ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



Westmoreland hills, when the meanest flowers that 

 blow could bring to him "thoughts that do often lie 

 too deep for tears." 



The Nature that to Wordsworth never betrays 

 us, and to Milton was "wise and frugal," is a hu- 

 manized, man-made Nature. The Nature we know 

 and wrest our living from, and try to drive sharp 

 bargains with, is of quite a different order. It is no 

 more constant than inconstant, no more wise and 

 frugal than foolish and dissipated; it is not human 

 at all, but unhuman. 



When we infuse into it our own idealism, or re- 

 create it in our own image, then we have the Nature 

 of the poets, the Nature that consciously minis- 

 ters to us and makes the world beautiful for our 

 sake. 



When in his first book, "Nature," Emerson says 

 that the aspect of Nature is devout, like the figure 

 of Jesus when he stands with bended head and 

 hands folded upon the breast, we see what a sub- 

 jective and humanized Nature, a Nature of his own 

 creation, he is considering. His book is not an inter- 

 pretation of Nature, but an interpretation of his 

 own soul. It is not Nature which stands in an atti- 

 tude of devotion with bowed head, but Emerson's 

 own spirit in the presence of Nature, or of what he 

 reads into Nature. Yet the Emerson soul is a part of 

 Nature — a peculiar manifestation of its qualities 

 and possibilities, developed through centuries of 



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