Naturality

“ It is the fancied riches of parts, the glitter of genius, the flight of imagination, the glory of learning, and the self-conceited strength of natural reason: these are the strong holds of fallen nature, the master-builders of pride’s temple in the heart of man. And here let it be well observed, that all these magnified talents of the natural man are started up through his miserable fall from the life of God in his soul. ”

“ Here he will be introduced to a world of thought and sentiment almost as fresh, as fair and many-sided as Nature herself,—the fragrant blossoming in myriad hues and forms of the life and mind of the most richly endowed portion of the human race. ”

“ We behold the real higher law. To the wise, therefore, a fact is true poetry, and the most beautiful of fables. These wonders are brought to our own door. You also are a man. Man and woman, and their social life, poverty, labor, sleep, fear, fortune, are known to you. Learn that none of these things is superficial, but that each phenomenon has its roots in the faculties and affections of the mind. Whilst the abstract question occupies your intellect, nature brings it in the concrete to be solved by your hands. ”

“ And it can no more be reasonably affirmed, that our knowledge of God and divine things, our opinions of the excellency of this, or that virtue, and of the immortality of our souls, are the effects of our natural light; than it can be reasonably affirmed, that our living in society, and our articulate language are owing to the light of nature. ”

“ Tell me—where would one derive naturalness but from nature? You grant that?" he asked, as she poised her lips in good-humored stubbornness. "Well, then, we people see nature so little that it affects us not at all, and we are far from natural, which makes that virtue unusual among us. ”

“ For although I confess, that there is but one kind of Life, and one kind of Soul in Nature, which is the sensitive Life, and the rational Soul, both consisting not onely of Matter, but of one kind of Matter, to wit, Animate; nevertheless they are of different degrees, the matter of the rational Soul being more agil, subtil and active, then the matter of the sensitive Life; which is the reason that the rational can act in its own substance or degree of matter, and make figures in it self, and its own parts ”

“ 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. ”

“ The name then is perfectly general; for, no matter what the something is that good is held to mean, the theory is still Naturalism. Whether good be defined as yellow or green or blue, as loud or soft, as round or square, as sweet or bitter, as productive of life or productive of pleasure, as willed or desired or felt: whichever of these or of any other object in the world, good may be held to mean, the theory, which holds it to mean them, will be a naturalistic theory. ”

“ So as we take a comprehensive view of Nature both in her outward bodily form and her inner spiritual reality, and find her to be an interconnected whole in which all the parts are interrelated with one another, one body and one mind, self-contained and self-conscious, and driven by a self-organising, self-governing, self-directing Activity—we should regard her as nothing less than a Personal Being. In ordinary language we speak of Nature as a Person, and when we so speak we should not regard ourselves as speaking figuratively: we should mean quite literally and as a fact that she is a Person. ”

“ Nature, in all her moods and phases—in her wonderful variety of elements—the grand and the lowly, the sublime and the beautiful, the terrible and the pleasing—nature in her mildest and most fearful displays of power, and also in her softest and sweetest attractions, is open to every man's observation, and he must be a close observer and a diligent student of her who would cultivate in himself the ideal element. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and of virtue, will purge the eyes to understand her text. By degrees we may come to know the primitive sense of the permanent objects of nature, so that the world shall be to us an open book, and every form significant of its hidden life and final cause. ”

“ XVII. And hitherto, indeed, reason has advanced with us in such a way as to be wholly derived from the original recommendation of nature. But now we must pursue another kind of argument, namely, that we are moved in these matters of our own exceeding goodwill, not only because we love ourselves, but because there is both in the body and in the mind a peculiar power belonging to each part of nature. ”

“ Such ideas, and others equally abstract, form the background for all our facts, the fountain-head of all the possibilities we conceive of. They give its “nature,” as we call it, to every special thing. ”

“ Your own nature is here your best guide, and it shows you a surprising thing: that your old habitual impressions of the world have suddenly become novel and strange, as if this smiling landscape were but just created, and you were the first to look with seeing eyes upon the glory of it. ”

“ But if such are the charms of inanimate nature, let us look, now, at the world of living, breathing creatures,—possessing one excellence, far surpassing all that have been yet described,—that of life and consciousness. ”

“ What is meant by Nature being a Person, and a Person actuated by a hidden ideal, and being in process of realising that ideal, and what is meant by an ideal perfecting itself, may be best explained with the help of an illustration. ”

“ We learn that the highest is present to the soul of man, that the dread universal essence, which is not wisdom, or love, or beauty, or power, but all in one, and each entirely, is that for which all things exist, and that by which they are; that spirit creates; that behind nature, throughout nature, spirit is present ”

“ 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. ”

“ Everything in nature has intellectual significance, and relation as utterance to the Thought out of which the universe was born, and we, whose minds were made in its image, who are the microcosm of the macrocosm, have in ourselves the key to unlock the meaning of that utterance. ”

“ These expressions of the divine urge within the evolving creature may be intellectually true, emotionally beautiful, and spiritually good; but the real soul of expression is absent unless these realities of truth, meanings of beauty, and values of goodness are unified in the life experience of the artisan, the scientist, or the philosopher. ”

“ But if this be not true, and Nature has never known a divine birth, and thou, man, alone wakest to consciousness of a great difference between thyself and Nature—thou, the last and radiant birth of earth's obscure working—oh, beware of pride. Think that thou too only seemest; art, like the rest, a dream, Yet, since thou canst think that, since thou mayst control thy pride, thou standest clear of Nature. ”

“ For, just as that is more excellent by nature which, through its natural essence, is nearer to the most excellent Being, so certainly that nature exists in a greater degree, whose essence is more like the supreme Essence. ”

“ Nature is the source of language, words being the signs of natural facts. But ‘every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.’ In brief, ‘the world is emblematic.’ Nature is a discipline of the understanding, devoting herself to forming the common-sense. ”

“ Think of a curious nature, warped morally, as well as physically—do you know how those natures feel? A thousand times more strongly than the even, straight natures in everyday life. Then think of such a nature brought face to face with this awful problem. ”

“ Observe nature in order that you may use nature, thus converting it into the habitation, instrument, and treasure of man. Here is the supreme maxim of our modern world, and the chief ground of its peculiar confidence and hopefulness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now, which are those original determinations, and the absolute creatures of nature? The world of individuals. The individuals, therefore, in consequence of their moral destinations, are the only true and actual in nature, and their creation completes nature in general. ”

“ Slowly, through a sympathetic study of nature and of human life, through a growing sense of the soul and meaning of all natural facts and of all human relationships, and through recreating in various forms that external world which is but the objective expression of his own inmost being, the individual attains to a consciousness and unity of life and to a vision of the Eternal Fountain of Life.—The Nest. ”

“ By means of such discipline the mental horizon can be flooded with the sunshine of beauty, wholeness, and harmony. To inaugurate pure and lofty thinking may at first seem difficult, even almost mechanical, but perseverance will at length render it easy, then pleasant, and finally delightful.
“The soul's real world is that which it has built of its thoughts, mental states, and imaginations. If we will, we can turn our backs upon the lower and sensuous plane, and lift ourselves into the realm of the spiritual and Real, and there gain a residence. ”

“ The formation of a virtuous character some ascribe to Nature, some to Custom, and some to Teaching. Now Nature's part, be it what it may, obviously does not rest with us; but belongs to those who in the truest sense are fortunate, by reason of certain divine agency. ”

“ But as they actually come and are given, creation widens to the view of their recipients. They suggest that our natural experience, our strictly moralistic and prudential experience, may be only a fragment of real human experience. They soften nature's outlines and open out the strangest possibilities and perspectives. ”

“ No acquaintance with the secrets of its mechanism, no degrading views of human nature, not the most swinish compost of mud and blood that was ever misnamed philosophy, can avail to hinder us from doing involuntary reverence to any exhibition of majesty or surpassing beauty in human clay. ”

“ Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly{3} speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the NOT ME, that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, Nature. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Nature, in being capricious and defying logic, in pulling down great and little, in crushing the noblest works of man, taking centuries to form—nature, by deviating from intellectual laws, proves that you cannot explain nature by nature’s laws themselves, and this sight drives the mind to the world of ideas, to the absolute. ”

“ But here we have mind-cure, with her diametrically opposite philosophy, setting up an exactly identical claim. Live as if I were true, she says, and every day will practically prove you right. That the controlling energies of nature are personal, that your own personal thoughts are forces, that the powers of the universe will directly respond to your individual appeals and needs, are propositions which your whole bodily and mental experience will verify. ”

“ There are thus two objects of the faculty of judgment—the beautiful in works of art and the natural products of organic life—which make known to us the unity of the Notion of Nature and the Notion of Freedom. ”

“ Sensible objects conform to the premonitions of Reason and reflect the conscience. All things are moral; and in their boundless changes have an unceasing reference to spiritual nature. Therefore is nature glorious with form, color, and motion, that every globe in the remotest heaven ”

“ Then for the first time the facts of Nature astonish him, they become for him an other-than-himself he would fain appropriate, and within which he strives to rediscover his own substance, that is the universal, thoughts, reason. ”

“ The emotions one feels, the acts one performs, must mould one's character, one's thought, opinion, the mental world in which one lives, and so one's creative genius. Nature is by no means all dunghill or reptile-haunted swamp, or even common kitchen ”

“ But to any mind at all sensitive to the real and deeper meaning of nature, to its spiritual origin, its profound unity, this underlying affinity of all its forms of life, there was a bit of true philosophy in the mother’s comment. ”