It was in much the same vein that Bernard spoke of the sea as the origin of all springs and rivers and compared it with Christ, the fount of all virtue and wisdom.[1078] It was a wish to find an allegorical meaning in the phenomena of nature that induced Abelard to compare the flood of the Nile with the spread of Christian grace throughout the world.[1079] These and the many other similar allegorical comparisons that are so frequent in the literature of our period are not mere juxtapositions of things that were seen to be alike. Bernard did more than liken the valley to the humble of spirit. He implied that the valley itself partook of the quality of humility and was thereby in some way more divine than the mountain. But, if Bernard believed that mountains were symbolical of pride and arrogance, others, like Altmann of Passau, Anselm of Canterbury, and Francis of Assisi, were lovers of mountains in a truly spiritual sense. To the twelfth-century mystic the beauty of nature was more than a symbol of the divinity: it drew its very essence from God. The love that St. Francis bore towards birds and animals, mountains and fellow man was a love that arose out of his regarding all of these as creatures of God impregnated with something of the divine. ESTHETIC LOVE OF NATURE The esthetic love of nature that existed during our period was very different. It had its roots in a movement of protest and rebellion against the austerity of the Christian life and ideals. Men wished to enjoy the things of this world without thought of the next. What is more, they sometimes actually dared to write about their pleasures. These early stirrings of the humanistic spirit, the spirit of the Great Renaissance, brought forth troubled protests and angry remonstrances from men like Bernard and other reformers; but none the less love poems were often composed in the monasteries, and vagrant poets wandered over Europe singing the praises of earthly love, rejoicing in the springtime, with little heed for aught but the beauty of the world. Popular wherever they went, these wanderers exerted a great influence, and something of their joyous, pagan spirit crept into more serious writings of the age. It would be possible to quote at some length texts testifying to the presence of an esthetic feeling for nature in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.[1080] Two or three examples must here suffice.