The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and Modern Times | Page 3

deepens love
for her and increases and refines the sense of her beauty. In short, deep
feeling for Nature always proves considerable culture of heart and
mind.
There is a constant analogy between the growth of this feeling and that
of general culture.
As each nation and time has its own mode of thought, which is

constantly changing, so each period has its 'landscape eye.' The same
rule applies to individuals. Nature, as Jean Paul said, is made
intelligible to man in being for ever made flesh. We cannot look at her
impersonally, we must needs give her form and soul, in order to grasp
and describe her.
Vischer says[1] 'it is simply by an act of comparison that we think we
see our own life in inanimate objects.' We say that Nature's clearness is
like clearness of mind, that her darkness and gloom are like a dark and
gloomy mood; then, omitting 'like,' we go on to ascribe our qualities
directly to her, and say, this neighbourhood, this air, this general tone
of colour, is cheerful, melancholy, and so forth. Here we are prompted
by an undeveloped dormant consciousness which really only compares,
while it seems to take one thing for another. In this way we come to say
that a rock projects boldly, that fire rages furiously over a building, that
a summer evening with flocks going home at sunset is peaceful and
idyllic; that autumn, dripping with rain, its willows sighing in the wind,
is elegiac and melancholy and so forth.
Perhaps Nature would not prove to be this ready symbol of man's inner
life were there no secret rapport between the two. It is as if, in some
mysterious way, we meet in her another mind, which speaks a language
we know, wakening a foretaste of kinship; and whether the soul she
expresses is one we have lent her, or her own which we have divined,
the relationship is still one of give and take.
Let us take a rapid survey of the course of this feeling in antiquity.
Pantheism has always been the home of a special tenderness for Nature,
and the poetry of India is full of intimate dealings between man and
plants and animals.
They are found in the loftiest flights of religious enthusiasm in the
Vedas, where, be it only in reference to the splendour of dawn or the
'golden-handed sun,' Nature is always assumed to be closely connected
with man's inner and outer life. Later on, as Brahminism appeared,
deepening the contemplative side of Hindoo character, and the drama
and historical plays came in, generalities gave way to definite
localizing, and in the Epics ornate descriptions of actual landscape took
independent place. Nature's sympathy with human joys and griefs was
taken for granted, and she played a part of her own in drama.
In the _Mahâbhârata_, when Damajanti is wandering in search of her

lost Nala and sees the great mountain top, she asks it for her prince.
Oh mountain lord! Far seen and celebrated hill, that cleav'st The blue o'
the sky, refuge of living things, Most noble eminence, I worship thee!...
O Mount, whose double ridge stamps on the sky Yon line, by
five-score splendid pinnacles Indented; tell me, in this gloomy wood
Hast thou seen Nala? Nala, wise and bold! Ah mountain! why consolest
thou me not, Answering one word to sorrowful, distressed, Lonely, lost
Damajanti?
And when she comes to the tree Asoka, she implores:
Ah, lovely tree! that wavest here Thy crown of countless shining
clustering blooms As thou wert woodland king! Asoka tree! Tree called
the sorrow-ender, heart's-ease tree! Be what thy name saith; end my
sorrow now, Saying, ah, bright Asoka, thou hast seen My Prince, my
dauntless Nala--seen that lord Whom Damajanti loves and his foes fear.
In Maghas' epic, The Death of Sisupala, plants and animals lead the
same voluptuous life as the 'deep-bosomed, wide-hipped' girls with the
ardent men.
'The mountain Raivataka touches the ether with a thousand heads, earth
with a thousand feet, the sun and moon are his eyes. When the birds are
tired and tremble with delight from the caresses of their mates, he
grants them shade from lotos leaves. Who in the world is not
astonished when he has climbed, to see the prince of mountains who
overshadows the ether and far-reaching regions of earth, standing there
with his great projecting crags, while the moon's sickle trembles on his
summit?'
In Kalidasa's Urwasi, the deserted King who is searching for his wife
asks the peacock:
Oh tell, If, free on the wing as you soar, You have seen the loved
nymph I deplore-- You will know her, the fairest of damsels fair, By
her large soft eye and her graceful air; Bird of the dark blue throat and
eye