Author of Nature

“ What is the author's attitude toward Nature— (1) does he view Nature in a purely objective way, as a mass of material things, a series of material phenomena or a mere embodiment of sensuous beauty; or (2) is there symbolism or mysticism in his attitude, that is—does he view Nature with awe as a spiritual power; or (3) is he thoroughly subjective, reading his own moods into Nature or using Nature chiefly for the expression of his moods? Or again, does the author describe with merely expository purpose, to make the background of his work clear? ”

“ But what, it may be asked, does this truth to nature actually consist in? Is it necessary that the author should set before us something that really exists?—something to be seen in nature, like a tree or a waterfall? ”

“ In the Second and Historical Part, the Author, appealing to the Testimony of Nature, to verifie his Doctrine, sets down, both some Observations, of what Nature does without being over-ruled by the power and skill of man; and some Experiments, wherein Nature is guided, and as it were, mastered by Art. ”

“ And what too soon would die, help to destroy.
As if the cares of human life were few
We seek out new,
And follow fate, which does too fast pursue.
In vain does Nature's bounteous hand supply
What peevish mortals to themselves deny. ”

“ Let the soul's reach the heart's restraint reprove,
And widen to the world our country's love.
Base are these local limits to mens hearts,
That canton out humanity in parts.
Truth has no districts to divide her toil;
And virtue is at home in every soil.
Since, on one common globe, we neighbouring dwell,
What narrower line should man from man expel.
Each born alike, and sons of nature all,
Human can ne'er from care of human fall. ”

“ That honour thinks amiss.
Thus are poor maids unkindly used
By Love and Nature both abused—
And tender harts all ease refused;
And when we burn with secret flame,
Must die with grief or live with shame. ”

“ Those who observe in this spirit will often experience, from some humble offering to the Muses, the delight felt by the naturalist in the grasses and lichens of some otherwise barren spot. These are the earliest and humblest efforts of nature, but to a discerning eye they indicate the entire range of her energies. ”

“ Human Nature is always more affected by what it sees, than what it hears of; And as those Ideas, which enter by the Eye, find the surest Passage to the Heart; so the more the Object, whatever it be, seems desirable to the One, the longer it continues in the Other. ”

“ But we may be sure that our Naturalist-Artist, when he gathers together in his mind the impressions which have been made upon him by his passage through the tropical forests to the alpine uplands and thence to the limit of perpetual snow, will find that his sense of the variety of beauty to be found in trees and leaves, in ferns and flowers, has immeasurably expanded. He will have acquired a firmer grasp of plant life as a whole. He will have a truer measure of the beauty in it. And irresistibly, but most willingly, he will have been more closely drawn to Nature's heart. ”

“ In the distant days of my boyhood and early youth my chief delight was in nature, and when I opened a book it was to find something about nature in it, especially some expression of the feeling produced in us by nature, which was, in my case, inseparable from seeing and hearing, and was, to me, the most important thing in life. ”

“ We want a man of such qualifications combined with the qualifications of a Darwin—with his love of natural history, his power of close and accurate observation, his genius for drawing right inferences from what he observed, his wide knowledge of Nature in her many manifestations, his sympathetic touch with every plant and animal, and his warm, affectionate nature in all human intercourse. ”

“ In the great centres of civilization we admire and study only the results of mind,—the products of human endeavor: here one views only the work of Nature,—but Nature in all her primeval power, as in the legendary frostless morning of creation. ”

“ Natural Philosophy has indeed sensible Objects to work upon, but then it often puzzles the Reader with the Intricacy of its Notions, and perplexes him with the multitude of its Disputes. But this kind of Poetry I am now speaking of, addresses it self wholly to the Imagination: It is altogether Conversant among the Fields and Woods, and has the most delightful part of Nature for its Province. It raises in our Minds a pleasing variety of Scenes and Landskips, whilst it teaches us: and makes the dryest of its Precepts look like a Description. ”

“ None merits you lesse, nor can value you more.
To purchase a smile, or a glance from her eyes,
Both my life and my fortune's too little a price;
But if to desert you can only be kind,
Like heaven, you must then to yourselfe be confin'd.
Our joyes are so ordred by nature's great doome,
That what ere we possesse, from another must come ”

“ We see, indeed, what Nature really is. We see the reality behind the appearance—the content within the outward form. We are not for the moment concerned with the cause but with the character of Nature. ”

“ We are fighting the same sacred battle for freedom and the emancipation of the oppressed—you, Sir, against negro, we against white slavery. The cause is truly identical; for, depend upon it, the day in which we shall succeed in binding to one freely accepted pact twenty-six millions of Italians, we shall give what we cannot now, an active support to the cause you pursue. We are both the servants of the God who says, "Before Me there is no Master, no Slave, no Man, no Woman, but only Human Nature, which must be everywhere responsible, therefore free." ”

“ Yet these facts, and many others connected with Nature’s wonderful arrangements, we may look upon as intended to increase the innate desire which every true lover of Nature has to study her beautiful and marvellous works. ”

“ Presumptuous minds dare Heaven engage!
But crowding years push on and forwards drive,
Till, hurried on, vain men arrive
On death's inevitable coast,
Where all, dissolved to dust, in nature's mass are lost! ”

“ And with his instinctive love of Natural Beauty thus confirmed and strengthened by this testing of his instinct against what cool reasoning on the facts revealed by observation in the forest had to say about it, he can with lightened heart search still further into Nature, and see her in higher, wider, deeper aspects than the forest alone can disclose. ”

“ But pardon, Madam, for I think it a Crime to compare the Creating, Generating and producing Corporeal Life and Wisdom of Nature unto any particular Creature, although every particular Creature hath their share, being a part of Nature. ”

“ It is the duty of the traveller who has been an eye-witness of all that torments and degrades human nature to cause the complaints of the unfortunate to reach those whose duty it is to relieve them. I have repeated, in this treatise, the fact that the ancient legislation of Spain on the subject of slavery is less inhuman and atrocious than that of the slave States on the American continent, north or south of the equator. ”

“ When we behold the landscape in a poetic spirit, we do not reckon individuals. Nature knows neither palm nor oak, but only vegetable life, which sprouts into forests, and festoons the globe with a garland of grasses and vines. ”

“ Treatment of Nature. If for the moment we take the restricted meaning of the word, and understand by “nature” the common phenomena of earth, air, and sea, we find the poetical attitude to nature altering profoundly. ”

“ Thus Curious was Virgil in diversifying his Subjects. But Mr. F. is a great deal too Uniform; begin where you please, the Subject is still the same. We find it true what he says of himself,
Toûjours, toûjours de l'Amour.
He seems to take Pastorals and Love-Verses for the same thing. Has Human Nature no other Passion? Does not Fear, Ambition, Avarice, Pride, a Capricio of Honour, and Laziness it self often Triumph over Love? But this Passion does all, not only in Pastorals, but in Modern Tragedies too. A Heroe can no more Fight, or be Sick, or Dye, than he can be Born without a Woman. ”

“ Where is the literature which gives expression to Nature? He would be a poet who could impress the winds and streams into his service, to speak for him; who nailed words to their primitive senses, as farmers drive down stakes in the spring, which the frost has heaved; who derived his words as often as he used them—transplanted them to his page with earth adhering to their roots ”

“ The reflective power of bodies will also strike your discerning attention, and when these combinations of the true Materia are well understood, the artist is a Master! Nature after all, has done all for us ”

“ That is [pg 059] the thought, the idea, the logos of dog. Can there be a thought without a thinker? Did the ideas in nature, the millions of objects which make up our knowledge, fall from the clouds? Did they make themselves or did nature make them? Who, then, is nature? Is it a masculine, feminine, or neuter? If nature can choose, then it can also think and produce. But can it? No, nature is a word, very useful for certain purposes; but empty, intangible, and incomprehensible. Nature is an abstraction, as much as dog or tree, but far more inclusive. ”

“ I love to think of Nature as a person—first born daughter of God—her head white with the snows of the centuries, her cheeks radiant with the flush of recurrent springtime, emblems of eternal youth. She takes you by the hand, leads you into the forests, talks to you of the soul of the tree, tells you how intelligent it is. ”

“ But I am here to-night as a member of the Naturalists’ Society, and by all of us, in that capacity, they are first to be regarded, not as illustrations of disease, but of the life history of some of nature’s creations—creations which are no doubt as important, as definite, and which play as large a part in the general scheme of life, as do many of the larger forms of animated beings. ”

“ Which of these two views of Nature, so far as Nature can be judged from what we see of her on this planet, is correct, he has now to determine. The profound mystery which everywhere prevails in the forest and which exerts such a compelling spell upon us he will want to probe to the bottom. ”

“ For it is in ourselves that the dominating spirit of Nature is most clearly manifested to us. And being ourselves the instruments and agents of Nature, and informed through and through with her spirit, we ought to be able to understand how she works if only we look carefully enough into the working of our own inner selves.
What we find is that under the inspiration of the genius of Nature we are perpetually projecting in front of us a pattern or standard of what we think we ought to be, or should like to be, and of what we think our country and the world ought to be. We set up an ideal. ”

“ By observing Nature in so many different aspects, and by comparing our impressions with one another, we ought to understand Nature better than any other race. And by entering more readily into communion with her we, better than others, should realise the Beauty she possesses. ”

“ Nature shall be my study. I will not fall a worshipper, like Correggio, to light and shade, but use them as adjuncts to the great idea which must ever dwell in the soul of the faithful artist, to give the whole of nature. ”

“ Here, too, at an earlier period, he had studied the wonders of the human frame, and attempted to fathom the very process by which Nature assimilates all her precious influences from earth and air, and from the spiritual world, to create and foster man, her masterpiece. ”

“ The life of the farmer is there; the life of the laborer; the life of the gamekeeper; the life of the women who work in the fields and of those who work at home. He revealed Nature in her works and ways; the flowers and the fields; the wild English creatures; the hedges and the streams; the wood and the coppice. He told what may be seen everywhere by those who have eyes to see," and he began "to write down the response of the soul to the phenomena of Nature, to interpret the voice of Nature speaking to the soul. ”

“ Let the reader look at a case of moths in the shop-window of a naturalist, and note the unspeakable delicacy, beauty, and yet serviceableness of their wings; or let him look at a case of humming-birds, and remember how infinitely small a part of Nature is the whole group of the animals he may be considering, and how infinitely small a part of that group is the case that he is looking at. ”

“ VIRGIL
Against some of the Reflexions of Monsieur Fontanelle.
S the Writings of greatest Antiquity are in Verse, so of all sorts of Poetry, Pastorals seem the most Ancient; being form'd upon the Model of the First Innocence, and Simplicity, which the Moderns, better to dispence themselves from imitating, have wisely thought fit to treat as Fabulous, and impracticable; and yet they, by obeying the unsophisticated Dictates of Nature, enjoy'd the most valuable Blessings of Life ”

“ With still greater force might it be said that he who attentively studies nature and fails to see in her ways the workings of Providence must, indeed, be blind. Who the guide of nature, but only the God of nature? In him we live, move, and have our being. Those things which nature is said to do are by divine art performed, using nature as an instrument. ”

“ What a source of pleasure, solace, and recreation, then, is open to him who knows how to distinguish and appreciate the beautiful in Nature! He hears in every breeze and every ripple of water a voice which the uncultivated ear cannot hear; and he sees in every fleeting cloud and varied aspect of Nature some beauty which the ignorant cannot see. ”

“ Are not nature’s most authentic specimens, those pioneers in every sphere of mundane activity who add the little more that means so much, are not these to walk about the earth just as nature fashioned them? ”

“ But even the domain of the natural itself, as we know it, is by no means simple and capable of a unified interpretation. Nature, especially in the realm of organic life, the animal and plant world, appears to be filled with marvels of purposefulness, with riddles of development and differentiation, in short with all the mysteries of life. ”