MANUAL 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 life 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? 
Let 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 
