handles of a plow until such time as objects begin to take
their natural shape and meaning in his mind.

It is not within my purview here to consider the abstract righteous
relation of man to the creation, nor to examine the major emotions that
result from a contemplation of nature. It is only a very few of the
simpler and more practical considerations that I may suggest.

The training in solid experience naturally emphasizes the righteousness
of plain and simple eating and drinking, and of frugality and control in
pleasures. Many of the adventitious pleasures are in the highest degree
pernicious and are indications of weakness.

Considering the almost universal opinion that nature exhibits the
merciless and relentless struggle of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a
tooth, it is significant that one of the most productive ways of
training a youth in sensitiveness and in regard for other creatures is
by means of the nature contact. Even if the person is taught that the
strong and ferocious survive and conquer, he nevertheless soon comes to
have the tenderest regard for every living thing if he has the naturist
in him. He discards the idea that we lose virility when we cease to
kill, and relegates the notion to the limbo of deceits. This only means
that unconsciously he has experienced the truth in nature, and in
practice has discarded the erroneous philosophy contained in books even
though he may still give these philosophies his mental assent.

It is exactly among the naturists that the old instinct to kill begins
to lose its force and that an instinct of helpfulness and real
brotherhood soon takes its place. From another source, the instinct to
kill dies out among the moralists and other people. And yet it is
passing strange how this old survival--or is it a reversion?--holds its
place amongst us, even in the higher levels. The punishment of a life
for a life is itself a survival. Entertainment even yet plays upon this
old memory of killing, as in books of adventure, in fiction, in
playgames of children, and worst of all on the stage where this strange
anachronism, even in plays that are not historic, is still portrayed in
pernicious features and in a way that would rouse any community and
violate law if it were enacted in real life.

It is difficult to explain these survivals when we pretend to be so much
shocked by the struggle for existence. We must accept the struggle, but
we ought to try to understand it. The