For a man walking down a lane at night can see the conspicuous fact that as long as nature keeps to her own course, she has no power with us at all.
 G. K. Chesterton, Heretics (1905). copy citation

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Author G. K. Chesterton
Source Heretics
Topic power night
Date 1905
Language English
Reference
Note
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/files/470/470-h/470-h.htm

Context

“Any one who does so will discover very quickly that men pictured something semi-human at the back of all things, not because such a thought was natural, but because it was supernatural; not because it made things more comprehensible, but because it made them a hundred times more incomprehensible and mysterious. For a man walking down a lane at night can see the conspicuous fact that as long as nature keeps to her own course, she has no power with us at all. As long as a tree is a tree, it is a top-heavy monster with a hundred arms, a thousand tongues, and only one leg. But so long as a tree is a tree, it does not frighten us at all. It begins to be something alien, to be something strange, only when it looks like ourselves.” source