Yet such an order is given, and the desire and the nerve center have both learned from repeated experiences just how properly to direct that message to the foot or to the tips of the fingers. If, for any reason, we miscalculate, we find ourselves walking haltingly or stumblingly along; or our fingers do not move the pencil fairly so as to get the right results. So, too, when we have lost a foot or a hand, the nerve centers send out their messages with the same force as before, but the messages find no way of being delivered. But at no time does a man think that he is less himself because of the missing member. For myself and my body are not one and the same. _Myself_ is that which lives in my body, and neither that body nor the years it exists in any way determine the life of myself. This self of mine, which thinks and feels, is older than recorded time; why, then, should we think that it will end with the century? It would not be possible, within the few years that the body exists, for the intelligence or consciousness of the individual to begin at nothingness and attain the degree of development of a human being. This self or consciousness is really the outcome of the impressions, experiences, and conclusions of my ancestors for thousands upon thousands of years back, and this self began to be shaped even by that from which man sprang. It is continuous; just as it began before my body was formed, so it must go on after the body ceases to exist; it cannot be a mere part of the body which will change with it or end with it. We do not know, as yet, how we shall continue to live after the body is laid away: whether in the thoughts and feelings and deeds we have done in the flesh; or in our unending, though unconscious, influence; or in the lives of the children of our bodies or of our minds and hearts. But we do know that the world will never be the same as if we had never been here. We do know that what has existed through unnumbered ages will not end in this. Life does not cease with sleep nor end with death. “I never was not,” says the Bhagavad Gita, “nor shall I hereafter cease to be.” CHAPTER XXXVI REST AND SLEEP O Happy Sleep! that bear’st upon thy breast The blood-red poppy of enchanting rest. ADA LOUISE MARTIN. One of the main purposes of sleep is to secure rest to men. But intelligence will find rest in many other ways independent of sleep or of promoting sleep. We are just beginning, under the leadership of such people as Miss Eva Vescelius, to make a full use of music as a soother of the nerves: yet, as long ago as the time of David, some persons knew its value. Browning’s magnificent poem, “Saul,” recounts its force.