s
fellow-countrymen and has energy and determination, he may do much to
affect her destiny.

England is therefore, so it seems, a _person_ just as much as a single
Englishman is a person. Englishmen, in fact, only attain their full
personality in an England which _has_ personality.

* * *

Now Nature, I suggest, in spite of what has been said against the
view, is a Person in exactly the same way as England is a person.
Nature is a collective being made up of component beings--self-active
electrons, self-active atoms, self-active suns and planets, self-active
cells, plants, animals, men, and groups and nations of men--as
England is made up of the land of England and all that springs
therefrom, including the Englishmen themselves. Nature thinks and
feels and strives as England thinks and feels and strives. And Nature
cares for her children as England looks after her sons. It is often said,
indeed, that Nature is hard and cruel. But it is only through the
unfailing regularity and reliability of her fundamental laws--of her
"constitution"--that freedom and progress are possible. If we could
not depend upon perfect law we could make no advance whatever.
We should all be abroad and uncertain. Yet in spite of her unbending
rigidity over fundamentals, she does also show mercy and pity. A
child toddling along downhill unregardful of the force of gravitation
falls on its face and screams with pain. But Nature, represented by
the mother, rushes up, seizes the little thing in her arms, presses it
lovingly to her bosom, rock it and coaxes it and covers it with kisses.

So if Nature can think and feel and strive and show mercy and
loving-kindness, she is entitled to the dignity of personality. And
when we stand back and regard Nature as a whole, we shall look
upon her as a Person and nothing less.

* * *

We have now to understand what is meant by saying that Nature is a
Person actuated by a hidden ideal and being in process of realising
that ideal. When travelling across the Gobi Desert I found a yellow
rose--a dwarf, simple, single rose. It is known to botanists as _Rosa
persica,_ and is believed to be the original of all roses. I found it on
the extreme outlying spurs of the Altai Mountains. Now, a seed of
the rose, partly under the influence of its surroundings (soil,
moisture, air, sunshine) but chiefly _by virtue of something which it
contains within itself,_ something inherent in its very nature, will
grow up into a r