2 THE KINGDOM OF MAN 



varied meanings and limitations, so that misconception 

 and confusion is liable to be associated with it. By 

 the professed student of modern sciences it is usually 

 understood as a name for the entire mechanism of 

 the universe, the kosmos in all its parts; and it is in 

 this sense that I use it. But many still identify 

 ' Nature ' with a limited portion of that great system, 

 and even retain for it a special application to the 

 animals and plants of this earth and their immediate 

 surroundings. Thus we have the term ' natural history ' 

 and the French term ' les sciences naturelles ' limited 

 to the study of the more immediate and concrete forms 

 of animals, plants, and crystals. There is some justifica- 

 tion for separating the conception of Nature as specially 

 concerned in the production and maintenance of living 

 things from that larger Nature which embraces, together 

 with this small but deeply significant area, the whole 

 expanse of the heavens in the one direction and Man 

 himself in the other. Giordano Bruno, who a little 

 more than 300 years ago visited Oxford and expounded 

 his views, was perhaps the first to perceive and teach 

 the unity of this greater Nature, anticipating thus in 

 his prophetic vision the conclusion which we now 

 accept as the result of an accumulated mass of evidence. 

 Shakespeare came into touch with Bruno's conception, 

 and has contrasted the more limited and a larger (though 

 not the largest) view of Nature in the words of Perdita 

 and Polyxenes. Says Perdita : 



* . . . the fairest flowers o' the season 



Are our carnations, and streak'd gillyvors, 



Which some call Nature's bastards ; of that kind 



Our ru tic garden's barren ; and 1 care not 



To get slips of them. . . . For I have heard it said, 



There is an art which, in their piedness, shares 



With great creating nature.' 



