224 The Bible of Nature 



** Return to Nature." — Another corollary drives 

 home a consideration which often seems so im- 

 practicable that we wriggle away from it. It is the 

 value of *'a return to nature" in one sense of that 

 much-abused phrase. Biologists are familiar with 

 the fact that, if an inheritance is to find appropri- 

 ate expression, the organism must develop in an 

 appropriate environment. Otherwise, potentiali- 

 ties will not be realized, the legacy cannot be 

 cashed. Now, if our natural inheritance has been 

 determined in the distant past under conditions 

 that imply close contact with nature — emotional 

 as well as practical — it seems common sense that 

 we and our children will always be handicapped 

 unless we can renew the contact. This is part of 

 the true inwardness of the " Nature-study " move- 

 ment, the rus in urhe, and the garden-city. This 

 is, in part, the gospel according to Wordsworth, 

 and according to Thoreau. 



There is, however, another side to this. There 

 were conditions of life in ancient days which man- 

 kind can never seriously wish to know again. A 

 struggle around the platter of bare subsistence, as 

 of pigs around the feeding-trough, should be an 

 impossible phenomenon among men. Yet, through 

 our selfishness and folly, we often sink back into 

 vital conditions which are horrible anachronisms, 

 which are inhuman and brutal, and then we 

 wonder at a recrudescence of hooliganism, licen- 



