136 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



animals — which' has produced and will produce the 

 greatest revolutions. 



This conception of universal divinity sprang from his 

 doctrine of Love. By love we can be at one with the 

 divine power which he calls God. " Love/' he says, " is 

 the true means by which the world is enjoyed : our love 

 to others, and others' love to us." Why, even the love 

 of riches he excuses, since " we love to be rich . . . that 

 we thereby might be more greatly delightful." And just 

 as Richard Jefferies says that Felise loved before ever she 

 loved a man, so Traherne says : " That violence where- 

 with a man sometimes doteth upon one creature is but a 

 little spark of that love, even towards all, which lurketh in 

 his nature. . . . When we dote upon the perfections and 

 beauties of some one creature, we do not love that too 

 much, but other things too little." It is this love by 

 which alone the commonwealth of all forms of life can 

 be truly known, and men are like God when they are 

 "all life and mettle and vigour and love to everything," 

 and " concerned and happy " in all things. His feeling 

 of the interdependence of all the world is thus insepar- 

 able from his doctrine of love; love inspires it; by love 

 alone can it be real and endure. " He that is in all and 

 with all can never be desolate." And, nevertheless, he 

 cannot always be thinking of the universe — he thought 

 that the sun went round the earth — and just as he regards 

 man as superior to other forms of life, so, perhaps, he 

 has a filial love of " this cottage of Heaven and Earth," 

 the brown land and blue sky, and one of the most beauti- 

 ful of his meditations is where he says— 



"When I came into the country, and being seated 

 among silent trees, and meads, and hills, had all my time 



