1903] Attwood Educational Value of Nature Study. 199 



" That God, which ever lives and loves, 

 One God, one law, one element, 

 And one far-off divine event. 

 To which the whole creation moves. " 



4. Culture is the expanding, the mellowing, and the purifying 

 of the soul by constant contact with the true, the beautiful and 

 the good. 



" To him who in the love of nature, holds 



Communion with her visible forms, she speaks 

 A various lang'uag'e ; for his gayer hours 

 She has a voice of gfladness, and a smile 

 And eloquence of beauty, and she glides 

 Into his darker musings, with a mild 

 And healing sympathy, that steals away 

 Their sharpness, ere he is aware." 



" Culture is the slowly maturing fruit of a silent feeding of 

 the soul upon nourishing ideas. While discipline looks to the 

 volume of mental power, culture looks to its kind. Culture is the 

 tone of power, rather than its amount or intensity. It is a 

 qualitative rather than a quantative word " Hinsdale. 



"Culture is the study of perteciion." It is the endeavor to 

 see and learn the will of God and make it prevail. "It is in 

 making endless additions to itself, in the endless expansion of its 

 powers, in endless growth in wisdom and beauty, that the spirit of 

 the human race finds its Ideal. To reach this ideal culture is an 

 indispensable aid, and that is the true value of culture." " Not a 

 having and a resting, but a growing and a becoming, is the char- 

 acter of perfection as culture conceives it." 



Nature is a slowly-evolving, ever-attaining but never-ending 

 process by which the divine ideal is being realized. It is a 

 panoramic unfolding of God's way of doing things. It is " not a 

 having and a resting but a growing and a becoming." 



" Every clod feels a stir of might, 



An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 

 And, g'roping blindly above it for light. 

 Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers." 



A characteristic of both Nature and Culture is the unceasing 

 striving onward and upward. Nature is universal and physical. 

 Culture is individual and spiritual. A harmonious alliance results 



