3 ic THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



acting in matter elude us, and, not less often, the causes which act in 

 spirit overpower us ; but it is not our task to elucidate that terrible 

 antithesis of law, when the genius of Kant failed in it. We would 

 only ask it to be observed how great an influence light has on the sys- 

 tem of the intellectual functions. The soul finds in it the least deceiv- 

 ing of the consolations it seeks for the eternal sadness of our destiny 

 the bitter melancholy of life. Thought, fettered and dumb in a dark 

 place, springs into freedom and spirit at evening, in a room brilliant 

 with light. We cannot shun the sad moods caused by gloomy and 

 rainy weather, nor resist the impulse of joy given by the spectacle of 

 a brilliant day. Here we must confess our slavery yet a slavery to 

 be welcomed, that yields only delights. And why should we not join 

 in the chorus of all animate and inanimate things, which, at the touch 

 of light, quiver, and thrill, and betray in a thousand languages the 

 magical, rapturous stimulus of that contact ? By instinct, and spon- 

 taneously, we seek it everywhere, always happiest when it is found. 

 In some sort, it suffices us. And what a part it plays, what a charm it 

 gives, in works of poetry and art ! 



This is not the place to unfold that attractive and hardly-opened 

 chapter of aesthetics to demonstrate the relation between the atmos- 

 phere and art, by interrogating the climates of the globe and the great 

 masters of all ages, not following a system of empirical analogies and 

 far-fetched suggestions, Ixit led by strict physiology and rigid optic 

 laws. A charming picture would unfold in tracing the countless and 

 changeful aspects of the sky, and all the caprices of light and air in 

 their influence over the moral and physical nature of painters, poets, 

 and musicians. The ever-varying face of the sun, the fires of dawn 

 and sunset, the opalescent play of air, the shimmer of twilight, the 

 blue, green, shifting hues and iridescent gleams of sea or mountain 

 all these things find a destined answer in the inmost and unconscious 

 ongrowings of life, as in the soul of one who looks understandingly at 

 Nature's works. In it they reveal and transform themselves by sub- 

 tlest thrills tender and creative. He who shall detect these shall 

 link, range, and embrace them in their wonderfully complex unity 

 will render a great service to science and to art. He will not make 

 the artist an automaton, nor prove man the copy of a plant, drawing 

 all its virtues from the soil it springs in, but he will lay his hand upon 

 the mechanism, as yet scarcely guessed, moving a whole system of 

 mighty combinations of energy. Revue des Deux Mondes. 



