NATURAL INTERPRETATIONS 31 



faculty of mankind. Among them the elements of 

 topography obviously hold a foremost place, including, 

 as they do, the most frequent and impressive mani- 

 festations of those natural agencies whereby the surface 

 of the land is constantly modified. It was impossible 

 that after men had begun to observe, and to connect 

 effects with causes, they should refrain from referring 

 the resultant changes of landscape to the working of 

 the natural processes that were seen or inferred to 

 produce them. They were led to trace this connec- 

 tion even while their religious belief or superstition 

 remained hardly impaired. The conclusions thus 

 popularly reached were sometimes far from correct, 

 but inasmuch as they substituted natural for super- 

 natural causes, they undoubtedly marked a distinct 

 forward step in the intellectual development of man. 



From that time onward the influence of scenery on 

 the human imagination took a different course. The 

 gods were dethroned, and the invisible spirits of nature 

 no longer found worshippers; but it was impossible 

 that the natural features which had prompted the 

 primeval beliefs should cease to exercise a potent 

 influence on the minds of men. This influence has 

 varied in degree and in character from generation to 

 generation, as we may see by comparing its place in 

 the literature of successive periods. Probably at no 

 time has it been more potent than it is at the present 

 day. 



To discuss fully this wide subject would demand 

 far more space than can be given to it here. I pro- 

 pose, therefore, to select two portions of it only; 

 one from the beginning and the other from the end 



