MAN IN NATURE 49 1 



creations on what nature has given him. Thus all art worthy 

 of the name is really a development of nature. It is true the 

 eccentricities of art and fashion are so erratic that they may 

 often seem to have no law. Yet they are all under the rule 

 of nature ; and hence even uninstructed common-sense, unless 

 dulled by long familiarity, detects in some degree their incon- 

 gruity, and though it may be amused for a time, at length 

 becomes wearied with the mental irritation and nervous dis- 

 quiet which they produce. 



I may be permitted to add that all this applies with still 

 greater force to systems of science and philosophy. Ultimately 

 these must be all tested by the verities of nature to which man 

 necessarily submits his intellect, and he who builds for aye must 

 build on the solid ground of nature. The natural environ- 

 ment presents itself in this connection as an educator of man. 

 From the moment when infancy begins to exercise its senses 

 on the objects around, this education begins — training the 

 powers of observation and comparison, cultivating the concep- 

 tion of the grand and beautiful, leading to analysis and abstract 

 and general ideas. Left to itself, it is true this natural educa- 

 tion extends but a little way, and ordinarily it becomes ob- 

 scured or crushed by the demands of a hard utility, or by an 

 artificial literary culture, or by the habitude of monstrosity and 

 unfitness in art. Yet, when rightly directed, it is capable of 

 becoming an instrument of the highest culture, intellectual, 

 aesthetic, and even moral. A rational system of education 

 would follow nature in the education of the young, and drop 

 much that is arbitrary and artificial. Here I would merely 

 remark, that when we find that the accurate and systematic 

 study of nature trains most effectually some of the more prac- 

 tical powers of mind, and leads to the highest development of 

 taste for beauty in art, we see in this relation the unity of man 

 and nature, and the unity of both with something higher than 

 either. 



