CHAPTER XII 



THE HEART OF NATURE 



THAT Nature is a Personal Being or at least 

 nothing less than a Personal Being that she is 

 actuated by an ideal, and that her ideal, so far as we 

 are able to judge, is an ideal of Divine Fellowship, 

 is the conclusion at which we have now arrived. 

 But we shall understand Nature better, and so see 

 her Beauty more fully, if we can understand how 

 she works out this ideal in detail. And we shall best 

 understand how she works it out if we examine what 

 goes on within our own selves and see how we work 

 out the ideal with which we believe Nature herself 

 has inspired us. For it is in ourselves that the 

 dominating spirit of Nature is most clearly mani- 

 fested to us. And being ourselves the instruments 

 and agents of Nature, and informed through and 

 through with her spirit, we ought to be able to 

 understand how she works if only we look carefully 

 enough into the working of our own inner selves. 



What we find is that under the inspiration of the 

 genius of Nature we are perpetually projecting in 

 front of us a pattern or standard of what we think 

 we ought to be, or should like to be, and of what we 

 think our country and the world ought to be. We 

 set up an ideal. It is generally very vague. But 

 there is always at the back of our minds an idea of 



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