12 Outlook to Nature 



events. He has little power to entertain 

 himself; and, his eyes never having been 

 trained to see what he looks at, he discovers 

 nothing and the world is void. He may find 

 temporary relief in some entertainment pro- 

 vided for him out of hand, as the so-called 

 news of the newspapers or some witless frip- 

 pery on the stage. 



Yet, unless the poets and philosophers have 

 misled us, the keenest delights that men have 

 found have been the still small voices of the 

 open fields. 



The nature writing. 



This is a real objection to much of the nature 

 writing, the fact that it is unrepresentative 

 of nature. It exploits the exceptional, and 

 therefore does not give the reader a truthful 

 picture of common and average conditions. 

 This has been true to some extent even of text- 

 books, they choose so-called "typical " forms 

 and structures, forgetting that typical examples 

 exist only in books for purposes of defini- 

 tion. 



