Nature Mysticism

There are many thinkers who are ready to acknowledge that the contemplation of nature leads to various kinds of emotional and aesthetic experience, but who at the same time deny...

A charge frequently brought against the nature-mystic is that he ignores the dark side of nature, and shuts his eyes to the ugly and repulsive features of the world of external...

The idea that inorganic nature is not merely informed by reason, but is also possessed of will and consciousness, will strike many serious students as bizarre and fanciful. Ther...

There can be no doubt, as already stated, that, of all physical phenomena, fire had the most marked effect upon the imagination of primitive man. He saw that it was utterly unli...

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 cre...

We have found that the constant movement and change manifested in the circulation of the waters of the globe impressed the mind of Thales and largely determined the course of hi...

The seasons and the months, especially those of the temperate zones--how saturated with mysticism! The wealth of illustration is so abounding that choice is wellnigh paralysed....

Mysticism and symbolism are generally regarded as inseparable: some may go so far as to make them practically synonymous. Hence the large space devoted to symbols in most treati...

Heracleitus is a philosopher whose speculations are of surpassing interest for the student of Nature Mysticism. He was born about 540 B.C., at Ephesus, and lived some sixty year...

What a charm the nature deities of Greece and Rome can still exercise! How large the place they still occupy in poetry, art, and general culture! At times some of our moderns ar...

As just stated, metaphysics and theology are to be avoided. But since Mysticism is generally associated with belief in an Unconditioned Absolute, and since such an Absolute is f...

After this metaphysical bath we return invigorated to the world of concrete experience dear alike to the common-sense thinker and the modern investigator. Do the facts of life,...

The general character of the nature-mystic's main contention will now be sufficiently obvious. He maintains that man and his environment are not connected in any merely external...

So much for the nature-mystic's relation to the concept of the Absolute. It would be interesting to discuss, from the same point of view, his relations to the rival doctrines of...

The world of fact, no less than the world of abstract thought, is full of contradictions and unsolved antinomies. Here is one such contradiction or antinomy. Moving water, it ha...

Charles Lamb, with his native sensitiveness, considered this line to be too terrible for art. Its suggestion of "the irresponsive blankness of the universe" was for him too nake...

Many thinkers of the present day pride themselves upon the growth of what they call the naturalistic spirit. What do they mean by this? They mean that the older ways of interpre...

Although the outstanding mark of intuition is its immediacy, that does not imply that it is independent of mental development, of culture, or of discipline. So far all classes o...

Thus does Goethe, in this little poem of two verses, with a masterly ease that carries conviction, suggest to us the subtle power of a calm at sea. The mountain tarn, alone with...

Is this a statement of fact? Largely so, if the reference is to the river gods, the Naiads, and water sprites, of classical mythology. But not true if the vaguer belief in spiri...

The programme laid down in the introductory chapter has been fulfilled. There has been no attempt to make any single section, much less the study as a whole, a complete or exhau...

A river is but a larger brook. And yet by virtue of its volume, it manifests features which are peculiarly its own, and exerts influences which have not alone affected individua...

The Ocean! What is its mystic significance? A question as fraught with living issues as its physical object is spacious and profound. Infinitely varied and yet unchanging; gentl...

The most familiar appeal of the Ocean is that of the wave which speeds over its surface or breaks upon its shores. Poets have found here an inexhaustible theme. Painters have he...

The contention of the nature-mystic is that man can enter into direct communion with the objects in his physical environment, inasmuch as they are akin to himself in their essen...

The materials are now fairly complete for understanding the rise and development of animism. The untrained primitive intellect was stirred by vague intuitions--stimulated by con...

So much by way of direct answer to the formidable attack upon the nature-mystic's position. In turning to more constructive work, which will furnish many indirect answers, it wi...

A wave of Mysticism is passing over the civilised nations. It is welcomed by many: by more it is mistrusted. Even the minds to which it would naturally appeal are often restrain...

And thus the three great nature-philosophers of the old world, Thales, Anaximenes, and Heracleitus, have been our guides, so to speak, in surveying the most striking phenomena o...

In an earlier chapter mention was made of that truly remarkable group of thinkers who, in the sixth century before the Christian era, made the momentous transition from mytholog...

There is a striking passage in Tylor's "Primitive Culture" which will admirably serve as an introduction to this chapter and the one which is to follow, on "Rivers and Waterfall...

The fundamental postulates and principles of a consistent Nature Mysticism have now been expounded with a fullness sufficient to allow of a soberly enthusiastic study of the det...

Robert Fludd, the English Rosicrucian, who died in 1637, wrote a treatise on the universe, in which he taught that man was a microcosm of the macrocosm, and that light and darkn...

Hitherto our attention has been almost exclusively fixed upon the mystical influences of water in motion or at rest. And even though we went no farther afield, a fair presentmen...