The question implies a misconception. Human development is not a material thing but is poetic and exalted. It has to do not merely with physical conditions but primarily with spiritual ideals. Let us observe more closely how Browning wakes Pippa up. When she comes to consciousness she utters a cry of joy and thanksgiving;
"Day!
Faster and more fast,
O'er night's brim, day boils at last."
The joyous thanksgiving of this first moment is the key to Pippa's life and to her influence through the whole day. Such was the right beginning to her day and such is the right beginning for us all to every day of our lives. Her faith and her hymn revealed the true ideals of this strange journey we call life.
There is an old proverb: "Guard beginnings." If a stream is poisoned at its head it will carry the deadly taint through its whole course.
The most significant moment of life is the moment of awakening.
The importance of morning has been more or less realized in the instinct of the human heart in every age.
Many of the myths of the early Greeks refer to the miracle of the morning. Aurora mirrors to us in a mystic way the significance of this hour to the Greeks. Athene was born by the stroke of the hammer of Hephæstus on the forehead of Zeus, and thus the stroke of fire upon the sky became the symbol or myth of all civilization. Even Daphne, pursued by Apollo, and turned into a tree, is doubtless the darkness fleeing before dawn until the trees stand out clearly defined in the morning light.
The dawn of day has always been considered a prophecy of the time when all ignorance will vanish before the light of truth.
When we remember that men of the early ages had no other light but that of the sun, we can see how naturally the coming of morning impressed primitive peoples, and it is not much wonder that they adored and worshiped the dawn and the rising sun.
We still speak of the dawn of a new civilization. Morning is still the most universal figure of progress, the type of a new life. More than all other natural occurrences it is used as a symbol of something higher.