As medical men, they are not required, perhaps, to say more; and we will
be grateful to them for faithfully urging this,--especially when we
consider, that, under the sage arrangements now existing, all that the
physician does for the general promotion of health is done in defiance
of his own interests. We, however, have further questions to ask. Why is
not the life-stream more affluent? Sleep _is_ needful,--but _wherefore_?
The physician vindicates the sleeper; but the philosopher must vindicate
Nature.

It is surely one step toward an elucidation of this matter to observe
that the necessity here accused is not one arbitrarily laid upon us _by_
Nature, but one existing _in_ Nature herself, and appertaining to the
very conception of existence. The elucidation, however, need not pause
at this point. The assumption that sleep is a piece of waste, as being a
mere restorative for the body, and not a service or furtherance to the
mind,--this must be called in question and examined closely; for it is
precisely in this assumption, as I deem, that the popular judgment goes
astray. _Is_ sleep any such arrest and detention of the mind? That it is
a shutting of those outward gates by which impressions flow in upon the
soul is sufficiently obvious; but who can assure us that it is equally
a closing of those inward and skyward gates through which come
the reinforcements of faculty, the strength that masters and uses
impression? I persuade myself, on the contrary, that it is what Homer
called it, _divine_,--able, indeed, to bring the blessing of a god; and
that hours lawfully passed under the pressure of its heavenly palms are
fruitful, not merely negatively, but positively, not only as recruiting
exhausted powers, and enabling us to be awake again, but by direct
contribution to the resources of the soul and the uses of life; that, in
fine, one awakes farther on in _life_, as well as farther on in _time_,