26 TREES IN NATURE, MYTH & ART 



emerges clear as the belief that whatever 

 natural objects have life or force also possess 

 consciousness. How different the world must 

 have felt to the people who believed this from 

 what it seems to us to-day ! M acaulay 's ' ' Father 

 Tiber, to whom the Romans pray," which 

 seems naive and childish to us, was the mere 

 commonplace of undoubted fact in an earlier 

 age — for the river had force. The trees had 

 more than force, they had life, that life which 

 to us is still so wonderful and inexplicable ; 

 much more certain was it that they would be 

 credited with consciousness. It is not my 

 purpose, even were it within my power, 

 learnedly to discuss the nature and origin of 

 tree- worship. It is dealt with here, not with 

 the aim of scientific exposition, but only to add 

 to the keenness of our interest in the trees and 

 the woods, when we are among them, and 

 think, not only of what they mean to us now, 

 but of what they have meant in the past, and 

 still mean indeed, to the most backward tribes 

 of the human race. It is strange to us to 

 think that the trees which we value now only 

 for their beauty and their serviceableness, have 

 been worshipped as gods. 



