Article September 1, 2013

Sleep

Originally published in October 14, 1916 issue of The Christian Science Monitor

The poets, on the whole, have been great materialists, and that, it is to be supposed, is the reason why men in every way so unlike as the authors of "Hudibras" and "Queen Mab," have seen so clearly the invisible link between sleep and death. The alternative would be to credit them with a peculiarly metaphysical insight, for only the materialist or the metaphysician could so clearly see the connection: the one from the very depths of his belief in matter, the other from the clearness of his perception of the unreality of matter. Thus Homer sings, in the Iliad, of

"Death's brother, Sleep"

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