The conditions which we must observe at our own doors cannot fail to convey as a conviction to the least imaginative mind, that a slightly prolonged continuance of darkness, with its consequent increase of coldness, would be fatal to the existence of the organic world.
The sun has entered Aries: it is spring. The length of the day and night are equal, the powers of light and darkness are now exactly balanced against each other, and light, like the Archangel, triumphs over the sombre spirit. The organic world awakes. Chemical action commences in the seed, the vital spark is kindled in the embryo, and under the impulsive force of some solar radiations the plant struggles into light and life. The same invigorating force impels the circulation of the sap through the capillary tubes of the forest tree, until the topmost branch trembles with the new flow of life. The buds burst forth into leaf, and a fresh and lively covering spreads over those branches which, in their nakedness, could scarcely be distinguished from the dead.
The animal races are no less sensible of the new influence which is diffused around. The birds float joyously upon the breeze, and give to heaven their trilling songs of praise. The beasts come forth from the clefts of the rocks and the tangled shelters of the forests, and gambol in the full luxury of their renewed vigour. Man, even man, the inhabitant of cities, trained and tempered to an artificial state, awakes of a spring morning with a fuller consciousness of mind, and a deeper and more pleased sense of his intelligence, than when the fogs and gloom of winter hung like the charmed robe upon the limbs of the giant. Now, the dormant poetry of man seeks expression. As the morning sun is said to have awakened the musical undulations of the Memnonian statue, so the sun of the vernal morning produces in the mind of the most earthly, faint pulsations of that heaven-born music, which neither sin nor sorrow can entirely destroy. The psychologist, in studying the peculiar phenomena of the human mind, must associate himself with the natural philosopher, and learn to appreciate the influence of physical causes in determining effects which our elder philosophers and the poets of every age have attributed to spiritual agencies.