We live in the midst of her and are strangers. She speaks to us unceasingly and betrays not her secret.
We are always influencing her and yet can do her no violence.
Individuality seems to be all her aim, and she cares naught for individuals. She is always building and always destroying, and her work-shop is not to be approached.
Nature lives in her children only, and the mother, where is she? She is the sole artist—out of the simplest materials the greatest diversity; attaining, with no trace of effort, the finest perfection, the closest precision, always softly veiled. Each of her works has an essence of its own; every shape that she takes is in idea utterly isolated; and yet all forms one.
She plays a drama; whether she sees it herself, we know not; and yet she plays it for us who stand but a little way off.
She has thought, and she ponders unceasingly; not as a man, but as Nature. The meaning of the whole she keeps to herself, and no one can learn it of her.
She rejoices in illusion. If a man destroys this in himself and others, she punishes him like the hardest tyrant. If he follows her in confidence, she presses him to her heart as if it were her child.
Her children are numberless. To no one of them is she altogether niggardly; but she has her favorites, on whom she lavishes much, and for whom she makes many a sacrifice. Over the great she has spread the shield of her protection.
She spurts forth her creatures out of nothing, and tells them not whence they come and whither they go. They have only to go their way; she knows the path.
The drama she plays is always new, because she is always bringing new spectators. Life is her fairest invention, and Death is her device for having life in abundance.