X 
MANUAL OF NATURF STUDY. 
of which were as numerous as the ideas to be represented. 
Hence wood and stream were early peopled with divine 
images born out of this love of nature. “To those gods,” 
it is said by one writer, “we owe our grandest architectural 
forms and most beautiful statuary. For at first temples 
were hollowed out of the trunks of trees, and wooden gods 
were placed therein for safety.” As the love of nature 
lifted man’s soul, “temples of wood took the place of trees, 
and these in turn gave place to temples of stone, beautifully 
adorned with gold and silver, and the wooden gods gave 
place to statuary of marble and ivory, so that to-day we can 
carve nothing to equal the work of these old Greek sculp¬ 
tors.” 
The Greek’s love of nature developed the Grecian spirit, 
and as it grew it poured itself out into the general spirit of 
nature, and the spirit of nature, thus reinforced, returned a 
flood of light upon the spirit of the Greek. Each stage of 
spiritual progress demands a finer piece of statuary to repre¬ 
sent deity and a better temple for his dwelling-place. This 
idea of worship—for that is what it was—this reaching out 
after satisfaction in nature, increases the magnitude, beauty 
and grandeur of the statuary and decreases the number of 
deities. When each element of the universe was considered 
separate and apart from all others, as distinct organisms in 
nature, deities multiplied in great abundance; but when the 
elements were found organized into one complex whole, a 
universal spirit was plainly visible through these outward 
manifestations. This universal spirit, which is God in 
nature, demanded a temple infinitely more beautiful than 
the finest Grecian architecture—a temple not made of mate¬ 
rial things. The ideal temple moved on and on beyond the 
bounds of matter; indeed it passed into the spiritual realm. 
