Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/499

Rh the centre of life and heat, and without which vegetable life would be a nullity. Can we, therefore, doubt its energizing potency upon animal life?

It is not only poets and sentimentalists that have acknowledged the importance of the moon and the stars as hygienic mental and spiritual influences upon man, but grave doctors and learned searchers after truth have been ready to add the weight of their judgment to the superficial imaginings of the common thought. The moon has been deemed almost the arbiter of man's destiny, for every thing was supposed to be attached to the mystery of its quarterings, and its coming or going was (and is) supposed to have a gravity utterly untenable upon any scientific principle; and yet to the great orb of day, of which the moon and stars are but reflections, and to which we are compelled to directly ascribe life and vigor, so little attention has been paid—perhaps from the comparative absence of mystery—that its importance has been, till lately, unrecognized by hygienic writers.

The long-lived generations of the past did better than worship the gsun: they lived in its light, bathed in its warmth, and had their spirits and material substance imbued with its life-giving potency. Instead of sun-penetrated tents, men now live in thick-walled dwellings, through whose stony externals the solar warmth cannot strike to dry up the dank humidity, and the sparse and infrequent rays, that might perchance enter through the narrow windows, are carefully shut out by the voluminous folds of ornamental silks, lest the rich carpets be faded thereby. And the dwellers within live in darkness of vision and intellect, ignorant that they are excluding the royal visitor to whose gracious coming every avenue should be thrown wide open, to admit the king possessing a true "royal touch," potent to the cure of more ills than was ever ascribed to earthly sovereign.

There is a prospect of some return to a renewal of the beneficent influences of the sun, from the sheepish followers of fashion. This fickle goddess has recently started the doctrine that, as a reaction from the tanning effects of a summer's out-of-door exposure, the winter's change adds new brilliancy and transparence to the complexion. Fashionable butterflies now seek for the most complete tanning that the summer's solstice can effect, in order to secure a corresponding reaction, and insensibly gather health and invigoration.

Contrast the myopic and weak-eyed men of the day with the eagle-eyed men of the plain and forest, whose sight needs no screening from the sunlight, by broad visor and head-apparel or dainty parasols. To their unshrinking eyes light has no perils or disagreeableness.

Have we not here another great contrast between the past and the present? Where picturesqueness may have gained from the embowered cottage and the shaded dwelling, has not health suffered. The city, thronged with high residences and warehouses, has shut out the potent rays of the sun, and humanity has grown pallid in its shade, like