Mother Nature

“ INFINITE WORLDS Once more, we all from seed celestial spring, To all is that same father, from whom earth, The fostering mother, as she takes the drops Of liquid moisture, pregnant bears her broods— The shining grains, and gladsome shrubs and trees, And bears the human race and of the wild The generations all, the while she yields The foods wherewith all feed their frames and lead The genial life and propagate their kind ”

“ Thanks to thee, beloved stranger, that thou hast turned away the wasteful arms of thy brethren from ruining this tree, with which my life is united. For thou shalt know that Mother Nature, who has granted to my race such varied powers and influences, has combined the fortune of our life with the growth and duration of the oak. ”

“ I've tried to find out something of what Nature means to her—what pictures mean Nature to that fresh young mind. It seems to her, Nature is a kind of presiding mother to all things, possibly something like a God-mother—to kittens and trees and butterflies and roses and children. ”

“ Generous Mother Nature, who supplies man’s wants in such bountiful fashion, has furnished on her plains and in her forests an abundance of material that may be transformed into this fine product of human ingenuity. ”

“ The nature we love is the gentle mother, uniform in her operations, kindly in her ways, beneficent in her results; the nature of the rain, the sunshine, seed-time and harvest and the sprouting seed again; ever patient, ever responsive, but in all as firm and steadfast as the foundations of eternity itself. ”

“ A child toddling along downhill unregardful of the force of gravitation falls on its face and screams with pain. But Nature, represented by the mother, rushes up, seizes the little thing in her arms, presses it lovingly to her bosom, rock it and coaxes it and covers it with kisses.
So if Nature can think and feel and strive and show mercy and loving-kindness, she is entitled to the dignity of personality. And when we stand back and regard Nature as a whole, we shall look upon her as a Person and nothing less. ”

“ Nature is mother to all, and has a message for the meanest and most tried of her children; and it is a message of divinest love. Through Nature, His handmaid, God speaks to us, giving us in the dawn of each new day, in the return of each season, in the shining of the sun and the blessing of the rain, grand and practical lessons in faith, fulfilment of promises which should mean a great deal to us, and teach us more and more to trust Him in all and through all. ”

“ The teachings of nature are open to all. The poor heart-broken mother sees, in the parent leaves that enfold the tender heart of the young plant, and in the bird that strips her own breast of its down to shelter her young from the night air, the same instinct that teaches her to cherish the child of sorrow. He who addressed the poor and illiterate drew his illustrations from nature: the lily of the field, the fowls of the air, and the young ravens, he made his teachers to those who, like him, lived in the open air, and were peculiarly susceptible to all the influences of nature. ”

“ And we men of the more advanced races have still more cause to consider her as our Mother, for we now know that not only the plants and trees but we ourselves sprang from her—as indeed we are nourished by her daily, eating her plants or the animals which feed on her plants. And as we judge of a lily, not by its origin, the ugly bulb, but by the climax, the exquisite flower; so we should not judge of the Earth by its origin, the fiery mist, but by its issue—ardent human fellowship. ”

“ My wise mother, anxious to give me a strong body to support a lively brain, turned me loose in the country and let me run wild, learning of Nature what no books can teach, and being led,–as those who truly love her seldom fail to be,–
"Through Nature up to Nature's God." ”

“ Nature is not easy to reach and penetrate.
We had longed to live in this spot conceiving it beforehand as an oasis set in dew. And here it is under our feet with its earth which smells good and its breezes which tinge our cheeks. For all our ardor and assiduity nature preserves her mystery; she is an unresponsive mother insensible to the clamor of her children. When we draw near, she stops talking and either drops a veil or retires completely into seclusion. ”

“ It seemed to her that Nature was never the same, on the great plains where men and cities always loomed into such ridiculous proportions, as when the Great Mother raised herself to comfort them with smiling hillsides, or encompassed them and drew them closer in the loving arms of her mountains. ”

“ You may think that Mother Nature, like the famous "old woman who lived in the shoe," has so many children that she doesn't know what to do. But you will know better when you become acquainted with her, and learn how strong she is, and how active; how she can really be in fifty places at once, taking care of a sick tree, or a baby flower just born ”

“ In the atmosphere of our rich modern fellowship with Nature, the unwritten poetry to which every open heart falls heir, we forget our earliest dependence on the great mother and the lessons she taught when men gathered about her knee in the childhood of the world. Not a spade turned the soil, not an axe felled a tree, not a path was made through the forest, that did not leave, in the man whose arm put forth the toil, some moral quality. ”

“ But nature herself, Mother of things, was the first seed-sower And primal grafter; since the berries and acorns, Dropping from off the trees, would there beneath Put forth in season swarms of little shoots; Hence too men's fondness for ingrafting slips Upon the boughs and setting out in holes The young shrubs o'er the fields. Then would they try Ever new modes of tilling their loved crofts, And mark they would how earth improved the taste Of the wild fruits by fond and fostering care. ”

“ If she had had a mother, she might, even in the wilderness of earth, have become a blossom fit for heavenly gardens, but as it was, her wayward nature, so full of dangerous beauty, was left to run wild. ”

“ Nature is a good mother, after all, in our latitude. She does not coddle and over-indulge her children, but rewards their love abundantly, invigorates them if they dwell in her presence, and develops mind and muscle, heart and soul, if they obey her laws and seek to know her well. ”

“ The teachings of Mother Nature being always straight and plain, it is remarkable what devious turnings and dark winding ways we prefer to stumble into rather than take the fair and open course. For example Nature says to us—“My children, Truth is simple,—and I am bound by all my forces to assist its manifestation. ”

“ Now the Earth I regard as a lady—as dear Mother-Earth. A real living being—live enough, at any rate, to give birth to mankind, to microscopic animalculae first and through them to man. And no one can look at the features of Mother-Earth without recognising her Beauty. It is there staring us in the face. So I cannot conceive why we geographers should confine ourselves to the dressmaker attitude of mind and describe every other characteristic of the Earth except her Beauty. ”

“ The trees heard Mother Nature calling, and they gave all their leaves to the field. But that was not enough. The field must be dug, as well as enriched and cleaned, before it could grow.
So the field called a third time to Mother Nature, and Mother Nature spoke to her children, the earth worms.
"Earth Worms," she said, "will you creep and [73] dig underneath the field and turn up the earth in furrows? The four winds have swept the earth clean, and the trees have given their leaves to make it rich, but it must be dug before it can grow." ”

“ Thus, then, Nature, through the whole geological history of the earth, was gestative mother of spirit, which, after its long embryonic development, came to birth and independent life and immortality in man. ”

“ In her processes too, Nature is patient and long-waiting. [202] She doth not say to the seed just planted in the earth, spring up and bear fruit forthwith, or you shall be cast out, but she waiteth for the unfolding of the tender germ, and the striking of the new-shooting roots; and hath long patience, and with slowliest care, and a mother's enduring love, she bringeth forth to light the first green leaf. ”

“ If this account of the Earth which physicists and biologists give us be true, then we geographers should take a less material and a more spiritual view of the Earth than we have done, and should, like primitive people all the world over, regard her as Mother-Earth, and recognise our intimate connection with her. Primitive peoples everywhere regard the Earth as alive and as their Mother. And so intensely do they feel this liveness that many will not run the plough through the soil from dislike of lacerating the bosom of Mother-Earth. ”

“ The experiment and the result may be properly styled the triumph of nature, for the deep solicitude of the mother, and especially her prompt expedient, are as much the movement of nature as is the affection in which they originated; and the attraction of the exposed bosom for the exposed child, was as much the gift of nature as was the hidden food which that bosom secreted and stored. ”

“ But a person has other uses in the world, and mother or teacher who regards him as a plant and herself as the gardener, will only be saved from grave mistakes by the force of human nature in herself and in her child.
Nature as an Educator.—​The notion of supplementing Nature from the cradle is a dangerous one. A little guiding, a little restraining, much reverent watching, Nature asks of us; but beyond that, it is the wisdom of parents to leave children as much as may be to Nature, and “to a higher Power than Nature itself.” ”

“ As feathers and hairs and bristles are begot The first on members of the four-foot breeds And on the bodies of the strong-y-winged, Thus then the new Earth first of all put forth Grasses and shrubs, and afterward begat The mortal generations, there upsprung— Innumerable in modes innumerable— After diverging fashions. For from sky These breathing-creatures never can have dropped, Nor the land-dwellers ever have come up Out of sea-pools of salt. How true remains, How merited is that adopted name Of earth—"The Mother!"—since from out the earth Are all begotten. ”

“ Nay, Fabulla, in this Case Nature herself blames you to your Face. Why is the Earth call'd the Mother of all Things? Is it because she produces only? Nay, much rather, because she nourishes those Things she produces: that which is produced by Water, is fed by Water. There is not a living Creature or a Plant that grows on the Face of the Earth, that the Earth does not feed with its own Moisture. Nor is there any living Creature that does not feed its own Offspring. Owls, Lions, and Vipers, feed their own Young, and does Womankind make her Offspring Offcasts? ”

“ You would think nature was like a kind of mother, to hear him talk. Then he reasoned that Jesus, the Author of nature, would do for me what nature had done for the wounded tree, but that I must not expect too much at first—that I must be receptive and willing to grow patiently as the tree had done, in a new and better life. ”

“ Shall we only call it ‘x,’ or [pg 057] may we transfer the word designating what works purposively in us to this Unknown, and speak of a universal Mind without which nature could not be what it is? Nature is not crazy nor incoherent. When the child is born, has the mother milk, and to what purpose? Why, certainly, to nourish the child. And the child has the lips and muscles to suck. When the fruit has ripened on the tree, it falls to the earth full of seed. ”

“ Blindly we bow to the word "mother"—worshipping the recreative processes of nature as did forgotten nations of old time in their great phallic religions.
The processes of nature are to be studied, not worshipped; the laws of nature find best reverence in our intelligent understanding and observance, not in obsequious adoration. ”

“ Nature is no longer gestative mother, but still nursing mother of spirit. As the organic embryo at birth reaches independent material or temporal life, even so spirit embryo by birth attains independent spiritual or eternal life. ”

“ The mortality of nature would teach a mother that, during Nature’s process in the formation and growth of embryo man, her heart should be pure, her thoughts and affections chaste, her mind calm, her passions without excitement, while her body should be invigorated with every exercise conducive to health and vigor, but by no means subjected to any thing calculated to disturb, irritate, weary, or exhaust any of its functions. ”

“ Whatever nature indicates is best. To do what nature indicates is to secure the greatest happiness. Trials may come, new sorrows and incumbrances be risked, but nature brings her recompense. I want you the mother of our child, of our children, as it may be. ”

“ The children are seeds, put away for the present in a green cradle at their mother's feet, where they will sleep and grow as babies should, until by and by they will all have opportunities to come out and build for themselves fine rose-colored houses like that of their parents. ”

“ So the first point I have to put before you is that we geographers should regard the object of our science not as a magnified billiard-ball, but as a living being—as Mother-Earth. Not as hard, unimpressionable, dull, and inert, but as live, supple, sensitive, and active—active with an intensity of activity past all conceivability. Yet with no chaotic activity, but with activity having coherence and direction, and that direction towards excellence. ”

“ It is thus that Nature, like an affectionate mother, cares for the life of all her plant-children, and gently weans them, first gradually altering their organism so as to adapt it to a change of diet, and then by degrees withdrawing the sustenance afforded by the nursing leaves. ”