see what things
really are. If we put ourselves right up against a picture in the
National Gallery we cannot possibly see its beauty--see what the
picture really is. No man is a hero to his own valet. And that is not
because a man is not a hero, but because the valet is too close to see
the real man. Cecil Rhodes at close quarters was peevish, irritable,
and like a big spoilt child. Now at a distance we know him, with all
his faults, to have been a great-souled man. Social reformers near at
hand are often intolerable bores and religious fanatics frequently a
pestilential nuisance. We have to get well away from a man to see
him as he really is. And so it is with mankind as a whole.

So I become more and more certain that my vision was true. And the
experience of the Great War strengthens my conviction. As we
recede from it, what will stand out, we may be sure, are not the
crimes and cruelties that have been committed and the suffering that
has been caused, but the astounding heroism which was displayed,
the self-sacrifice, the devotion and love of country that were
shown--heroism and devotion such as have never before in the world's
history been approached, and which was manifested by common
everyday men and women in every branch of life and in every
country.

* * *

The conclusion I reach from this experience is that I was, at the
moment I had it, intimately in touch with the true Heart of Nature. In
my exceptionally receptive mood I was directly experiencing the
genius of Nature in the very act of inspiring and vitalising the whole.
I was seeing the Divinity in the Heart streaming like light and heat
through every part of Nature, and with the dominating forcefulness
of love lifting each to its own high level.

And my experience was no unique experience. It was an experience
the like of which has come to many men and many women in every
land in all ages. It may not be common; but it is not unusual. And in
all cases it gives the same certainty of conviction that the Heart of
Nature is _good,_ that men are not the sport of chance, but that
Divine Love is a real, an effectively determining and the dominant
factor in the processes of Nature, and Divine fellowship the essence
of the ideal which is working throughout Nature and compelling all
things unto itself.

CHAPTER XII

THE HEART OF NATURE

That Nature is a Personal Being--or at least nothing _less_ than a
Personal Being--that she is actuated by an ideal