But as I intend to devote an Essay on Atmospheric influence, I shall content myself with asserting, in the mean time, that there is some common cause, or causes, assigned either to atmospherical changes, or co-ordinate with these changes, affecting the animal spirits of the sane and the insane—of the healthy and diseased, (in all, the manifestation is according to individual state,) is generally, and indeed, I might perhaps say, universally admitted, that the fact will require no further proof, either to introduce or confirm its truth. There is then a certain periodicity in the excitement and depression of our spirits, as well as in all our diseases, mental or corporeal, so absolutely certain, that it must be the conjoined effect of some order in the operations of nature, and cannot be explained on the principle of accidental or apparent coincidence, by which credulous and superstitious minds are often deceived. Though the artificial habits and constitutions of men must modify these influences, we still, notwithstanding, often perceive the effects are simultaneous in time, and sometimes that they preserve the same type, and as such artificial modifications do not exist in the same degree in the animal creation, especially in those undomesticated, on the contrary, these influences are so uniform on them, that the signs and symptoms of their presence are the barometers of rural life, it follows that these very modifications in men, when rightly perceived, are additional proofs of their being the effects of one cause. Even in man the influence of seasons, climate, and all violent atmospherical changes, are so striking as to be admitted by all, because they are so powerful as to overwhelm all artificial counteracting modifications; but, as it regards all common and minor influences, even when the effect on the mass are coincident in time, they are in individuals so modified by the specific habits, the state of the health, and the peculiar state of mind, that they become so much disguised, and of course so much less obvious to common observation, that even some medical men will deny atmospherical influences altogether when held forth as objects of scientific investigation, and ridicule as fanciful the man who maintains a firm and well-grounded philosophical faith in them; this is most inconsistent, and is like admitting a clock may mark hours, but cannot mark minutes as they pass.—It is the child who has just discovered the use of the hour, but not of the minute hand, of a time-piece. The philosopher knows that the unobserved and silent influence is the most important, and that the striking results are the mere indexes of its secret movements.