RUMINATIONS 



day and age of the world he has been pretty wel? 

 interpreted. But the final interpretation is as fai 

 off as ever, because the condition of man is not 

 static, but dynamic. He is forever born anew into 

 the world and experiences new wonder, new joy. 

 new loves, new enthusiasms. Nature is infinite, 

 and the soul of man is infinite, and the action and 

 reaction between the two which gives us our cul- 

 ture and our civilization can never cease. When 

 man thinks he is interpreting Nature, he is really 

 interpreting himself — reading his own heart and 

 mind through the forms and movements that sur- 

 round him. In his art and his literature he bodies 

 forth his own ideals; in his religion he gives the 

 measure of his awe and reverence and his aspira- 

 tions toward the perfect good; in his science he 

 illustrates his capacity for logical order and for 

 weighing evidence. There is no astronomy to the 

 night prowler, there is no geology to the woodchuck 

 or the ground mole, there is no biology to the dog 

 or to the wolf, there is no botany to the cows and 

 the sheep. All these sciences are creations of the 

 mind of man; they are the order and the logic which 

 he reads into Nature. Nature interprets man to 

 himself. Her beauty, her sublimity, her harmony, 

 her terror, are names which he gives to the emo- 

 tions he experiences in her presence. The mid- 

 night skies sound the depths of his capacity for the 

 emotion of grandeur and immensity, the summer 



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