Rocked in the cradle of the deep I lay me down in peace to sleep. EMMA WILLARD. The unsatisfied longing for rest in all mankind will be attributed to different causes according to the way we look at life. The physical or animal man desires rest because of the relief it will bring to nerves and muscles wearied by the strain of activities; he feels that to relax will bring him some ease and that relaxation will help him to forget the bodily weariness. Recovering from weariness or pain is a pleasure in itself. The sigh of relief is really a sigh of pleasure. When the mind reigns, it instinctively recognizes that rest would restore the balance disturbed by feverish exertions. Our whole lives seem passed in a struggle to attain something, and the law of rhythm, which is the law of action and reaction, requires that, after struggle, effort should cease. One implies the other; neither effort nor true rest can continue steadily. Effort is the breaking of rest; shadow is only the relative absence of light. It is contrast that makes sensations; the shadow serves to make the light brighter; the night makes the day more fair; and noon makes the night darker. Tennyson recognized this in the line, “Sorrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.” He might have said, with equal truth, that the present joy has a warmer flush because of forgotten pain. Wagner understood that, and so we find crash and seeming inharmony so often a prelude to the softest, tenderest strains. The mind first wearies of monotony, even of harmony, and then ceases to be able to perceive it. Wagner saw this, and introduced clashing sound that seems like discord until we feel its connection with the emotion and the context of the piece. These relieve the emotions and throw the harmonies into relief. Says Hobbes: to have one sensation and to have it continually would be to have none. The mental man feels and knows all this, and to him rest becomes necessary to restore that balance of things that contrast suggests—rest after effort, peace after turmoil. The spiritual man goes still deeper into true conditions in his longing for rest. Rest carries with it the idea of attainment. He who has attained has peace: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you.” The unity of all three desires—that of the body, that of the mind, and that of the spirit—cannot fail to strike the thinker. To cease to strain is the keynote of ease. Why? Because man sees, however dimly, that agonizing, like antagonizing, is really futile, and that the only thing that is necessary is to put one’s self in harmony with the Universe.