M*T*T 



c*. or 



l *Ji2gjg^ 



- 



EDUCATION THROUGH NATURE 



CHAPTER I 

 Introduction 



I. Historical. 



That period in the history of western civilization 

 commonly called the dark ages was peculiar for the 

 absence of those startling events or revolutions of 

 society with which primitive history delights to deal. 

 It was the age of faith, when the human mind, tak- 

 ing things for granted as tradition explained them, 

 felt nothing of that agitation and unrest which is so 

 essential to the discovery of new truths. It was not, 

 however, a barren period. Rather the adolescent 

 period of the race, when, regardless of conventional- 

 ism and art, men concerned themselves, not with the 

 greater universal problems, but rather with the little 

 every-day problems which their close contact with 

 nature was sure to occasion. 



In that close contact with nature there doubtless 

 was promise of better things. That rugged physical 

 strength, that knowledge of things, and that power 

 of bravely coping with natural forces, of which north- 

 ern mythology so eloquently speaks, were probably 

 the essential conditions for that richer unfolding of 

 latent powers, that fruitage, which first began to appear 

 at the time of the renaissance. Western civilization 



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