Nature Mysticism | Page 2

however complex and sublimated their interactions. It reveals a
ceaseless striving--an elan vital (as Bergson calls it) to expand and
enrich the forms of experience--a reaching forward to fuller beauty and
more perfect order.
A certain amount of metaphysical discussion will be necessary; but it
will be reduced to the minimum compatible with coherency.
Fortunately, Nature Mysticism can be at home with diverse
world-views. There is, however, one exception--the world-view which
is based on the concept of an Unconditioned Absolute. This will be
unhesitatingly rejected as subversive of any genuine "communion" with
nature. So also Symbolism will be repudiated on the ground that it
furnishes a quite inadequate account of the relation of natural
phenomena to the human mind. The only metaphysical theory adopted,
as a generalised working basis, is that known as Ideal-Realism. It
assumes three spheres of existence--that which in a peculiar sense is
within the individual mind: that which in a peculiar sense is without
(external to) the individual mind: and that in which these two are fused
or come into living contact. It will be maintained, as a thesis
fundamental to Nature Mysticism, that the world of external objects
must be essentially of the same essence as the perceiving minds. The
bearing of these condensed statements will become plain as the
phenomena of nature are passed in review. Of formal theology there
will be none.
The more certain conclusions of modern science, including the broader
generalisations of the hypothesis of evolution, will be assumed. Lowell,

in one of his sonnets, says:
"I grieve not that ripe knowledge takes away The charm that nature to
my childhood wore For, with that insight cometh, day by day, A greater
bliss than wonder was before: The real doth not clip the poet's wings;
To win the secret of a weed's plain heart Reveals some clue to spiritual
things, And stumbling guess becomes firm-rooted art."
Admirable--as far as it goes! But the modern nature-mystic cannot rest
content with the last line. The aim of nature-insight is not art, however
firm-rooted; for art is, so to speak, a secondary product, a reflection.
The goal of the nature-mystic is actual living communion with the Real,
in and through its sensuous manifestations.
Nature Mysticism, as thus conceived, does not seek to glorify itself
above other modes of experience and psychic activity. The partisanship
of the theological or of the transcendental type is here condemned. Nor
will there be an appeal to any ecstatic faculty which can only be the
vaunted appanage of the few. The appeal will lie to faculties which are
shared in some degree by all normal human beings, though they are too
often neglected, if not disparaged. Rightly developed, the capacity for
entering into communion with nature is not only a source of the purest
pleasure, but a subtle and powerful agent in aiding men to realise some
of the noblest potentialities of their being.
When treating of specific natural phenomena, the exposition demands
proof and illustration. In certain chapters, therefore, quotations from the
prose and poetry of those ancients and moderns who, avowedly or
unavowedly, rank as nature-mystics, are freely introduced. These
extracts form an integral part of the study, because they afford direct
evidence of the reality, and of the continuity, of the mystical faculty as
above defined.
The usual method of procedure will be to trace the influence of certain
selected natural phenomena on the human mind, first in the animistic
stage, then in the mythological stage, and lastly in the present, with a
view to showing that there has been a genuine and living development
of deep-seated nature intuitions. But this method will not be too strictly

followed. Special subjects will meet with special treatment, and
needless repetition will be carefully avoided. The various chapters, as
far as may be, will not only present new themes, but will approach the
subject at different angles.
It is obvious that severe limitations must be imposed in the selection
from so vast a mass of material. Accordingly, the phenomena of Water,
Air, and Fire have received the fullest attention--the first of the triad
getting the lion's share; but other marked features of the physical
universe have not been altogether passed by. The realm of organic
life--vegetable and animal--does not properly fall within the limits of
this study. For where organised life reveals itself, men find it less
difficult to realise their kinship with existences other than human. The
curious, and still obscure, history of totemism supplies abundant
evidence on this point; and not less so that modern sympathy with all
living things, which is largely based on what may be termed the new
totemism of the Darwinian theory. But while attention will thus be
focussed on the sphere of the inorganic, seemingly so remote from
human modes of experience, some attempt