THE HAPPINESS TO BE FOUND IN LOVE OF 
NATURE. 
L real and wholesome enjoyments possible to man have 
been just as possible to him, since first he was made of 
the earth, as they are now ; and they are possible to 
him chiefly in peace. To watch the corn grow, and 
the blossoms set ; to draw hard breath over ploughshare or 
spade ; to read, to think, to love, to hope, to pray, — these are the 
things that make men happy ; they have always had the power 
of doing these, they never will have power to do more. The 
world’s prosperity or adversity depends upon our knowing and 
teaching these few things : but upon iron, or glass, or electricity, 
or steam, in no wise. 
And I am Utopian and enthusiastic enough to believe that 
the time will come when the world will discover this. It has 
now made its experiments in every possible direction but the 
right one : and it seems that it must, at last, try the right one, in 
a mathematical necessity. It has tried fighting, and preaching, 
and fasting, buying and selling, pomp and parsimony, pride and 
humiliation, — every possible manner of existence in which it 
could conjecture there was any happiness or dignity ; and all the 
while, as it bought, sold, and fought, and fasted, and wearied 
itself with policies, and ambition, and self-denials, God had 
placed its real happiness in the keeping of the little mosses of the 
wayside, and of the clouds of the firmament. Now and then a 
wearied king,* or a tormented slave, found out where the true 
kingdoms of the world were, and possessed himself, in a furrow 
or two of garden ground, of a truly infinite dominion. But the 
world would not believe their report, and went on trampling down 
the mosses, and forgetting the clouds, and seeking happiness in 
its own way, until, at last, blundering and late, came natural 
science ; and in natural science not only the observation of 
things, but the finding out of new uses for them. Of course 
the world, having a choice left to it, went wrong as usual, and 
thought that these mere material uses were to be the sources 
of its happiness. It got the clouds packed into iron cylinders, 
and made them carry its wise self at their own cloud pace. It 
got weavable fibres out of the mosses, and made clothes for 
itself, cheap and fine, — here was happiness at last. To go as 
fast as the clouds, and manufacture everything out of anything, — 
here was paradise, indeed ! 
And now, when, in a little while, it is unparadised again, if 
there were any other mistake that the world could make, it 
would of course make it. But I see not that there is any other ; 
and, standing fairly at its wit’s end, having found that going fast, 
when it is used to it, is no more paradisiacal than going slow ; 
See the description of the abdication of Diocletian. Gibbon, chap. xiii. 
