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tions and ideals incited discovers the spiritual reality behind appearance. The Greek Pan is not the objective whole of Nature, but the subjective thrill in the presence of Nature. Naiads and muses are not fountains, but the exaltation of spirit awakened by the murmur of fountains. The oracles of sacred oaks are not their rustling leaves, but the impulses. and dreams they stir in the susceptible soul. In a word, in the recoil of spirit against the incitement of Nature is revealed the character of the incitement itself."

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And now, dear friend, if Nature be indeed speech, who is the speaker? Since we can interpret her must we not resemble her? Since we can only interpret her by looking within our own souls must there be a spirit in her like the spirit in us? May it really be as the Schoolmen taught, that in every object of sensitive experience God himself lies hid? And as His revelation to sense was first in the history of the world must it not be the first to appeal to the individual? Since literature, art, and religion are the fair issue of a marriage between Nature and the human mind, should not the sacramental union be formed anew by each fresh soul? You read my

*Hegel's Philosophy of History, Eng. tr., pp. 244–246.

meaning? Teach Harold to love Nature, to enjoy her beauty, wonder at her mystery, feel her living companionship. So shall the pulsations of his thought move in rhythm with the eternal stream of spiritual energy; so shall his soul become inwardly one with the Infinite spirit who "from the shining fount of life pours the deluge of creation."

LETTER VII.

THE SOUL OF THE FLOWER.

FLOWER SONG.

The Life Supreme, that lives in all,

Gives everything its own;

A soul remains itself despite

Life's ceaseless shift-Death's sure, cold might
Itself-though changed or grown.

And something to a soul akin

Looks out from every flower;

A lily is a lily still,

On mountain bleak, by meadow rill,
In sunshine or in shower.

Ten thousand roses June may boast,
All differing each from each;
And still the rose-soul in each one
Glows fervent, as if there alone
Its silence had found speech.

HENRIETTA R. ELIOT.

FRAGRANT FLOWERS.

Oh! the pretty flowers!

Well their names we know,

When we see their colors

That so brightly glow.

All these pretty flowers

Have their own sweet smell.

Often without seeing

We their names can tell.

DEAR

So our eyes we cover

That we may not see;
While the fragrance tells us
What the flower must be.*

Hilda's eyes we cover

That she may not see;

While the fragrance tells her

What the flower must be.

:

EMILIE POULSSON.

For years I have watched with anxiety the increasing number of books whose object is to kindle in the heart of childhood a passion for natural science. For years I have realized with dismay that in order to make time for exercises in botany, natural history, and elementary physics kindergartners were sacrificing the ideal of creative self-activity, and quietly ignoring those distinctively Froebelian games which stir presentiments of social solidarity and spiritual freedom. In the mind of any one who recognizes that the realm of Nature is a realm of fate, and that the exclusive or preponderant study of natural science must create an intellectual bias toward fatalism, the undue emphasis so often placed upon science can not fail to rouse a protest. The teaching of science is that Nature is an

*After singing three stanzas to introduce the play, the last stanza only is repeated, as different children try to distinguish the flowers. Each child's name may be used.

unbroken chain of phenomena in which every link is determined by that which preceded it. The supreme and exhilarating fact about man is that his soul is a fathomless spring of creative energy. We are told that each grain of sand on the seashore lies where it does because the whole past history of the world and the totality of present conditions have conspired to place and keep it there. But here comes the baby just two years old and, scouting and flouting all past and present causality, insists that he is himself an original causal energy. No sum total of antecedent or present influences shall constrain him. He has discerned in Nature an ideal possibility, and, victor that he is, plants his foot upon her neck. He wants a hollow where now is a level, or a sand mountain where now is a hollow. And what he wants he makes, thereby asserting his transcendental freedom and enacting on his Lilliputian scale one scene in the splendid drama of human conquest.

Because man is free and nature unfree the young mind should not be warped by too early or too exclusive stress upon the study of natural science. So beware of the temptation to make Harold a prodigy of informations with regard to plants and animals, and warn Helen against com

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