| Show UP AT WILL WHY IS T THAT MANY PERSONS A CERTAIN HOUR A Dt culon of bhele of tir sleeping billil truc it beyond doubt that many are who can set for certain dertod A discussion has been going on in the society for psychical research ail to the existence and the nature of the power by which so people manago to wake themselves pre clely at the hour at which they have resolved to awake on the previous night there is no question as to chii fact it Is a matter on which probably the greater number of people can convince themselves 1 you may fix a time whan nc lock strikes so abat it cannot be a ball beard sound which wakes you you nay fix five minutes before the houi in a house in which no clock strikes the t quarters or even in a house in which there i lano striking clock at all and no church clock within aeple of miles and yet not one person only but a great many we might perhaps eay the majority of persona t past middle age can wake themselves at the right hour it on the previous night 1 they go to bed with the resolve to do so strong on their minds it is a power which belong to ail sorts of persons not only persons who have been in the habit of getting up at given hours but to persons who have not most nurses have it most servants most laborer most professional men yet it la very difficult to account for for when you wake you have no distinct nor indeed indistinct recognition 0 the time on you you only know what time you ought to lave been awake but not in the least con ly abat this time has arrived though when you look at your watch in a fright you find as matter of fact that athas arrived and only just arrived we believe tat the same power would apply to the daytime under the same conditions name ly that you firmly in your mind some hours or at least some considerable time earlier that you are to do something cielo and to t roused to a sense of the time at a minute only people notice this less since there are so many things in the daytime which warn us and thus put ais on the watch as to how time is the curious thing Is that though you can arrest your attention and wako up at the required time you never seem to have the least assurance abat it is the right time without consulting your watch jf you do really divine the time you have no power of recognizing that you have divined it you feel as it you had merely guessed it and very probably guessed it wrong until your watch confirms the guess it Is not by a keen sense of duration that you compute the hour for that would imply that you knew at what time you made the resol veat what time you went to sleep with tho resolve on your mind and this often just what you do not know if you measured time by the organic processes which go on within you by a general sense of the number of pulsations of your heart or the number of breaths e drawn then you would require to know accurately what the time was when you i resolved to awake and you would measure only by the length of the thread eurso drawe out not only would that be a very complicated process but it Is al most certainly not the actual process toi you may be quite unconscious at what hour exactly the resolve is formed it beems to time as quite dis from a beuse of the duration ot your p bleep or ot the length ot any organic process which has gone on sinco the resolve waa made yet it ts extremely difficult to imagine that the individual mind can be so closely in feeling with the revolution of the earth ou ils axis as would enable it tc pay at what hour a m or p m you have 1 arrived the mind measures duration chiefly by the succession of its own thoughts but as we have seen it Is not duration but something quite different from duration of which it appears to be conscious thus it can wake the body at any given hour without even knowing at least how much time lias elapsed since the revolve to wake was first formed the writer may assign the arc article consequence one of very ot the power of waking at the exact hour desired dee ired an hour which is often varied in accordance w ith the urgency of the case abat it cannot be ascribed to the habit of waking at exactly the seine hour it Is a aery curious power tor which we can dign no parallel we certainly have no iti milar power of waking ourselves on a journey at any exact point in on which we may previously determine U we resolve to wake up at the moment the i express train tn which we are traveling passe aa particular point from which sup pose a striking landscape is visible we it unless the train were so punctual that we could effect it by dc to waken at the precise minute when the train waa duo there though in that way we believe it might occasionally bo effected bat there certainly are multitudes of persons who appear to carry some kind of clock about with them in their inner mind though whether it be the clock of tha house or the clock of the neighborhood U would be well to find out in the present writers case it Is not the clock of the house which ts kept fast but f as near as be can judge what be believes to be right time 1 e railway time though it be were say five minutes wrong in his impression ot what right time Is it ie able abat be would awaken by the time of hla impression and not by railway or greenwich time london spectator |
