ensation or
rarefaction of the particles of the primary substance. The simple
normal condition of this substance he deemed to be air. In its
rarefied condition, it becomes fire, and in its condensed
condition it progresses by stages from liquid to solid. And just
as the modern chemist is beginning to have good ground for
believing that all substances, or so-called elements, may be the
result of a series of differentiations and compositions of an
originally homogeneous substance, in spite of the fact that he is
not yet able to effect the transformations in his laboratory, so,
all those centuries ago, the Milesian sage seized on the same
root idea and made it the basis of a world philosophy. It is a
long cry from the old idea, familiar to Homer, that mist or
vapour is condensed air to the cosmology of a Herbert Spencer,
and yet nature is so rich in material for prompting intuitions of
her deepest truths that one ultimate cause of material evolution
was revealed in days when science was hardly brought to the
birth.

An examination, albeit cursory and partial, of this ancient
speculation, has thus revealed at any rate two results of prime
importance in the study of Nature Mysticism. The one is that
the air has furnished the primary type of the soul as the
principle of life--man's fleeting breath has suggested and
fostered the idea of immortality; the wind that bloweth where it
listeth, the idea of a realm of changeless spirit! The other result
is that certain of nature's most obvious phenomena, when seized
by intuition, can supply a key to some of her profoundest
secrets. Shall not these results be as true for the world of to-day
as for the flourishing times of old-world Miletus?

CHAPTER XXVI

WINDS AND CLOUDS

The recognition of the mystic element in external nature has had
its fluctuations in most ages and climes, and not least so in
England. Marvel, in his day, felt the numbness creeping on that
comes of divorce from nature, and uttered his plaint of "The
Mower against Gardens."

"Tis all enforced, the fountain and the grot,
While the sweet fields do lie forgot,
Where willing nature does to all dispense
A wild and fragrant innocence."

And declared of the polished statues made to adorn the gardens,
that

"howsoe'er the figures do excel,
The gods themselves with us do dwell."

His protests, however, did not avail to ward off the artificiality
of the reign of Pope. H