SNOW, AND QUALITY OF WHITENESS 117 



laughs at the storm; that the earth is glad with 

 flowers in spring, and the autumn fields happy; 

 that the clouds frown and weep, and the wind 

 sighs and "utters something mournful on its 

 way" that in all this they speak not in metaphor, 

 as we are taught to say, but that in moments of 

 excitement, when we revert to primitive condi- 

 tions of mind, the earth and all nature is alive 

 and intelligent, and feels as we feel. When, after 

 a spell of dull weather, the sun unexpectedly 

 shines out warm and brilliant, who has not felt in 

 that first glad instant that all nature shared his 

 conscious gladness? Or, in the first hours of a 

 great bereavement, who has not experienced a 

 feeling of wonder and even resentment at the 

 sight of blue smiling skies and a sun-flushed 

 earth? 



"We have all," says Vignoli, "however unac- 

 customed to give an account of our acts and func- 

 tions, found ourselves in circumstances which pro- 

 duced the momentary personification of natural 

 objects. The sight of some extraordinary phenom- 

 enon produces a vague sense of some one acting 

 with a given purpose." Not assuredly of "some 

 one" outside of and above the natural phenom- 

 enon, but in and one with it, just as the act of a 

 man proceeds from him, and is the man. 



It is doubtless true that w T e are animistic to 

 this extent only at rare moments, and in excep- 

 tional circumstances, and during certain aspects 

 iDf nature that recur only at long intervals. And 



