MANUAI, OF NATURE STUDY. IX 



are spent in exploring nature. He finds systems and 

 plans in nature and his thoughts go out in search of the 

 Great Systematizer and Designer. This habit of searching 

 and experimenting grows on him until he finds God in 

 nature, and learns to read His thoughts as expressed in the 

 flowers of the field, the trees of the forest and in all other 

 living realities. The more he reads divine thoughts as ex- 

 pressed in the creation, the more self becomes crucified and 

 the nearer he comes to "Him whose thought nature is." 

 Shall we not, then, give the child the freest opportunity to 

 push upward in the direction of the highest ideal of human 

 character? 



The boy feels that there is life force in plant life and 

 intelligence in .animal life just the same as in human life, 

 and that the same hand is back of it all; and that the same 

 spirit that developed infinite divisibility and individuality 

 has also brought everything into one grand unity as a mani- 

 festation of the universal spirit. When the child is led to 

 see that Ufe grows out of contrast, and that beauty is found 

 in unified variety, that all nature is formed upon one com- 

 mon plan, and that the same spirit pervades all, he and 

 nature will be blended into one, in which unity they will 

 ever walk, each contributing to the' support of the other. 

 Nature flows into the child's life, elevates his esthetic and 

 ethical nature, while he in turn, thus strengthened, contrib. 

 utes to the life of nature and lifts it into grander beauty. 

 Can such experience fail to prepare the child for complete 

 living? 



I^t us see what the love of nature did for the Greeks 

 and Romans. They loved and recognized her as their 

 mother. In fact, they saw in her the workings of the 

 divine spilit. Their ideas of deity took form, the varieties 



