F 



II 



MANIFOLD NATURE 



EW persons, I fancy, ever spend much time in 

 thinking seriously of this vast, ever-present 

 reality which we call Nature; what our true relations 

 to it are, what its relations are to what we call God, 

 or what God's relations are to it; whether God and 

 Nature are two or one — God and Nature, or only 

 Nature, or only God. 



When we identify Nature with God we are at once 

 in sore straits because Nature has a terrible side to 

 her, but the moment we separate God from Nature 

 we are still more embarrassed. We create a hiatus 

 which we must find something to fill. We must in- 

 vent a Devil upon whom to saddle the evil that 

 everywhere dogs the footsteps of the good. So we 

 have both a God and a Devil, or two gods, on our 

 hands contending with each other. Even our good 

 friends in the churches talk glibly of the God of Na- 

 ture, or Nature's God, little heeding the terrible 

 black depths that lie under their words. 



The Nature that the poets sing and that nature- 

 writers exploit is far from being the whole story. 

 When we think of Nature as meaning only birds 

 and flowers and summer breezes and murmuring 

 streams, we have only touched the hem of her gar- 



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