"One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee, One lesson which in every wind is blown, One lesson of two duties kept at one Though the loud world proclaim their enmity-- Of toil unsevered from tranquillity, Of labour that in lasting fruit outgrows Far noisier schemes, accomplished in repose, Too great for haste, too high for rivalry. Yes, while on earth a thousand discords ring, Man's senseless uproar mingling with his toil, Still do thy quiet ministers move on, Their glorious tasks in silence perfecting: Still working, blaming still our vain turmoil, Labourers that shall not fail when man is gone." It is in nature, then, and in her subtle but potent workings on the human soul that we shall find at least one antidote for the undue and portentous tension of our day. To say this is not to depreciate science, but to put it in its rightful setting. Nor is it to depreciate culture, but to bring it into due perspective, and to vitalise it. Nor is it to depreciate art, but to endow it with glow, with variety, with loyalty to truth. According to Pope, the proper study of mankind is man. How shallow, how harmful such a dictum! Contrast Kant's deeper insight. "Two things fill me with awe--the starry heaven without, and the moral law within." That famous apophthegm leads us nearer to the saving truth. For it contemplates man, not in his isolation, but as placed in a marvellous physical environment: to understand one you must understand the other also. Add the thought expressed in the fundamental principle of Nature Mysticism--the thought that nature is spiritually akin to ourselves--and we see that the proper study of mankind is human nature as a part of a living whole. But the nature-mystic is not content to "study." He desires to hold communion with the spirit and the life which he feels and knows to be manifested in external nature. For him there is no such thing as "brute" matter, nor even such a thing as "mere" beauty. He hears deep calling unto deep--the life within to the life without--and he responds.