1898-99. | PRIMITIVE NATURE STUDY, 343 
ings? What but the one eternal fact which the heart of man in all 
ages, in all lands, has believed in and trusted, though his head has often 
dared to doubt! 
Rightly understood, the nature-creed of primitive man is my creed 
and your creed, the creed of every sane, healthy, thoroughly human 
soul, who has thought since the race began and done no violence to the 
inspired instincts of his oldest, deepest being—the immanence of God: 
*“ God dwells in all, 
From life’s minute beginnings up at last 
To man.” 
The nature-myths, lore and legends of the primitive races of the globe, 
their poetry, speech, arts, institutions, wherever these have felt the touch 
of plant and animal, of sun and moon and stars, of earth and sea and sky, 
of changing seasons, of calm and storm, of summer rain and winter snow, 
of heat and cold, of light and dark, alike reveal the existence behind the 
appearances and the changes, the rest and the motion, the silence and 
the stir, the coming and the going, of all things, of some controlling 
influence to which is due the evolution of nature and the development 
of man. 
If we must look to nature-study for one article of a religion that 
shall abide, we find it expressed by that great lover of Nature, the 
Oriental mystic poet Jelaleddin, who, more than six centuries ago, put 
into the mouth of the Being behind all the phenomena of life and death, 
these reverent words: 
‘* The sunbeam am I and the sun itself ; 
To the sunbeam say I: stay ; and to the sun: depart 
I am the morning-gleam, the ev’ning breeze am I, 
I am the forest’s murmur, I am the surging of the sea, 
The mast am I, the helm, the helmsman and the ship, 
The reef of coral, too, on which ‘tis wrecked, 
I am the fowler and the bird, I am the net, 
I am the picture, mirror, sound, the echo, too. 
I am the tree of life, the parrot sitting on it ; 
Silence and thought am I, the tongue and speech. 
The breathing of the flute lam, I am man’s spirit, too, 
The spark within the stone I am, the metal’s golden flash. 
I am intoxication, the grape, the wine-press and the must 
The toper am I and the tavern, the crystal goblet, too. 
I am the candle and the butterfly that circles round it. 
The rose and she whom it intoxicates, the nightingale. 
The doctor am I, the disease, the poison and the antidote. 
I am the sweet and bitter, the honey and the gall! 
War, peace, am I, forum and victory, 
The town and its defender, the stormer and the wall. 
’ 
