BOOK III. AUTUMN 



IMPRESSIONIST SKETCH 



THE life of plants and animals and of man himself 

 is rhythmic. Rest and repair alternate with work 

 and waste ; periods of hunger and self-increase are followed 

 by periods of love and species-continuing. There are 

 well-established internal rhythms, and these bear a relation, 

 partly of origin, and partly of present stimulus, to the 

 external periodicities of day and night, month and tide, 

 summer and winter. Just as the fatigue of evening and the 

 sleep of night express an external punctuation of an internal 

 rhythm, so it is with the decadence of Autumn and the rest 

 of Winter. The external changes more oblique light, 

 a shorter day, increasing cold, and rising storms act upon 

 living creatures which have, in the course of ages, become 

 predisposed to respond. 



There is aptness in the usage which speaks of Autumn as 

 " the fall," for life then begins to go on the down-grade. It 

 is the ebb-tide of the year a time of decadence. And it 

 is largely a matter of a diminished supply of solar energy ; 

 for just as it is the sun that quickens the seeds, raises the 

 sap, unpacks the buds, and opens the flowers, and our hearts 

 as well, in Spring, so it is the lack of sun that now casts a 

 spell upon life, putting the fires out and making us melan- 

 choly in the Autumn. It is the year's curfew and its 

 vespers. When the bells cease we know the silence for 



Winter. 



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