But devotion to activity begets an everlasting vigil after toils. Let not food weigh us down, but lighten us; that we may be injured as little as possible by sleep, as those that swim with weights hanging to them are weighed down. But, on the other hand, let temperance raise us as from the abyss beneath to the enterprises of wakefulness. For the oppression of sleep is like death, which forces us into insensibility, cutting off the light by the closing of the eyelids. Let not us, then, who are sons of the true light, close the door against this light; but turning in on ourselves, illumining the eyes of the hidden man, and gazing on the truth itself, and receiving its streams, let us clearly and intelligibly reveal such dreams as are true.
But the hiccuping of those who are loaded with wine, and the snortings of those who are stuffed with food, and the snoring rolled in the bed-clothes, and the rumblings of pained stomachs, cover over the clear-seeing eye of the soul, by filling the mind with ten thousand phantasies. And the cause is too much food, which drags the rational part of man down to a condition of stupidity. For much sleep brings advantage neither to our bodies nor our souls; nor is it suitable at all to those processes which have truth for their object, although agreeable to nature.
Now, just Lot (for I pass over at present the account of the economy of regeneration [1486] ) would not have been drawn into that unhallowed intercourse, had he not been intoxicated by his daughters, and overpowered by sleep. If, therefore, we cut off the causes of great tendency to sleep, we shall sleep the more soberly. For those who have the sleepless Word dwelling in them, ought not to sleep the livelong night; but they ought to rise by night, especially when the days are coming to an end, and one devote himself to literature, another begin his art, the women handle the distaff, and all of us should, so to speak, fight against sleep, accustoming ourselves to this gently and gradually, so that through wakefulness we may partake of life for a longer period.
We, then, who assign the best part of the night to wakefulness, must by no manner of means sleep by day; and fits of uselessness, and napping and stretching one's self, and yawning, are manifestations of frivolous uneasiness of soul. And in addition to all, we must know this, that the need of sleep is not in the soul. For it is ceaselessly active. But the body is relieved by being resigned to rest, the soul whilst not acting through the body, but exercising intelligence within itself. [1487] Thus also, such dreams as are true, in the view of him who reflects rightly, are the thoughts of a sober soul, undistracted for the time by the affections of the body, and counselling with itself in the best manner. For the soul to cease from activity within itself, were destruction to it. Wherefore always contemplating God, and by perpetual converse with Him inoculating the body with wakefulness, it raises man to equality with angelic grace, and from the practice of wakefulness it grasps the eternity of life. [1488]
[1477] [Family prayers, apparently.]
[1478] See p. 258, infra. Sleep, he supposes, frees the soul as really, not so absolutely, as death:--
"Th' immortal mind that hath forsook
Her mansion in this fleshly nook." Penseroso, line 91.]
[1479] Iliad, x. 155. [Note the Scriptural moderation with which he censures, recognising what is allowable, and rejecting the "pride that apes humility."]
[1480] Luke xii. 35-37. [Concerning "sleep," see p. 259, infra.]
[1481] [Holy men, on waking in the night, have always used ejaculations, even when unable to rise. Ps. cxix. 62; Acts xvi. 25.]
[1482] John i. 5.
[1483] John i. 3, 4.
[1484] Prov. viii. 34.
[1485] 1 Thess. v. 5-8.
[1486] [Does our author here use the term "regeneration" with reference to the restitution of all things? (Matt. xix. 20; Acts iii. 21.) He touched upon the subject above, speaking of one that is illuminated: then he begins upon the true life, and to this he may refer. But it strikes me, that naming Lot, his place in the dispensations of grace strikes him as needing some comment, and so he apologizes for passing on.]
[1487] [See [15]note 7 supra, p. 257. Here the immaterial soul is recognised as wholly independent of bodily organs, and sleep is expounded as the image of death freeing the mind.]
[1488] [The psychology of Clement is noteworthy, but his ethical reflections are pure gold.]