THE SOUL OF NATURE 



THE Greeks had little to say about na- 

 ture, but they lived closer to it than 

 we do, in spite of our habit of painting, 

 describing, and gushing over it. Carlyle, 

 no doubt, would have said, from their very 

 silence and unconsciousness, that nature 

 was a part of their lives. They did feel 

 and love it. We need no other proof than 

 this : that they endowed it with godhood. 

 They felt what science knows and the poet 

 and preacher hope : that our relation to the 

 universe is wide-spreading, though unfath- 

 omed. What is behind this mask of form 

 we are not resolved, yet every primitive 

 people realizes that it is a sign and an 

 emblem, and the speech of this realization 

 is poetry. The Indians of our Northwest 

 are Greeks in their faith ; they people the 



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