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these rare entities pass one-sixth of their lives in a state of unconsciousness. Most men spend at the very least a third of their lives in this condition. And it is quite clear, from the experience of the dullest among us, that the brain works in sleep. There are people, it is said, who never dream. It is questionable. I have heard a story of Coleridge's meeting a man who professed himself an atheist, and saying, 'Do you dream?' The man said, 'No,' and the poet was no longer surprised at his atheism. So far as I can judge from experience and evidence, the probability is that the spirit, the soul, the self, never sleeps. Why should it? Clogged by corporeity, it retires into its inmost asylum, and what we call dreams are the echoes of its movement there. There are times when the outwearied senses can take no cognisance of their master's actions: then we have sound sleep, devoid of dreams. Between that stage and wakefulness there are numberless grada

tions; there are visions that would madden Nebuchadnezzar and perplex Daniel; there are dreams outdoing those of Ezekiel and De Quincey; but there are also grotesque and ridiculous and commonplace dreams. All these variations seem accountable on the hypothesis that the Spirit wakes always, but that its serfs, the Senses, often sleep. Those five slaves of the soul are, like all other servile creatures, untrustworthy. Berkeley believed them to be consistent liars. I do not: but I know well that all five may deceive the master of this mortal mansion if he does not look after them. In no case is the adage more perfectly verified that good masters make good servants. Sight may be keen: but what cognizance can he take of a lovely woman or a noble landscape without the educated guidance of Soul? If Hearing hath no such guidance, he will take for truth the poet's irony

The devil, with his hoofs so cloven,
May, if he chooses, take Beethoven.

Touch is seldom well managed by his master, as is shown by his exceptional excellence in exceptional cases: and as to Taste, I scarce dare venture to mention him in days when Bruce is in the ascendant. Still, Sir Toby's immortal question will find its reply. Perhaps Smell is worse treated than any of his brothers a thing not remarkable in days of infinite and innumerable stenches. In half a minute, in the Strand, you may walk past a pickle-shop, a cook-shop, and a scent-shop: the blended odours of the three are sufficient to demoralize ordinary noses, even as the Bonapartist army was demoralized. But Soul seldom educates Smell . . . which is curious, when his dogs might teach him better. A dog-ay, or even a bee-knows a gentleman from a cad by his odour. Men seldom know honeysuckle from beans, and are quite unaware that in the hyacinth and the onion you strike the same note of perfume, with just an octave between.

However, not to be too digressive and desultory, it just comes to this. The five Senses are not over well treated; they like amusement: they want the sympathy and direction of their master, who indeed can do very little without them. For although in his mansion he has noble windows of fancy on the first floor, and sometimes a right regal outview of imagination from a tower that overlooks the world, even these are valueless unless his serfs clean the windows, and so give him cognizance of all which surrounds him. When left to their own devices, when unshown the work they have to do, they take the common advantage of their master's periodical absence-and there is High Life Below Stairs. The man who in his dreams sees monsters, hears owls hoot, tastes salts and senna, smells asafetida, touches corpselike palms, is punished because the soul has never subjugated the senses.

Hence my aphorism: if you want sweet,

sound, sufficing sleep, let the soul be paramount. Let no sense either shirk its duty or do more than its duty. Keep always alive to all influences, yet be greater than them all. Have you not seen one man the slave of music, another of pictures, another of his dinner. . . &c.? Verily it is almost worse to be the slave of

your own senses

than of an alien master. If you have to

stand behind a counter for

coin you are to be pitied but if, with no necessity forcing, you put yourself under the thumb of some one of your senses, and allow Sight or Taste, or any other of the five, to govern Soul, you deserve to be kicked. And kicked you will be, certes.

Be the master. Make every sense do its work, and do it thoroughly. Miss not enjoyment of a rare sunset, a chorus of nightingales, a hedge of Portugal laurel, a splash in the sea, a bottle of good claret perfected with asperula odorata. But always let these

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