228 NATURAL BEAUTY 



complete which has not art behind it. We shall 

 never be able fully to know and understand the 

 Earth or to describe what we see if we use our in- 

 tellectual and reasoning powers alone. If we are 

 to attain to a complete knowledge of the Earth, and 

 if we are to describe what we learn about it in an 

 adequate manner so that others may participate in 

 our knowledge, then we must use our hearts as well 

 as our heads. We must be artists as well as 

 meticulous classifiers, cataloguers, and reasoners. 

 The Earth is a living being, a throbbing, palpitat- 

 ing, living being — "live" enough to have given 

 birth to the remote ancestors of mankind, and live 

 enough, so some biologists consider, to be con- 

 tinually to this day generating the lowliest forms of 

 organisms. To know and understand a living 

 being, particularly when that living being happens 

 to be his own Mother, man must use his heart as 

 well as his head. 



With his head alone the geographer may do a 

 vast amount of most useful and necessary work 

 which will help us to understand the Earth. He 

 may collect and classify facts about her and record 

 measurements, and reason about these facts and 

 measurements, but if he is to get the deepest vision 

 of the Earth and learn the profoundest truth about 

 her he must exercise his finest spiritual senses as 

 well. And when he brings those faculties of the 

 soul into play, it will be the Beauty on the face of 

 Mother-Earth that he will see and that will disclose 

 to him her real nature. 



And therefore I hold that if it be the function of 

 Geography to know the Earth and to describe the 



