MAN IN NATURE 219 



philosophy. Ultimately these must all be tested by 

 the verities of nature to which man necessarily sub 

 mits his intellect, and he who builds for aye must 

 build on the solid ground of nature. The natural 

 environment 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 ob 

 servation and comparison, cultivating the conception 

 of the grand and beautiful, leading to analysis and 

 abstract and general ideas. Left to itself, it is true 

 this natural education extends but a little way, and 

 ordinarily it becomes obscured or crushed by the 

 demands of a hard utility, or by an artificial literary 

 culture, or by the habitude of monstrosity and unfit- 

 ness in art. Yet when rightly directed it is capable 

 of becoming an instrument of the highest culture, 

 intellectual, aesthetic, and even moral. I have in 

 writing on evolution in education insisted on the 

 importance of following nature in the education of 

 the young, and of dropping 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 

 practical powers of mind, and leads to the highest 

 development of taste for beauty in art, we see in t 

 relation the unity of man and nature, and the unity 

 of both with something higher than either. 



It may, however occur to us here that when we 



