But we must now turn to consider, secondly, what were his views about Nature, when they were fully matured. He now came to hold with conscious conviction, what formerly he had only felt, hardly knowing that he felt it, that Nature had
A self-subsistence, existing outside of man’s thoughts and feelings, and wholly independent of them;
A unity of life and power pervading it through all its parts, and binding them together into a living whole;
A true life of her own, which streamed through and stimulated his life—a spirit which, itself invisible, spoke through visible things to his spirit.
That this life had qualities inherent in it:—
Calmness, which stilled and refreshed man;
Sublimity, which raised him to noble and majestic thoughts;
Tenderness, which, while stirring in the largest and loftiest things, condescends to the lowest, is with the humblest worm and weed as much as in the great movements of the elements and of the stars.
Above all, Nature he now saw to be the shape and image of right reason, reason in the highest sense, embodied and made visible in order, in stability, in conformity to eternal law. The perception of these satisfied his intellect, calmed and soothed his heart.