always the tendency to harden and narrow the life, and to posit the
individual too much upon himself. Any justification from without--from
the physical side--consequently fails to give any help or satisfaction.
And man needs this help. As it is impossible for him to fly out of the
world to some region where mind or spirit alone reigns, he has to do the
best he can with the physical world in the midst of which he exists. It
is within such a world that he has to cultivate the spiritual potencies
of his own being. It is true that the spiritual potencies of his own
being are higher and of more value than anything in Nature. Still, that
does not mean that Nature has to be discarded or condemned before the
potencies of his own being can develop. Nature is not a mere blind
machine; it has produced all--including man and his potencies--that is
to be found on the face of it. It is therefore not entirely meaningless,
and the meaning it possesses is a necessary element in the evolution of
personal spiritual life. Man must enter into some relation with Nature.
But such a relation produces even more than all this. When viewed in a
friendly mood, [p.123] Nature herself wears an aspect higher than a
materialistic or intellectual one. It calls forth the best in
imagination; it enables us to feel that something of the power that
dwells within the soul dwells also in all the manifestations of
phenomena.[40] This fact is evident in all the poetry of the world, and
without the perpetual presence of Nature to the soul in the form of
wonder, reverence, and admiration, no poetry worthy of the name is
possible. Nature thus is of value in the fact that when its phenomena
present themselves to a consciousness aware not only of its _knowing_
aspect but also of its _feeling_ aspect, the union of Nature and soul
produces a feeling of reality which creates an ideal nature. "The light
that never was on sea or land" becomes now on sea and land; it
illuminates the whole scene with a "halo and glory" which was concealed
before. But there must be present "an eye of the soul" united with the