in this earth a strange touch of lightness that is almost frivolity.
Nature was a solemn mother to the worshippers of Isis and Cybele.
Nature was a solemn mother to Wordsworth or to Emerson.
But Nature is not solemn to Francis of Assisi or to George Herbert.
To St. Francis, Nature is a sister, and even a younger sister:
a little, dancing sister, to be laughed at as well as loved.

This, however, is hardly our main point at present; I have admitted
it only in order to show how constantly, and as it were accidentally,
the key would fit the smallest doors. Our main point is here,
that if there be a mere trend of impersonal improvement in Nature,
it must presumably be a simple trend towards some simple triumph.
One can imagine that some automatic tendency in biology might work
for giving us longer and longer noses. But the question is,
do we want to have longer and longer noses? I fancy not;
I believe that we most of us want to say to our noses, "thus far,
and no farther; and here shall thy proud point be stayed:"
we require a nose of such length as may ensure an interesting face.
But we cannot imagine a mere biological trend towards producing
interesting faces; because an interesting face is one particular
arrangement of eyes, nose, and mouth, in a most complex relation
to each other. Proportion cannot be a drift: it is either
an accident or a design. So with the ideal of human morality
and its relation to the humanitarians and the anti-humanitarians.
It is conceivable that we are going more and more to keep our hands
off things: not to drive horses; not to pick flowers. We may
eventually be bound not to disturb a man's mind even by argument;
not to disturb the sleep of birds even by coughing. The ultimate
apotheosis would appear to be that of a man sitting quite still,
nor daring to stir for fear of disturbing a fly, nor to eat for fear