i88 With Feet to the Earth 



This may be a wrong attitude, for submis- 

 sion to nature has its advantage no less 

 than mastery of it. They say we improve 

 with the positive or conquering mood. 

 But in that mood we close our intuitions 

 to the appeals and promptings of field and 

 sky and shut out happiness. The law of 

 compensation perhaps makes an average of 

 satisfaction in both cases, the mastering 

 and receptive. The attitude will depend 

 on the person, as nature, that deepens 

 egotism in one, destroys it in another. 

 Thoreau lived so much with nature that he 

 was the only man of his own acquaintance, 

 and why not make much of him ? Others 

 are so impressed by the great pageant that 

 they realize how small a part of it they are. 

 It is the positive and negative again. You 

 find it in letters. Some writers din away 

 on technic, working so much for expression 

 that they leave out things to be expressed. 

 There are subjective moments when elusive 

 nature comes to us with ideas and beauties 

 that are large and new, forecasting and 

 consoling better than words. They seldom 

 come to us in company. In fact, it is a 



