2o Education through Nature 



has often been traced back to the renaissance, as if 

 all the preceding ages had been a mere blank in the 

 intellectual life of the peoples of western Europe. 

 It is only recently that it is being realized that those 

 obscure centuries were really the maturing age in 

 which western Europe became capable of that remark- 

 able awakening. The fact that the splendid Greek 

 and Roman culture was so eagerly seized upon at this 

 time by the people of western Europe testifies to a 

 maturity which no other people seems to have possessed. 



The importance of it all, in this connection, lies in 

 the fact that this Greek and Roman culture, when 

 once discovered, was taken to be the climax of human 

 achievement; and in the mistaken notion that such 

 culture could be transferred from one race to another, 

 directly, without the preliminary process of growth. 

 It was thought that culture must necessarily be trans- 

 mitted with the language of those civilized peoples. 

 Hence all mental effort was turned away from former 

 subjects relating to nature, and directed towards the 

 acquisition of an artificial culture, supposed to reside, 

 like a hidden virtue, in forms and symbols of thought. 

 The novelty of it so dazzled the mind that it was not 

 perceived that the races in which this culture had 

 developed had succumbed to the very effects of its 

 artificial and enervating influence. The study of 

 symbols and the contemplation of forms devoid of 

 actual living content, so sedulously practiced through- 

 out the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, was itself 

 an artificial system, which, doubtless, would have 

 ultimately had a similar effect, even if real classic 

 culture could have been acquired and transmitted in 

 the way supposed. The Greeks and Romans, them- 

 selves, had lived the life and breathed the very air of 

 that culture which their imitators were trying to 

 resurrect in themselves by means of soulless symbols. 



To this should be added the prevailing conception 



