without exhaustion or injury. He also calls attention to the fact that when this habit of periodic synthesis is once gained, the brain does a good deal of it by some process of unconscious cerebration, and even during sound and refreshing sleep.
The principle on which Gratry's system, and every other vitally healthy one, depends, is that mere cessation of action, or even mere change of action, is not rest; rest must be prepared for by antithetic action. The normal sequence of the lungs is expansion, contraction, repose. If we tried to make our lungs stand still at any point of the cycle except the right one, such inaction would not give true rest, but induce disease. So it is with all our functions; each organ must not only have its period of non-action, but it must be prepared for inaction by completing its cycle of action, or else the inaction is not sufficient rest. The true brain cycle is this:—
Forming special conceptions; unifying those conceptions; washing out all conceptions by thinking of The Inconceivable Unity, Repose.
Sabbath and Jubilee mean not inaction but renewal. Sabbath was, in fact, in its origin, the Festival of The Unity; the true key-note was struck in the "Preparation for Sabbath"; recreative rest was to be prepared for by reaction against specialization, by seeking to know The Unity.
If ever parents understood the Art of mental recreation by Unity, the school-teachers must have had reason to feel that their lines had fallen in pleasant places! Teaching, especially for the more conscientious teachers, is made very unsatisfactory by the general lack of recognition of the true Art of recuperation; for this reason:—
