No. 4.] LOVE AND STUDY OF NATURE. 139 



potcnoc, in the sense in which Schelling was fond of using 

 that term, because he is a microcosm, and to know all that 

 is in man will be to know all that is in his universe. 



From these rough and brief characterizations we may see 

 that, in the larger sense of that mighty word, in nature about 

 all human interests are involved, and that the love and study 

 of it might almost be made the supreme duty and end of 

 human existence. 



Let us now pass to a very different part of our theme, and 

 show how, in its early stages, the development of childhood 

 passes through all these stages of love and interest. We 

 have collected many hundreds of cases where children gather 

 stones, knots, bits of metal, pottery, wood, bone, shells, 

 leather, rags and scores of other inanimate things, endow 

 them with a rudimentary kind of sensation, keep smooth, 

 bright or pretty colored stones in cotton, try to keep them 

 warm, carry them in their pocket or otherwise about their 

 person, and even talk or invent experiences or myths about 

 them, and are essentially fetish worshippers in all that that 

 term implies. We may have done thus more or less in our 

 early years ; but memory rarely preserves traces of these 

 experiences, which, indeed, have to be scored away to make 

 room for higher and larger mental content. This is going 

 on often with our own children or those about us, unnoticed 

 by even the fondest parents ; and is, indeed, concealed by 

 most children in civilized lands, who are early haunted by the 

 dim presentiment of a future stand-point. Again, we have 

 a large collection of spontaneous conversations with or in- 

 vocations of prayers to the sun, particularly to the moon, by 

 American children, who illustrate the once widespread astro- 

 logical consciousness. Many see the faces of just dead 

 friends, parents, God, the Virgin Mary, Christ, etc., in the 

 moon. They often make it an external conscience, believing 

 that is recedes further into the sky or grows either small or 

 dim when they are bad, it is repelled, ashamed, hiding behind 

 clouds for shame, or tearful of their wrong-doings, or comes 

 nearer, getting larger, brighter if they are good, and in rare 

 cases even speaking commendations of their acts. So, too, 

 flowers have a language all their own. The rose speaks of 

 love, the violet of modesty, the lily of kingly beauty, the 



