Unity of nature

“ Nature an enormous system, but in mass and in particle curiously available to the humblest need of the little creature that walks on the earth! The immeasurableness of Nature is not more astounding than his power to gather all her omnipotence into a manageable rod or wedge, bringing it to a hair-point for the eye and hand of the philosopher.
Here stretches out of sight, out of conception even, this vast Nature, daunting, bewildering, but all penetrable, all self-similar,—an unbroken unity,—and the mind of man is a key to the whole. ”

“ These signs have been multiplied by Providence with love; but I wish to insist here upon that token which has not only followed past ages in their course, but has, if I may so speak, grown with their growth: that grand characteristic which reveals the author of nature, and which assures us of the giver of revelation, is unity. {490} The unity of nature reveals God as the creator, the harmony of the heavens and of the earth recount the glory of their author: "The heavens explain the glory of God." It is the chant of the unity of space. ”

“ Thereby, we perceive the inner meaning of Nature as a whole, recognizing an Immanent Deity, ruling and reigning in combinations often bewildering to us, — not unfrequently causing us to shrink with sense of pain. We see the unity of Nature in structure and in history. ”

“ Nature held me henceforth so fast that for years I was chained uninterruptedly to her study, though truly languages went on as a side-study during the time. Yet it was not as separate entities that I considered the phenomena I was working at; rather was it as parts of the great whole of natural life, and this also I regarded as reposing in one supreme unity together with all mankind; Nature and man, the two opposite mutually casting light upon each other and mirroring each other. ”

“ Thus different formularies may sometimes express the same Christian truth, viewed under different aspects. How dull would be this visible creation if all its boundless variety of shape and color were to give place to one unbroken uniformity? How melancholy would be its aspects, if all created beings did but compose a solitary and vast unity? The unity which comes from heaven, doubtless has its place; but the diversity of human nature has its proper place also. ”

“ God has placed nature by the side of man as a friend, who remains always to guide and console him in life; as a protecting genius, who conducts him, as well as all species, to a harmonious unity with himself. The earth is the material bosom which bears all the races. Nature arouses man from the sleep in which he would remain without thought of himself, inspires him with noble designs, and preserves thus in humanity activity and life. ”

“ The unity of Nature is the ideal counterpart of the actual unity of each individual experience, where synthesis ever precedes analysis, and things are only distinguished relatively to each other so long as they are apperceived together by the one subject. The category of causality we owe to the interaction of active subjects with their environment and especially with each other, and we attribute it analogically to what we then call the interaction of natural agents. ”

“ The sun, that colossal center of our solar system, the giant stars and planets, the towering mountains, the earth itself and its kingdoms of life lower than the human,—all are captives of nature except man. No other created thing can deviate in the slightest degree from obedience to natural law. The sun in its glory and greatness millions of miles away is held prisoner in its orbit of universal revolution, captive of universal natural control. Man is the ruler of nature. ”

“ All nature in its myriad forms of life is changeable, impermanent, unenduring. Only the informing Principle of nature endures. Nature is many, and is marked by separation. The informing Principle is One, and is marked by unity. ”

“ In fact, its entrance as a principle into the natural order is precisely what raises Nature out of being a mere private show for each mind into a universal experience, with an aspect common to all minds alike. It is this that lifts it out of resilient manifoldness and mere disjunction, and carries it into unity — the unity of a communal system of experience, in which the dissents of individuals are reduced and harmonised by the deeper principle in their being, out of which their total nature flows by the self-defining act of each. ”

“ These constitute the identity of human nature under all circumstances; these characterize humanity in all conditions. Like permanent germs in vegetable life, always producing the same species of plants; or like fundamental types in the animal kingdom, securing the same homologous structures in all classes and orders; so these fundamental ideas in human nature constitute its sameness and unity, under all the varying conditions of life and society. ”

“ That which the soul seeks is resolution into being above form, out of Tartarus and out of heaven,- liberation from nature.
If speculation tends thus to a terrific unity, in which all things are absorbed, action tends directly backwards to diversity. The first is the course or gravitation of mind; the second is the power of nature. Nature is the manifold. The unity absorbs, and melts or reduces. Nature opens and creates. These two principles reappear and interpenetrate all things, all thought; the one, the many. One is being; the other, intellect: one is necessity ”

“ The fact that substance is everywhere subject to eternal movement and transformation gives it the character also of the universal law of evolution. As this supreme law has been firmly established and all others are subordinate to it, we arrive at a conviction of the universal unity of nature and the eternal validity of its laws. ”

“ The memory of Nature is in reality a stupendous unity, just as in another way all mankind is found to constitute a spiritual unity if we ascend to a sufficiently elevated plane of Nature in search of the wonderful convergence where unity is reached without the loss of individuality. ”

“ The Reign of Law has gradually crept into every department of Nature, transforming knowledge everywhere into Science. The process goes on, and Nature slowly appears to us as one great unity, until the borders of the Spiritual World are reached. ”

“ How much, therefore, in mixed modes, the unity necessary to any essence depends on the mind; and how much the continuation and fixing of that unity depends on the name in common use annexed to it, I leave to be considered by those who look upon essences and species as real established things in nature. ”

“ There is another sense in which we attribute beauty [Pg 182] to Nature, namely, when we have the collective picture of a landscape before us rather than observe the living form of a simple object. Here we have no organic articulation of parts such as is derived from their notion and is presented to us as such ideal unity in spontaneous life. ”

“ We shall hold them to be so if we see them accompanied and supported by all the other circumstances which also have their spring of action in nature; for nature can only be recognized by the close and strict consistency, by the unity and uniformity of its effects. ”

“ And, on the other hand, the kingdom of nature gets its ideality recognised: its unity and continuity made effective in an Idea which embraces, co-ordinated and systematised, its disparate and unconnected portions. ”

“ There is in nature a parallel unity which corresponds to the unity in the mind and makes it available. This methodizing mind meets no resistance in its attempts. The scattered blocks, with which it strives to form a symmetrical structure, fit. This design following after finds with joy that like design went before. Not only man puts things in a row, but things belong in a row. ”

“ In the fifty years that have elapsed since that time the science of the origin and nature of man has made astonishing progress, and we are now fairly agreed in a monistic conception of nature that regards the whole universe, including man, as a wonderful unity, governed by unalterable and eternal laws. ”

“ Nor can we wonder that in such an environment, the premonitions of the spiritual unity of existence, that were stirring in many hearts, found special sustenance.
Let it be clearly understood that in the striking and unmistakable illustrations just adduced, there is no mere question of the influences of physical environment on social organisation or economic development—though these also react in a thousand ways upon ideas and ideals—but a question of moulding spiritual concepts by the direct influence of the ideas and impulses manifested in external nature. ”

“ Both doctrines are perfectly justified as expressions of the perspective view of Nature which we men naturally take. Neither view can stand against any deeper reason that we may have for interpreting our experiences of Nature as a hint of a vaster realm of life and of meaning of which we men form a part, and of which the final unity is in God’s life. ”

“ External forces would reassert themselves and wild nature would resume its sway. While, in a sense, he had strenuously advocated the unity of all nature, he found in it two rivals: the artificial products of sentient man and the forces and products of wild nature. ”

“ The stars and suns swinging through infinite space, all earthly forms of life and existence whether mineral, vegetable or animal come under the dominion and control of natural law. Man through scientific knowledge and power rules nature and utilizes her laws to do his bidding. ”

“ This lapse from natural unity has not escaped notice, and nations from the earliest times have asked the meaning of the wonderful division of the spirit against itself. No such inward disunion is found in nature: natural things do nothing wicked. ”

“ These only come rationally into the system of nature under the supposition of a Higher Intelligence, from whom man emanates, and whose nature he shares.
But on this theistic view we are introduced to a kind of unity and of evolution for a future age, which is the great topic of revelation, and is not unknown to science and philosophy, in connection with the law of progress and development deducible from the geological history, in which an ascending series of lower animals culminates in man himself. ”

“ Evolution teaches unity in nature. The mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms are composed of the same elements. The transition from one kingdom into another is almost imperceptible. There is no line to be drawn between living and non-living matter. Botanists and zoologists are often at a loss to determine to which kingdom certain specimens be380long.DP There is unity in nature, and man is no less an integral part of nature than the air or the stars.
Now, man is a rational being. Hence an integral part of nature is rational, and there is rationality in nature. ”

“ Genius watches the monad through all his masks as he performs the metempsychosis of nature. Genius detects through the fly, through the caterpillar, through the grub, through the egg, the constant individual; through countless individuals, the fixed species; through many species, the genus; through all genera, the steadfast type; through all the kingdoms of organized life, the eternal unity. Nature is a mutable cloud, which is always and never the same. She casts the same thought into troops of forms, as a poet makes twenty fables with one moral. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil,—to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. ”

“ There must be an orchestration of humanity ere it can echo divine melodies. In real truth we are all seeking in the majesties we create for union with a greater Majesty.
I wrote in an earlier page that the ancient conception of Nature as a manifestation of spirit was incarnating anew in the minds of modern thinkers; that Nature was no longer conceived of as material or static in condition, but as force and continual motion; that they were trying to identify human will with this arcane energy, and let the forces of Nature manifest with more power in society. ”

“ Nay, further we may ask, what kingdom is there of nature, what corner of space, in which there is any thing that can be examined by us, where we do not fall upon contrivance and design? The only reflection, perhaps, which arises in our minds from this view of the world around us, is that the laws of nature everywhere prevail; that they are uniform and universal. But what do we mean by the laws of nature? ”

“ At this point, without encountering any breach of continuity in the cosmic process, we crossed the threshold of the ethical world, and entered a region where civilization, or the gradual perfecting of the spiritual qualities, is henceforth Nature's paramount aim. ”

“ Here we see, then, that the constitution or structure of the various recipient objects, has power to convert the inflowing influence or substance into a nature corresponding to its own, and thus cause it to nourish its own life, of whatever nature that life be, whether good or evil, ugly or beautiful. There is but one sun for all—but one light and heat for all—yet how various are the colours, how different the qualities, of the myriad objects in the natural world. ”

“ It is social consciousness, the child of love, of the instinct of perpetuation, that leads us to socialize everything, to see society in everything, and that shows us at last that all Nature is really an infinite Society. For my part, the feeling that Nature is a society has taken hold of me hundreds of times in walking through the woods possessed with a sense of solidarity with the oaks, a sense of their dim awareness of my presence. ”