Natural love

“ The heart beats in this age as of old, and the passions are busy as ever. Nature has not lost one ringlet of her beauty, one impulse of resistance and valor. From the necessity of loving none are exempt, and he that loves must utter his desires. A charm as radiant as beauty ever beamed, a love that fainteth at the sight of its object, is new to-day. ”

“ We and the natural object come into harmony with one another. We have recognised in the flower, the mountain, the landscape, something that is the same as what is in ourselves. We fall in love with the natural object. A marriage takes place. Our soul is wedded to the soul of the natural object. And at the very moment of wedding Beauty is born. It springs from Love, just as Love itself originally sprang from the wedding of primitive man and woman.
In this process all will depend upon the mood. If we are not in the mood for it, we are unreceptive of Nature's impressions, and we are irresponsive. ”

“ It is amid scenery which he has loved since boyhood, in the hearts of his own countrymen in their own country, that he will see deepest into Nature. And deepest of all will he see when from among his countrywomen he has united himself to the one of his own deliberate choice, and in this union realised in its fulness, strength, and intensity that Creative Love which springs from Nature's very heart, and is the ultimate fount and source of all Natural Beauty. ”

“ The natural sparks of love which, after the fall, God has not permitted to be entirely quenched, but has allowed to appear and be seen in reasoning and unreasoning creatures according to their natures and attributes, will also, through improper worldly love in many respects be weakened and overcome. I will only cite the natural love among natural men. They are impelled through these sparks of love in their hearts to unite with each other in marriage. ”

“ Moreover, this contemplation of Nature will have evoked from within himself much that he had never suspected he possessed, and thereby his own soul also he will have learned to understand. And from this completer comprehension of his own soul and hers will have emerged a fuller community of heart between him and Nature. He will have come to worship her with a still more ardent devotion, and through the intensity of his love discovered richer and richer Beauty in her. ”

“ The love which attracted the man and woman together and which they keep striving to attain in higher and higher degree, is the same as the creative impulse which comes surging up from the very Heart of Nature. Direct and without ever a break it has come out of the remotest past and deepest deeps. Few seem aware of this, and yet it is an obvious fact—and a fact which vastly increases our sense of intimacy with Nature. It was due to the same impulse which has brought the man and woman together that they themselves were brought into being. ”

“ The only love-poetry that stands through all time and appeals to all hearts is that which is founded on either or both the species of love natural to all men,—the love of the senses, and the love of custom. ”

“ And the difference in view must make a profound difference in our attitude to Nature, and therefore in our capacity for seeing and enjoying Natural Beauty. We may admire and worship but we can scarcely love, in any true sense of the word, a Being dwelling distant and aloof from us, and with whom, from the mere fact of his being perfect, it is most difficult for us to be on terms of homely intimacy and affection. But for a Being who, like our country, is one of whom we ourselves form part, we can have not only admiration and reverence but deep affection. ”

“ Poetry, Music, and Literature are under suspicion with the average English schoolboy, whose love of manliness he will share with nothing else. Yet love of Beauty persists in spite of all discouragement, and will not be suppressed. Natural Beauty, especially, insists on a place in our affections, derived originally from Love, and essentially and inseparably connected with it, Natural Beauty acknowledges supremacy to Love alone. ”

“ It cannot be otherwise, because natural love is the fundamental law of human life. ”

“ Amid scenes of such rustic freshness were set human passions as fresh and natural: a great romantic love, subdued to duty, yet breaking forth again and again as young shoots spring from the root of a felled tree. To eighteenth-century readers such a picture of life was as new as its setting. ”

“ We have learned to check this natural sentiment, by finding other objects for those faculties of our minds, which nature intended to bless and benefit creatures born to love us, and to enlarge our affections by exciting them. ”

“ The more we find ourselves drawn to Nature and in harmony and love with her, the more Beauty do we see. In closest reciprocity Love of Nature inspires Natural Beauty and Natural Beauty promotes Love of Nature. ”

“ In the more cultured races this instinctive love of Nature and appreciation of Natural Beauty has enormously developed. But if men ever came to hold the idea—as so many since the doctrine of the survival of the fittest has come into prominence are inclined to do—that Nature is at heart cold and hard, and recks nothing of human joys and sorrows, then love of Nature would fade away from men's hearts. Being out of sympathy and repelled from entering into deep communion with her, men would never again see Beauty in her. ”

“ So our love is active, and it vehemently impels us to get to know her better and better, to get ourselves in ever closer touch with her, to discover the utmost fulness of her Beauty, and to communicate to others all that we have come to know and all the Beauty we have seen, so that others may share in our enjoyment and come to love Nature more even than we love her ourselves—love Nature in all her aspects, love physical Nature in the mountains, seas and deserts, the clouds, sunsets and stars, love plant Nature and animal Nature and human Nature ”

“ Originating from sexual drive, love is one of the experiences from which family, friendship, art, and philosophy derived over time. Once written in the Book as a different form of love, once ascertained as a practical experience, it bridges between its natural biological basis and its cultural reality as a characteristic of a framework of human interaction in which individuals project their biological and cultural identity. Written about in religious books, love starts a journey from naturalness to artifact. ”

“ Leaving the refinements of love out of the question; nature, by making the gratification of an appetite, in this respect, as well as every other, a natural and imperious law to preserve the species, exalts the appetite, and mixes a little mind and affection with a sensual gust. ”

“ Every one knows, however, that evolution brings about a more complicated, heterogeneous state than the original one; and in this respect love is the most conspicuous example. Love—as we have already shown—has now become a great spiritual power, a form of genius comparable with any other creative force in the domain of culture, and its production in that region is just as important as in the so-called natural field. ”

“ "I do not believe that the heart is turned from the Creator by enjoying his works. Of what avail is the sweet breath of the rose, the morning song of the lark? The pleasure they impart is not matter of necessity, and yet we delight in both. The soul of the poet is as much His gift as the fragrance of the flower, or the lay of the bird; and the page where inspired words record heroic deed, touching sorrow, or natural loveliness, is one of those pleasures for which we should be thankful. ”

“ Nature had acquired tenfold charms to their eyes; and the secret of it was, that the spirit of love within their hearts pervaded and brightened it all. Love itself seemed to have gained an intensity and brightness in those scenes that it had never known before, because the great spirit of nature, the inspiring, the expanding genius of the scene, answered the spirit within their hearts, and seemed to witness and applaud their affection. ”

“ But in this rummaging up of the crude tastes, the hot little opinions, the romance, the countless visions, the many affectations of nursery days, there will be recalled also a very real love of nature; varying, of course, in its intensity from a mere love of fresh air and free romping, and a destructive taste for nosegays, to a living romance about the daily walks of the imaginative child,—a world apart, peopled with invisible company, such as fairies, and those fancy friends which some children devise for themselves, or with the beasts and flowers, to which love has given a personality. ”

“ It has a divided nature. As we have an immortal soul, but a body of clay; as the plant roots [Pg 55] itself in decaying earth, but spreads its flowers in glorious sunlight,—so love has a physiological and a moral nature. ”

“ Where she finds a wilderness, she leaves a fruitful field for the sickle of the husbandman; she meets with briars and thorns, and converts them into the myrtle tree and the rose; she encounters all the base lusts and ferocious dispositions of our nature, and supplants them with the tranquillizing affections of purity and peace. She improves the intellect, refines the taste, and humanizes the character; and, by raising men to a state of spiritual communion with the Supreme Being, imprints on them the image of his benevolence, and animates them with his love of righteousness. ”

“ Mine does not break with nature. On the contrary, it obeys every instinct and listens to every call on the senses. [Pg 74] My love begins in my biologic self, grows with my growth, takes its hues from visioned sunsets in corn-flower skies, its grace from swaying rivers of grain seen in dreams. ”

“ Thus it is that the lesser graces display themselves most richly, like the leaves and flowers of life, where there is the deepest and the widest root of love; not like the staring and artificial blossoms of dry custom that, winter or summer, cannot change; but living petals woven in Nature's workshop and folded by her tender skill, opening and shutting morning and night, glancing and trembling in the sunshine and in the breeze. This easy capacity of great affections for small duties is the peculiar triumph of the highest spirit of love. ”

“ Kind Nature takes her poor warped little ones, and with gentle, imperceptible hand touches them to a grace and softness which we have no right to expect, but to never that divine grace, that ineffable sweetness, of which the human soul is capable, and to which in its highest moods it ever yearns. O, if this one truth could be imprinted upon this age,—the one truth that the regeneration of the world is to come through love,—what hope could one not see for the future! ”

“ We have found all or nearly all the forms which nature lends to the great dream of love, to the yearning for beauty that stirs within her bosom. We live, so to speak, in the midst of her tenderest confidences, of her most touching inventions. ”

“ Yet the oneness and the spirit of life had touched me from the miracle, like the ineffable presence of the dogwood in bloom on that fairy slope.
The love of Nature, the different love, is a matter of our own receptivity. If we are brave enough, or sweet enough within, we will not require the touch of the senses, nor Nature's masterstrokes to awaken us. ”

“ If these fresh young girls could smile and look back upon him, with that lingering glance which his presence ever invoked, why not she who was not only sweet, tender, and lovely, but gifted with a nature that responded to the deep things of life, and the stern passions of potent humanity. Could a merry laugh lure her while he stood by? Was the sunshine the natural atmosphere of this flower, that had bloomed under his eye so sweetly and shed out its innocent fragrance, at the approach of his solemn-pacing foot? ”

“ It is certainly the great sphere in which our affections are to be cultivated. Of course I do not mean that this is the limit of their cultivation. But here they are nurtured, and out of this they grow. As love is the Infinite Nature itself, so is it the prevalent sentiment of all life. ”

“ But are the mountains not favourable to meditations, to independence, to poetry? Do fine deep solitudes, mingled with sea, receive nothing from the soul, add nothing to its delights? Does a sublime nature not render us more susceptible to passion, and does passion not make us better understand a sublime nature? Is an intimate love not increased by the vague love of all the beauties of the senses and the intelligence which surround it, even as similar principles attract and blend with one another? ”

“ Nature awaits you, but only as a fair captive, ready to respond to your behests, to answer to the spring of your imaginings. To man's wooing, "I love you, love me back," she resigned herself, not perceiving the drift of homage that was paid, not so much to the beauty that she had, but to the beauty of a heightened sort that should ensue upon his cultivation, for the sake of which he sought her. ”

“ For there is, in all our perceptions and desires of physical and moral beauty, an element of passion which is akin to love; and there is, in all love that is not mere lust, a perception of, a craving for, beauty, real or imaginary which is identical with our merely aesthetic perceptions and cravings; hence the possibility, once the wish for such a passion present, of a kind of love which is mainly aesthetic, which views the beloved as gratifying merely to the wish for physical or spiritual loveliness, and concentrates upon one exquisite reality all dreams of ideal perfection. ”

“ It can not be touched, "'but you feel the sweetness that it pours into everything. Without love, you would not be happy or want to play.' The beautiful truth burst upon my mind. I felt that there were invisible lines stretched between my spirit and the spirit of others." This period seems to have came gradually and naturally to this wonderful child, whose life has been perhaps the purest ever lived and one of the sweetest. None has ever loved every aspect of nature accessible to her more passionately, or felt more keenly the charm of nature or of beautiful sentiments. ”