I pluck you out of your crannies,

I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,

Little flower, but if I could understand

What you are, root and all, and all in all,

I should know what God and man is."

§ 62

But my song has grown too advent'rous. Let us descend th'Aonian mount.—This, however, let me say: If to somewhat abstruse ontological speculations such as these you like to add scientific or other knowledge of the region of your walk—something of the geology, palæontology, mineralogy, zoology, botany, archæology, history, well and good. No sort of knowledge but is profitable for doctrine. The interest and pleasure of walking are greatly enhanced by noting and being able to account for the thousand and one natural phænomena which greet the eye even in the shortest stroll; and few things sooner oust petty worries from the mind than such occupation. Happy is the man who can do this. I, alas, cannot help you here. I have but a bowing acquaintance with Science, though it is always with a deep reverence that I doff my hat to her. Nevertheless, with this I console myself; it seems to matter but little with what sort of eyes you look on Nature, provided you really look. Give her but the seeing eye and the understanding heart, and she is lavish of her gifts.—And (let me roun this in thine ear) perhaps she prefers (woman-like) the understanding heart to the seeing eye; though (woman-like again) she likes to be admired as well as understood—though never (and here most woman-like) does she like to be too curiously regarded.—Sometimes, I confess, I have envied him gifted with the scientific eye: him in whom a granite boulder in a grassy mead rouses long geological trains of thought; to whom the dwarfed horse-tails by lacustrine shores paint pictures of dense equisetaceous forests; for whom a fossil trilobite calls up visions of Silurian seas; him too have I envied who can classify common plants or recognise and name the stones at his feet: can tell us why the lowly daisy is superior to the lordly oak; can expatiate on crystallographic angles; and learnedly descant on amphibole or pyroxene. For myself, I am not versed in the mechanism of Nature. I have never asked to see the wheels go round. I like to see her smile, and am not careful as to what oral or buccal muscles are brought into play for that smile. That she has an anatomy I suppose. But I bethink me of Actæon's fate, he who saw Dian's naked loveliness too near. So thou, beware lest thine eye see so much that thy heart understand too little. Keep thy mind "in a just equipoise of love." Accomplish that, and no knowledge is too high for thee.

§ 63

Here, however, it is but right to enter a caveat. It must be admitted that it is not given to everyone to hold high converse with Nature. Nature speaks a cryptic tongue, and unless one has paid some heed to her language her accents are apt to fall upon deaf ears. Nor can anyone translate Nature's language to those unversed in her speech. If you think to hear her voice while the din and clatter of business or mercature are ringing in your ears, you will hear nothing. Nor, for that matter, will you see anything. Trees and fields and clouds you may see, or may think you see; but they will say nothing to you, will mean nothing to you. To their mere beauty you will be blind; for beauty is a thing to be felt, not seen.

Goethe declared that Beauty was a primæval phænomenon which had never yet made its appearance.[46] To Euripides—κλυων μεν αυδην, ομμα δ'ουχ ορων το σον.[47]