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1898 -g9. } PRIMITIVE NATURE STUDY. 313 
Pie veley Ee NAT URE: Se by. 
By ALEX. F. CHAMBERLAIN, PH.D. 
(Read May 6th, 1899.) 
Ir is an all-too-common idea that the so-called “lower races” of 
man have little or no appreciation of the beauty and the majesty of 
Nature. 
Hoffding does not hesitate to declare that “Children and savages 
have, as arule, no sense for the beauties of Nature” (Psych., p. 266), 
and Ribot goes even further when he says: “In primitive poetry, man 
is in the foreground, Nature is only an accessory. Little of description, 
a few verses or epithets suffice to create it.” (Psych. des Emotions, p. 336.) 
Psychologists, generally, have seen fit to date the rise of real Nature- 
feeling from the middle of the eighteenth century, so far at least as the 
masses of the people are concerned, and to credit Rousseau with being 
the first to arouse such a sentiment (Azdo¢, p. 267). The ancient 
Greeks, however, and the Chinese had certainly a keen sense of natural 
grandeur and beauty, no less than that of- the Hebrews, while, as Biese, 
who has written so excellently of the “ Development of the Feeling for 
Nature,” points out “the nature-lyric is primitive [uralt] and common 
to all peoples.” 
It is eminently fitting then, that a recent writer (Prof. Patten) should 
take occasion to observe concerning Rousseau, “the interpreter of 
Nature,” as he has been called (Axx. Am. Acad. Pol. and Soc. Sct., VU11., 
p- 455): 
“Rousseau was a man of a more primitive type than the leaders of 
the preceding period of French thought. He had many of the charac- 
teristics of a savage and his concept of nature belonged to a much 
earlier epoch.” 
With this introduction, let us now turn to the consideration of the 
nature-lore of peoples who may be judged fairly to represent the 
thought and feeling of this “earlier epoch.” 
