agrance filling the air--to a higher life than we fell asleep from;
and thus the darkness bear its fruit, and prove itself to be good,
no less than the light. That man who does not believe that each day
contains an earlier, more sacred, and auroral hour than he has yet
profaned, has despaired of life, and is pursuing a descending and
darkening way. After a partial cessation of his sensuous life, the soul
of man, or its organs rather, are reinvigorated each day, and his Genius
tries again what noble life it can make. All memorable events, I should
say, transpire in morning time and in a morning atmosphere. The Vedas
say, "All intelligences awake with the morning." Poetry and art, and
the fairest and most memorable of the actions of men, date from such an
hour. All poets and heroes, like Memnon, are the children of Aurora, and
emit their music at sunrise. To him whose elastic and vigorous thought
keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not
what the clocks say or the attitudes and labors of men. Morning is when
I am awake and there is a dawn in me. Moral reform is the effort to
throw off sleep. Why is it that men give so poor an account of their day
if they have not been slumbering? They are not such poor calculators.
If they had not been overcome with drowsiness, they would have performed
something. The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only
one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion,
only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake
is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How
could I have looked him in the face?

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical
aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake
us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than
the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious
endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or
to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far
more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through
which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the
day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life,
even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated
and critical hour. If we refused, or rather used up, such paltry
information as we get, the oracles would