SAINTS, AND THEIR BODIES 27 
the atmosphere. Some prudent persons may 
possibly regard this as being rather an extreme, 
while yet their own extreme of avoidance of 
every breath from heaven is really the more 
extravagantly unreasonable of the two. 
It is easy for the sentimentalist to say, “ But 
if the object is, after all, the enjoyment of 
Nature, why not go and enjoy her, without any 
collateral aim?” Because it is the universal 
experience of man, that, if we have a collateral 
aim, we enjoy her far more. He knows not 
the beauty of the universe who has not learned 
the subtile mystery, that Nature loves to work 
on us by indirections. Astronomers say that, 
when observing with the naked eye, you see a 
star less clearly by looking at it than by look- 
ing at the next one. Margaret Fuller’s fine 
saying touches the same point, — “ Nature will 
not be stared at.” Go out merely to enjoy her, 
and it seems a little tame, and you begin to 
suspect yourself of affectation. There are per- 
sons who, after years of abstinence from ath- 
-letic sports or the pursuits of the naturalist or 
artist, have resumed them, simply in order to 
restore to the woods and the sunsets the zest 
of the old fascination. Go out under pretence 
of shooting on the marshes or botanizing in the 
forests ; study birds or butterflies ; go to paint 
a red maple-leaf in autumn, or watch a pickerel- 
