234 Education through Nature 



hand, and by his mental life on the other. This is 

 what we should expect from that universal law of 

 action and reaction, the interaction of mind and body, 

 and the interaction of man and the external world. 

 Man thinks the thoughts of nature; and by so doing 

 is able to modify nature. But this is true chiefly in 

 the higher stages, when man has learned to know 

 nature. 



Even in the earliest culture epochs that we know 

 anything about, there is evidence of a consciousness, 

 on the part of man, that he is in the midst of forces 

 which he cannot control; and hence a certain rever- 

 ence for nature can be discovered, which reveals itself 

 in the worship of objects and elements. Besides, 

 primitive language is figurative, showing how nature 

 is personified. Primitive man often seems to project 

 his own inner feelings into external nature, and to endow 

 it with various imaginary attributes which it does not 

 possess. In this respect he is much like the timid 

 girl in the dark night, who imagines she hears voices, 

 sees faces, and feels the breath of ghosts and phantoms. 



These early relations to nature contain the germs 

 of future philosophic and religious systems. Philoso- 

 phy and religion, both dealing with the problems of 

 the non-ego, are at first intimately associated, but 

 are later separated into distinct systems, knowing 

 and feeling being more distinctly differentiated. 



i. The earliest philosophy seems to center in the 

 problem of existence in general. Such problems as 

 that of the essence of matter and force, their relations 

 to space and time, and, finally, the relation of all 

 existence to the absolute and infinite, are the problems 

 of primitive speculation of the race, no less than of 

 the juvenile philosopher. 



It must not be forgotten that much real experience 

 with nature had been active in producing these abstract 

 general speculations. Otherwise one might be forced 



