Natural person

“ Here it is plain that by the natural man,” is not meant a person devoid of natural judgment, reason, or conscience, in which sense the expression is often used among men. Nor does it signify one who is entirely governed by his fleshly appetites, or what the world calls a voluptuary, or sensualist. ”

“ Are we not in spiritual bodies clothed with all beauty and perfection? Are we not in a spiritual world vastly more beautiful and happy than the natural? Why should we return into nature? into a natural body? ”

“ I am aware of a pride in myself that is mine, and mine alone. It is organic. Every fibre of me is thrilling with it. It is very natural. It is a mere matter of satisfaction at adjustment to environment. ”

“ I sat aghast.
"I am not deceived," she continued; "you have not forgotten nature. It draws you more powerfully than anything else in the world. Whenever you speak of it, you say the right thing, you find the right word, you get the right meaning. With nature alone you are perfectly natural. Towards society you show your shabby, awkward, trivial, uncomfortable side. ”

“ If it had been and the opportunity had offered, we might have had the very type of Naturalist-Artist we are now awaiting. He would have had the physical fitness and capacity to endure hardships which are required for travel in parts of the Earth where the Natural Beauty is finest, and he would have had, too, the sensitiveness of soul to receive impressions and the power of expressing himself so that others might share with him the impressions he had felt. ”

“ The great body of our life is, we know, a purely natural affair. Our instincts, our wayward impulses, our unconnected disorderly purposes— these, which fill the larger portion of our existence, do not express our personal nature. ”

“ So we look forward to the appearance among us of a great Artist who, born with an exceptionally sensitive soul, will deliberately heighten and intensify this sensitiveness, learn what others have experienced, compare notes with them, and train himself to detect the significance of every slightest indication which Nature gives of the workings of the soul within her ”

“ The new virtue which constitutes a thing beautiful, is a certain cosmical quality, or, a power to suggest relation to the whole world, and so lift the object out of a pitiful individuality. Every natural feature, — sea, sky, rainbow, flowers, musical tone, — has in it somewhat which is not private, but universal, speaks of that central benefit which is the soul of Nature, and thereby is beautiful. ”

“ First, That Nature is Infinite, and the Eternal Servant of God: Next, That she is Corporeal, and partly self-moving, dividable and composable; that all and every particular Creature, as also all perception and variety in Nature, is made by corporeal self-motion, which I name sensitive and rational matter, which is life and knowledg, sense and reason. ”

“ If we have petty, meagre souls we shall find little in common with the great soul of Nature, and consequently see only shallow Beauty. If we have great souls we shall have more in common and see more Beauty. But to arrive at a full understanding of the real Nature we must observe her from every point of view and see her in all her aspects. Only so shall we be able to understand her real self and see her full Beauty. ”

“ Let us be a human society. Super-natural? Yes. But if you are to add nothing to Nature, why leave her? In that case you may as well content yourself with work like the ant, and with honey like the bee. ”

“ It is the life of nature which is everywhere recognized; not mere growth and cell changes, but sentient, personal life; and the recognition of this personality in nature characterizes all the world's great poetry. ”

“ There is yet another way in which natural history may, I am convinced, take a profound hold upon practical life,—and that is, by its influence over our finer feelings, as the greatest of all sources of that pleasure which is derivable from beauty. ”

“ What we ordinary men have to do, and what we especially want those gifted with unusually sensitive souls to do, is to bear in mind the difficulties which the midge has in understanding us and in seeing any beauty in us, and the way in which it would have to train and cultivate its faculties before it could ever hope to understand the expression on our features—to bear this in mind, and then to take ourselves in hand and develop the soul within us till it is fine enough and great enough to enter into the great soul of Nature. ”

“ For if he has any doubt in his mind as to the goodness of Nature or any hesitation about giving himself out to her, there is little prospect of his seeing Beauty in her. He will remain cold and unresponsive to her calls and enjoyment of Natural Beauty will not be for him. ”

“ In your case reason, conscience, good taste, must supervise and direct natural impulses. Thus following nature you become natural, and cease to be conventional. If you don't do this you will be either conventional or queer. ”

“ And these experiences of ours in the formulation and working out of our ideal give us the clue to the manner in which Nature on her part works out her ideal. We are the representations and representatives of the whole, and we may assume that the whole works in much the same way as we ourselves work. ”

“ The natural is defined thus—"a representation of the human form, according to the distinction of sex and age, in action or repose, expressing the affections of the soul," and the ideal has this addition—"selected from such perfect examples as may excite in our minds a conception of the preternatural." ”

“ And in a delicately sensitive man such as an artist—painter, poet, or musician—this sense of kinship with Nature is highly developed. In regard to his relationship with Nature he is like the finely sensitive and cultured artist-midge would be in regard to a man—the midge who, through understanding the inner soul and character of the man, was able to read the expression on his features and see their beauty. ”

“ But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.
The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred ​impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. ”

“ But it is to be observed that the world which people create round about them here, being external and natural, is in correspondence not with their internal and spiritual, but with their external and natural thoughts and affections. ”

“ The pots and pans of Teniers and Van Mieris are natural; the passions and humours of Shakspeare and Moliere are natural; the angels of Fra Angelico and Luini are natural; the Sleeping Fawn and Fates of Phidias are natural; the cows and misty marshes of Cuyp and the vacillations of Hamlet are equally natural. In fact the natural means TRUTH OF KIND. Each kind of character, each kind of representation, must be judged by itself. ”

“ The natural man reveals to us every motive, every process internal and external, every slightest circumstance of his daily life, and each element that gradually transformed him into the non-natural man. ”

“ The incidents of a fully developed human personality are superinduced on the mystical and abstract essence of that fiery spirit in the flowing veins of the earth—the aroma of the green world is retained in the fair human body, set forth in all sorts of finer ethical lights and shades—with a wonderful kind of subtlety. ”

“ In this case, none of the passions or propensities of the natural man are destroyed, but simply brought under subjection to the spiritual and more regal part of his nature—to the true and heaven-born man. ”

“ For this vitality the essential principle on the spiritual side is that natural delightfulness, and on the corporeal side is that beauty which is consonant with physical form, a beauty which independently, as beautiful form, already displays innocence, buoyancy, maidenhood, natural grace of temperament, nobility, imagination, and a loving soul. ”

“ Nature had enriched him with many gifts—a strong and active physique, a mind open to any and every simple pleasure and joy that a bountiful Providence could offer, and above all, and greatest of all, a rare appreciation of beauty. ”

“ That Nature is a Personal Being—or at least nothing less than a Personal Being—that she is actuated by an ideal, and that her ideal, so far as we are able to judge, is an ideal of Divine Fellowship, is the conclusion at which we have now arrived. But we shall understand Nature better, and so see her Beauty more fully, if we can understand how she works out this ideal in detail. And we shall best understand how she works it out if we examine what goes on within our own selves and see how we work out the ideal with which we believe Nature herself has inspired us. ”

“ How completely we are parts of life as it is lived upon this planet! Desires, affections, passions, ideas, habits, all, when analyzed, point to the human organism and its environment. Our personality is like a plant which draws its nourishment from what surrounds it. ”

“ His genius grasped this, that beauty, perfect beauty, is the typifying not of one passion, one phase of human nature, but of the aggregation of all the moods which sway the human mind. There is a great thought in that. It is 'the healthy mind in the healthy body,' as the sculptor feels it. And 'the healthy mind in the healthy body' is one of the great thoughts of the past. ”

“ Lastly, it has spread itself over a wider field, with the vast expansion of human interests in the last two centuries, and has learned to love all the rocks, and hills, and seas, and clouds, of earth and heaven, for their own intrinsic loveliness. So it has progressed in unbroken order from the simple admiration of human beauty, for the sake of a deeply seated organic instinct, to the admiration of abstract beauty for its own sake alone.—Mind. ”

“ As in describing natural objects, it impregnates sensible impressions with the forms of fancy, so it describes the feelings of pleasure or pain, by blending them with the strongest movements of passion, and the most striking forms of nature. ”

“ The character of mental products is as much determined by the natural condition and constitution of mind as are the natural products of the earth determined by its physical conditions. It would be just as irrational to expect glowing pictures, grand conceptions, and lofty harmonies to spring in the universal mind, as to expect to clothe the whole globe with the cocoa, the palm-tree, and the banian. Original genius must be inherited. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Did that lovely creature suppose that Nature, who had done so much for her that the fame of her beauty extended throughout the world, had yet left her so weak and feeble that she could not support herself in the position most calculated to give her ease and pleasure? ”

“ These three discrete planes form and constitute the Natural Mind. The Natural Mind is that which is frequently though vaguely designated as the lower nature of man. The Natural Mind is the natural man. ”

“ We should accustom ourselves to receive from nature all our impressions, whatever they may be, and whatever temperament we may have. We should be saturated and impregnated with her, and think what she wishes to make us think. ”

“ Whether or not the individual be aware of the fact, Nature furnishes to each his mask of personality—his persona—by which those who understand may recognize the part he plays, or his character. In both the inner character, and the outer personality, each individual struts the stage of life and plays his part. ”

“ Nay, more, they are his affections and thoughts, embodied in material and objective forms. As a smile is the embodiment of a pleasant emotion, as the brightness which shines in the eye and illuminates the face when a new and beautiful thought is born in the intellect, so every plant and animal, and the light of the sun which reveals and glorifies the material world, is the embodiment of some affection, some thought or principle in the composition of the human mind. God reveals Himself to man in nature. He reveals man to Himself in nature. ”

“ We all enter the world little plastic beings, with so much natural force, perhaps, but for the rest—blank; and the world tells us what we are to be, and shapes us by the ends it sets before us. ”

“ Listen to my distinction;—good features, and a fine complexion, I term bodily beauty. Like the streaks in the tulip, they please the eye for a moment; but this uniformity soon tires, and the active mind flies off to something else. The soul of beauty, my dear children, consists in the body gracefully exhibiting the emotions and variations of the informing mind. ”

“ At any time, and under any circumstances of human interest, is it not strange to see how little real hold the objects of the natural world amid which we live can gain on our hearts and minds? We go to Nature for comfort in trouble, and sympathy in joy, only in books. Admiration of those beauties of the inanimate world, which modern poetry so largely and so eloquently describes, is not, even in the best of us, one of the original instincts of our nature. ”

“ 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. ”