The Whence and the Whither of Man: A Brief History of His Origin and Development through Conformity to Environment; Being the Morse Lectures of 1895 — John Shaqi
The Whence and the Whither of Man: A Brief History of His Origin and Development through Conformity to Environment; Being the Morse Lectures of 1895Tyler, John M. (John Mason)
Religion
The Whence and the Whither of Man: A Brief History of His Origin and Development through Conformity to Environment; Being the Morse Lectures of 1895
Tyler, John M. (John Mason)
Evolution
But if you will think long and carefully even of anatomical facts,
you will see in and behind them something more and grander than
they. You will catch glimpses of the divinity of Nature. Most of us
travel threescore years and ten stone-blind in a world of marvellous
beauty. Why does the artist see so much more in every fence-corner
and on every hill-side than we, set face to face with the grandest
landscapes? Primarily, I believe, because he is sympathetic, and
looks on Nature as a comrade as near and dear as any human sister
and companion. As Professor Huxley has said, "they get on rarely
together." She speaks to the artist; to us she is dumb, and ought to
be, for we are boorishly careless of her and her teachings.
Nature, to be known, must be loved. And though you have all the
knowledge of a von Humboldt, and do not love her, you will never
understand her or her teachings. You will go through life with her,
and yet parted from her as by an adamantine wall.
I do not suppose that the author of the book of Job had ever studied
geology, or mineralogy, or biology, but read him, and see whether
this old prince of scientific heroes had loved, and understood, and
caught the spirit of Nature. And what a grand, free spirit it was,
and what a giant it made of him. I do not believe that Paul ever had
a special course of anatomy or botany. But if he had not pondered
long and lovingly on the structure of his body, and the germination
of the seed, he never could have written the twelfth and fifteenth
chapters of the first letter to the Corinthians. And time fails to
speak of David and all the writers of the Psalms, and of those
heroic souls misnamed the "Minor" Prophets.
Study the teachings of our Lord. How he must have considered the
lilies of the field, and that such a tiny seed as that of the
mustard could have produced so great an herb, and noticed and
thought on the thorns and the tares and the wheat, and watched the
sparrows, and pondered and wondered how the birds were fed. All his
teaching was drawn from Nature. And all the study in the world could
never have taught him what he knew, if it had not been a loving and
appreciative study.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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