of strength. It would be no more
senseless than the way in which most of us try to sleep now, and then
wonder why we are not better rested from eight hours in bed. Only this
matter of fatiguing sleep has crept upon us so slowly that we are blind
to it. We disobey mechanically all the laws of Nature in sleep, simple
as they are, and are so blinded by our own immediate and personal
interests, that the habit of not resting when we sleep has grown to
such an extent that to return to natural sleep, we must think, study,
and practise.

Few who pretend to rest give up entirely to the bed, a dead
weight,--letting the bed hold them, instead of trying to hold
themselves on the bed. Watch, and unless you are an exceptional case
(of which happily there are a few), you will be surprised to see how
you are holding yourself on the bed, with tense muscles, if not all
over, so nearly all over that a little more tension would hardly
increase the fatigue with which you are working yourself to sleep.

The spine seems to be the central point of tension--it does not _give_
to the bed and rest there easily from end to end; it touches at each
end and just so far along from each