e homage of man to this unfathomed secret, concerning which no sane
man can affect an indifference or incuriosity. Nature is loved by what
is best in us. It is loved as the city of God, although, or rather
because there is no citizen. The sunset is unlike anything that is
underneath it: it wants men. And the beauty of nature must always seem
unreal and mocking, until the landscape has human figures that are
as good as itself. If there were good men, there would never be this
rapture in nature. If the king is in the palace, nobody looks at the
walls. It is when he is gone, and the house is filled with grooms and
gazers, that we turn from the people to find relief in the majestic men
that are suggested by the pictures and the architecture. The critics who
complain of the sickly separation of the beauty of nature from the
thing to be done, must consider that our hunting of the picturesque
is inseparable from our protest against false society. Man is fallen;
nature is erect, and serves as a differential thermometer, detecting
the presence or absence of the divine sentiment in man. By fault of our
dulness and selfishness we are looking up to nature, but when we are
convalescent, nature will look up to us. We see the foaming brook with
compunction: if our own life flowed with the right energy, we should
shame the brook. The stream of zeal sparkles with real fire, and not
with reflex rays of sun and moon. Nature may be as selfishly studied as
trade. Astronomy to the selfish becomes astrology; psychology, mesmerism
(with intent to show where our spoons are gone); and anatomy and
physiology become phrenology and palmistry.

But taking timely warning, and leaving many things unsaid on this
topic, let us not longer omit our homage to the Efficient Nature, natura
naturans, the quick cause before which all forms flee as the driven
snows; itself secret, its works driven before it in flocks and
multitudes, (as the ancient represented nature by Proteus, a shepherd,)
and in undescribable variety. It publishes itself in creatures, reaching
from particles and spiculae through transformation on transformation to
the highest symmetries, arriving at consummate results without a
shock or a leap. A little heat, that is a little motion, is all that
differences the bald, dazzling white and deadly cold poles of the earth
from the prolific tropical climates. All changes pass without violence,
by reason of the two cardinal conditions of boundless sp