A PLEA FOR INDIVIDUAL EFFORT 
145 
strenuous life, which is that of our Council, and the other life, 
which is led, or should be led, by each member of our body. It 
is necessary that the Selborne Society should stand in “ the 
open ” to fight the world, if need be, in the defence of natural 
beauty, the preservation of our flora and fauna, the rurification 
of towns, the protection of the countryside from Philistine sign- 
boards, tlie thoughtless vandalism of the tripper and dilettante 
collector. It must strive, even if in vain, to preserve intact 
the laves and penates of generations gone by, the stone monu- 
ments of builders who made history while they piled stone on 
stone, and cornices graved with the memories of those men who, 
for better or for worse, have created the England of to day. 
The Selborne Society has done all this, and the value of its 
work is best attested by the fact that it has begotten quite a 
respectable family of young societies which have appropriated 
one or other of the aims the Selborne Society has striven to 
promote. The National Trust, the Bird Societies, and others 
are each emulating the mother organization and doing good 
work. May I say the Selborne Society is an indulgent mother ; 
she rejoices in her offspring, and even if at times her work is 
ignored and the newer worker claims the laurels, she readily 
extends her indulgence provided that the work is well done. 
To her it is more important that the ends for which she 
strives are attained than that cheap applause should crown 
futile endeavour. 
But, as 1 have said, there is another side of the Selborne 
Society — the personal, the intimate, “the soul.” We can fight, 
we can achieve the objects of our corporate existence, the 
objects of the Selborne Society which are set forth in our 
prospectus, and having done all this we have not learnt “ the 
soul ” of the Selborne Society. This is the holy of holies of 
our work and of our world, and is hidden in each individual 
member of our organization. The freemasonry of Nature-love, 
the seeking for the essential beauty in the world and its in- 
dwellers, is involved in the Selborne Cult. To us. Pan and the 
Powers of the Air no longer typify a theocracy ; they embody 
a solemn truth, that men who learn to live in touch with Nature 
may attain to a clarified atmosphere where even the furious 
raging of the peoples is as a vain thing. What I want to convey 
in these halting sentences is, that it is the individual rather than 
the .Society who must do the ultimate work of Gilbert White 
in our day and in our generation. The man, be he humble or 
be he handicapped by affluence and the appliances for promoting 
his idleness and selfishness, if only he learns to commune with 
Nature, acquires the secret of peace and contentment, grasps 
the philosophy which books cannot teach, metaphysical methods 
cannot compass. I deplore that as a Society we do so little to 
inculcate this side of our work. We are militant, we are mildly 
scientific, but we are not whole-souled worshippers of Nature. 
We do a great deal, but may I venture to say we need do a 
