Chapter 10 THE NATURE OF NATURE

The Artist is now in a position to take stock of Nature as a whole, of her nature, methods, and manner of working, of the motives which actuate her-of what, in short, she really is at heart. And having thus reviewed her, he will have to determine whether his wider and deeper knowledge of Nature confirms or detracts from the impression of her which he had gained from a contemplation of the forest's innumerable life. Upon this decision will depend his final attitude towards her. And upon his attitude towards her depends his capacity for enjoying Natural Beauty.

For if he has any doubt in his mind as to the goodness of Nature or any hesitation about giving himself out to her, there is little prospect of his seeing Beauty in her. He will remain cold and unresponsive to her calls and enjoyment of Natural Beauty will not be for him.

And each of us-each for himself-just as much as the Artist will have to make up his mind on this fundamental question. If we are to get the full enjoyment we should expect out of Natural Beauty we must have a clear and firm conception in our minds of what Nature really is, what is her essential character, whether at heart she is cold and callous or warm and loving. So far as we were justified in drawing conclusions regarding the character of Nature as a whole from what we saw of her manifestations in the life of the forest, we came to the conclusion that she was not so hard and repellent as she assuredly would be to us if her guiding principle of action were the survival of the fittest. We inferred, rather, from our observations of her in the forest that she was actuated by an aspiration towards what we ourselves hold to be of most worth and value. We were therefore not disillusioned by closer familiarity with her, but more closely drawn towards her, and therefore prepared to see more Beauty in her. Now we have to review Nature as a whole-that is, in the Starry World as well as on this Earth-and see if the same conclusions hold good, and if we are therefore justified in loving Nature, or if we should view her with suspicion and distrust, hold ourselves aloof from her, and cultivate a stoic courage in face of a Power whose character we must cordially dislike.

There are men who hold that the appearance of life and love on this Earth is a mere flash in the pan and comes about by pure chance. They believe that life will be extinguished in a twinkling as we collide with some other star, or will simply flicker out again as the Sun's heat dies down and the Earth becomes cold. If this view be correct, then that impression of the reliability and kindliness of Nature which we formed when contemplating the stars in the desert would be a false impression; our feelings of friendship with Nature would at once freeze up and our vision of Beauty vanish like a wraith.

Fortunately Truth and Knowledge do not deal so cruel a blow at Beauty. Far from it: they take her side. There are no grounds for supposing that either chance or mechanism produces spirit, or that from merely physical and chemical combinations spirit can emerge. Spirit is no casual by-product of mechanical or chemical processes. Spirit is the governing factor regulating and controlling the physical movements-controlling them, indeed, with such orderliness that we may be apt from this very orderliness to regard the whole as a machine and fail to see that all is directed towards high spiritual ends.

If we are to appeal to reason, it is much more reasonable to assume that spirit always existed, and that the conditions for the emergence of life were brought about on purpose, than to assume that spirit is a mere excretion, like perspiration, of chemical processes. Certainly the former assumptions more clearly fit the facts of the case. For these facts are, firstly, that we spiritual selves exist, next that we have ideas of goodness and a determination to achieve it, next that plant as well as animal life on this Earth is purposive, then that the stars, numbering anything from a hundred to a thousand million, each of them a sun and many of them presumably with planets, are made of the same materials as this Earth, the plants, animals, and ourselves are composed of; that these materials have the same properties; that the same fundamental laws of gravitation, heat, motion, chemical and electrical action prevail there as here; and lastly that they are all connected with the Earth by some medium or continuum of energies, which enables vibrations, of which the most obvious are the vibrations of light, to reach the Earth from them. These facts point towards the conclusion that the whole Universe, as well as ourselves and the animals and plants on this Earth, is actuated by spirit. Goodness we have seen to be working itself out on the Earth; and there is nothing we see in the world of stars that prevents us from concluding that in the Universe as well as on the Earth what should be is the ground of what is.

Something higher than life, or life in some higher form than we know, may indeed have been brought into being among the stars. Life has appeared in an extraordinary variety of forms on this Earth, and it would necessarily appear in other forms elsewhere. And it is not difficult to imagine more perfect forms in which it might have developed. We men are the most highly developed beings on this planet. But our eyes and ears and other organs of sense take cognisance of only a few of the vibrations raining in upon our bodies from the outside world. There is a vast range of vibrations of the medium in which we are immersed of which our bodily organs take no cognisance whatever. If we had better developed organs we would be in much more intimate touch with the world about us, and be aware of influences and existences we are blind to now. Beings with these superior faculties may very possibly have come into existence among the stars.

Nor is there anything unreasonable in the assumption that from the inhabitants of these stars in their ensemble issue influences which directly affect conditions on this Earth; that in the all in its togetherness is Purpose; and that it was due to the working of this Purpose that conditions were produced on the Earth which made the emergence of life possible. To some it may seem that it was only by chance that the atoms and molecules happened to come together in such a particular way that from the combination the emergence of life was possible. To men of such restricted vision it would seem equally a matter of chance that a heavenly song resulted when a dozen choirboys came together, opened their mouths and made a noise. But men of wider vision would have seen that this song was no matter of chance, but was the result of the working out of a purpose; that the choirboys were brought together for a purpose; and that that purpose was resident in each of a large number of people scattered about a parish, but who, though scattered, were all animated by the same purpose of maintaining a choir to sing hymns. So it is not unreasonable to suppose that when the particles came together under conditions that life resulted, they had been brought together in those conditions to fulfil a purpose resident in each of a number of beings and groups of beings scattered about the Universe, but who, though scattered, were nevertheless animated by the same purpose. Anyhow, this seems a more reasonable assumption than the assumption that the particles came together by pure chance.

Beings with these superior faculties may very possibly have emerged among the stars. It would seem not at all improbable, therefore, that in some unrecognised way conditions on this Earth may be influenced in their general outlines by what is taking place in the Universe at large, in the same way as conditions in a village in India are affected by public opinion in England as epitomised in the decisions of the Cabinet. The remote Indian village is unaware that men in England have decided to grant responsible government to India in due course. And even if the villagers were told of this they would not realise the significance of the decision and how it would affect the fortunes of their village for good or ill during the next century or two. Conditions on this Earth may be similarly being affected by decisions made in other parts of the Universe-decisions the significance of which we would be as totally unable to recognise as the Indian villagers are to recognise the significance of the steps towards self-government which have just been made.

The Universe is so interconnected, and there is so much interaction between the parts and the whole, that the Earth may be more affected than we think by what goes on in the Universe at large. If there are higher levels of being among the stars, it may well be that the successive rises to higher levels on this Earth-from inorganic to organic, from organic to mental, and from the mental to the spiritual-have come about through this interaction between the parts and the whole. Conditions on this Earth may be more affected than we are aware of by the Universe in its ensemble, and by the actions of higher beings in other Earths.

In this very matter of Beauty, for example, it may quite possibly be the case that our intimation of Beauty has been received through the influence upon the most sensitive among us of beings in other parts of the Universe. We may be as unaware of the existence of those beings or of their having feelings towards us as the Indian villager is of the existence of the Cabinet in London or of the Cabinet's feelings towards him. But these stellar beings may be exerting their influence all the same. And it may be because of this influence that we men are able to see Beauty which escapes the eye of the eagle. Because of our higher receptiveness and responsiveness we may be able to receive and respond to spiritual calls from the Heart of Nature. And thus it may have been that we men learned to see Beauty, and now learn to see it more and more. There may be parts of the Universe where people live their lives in a blaze of Beauty, and are as anxious to impart to us their enjoyment of it as certain Freedom-loving Englishmen are to instil ideas of Freedom into the villagers of India.

These, at any rate, are among the possibilities of existence. It would be the veriest chance if on this little speck of an Earth the highest beings of all had come to birth. It may be so, of course. But the probabilities seem to be enormously great against it. It seems far more probable that among the myriads of stars some higher beings than ourselves have come into existence, and that conditions on this Earth are affected by the influence which they exert. We are under no compulsion whatever to believe that we men are completely at the mercy of blind forces or that chance rules supreme in Nature. We have firm ground for holding that it is spirit which is supreme, and that every smallest part and the whole together are animated by Purpose.

So when we view Nature in the tropical forests and in barren deserts, in mountains and in plains, in meadows and in woodlands, in seas and in stars, in animals and in men, we do not see Nature as a confused jumble with all her innumerable parts come together in haphazard fashion as the grains of sand shovelled into a heap-a chance aggregate of unrelated particles in which it is a mere toss-up which is next to which and how they are arranged. Nature is evidently not a chance collection of unrelated particles. We came to that conclusion when studying the forest, and a study of the stars shows nothing to weaken that conclusion. Nature is animated by Purpose.

Yet because Nature is animated by Purpose, we need not regard her as a machine, a piece of mechanism which has been designed and put together, wound up and set going by some outside mechanician, and regard ourselves as cogs on the wheels, watching all the other wheels go round and through the maze of machinery catching sight of the mechanician standing by and watching his handiwork. A cog on the wheel as it revolved would be rigidly confined in its operations: it would have no choice as to what means it should employ to carry out its end. Yet even plants have the power of choice, as we have seen, and use different means to achieve the same end. They also spend their entire lives in selecting and rejecting-in selecting and assimilating what will nourish their growth and enable them to propagate their kind, and in rejecting what would be useless or harmful. These are something more than mechanical operations; and if Nature were a machine, not even plants, much less animals and men, could have been produced. The operations of Nature, though orderly, are not mechanical only, and we cannot regard Nature as a machine.

And if Nature is purposive, she is at work at something more than the completion of a prearranged plan. We do not picture Nature as a structure, as a Cathedral, for example, designed by some super-architect, in process of construction. In a Cathedral each stone is perfectly and finally shaped and placed in a position in which it must ever after remain, and the whole shows signs of gradual completion as it is being built, and when it is built remains as it is. The architect has made I and carried out his plan, and there is an end of the matter. It is not thus that we view Nature, for everywhere we see signs of perfectibility in the component parts and in the whole together. Only if the Cathedral had in it the power to be continually making its foundations deeper, to be ever towering higher, and to be perpetually shaping itself into sublimer form, should we look on Nature as a Cathedral. But in that case the mind of the architect would have to dwell in each stone and in all together, and the Cathedral would be something more than a structure in the ordinary use of the word.

Nature is not a chance collection of particles, nor is she a mere machine, nor some kind of structure like a Cathedral in course of construction. But she is a Power of some kind, and what we have to determine is the kind of Power she is. Now we have seen that running through the life of the forest, controlling and directing the whole, is an Organising Activity. And our observation of the stars leads us to think that this same Organising Activity runs through them also. There is quite evidently an Activity at work keeping the whole together-the particles which go to form great suns, the particles which go to form a flower, and the particles which go to form a man; and all in their togetherness. Only we would not look upon this Activity as working anywhere outside Nature: we would look for it within her. We would not regard it as emanating from some kind of spiritual central sun situated among the stars midway between us and the farthest star we see-as irradiating from some sort of centrally-situated spiritual power-house. As we look up into the starry heavens we cannot imagine the Activity as residing in the empty space between the stars or between the stars and the Earth on which we stand. It seems absurd to picture its dwelling-place there. Equally absurd does it seem to regard the Activity as emanating from some spiritual sun situated far beyond the confines of the stars, and from there emitting spiritual rays upon Nature, including us men. As we look out upon Nature we see that the Activity which animates her does not issue from any outside source, but is actually in her.

We do not need to look for the seat of that animating Activity in the empty spaces of the starry heavens or anywhere beyond them. We look for it in the stars themselves, in our own star, in the Earth, in every particle of which the stars and Sun and Earth are composed, in every plant and animal, and in every human heart, and in the whole together. There it is-and especially in the human heart-that the soul of Nature resides. There is its dwelling-place. To each of us it is nearer than father is to son. It is as near as "I" am to each one of the myriad particles which in their togetherness go to make up the body and soul which is "me." The spirit of Nature is resident in no remoteness of cold and empty space. It is deep within us and all around us. It permeates everything and everybody, everywhere and always. And if we wish to be unmistakably aware of its presence, we have only to look within ourselves, and whenever we are conscious of a higher perfection which something within, responding to the influences impinging insistently on us, is urging us to achieve; whenever we have a vision of something more perfect, more lovely, more lovable, and feel ourselves urged on to reach after that greater perfection-we are in those moments directly and unmistakably experiencing the Divine Spirit of Nature. Whenever we feel the Spirit within us showing us greater perfectibility and prompting us to make ourselves and others more perfect than we have been we are, in that moment, being directly influenced by the Spirit of Nature itself. We are receiving inspiration direct from the genius of Nature, the driving Spirit which is continually urging her on, and the directing Spirit which guides her to an end. We are in touch with the true Heart of Nature.

So as we take a comprehensive view of Nature both in her outward bodily form and her inner spiritual reality, and find her to be an interconnected whole in which all the parts are interrelated with one another, one body and one mind, self-contained and self-conscious, and driven by a self-organising, self-governing, self-directing Activity-we should regard her as nothing less than a Personal Being. In ordinary language we speak of Nature as a Person, and when we so speak we should not regard ourselves as speaking figuratively: we should mean quite literally and as a fact that she is a Person. And we should look upon that Personal Being, in which we are ourselves included, as in process of realising an ideal hidden within her-an ideal which in its turn is ever perfecting itself.

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What is meant by Nature being a Person, and a Person actuated by a hidden ideal, and being in process of realising that ideal, and what is meant by an ideal perfecting itself, may be best explained with the help of an illustration.

First it will be necessary to explain how we can regard Nature as a Person, or at least as nothing less than a Person-though possibly more. It is contended by many authorities that we cannot regard any collective being, such as a college or a regiment-and Nature is a collective being-as a true person. But their arguments are unconvincing. They allow that "I" am a person because "I" possess rationality and self-consciousness. But "I" am a system or organisation of innumerable beings-electrons, groupings of electrons, groups of groupings in rising complexity. "I"-the body and soul which makes up "me"-am nothing but a collective being myself. And if we take the case of "England" as an example of a collective being, we shall see that England has as much right to be considered a personal being as any single Englishman, composed as he is of innumerable separate beings.

Perhaps to one who is representing England among strange peoples the personality of England is more apparent than to those who are constantly living in England itself. To the foreign people among whom this representative is living England is a very real person. What she thinks about them, what she does, what her intentions are, what is her character and disposition, are matters of high interest; for upon England's good or ill will towards them may perhaps depend to a large extent their own future. Viewed from a distance like that, England quite obviously does possess a character of her own. She appears to some people large-hearted and generous; to others aggressive and domineering; to most solid, sensible, reasonable, steadfast, and steady. And to all she has a character quite distinctive and her own-quite different from the character of France or of Russia. And England with equal obviousness thinks. She forms her own opinions of other nations, of their character, intentions, activities, and feelings. She thinks over her own line of action in regard to them. She takes decisions. And she acts. She is for a long time suspicious of Russia, and takes measures to defend herself against any possible hostile Russian action. She later comes to the conclusion that there is no fundamental difference between her and Russia, so she takes steps to compose the superficial differences. Later still, when both she and Russia are being attacked by a common enemy, she deliberately places herself on terms of closest friendship with Russia, and both gives her help and receives help from her. At the same time, having come to the conclusion that Germany is threatening her very life, she makes war on Germany, and prosecutes that war with courage, endurance, steadfastness and intelligence, and with a determination to win at any cost. England has deep feeling, too. She had a feeling of high exaltation on the day she determined to fight for her life and freedom. She had a feeling of sadness and anxiety as things went against her at Mons, Ypres, Gallipoli, Kut. She was wild with joy when the war was victoriously concluded. And she was proud of herself as she thought how among the sister nations of the Empire of which she was the centre, and among the allied nations, she had played a great and noble part.

Now when a body, like England, can thus think for itself, form its own decisions, take action, establish friendships, fight enemies, and feel deeply, surely that body must possess personality. In ordinary language England is always spoken of as a person. And ordinary language speaks with perfect accuracy in this respect.

In her relations with individual Englishmen England also shows her personality. The representative abroad feels very vividly how she expects him to act in certain ways-ways in accordance with her character and her settled line of action. And she conveys these expectations to him not only in formal official instructions from her Government: the most important of those expectations are conveyed in a far more subtle and intimate but most unmistakable way. The English Government did not write officially to Nelson at Trafalgar that England expected every man to do his duty. But Nelson, standing there for England, knew very well that this was what England was expecting of him and of those serving under him. A representative would find it very hard to locate the exact dwelling-place of the heart and soul and mind of England, whether in Parliament, or in the Press, or in the Universities, or in factories, or in the villages. But that there is an England expecting him to behave himself in accordance with her traditions and character, and to act on certain general but quite definite lines, and who will admire and reward him if he acts faithfully to her expectations, and condemn and in extreme cases punish him if he is unfaithful, he has not the shadow of a doubt. Nor does he doubt that this England, besides expecting a certain general line of conduct, will and can constrain him to act in accordance with her settled determination-that she has authority and has power to give effect to her will.

And the official governmental representatives are not the only representatives of England. Every Englishman is a representative of England. How representative he is he will experience as he finds himself among strange peoples outside his own country. He will find then that he has certain traits and traditions and characteristics which clearly distinguish him from the people among whom he is travelling. And unofficial though he may be, he will yet feel England expecting him to behave as an Englishman. And though he may not be so vividly aware of it when he is at home, he is still a representative of England when he is in England itself. In everyday life he is being expected and constrained by England to act in certain ways.

Nor is it all a one-sided affair-England expecting so much of him and he having no say or control over what England does. On the contrary, the relationship is mutual. He goes to the making and shaping of England just as much as she goes to the making and shaping of him. He expects certain behaviour of her as she expects such of him. And if he has gained the confidence of his fellow-countrymen and has energy and determination, he may do much to affect her destiny.

England is therefore, so it seems, a person just as much as a single Englishman is a person. Englishmen, in fact, only attain their full personality in an England which has personality.

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Now Nature, I suggest, in spite of what has been said against the view, is a Person in exactly the same way as England is a person. Nature is a collective being made up of component beings-self-active electrons, self-active atoms, self-active suns and planets, self-active cells, plants, animals, men, and groups and nations of men-as England is made up of the land of England and all that springs therefrom, including the Englishmen themselves. Nature thinks and feels and strives as England thinks and feels and strives. And Nature cares for her children as England looks after her sons. It is often said, indeed, that Nature is hard and cruel. But it is only through the unfailing regularity and reliability of her fundamental laws-of her "constitution"-that freedom and progress are possible. If we could not depend upon perfect law we could make no advance whatever. We should all be abroad and uncertain. Yet in spite of her unbending rigidity over fundamentals, she does also show mercy and pity. A child toddling along downhill unregardful of the force of gravitation falls on its face and screams with pain. But Nature, represented by the mother, rushes up, seizes the little thing in her arms, presses it lovingly to her bosom, rock it and coaxes it and covers it with kisses.

So if Nature can think and feel and strive and show mercy and loving-kindness, she is entitled to the dignity of personality. And when we stand back and regard Nature as a whole, we shall look upon her as a Person and nothing less.

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We have now to understand what is meant by saying that Nature is a Person actuated by a hidden ideal and being in process of realising that ideal. When travelling across the Gobi Desert I found a yellow rose-a dwarf, simple, single rose. It is known to botanists as Rosa persica, and is believed to be the original of all roses. I found it on the extreme outlying spurs of the Altai Mountains. Now, a seed of the rose, partly under the influence of its surroundings (soil, moisture, air, sunshine) but chiefly by virtue of something which it contains within itself, something inherent in its very nature, will grow up into a rose-bush and give forth roses. The seed develops into a rose, not because some outside super-gardener takes hold of each one of the million million ultra-microscopic particles of which it is made up and puts it carefully into its appointed place, as a builder might put the stones of a building into their exact places according to the plans of an architect; but because each of those minutest ultimate particles has that within it which prompts it to act of its own accord in response to the call of the whole. Each of these electrons is in incessant and terrific motion, moving at the rate of something like 180,000 miles a second, so placing it in position would be a difficult matter. Besides which, each electron is not a tiny bit of matter as we ordinarily conceive matter-something which we can touch and handle. It is a mere centre or nucleus of energy. Any placing of it in position by a super-gardener is therefore out of the question. Each of those little particles moves and acts of itself in accordance with its own inner promptings, and in response to the influence of those other myriads of particles and groups of particles about it. And that system of these groups of particles which is enclosed within the rondure of the seed must have within it the ideal of the rose to be. Each particle will act on its own initiative, but all will act under the mutual influence of one another, and in their togetherness will make up the rose-spirit, being informed by the ideal of the rose which in its turn will suffuse the whole. And this rose-spirit-this rose-disposition-as it gives itself play, so controls and directs their movements that eventually the full-blown rose comes into being.

What happens is, we may imagine, much the same as what happened in the case of Australia. A handful of settlers from the mother-country formed the germ-seed from which the Australia of to-day has grown up. There was no external despot ordering each individual Australian to do this, that, and the other-to come this way and go that, and to stop in one place this year and in another place the next. Each Australian acting on his own initiative, and all in their togetherness, created the Australian spirit, which again reacting upon each Australian induced him to act in accordance with that spirit. And so in time Australia, assimilating individuals from outside and absorbing them into its texture, and imbuing them with the Australian spirit, grew up into manhood in the Great War and astonished the world by its strong individuality, its character, intelligence, determination, and good comradeship.

In the same way these particles of the rose-seed, each acting of itself, in their collectivity formed the rose-spirit. And each was in turn imbued by the rose-spirit. They had in them unconsciously the ideal of the rose-bush with its roots, stem, branches, leaves, flowers, fruit, seed. In all their activities they were actuated by this ideal. It was always constraining them in the given direction. By reason of the working of it in the particles they could by no possibility arrange themselves into a may tree or a lilac bush. There was an inner core of activity which persisted through all the countless changes of the process, which permeated the whole and which kept it directed to the particular end it had all the time in view. That activity had, in fact, a well-defined disposition, and that disposition was defined by the ideal of the rose, and was to form a rose-bush bearing roses.

That the rose-seed developed into the rose was due, therefore, not to the operation of any outside agent, but was due to the operation of the rose-spirit that it had within it, and which was persistently driving it to bring into actual being that ideal of the rose which was the essence of its spirit. The ideal of the rose was the motive-power of the whole process.

Where the rose-spirit derived from we shall later on enquire. Here we must note a point of the utmost importance. The seed of this Rosa persica is imbued with the spirit of Rosa persica. It has this ideal working within it. But it is not confined within the rigid limits of that ideal. It has that ideal, but something beyond also-something in the direction of that ideal, but stretching on ahead to an illimitable distance. The rose-seed developed riot only into the rose-flower, but through the flowers into numerous rose-seeds. And from the original Rosa persica seeds have sprung roses of scores of varieties. Roses of every variety of form, colour, habit, texture are constantly appearing. By purposeful mating, and supplying favourable conditions of soil, temperature, etc., almost any kind of variety can be produced. So we have not only yellow roses of every shade from gold and cream to lemon, but also white and red and pink roses of every hue. We have single roses and roses as full as small cabbages. And we have dwarf roses and roses climbing 50 or 60 feet in height.

From all this it is evident that within the original seed of Rosa persica was a rose-spirit which refused to be confined within the limits of Rosa persica only, but stretched out far beyond as well. The rose-spirit had latent in it, and was unconsciously stretching out to, all the beauties which roses have since attained to, and beyond that again to all the beauties that are yet to come. The horizon of the rose-spirit was never confined by a single plan-the plan of the Rosa persica-as the builder is confined by the plan of the architect, beyond which he cannot go. The rose-spirit could reach out along the line of roses to an unlimited extent. It could produce nothing but roses; it could not produce laburnums. But it could produce roses of unlimited variety, provided favourable conditions were available.

But the Rosa persica was itself the outcome of a long line of development from a far-away primordial plant-germ. From that original plant-germ have sprung all the ferns and grasses, the shrubs and trees and flowers, of the present day. So in that plant-germ must have resided the plant-spirit with an ideal of all this variety of plant-life actuating it-unconsciously, of course, but most effectively for all that. The particles of that original germ in their individual activities and in their mutual influence upon one another were in their togetherness actuated by a plant-spirit which had in mind-so to speak-not only the reproduction of a plant precisely similar to the original plant, but one with the possibilities of development and of reproducing others with possibilities of still further development. All that plant life has so far attained and all that it will attain to in future-perhaps also all that it might have attained to-must have been present in the plant-spirit of that original plant-germ. And it is through the working out-the realising-of this ideal which actuated that plant-spirit, and through the response which this spirit made to the stimulus of its surroundings that all the wonderful development of plant life has taken place. The plant-spirit had to keep within the lines of plant life; it could not stray beyond it to develop lions and tigers. But within the lines of plant life it could stretch out to illimitable distances. All that was wanted was the stimulus of favourable conditions, and from its surroundings it could select, reject, assimilate, all that would further its end.

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In the Gobi Desert I also saw the wild horse-Equus Prjevalskyi-supposed to be the original horse. And as the rose springs from the seed, so the horse develops from the ovum. And by virtue of the horse-spirit, the horse-ideal, by which all the innumerable particles of that ovum is actuated, it develops into a horse, and not into a donkey or a cow. But the ovum of the original Equus Prjevalskyi must have had in it the ideal of something more than the Equus Prjevalskyi, for from the original stock has sprung the great variety of horses we see to-day-race-horses, cart-horses, hunters, polo ponies, Shetland ponies, etc. And these are still varying. And the Equus Prjevalskyi was itself the outcome of a long line of development. Like all other animals, including man, it must have sprung from an original animal-germ. And the particles of that original animal-germ must have had in them the animal-spirit actuated by the ideal of all the animals of the present day, including man, and ready to develop as soon as favourable conditions provided the necessary stimulus to which the germ was ready to respond.

And both the original plant-germ and the original animal-germ sprang from an original plant-animal germ. And this, again, from the Earth itself. So that the Earth must always have had hidden in it the ideal of all plant and animal and human life-and not only the ideal of what it has reached at present, but of all it will become, and, it is important to note, of all it might become in future. It is the working of this ideal in the Earth, from the time five hundred million years or so ago when it budded off from the Sun as a fiery mist, that it has, under the influence of the light and heat of the Sun, and possibly also under the influences from the Stellar Universe as well, produced what we see to-day. The Earth-Spirit was inspired by this ideal, and in the ideal was this capacity for improving itself. And through the working of this ideal, and under the influence of the rest of the world, the Earth has developed from a flaming sphere into a molten ball, into a globe of barren land and sea, and so on into the verdure-covered and animal- and man-inhabited Earth of the present age. The Earth, like the rose-seed, contained within it a core of Activity which permeated every particle and constrained it with its fellow-particles to direct itself towards the ideal-a core of Activity which was animated by the ideal, while the ideal on its part had an innate faculty of perfecting itself.

But the Earth is itself only a minute mite even of the Solar System. And the Sun is only one of perhaps a thousand million other stars, some so distant that light travelling at the rate of 186,000 miles a second must have started from them before the birth of Christ to reach us to-day. Nevertheless the Earth is composed of the same ultimate particles of matter that even the most distant stars are made of. The Earth, the Sun and stars, are composed of electrons which are all alike. Doubtless there are individual differences between electrons as there are between men, but in a general way they are as much alike as all men appear alike to an eagle. And of these electrons the whole Universe is made as well as the Earth. The same laws of motion, of gravitation, and of electro-magnetic and chemical attraction, obtain there as here. The scale of the Stellar World is immensely larger than the scale we are accustomed to on this Earth. But the same fundamental laws everywhere prevail, and the Earth and stars are composed of the same material.

So it must have been from the Heart of Nature as a whole that the Earth-Spirit must have derived the ideal which actuated it. Deep in the Heart of Nature must have resided the ideal of the state of the Earth as it is to-day. In the great world as a whole, as in the rose-seed, must have been operating an ideal at least of what is on the Earth to-day, and of what this Earth will become and of what it might become; and possibly also of greater things which have already been realised, or will be realised and might be realised in the planets of other suns than our Sun. There must ever have been working throughout the Universe an Activity constraining the ultimate particles in a given direction. There must have been an Organising Activity, collecting the diffused particles together, grouping them into concentrated organisms and achieving loftier and loftier modes of being. Each of those inconceivably numerous and incredibly minute particles which make up the stars and the Earth and all on it-each one acted of itself. But each acted of itself under the influence of its fellows-that is, of every other particle; that is, of the whole. Each acted in response to its surroundings, but its surroundings were nothing short of the whole of Nature outside itself. Together they formed the Spirit of Nature with the ideal as its essence. And Nature in her turn acted on the particles-as Englishmen form the spirit of England and the spirit of England acts back upon individual Englishmen.

It was the working of this Spirit, with its self-improving ideal, that has produced Nature as we see her to-day. The distant ideal furnished the motive-power by which the whole is driven forward. And this ideal was itself built up by the unceasing interaction of the whole upon the parts and the parts upon the whole. What was in the parts responded to the stimulus of what was in the whole, and the whole was affected by the activity of the parts. What was immanent responded to what was transcendent. And the transcendence was affected by the immanence.