§ 10
One thing at least is certain. Of this human race, of which each of us frail and wailing mortals is a fragment, this kindly or unkindly thing we call "external Nature" is at once the mother, the cradle, and the home: out of it we came; in it we play; from it we delve our livelihood; and—to it we go. For it is also our grave. But, unlike the mournful mounds, so pitilessly ranged in regular rows—as if, 'fore God, to accentuate the fact that in Death this impotent thing called sapient man meets at last a uniforming and levelling foe—unlike those mournful mounds we see in cemeteries, external Nature is a grave out of which there is a perpetual and unceasing resurrection. Nature is at once the tomb and the womb of life. What was once soil and rain and sunshine becomes grass—then hay—then beef or mutton or milk—and, in time, the very bone and muscle, the very laughter and tears of the child that plays in those fields. And when bone and muscle lay down that subtle thing called Life, give up the spirit and lie inert, they enter once again into the tomb and womb of Nature, and the mighty cycle begins afresh.