Chapter 17

A BOY'S ANIMISM

The animistic faculty and its survival in us--A boy's animism and its persistence--Impossibility of seeing our past exactly as it was--Serge Aksakoff's history of his childhood--The child's delight in nature purely physical--First intimations of animism in the child--How it affected me--Feeling with regard to flowers--A flower and my mother --History of a flower--Animism with regard to trees--Locust trees by moonlight--Animism and nature-worship--Animistic emotion not uncommon --Cowper and the Yardley oak--The religionist's fear of nature-- Pantheistic Christianity--Survival of nature-worship in England-- The feeling for nature--Wordsworth's pantheism and animistic emotion in poetry