han the primitive man or the isolated man in daily contact with
non-human nature. Communing with nature seems not only to require
communing with man but to give joys in proportion as the nature lover
is concerned for the human society of which he is a part. Natural law
does not become a moral principle until man is benefited or injured by
man's use of nature's resources within and about him. Natural living
according to natural law must be something sounder, more beautiful, and
more progressive than can be read into or out of mountains, trees,
brooks, and sky, or primitive society.

Natural law points to a Nature Fore as well as a Nature Back, to a
Nature Up and Beyond as well as a Nature Down and Behind. The Nature
that was yesterday will not do for to-morrow, any more than a man is
willing to give up his nature aspirations for the careless, animal ways
of romping childhood. Civilization is constantly urged at each step to
repeat the prayer of Holmes's old man who dreams for the Autocrat of
the Breakfast Table:

Oh for one hour of youthful joy!
Give back my twentieth spring!
I'd rather laugh a bright-haired boy
Than reign a gray-beard king!

Off with the wrinkled spoils of age!
Away with learning's crown!
Tear out life's wisdom-written page,
And dash its trophies down!

One moment let my life blood stream
From boyhood's fount of flame!
Give me one giddy, reeling dream
Of life all love and fame!

But every experiment in turning back exalts the present and the future.
Gifts as well as problems are seen to come with complexity, and
civilization flatly refuses to relinquish these gifts. Sound maturity
is better than youth or age:

The smiling angel dropped his pen,--
"Why, this will never do;
The man would be a boy again,
And be a father too!"

Problems of health and of civics can never be solved by appealing to
Nature Back, when only the few could be healthy, when one baby in three
died in infancy, when old age was toothless and childish, when
infection ravished nations, when the average life was twenty years
shorter than now, and when unspeakable filth was tolerated in air,
street, and house. They can all be solved by appeals to Nature Fore,
which holds up an ideal of mankind physically able to enjoy all the
benefits and to conquer all the dangers of civilization. It is not
looking back, but looking in and forward that reveals wh