Nature is Genial to Man
in which Henry Thoreau expresses the principle
that the universe (Nature)
is uniquely – necessarily –
compatible to man
(and all living things)
All men beholding a rainbow
begin to understand the significance
ofthe Greek name for the world,
-Kosmos, or beauty.
We live, as it were,
within the calyx of a flower.
August 6, 1852
I am a body
connected to all bodies
awake in the world.
~Zphx
September 4, 2018
How adapted these forms and colors to my eye! A meadow and an island! I am made to love the pond and the meadow, as the wind is made to ripple the water. November 21, 1850
How adapted these forms and colors to our eyes . . . What are these things? February 14, 1851
The existence of man in nature is the divinest and most startling of all facts. Man, the crowning fact, the god we know. May 21, 1851
It is a certain faeryland where we live. You may walk out in any direction over the earth's surface, lifting your horizon, and everywhere your path, climbing the convexity of the globe, leads you between heaven and earth [toward] the light of the sun and stars and the habitations of man. I wonder that I ever get five miles on my way, the walk is so crowded with events and phenomena. June 7, 1851
My life was ecstasy. In youth, before I lost any of my senses, I can remember that I was all alive, and inhabited my body with inexpressible satisfaction; both its weariness and its refreshment were sweet to me This earth was the most glorious musical instrument, and I was audience to its strains. To have such sweet impressions made on us, such ecstasies begotten of the breezes! I can remember how I was astonished. I said to myself, — I said to other , “There comes into my mind such an indescribable , infinite , all - absorbing , divine , heavenly pleasure , a sense of elevation and expansion, and [ I ] have had nought to do with it . I perceive that I am dealt with by superior powers. July 16, 1851
Let us preserve, secure, protect the coincidence of our life with the life of nature. January 26, 1852
Why should just these sights and sounds accompany our life? April 18, 1852
What were the firefly's light, if it were not for darkness? The one implies the other. June 25, 1852
I hear the sound of a distant piano . . . By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe, I am fitted to hear, my being moves in a sphere of melody, my fancy and imagination are excited to an inconceivable degree. August 3, 1852
What are these rivers and hills, these hieroglyphics? August 23, 1852
I look out at my eyes, I come to my window, and I feel and breathe the fresh air. It is a fact equally glorious with the most inward experience. August 23, 1852
It is, in some degree, warmer after the first snow has come and banked up the houses and filled the crevices in the roof. There is something genial even in the first snow, and Nature seems to relent a little of her November harshness. Men, too, are disposed to give thanks for the bounties of the year all over the land. November 23, 1852
The heavens and the earth are one flower. The earth is the calyx, the heavens the corolla. June 5, 1853
See some green galls on a goldenrod three quarters of an inch in diameter, shaped like a fruit or an Eastern temple, with two or three little worms inside, completely changing the destiny of the plant, showing the intimate relation between animal and vegetable life. The animal signifies its wishes by a touch, and the plant, instead of going on to blossom and bear its normal fruit, devotes itself to the service of the insect and becomes its cradle and food. It suggests that Nature is a kind of gall, that the Creator stung her and man is the grub she is destined to house and feed. The plant rounds off and paints the gall with as much care and love as its own flower and fruit, admiring it perchance even more. July 30, 1853
For all Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. She exists for no other end. Do not resist her. "Nature" is but another name for health, and the seasons are but different states of health. August 23, 1853
Who placed us with eyes between a microscopic and a telescopic world? February 19, 1854
Why do precisely these objects which we behold make a world? Walden
A sweet scent fills the air from the expanding leafets or some other source. The earth is all fragrant as one flower. And bobolinks tinkle in the air. Nature now is perfectly genial to man. May 16, 1854
Do I not live in a garden, — in paradise? I can go out each morning before breakfast — I do — and gather these flowers with which to perfume my chamber where I read and write, all day. June 16, 1854
I enjoy the warmth of the sun now that the air is cool, and Nature seems really more genial. My mistress is at a more respectful distance, for, by the coolness of the air, I am more continent in my thought and held aloof from her, while by the genial warmth of the sun I am more than ever attracted to her. August 29, 1854
Nature is stung by God and the seed of man planted in her. September 4, 1854
I am affected by the thought that the earth nurses these [turtle] eggs. They are planted in the earth, and the earth takes care of them; she is genial to them and does not kill them. It suggests a certain vitality and intelligence in the earth, which I had not realized. This mother is not merely inanimate and inorganic. Though the immediate mother turtle abandons her offspring, the earth and sun are kind to them. The old turtle on which the earth rests takes care of them while the other waddles off. Earth was not made poisonous and deadly to them. The earth has some virtue in it; when seeds are put into it, they germinate; when turtles’ eggs, they hatch in due time. Though the mother turtle remained and brooded them, it would still nevertheless be the universal world turtle which, through her, cared for them as now. Thus the earth is the mother of all creatures. Journal, September 9, 1854
A warmth begins to be reflected from the partially dried ground here and there in the sun in sheltered places, very cheering to invalids who have weak lungs, who think they may weather it till summer now. Nature is more genial to them. February 21, 1855
What a delicious sound! It is not merely crow calling to crow, for it speaks to me too. I am part of one great creature with him; if he has voice, I have ears. I can hear when he calls. Ah, bless the Lord, O my soul! bless him for wildness, for crows that will not alight within gunshot! and bless him for hens, too, that croak and cackle in the yard! January 12, 1855
I am struck by the perfect confidence and success of nature. The existence of these delicate creatures [redpolls], their adaptedness to their circumstances. Here is no imperfection. The winter, with its snow and ice, is as it was designed and made to be. December 11, 1855
I have never got over my surprise that I should have been born into the most estimable place in all the world, and in the very nick of time, too. December 5, 1856
What is the relation between a bird and the ear that appreciates its melody, to whom, perchance, it is more charming and significant than to any else? Certainly they are intimately related, and the one was made for the other. It is a natural fact . . . I see that one could not be completely described without describing the other. February 20, 1857
How rarely a man's love for nature becomes a ruling principle with him, like a youth's affection for a maiden, but more enduring! All nature is my bride. That nature which to one is a stark and ghastly solitude is a sweet, tender, and genial society to another. April 23, 1857
Think of that (of yesterday), — to have constantly before you, receding as fast as you advance, a bow formed of a myriad crystalline mirrors on the surface of the snow!! What miracles, what beauty surrounds us! Then, another day, to do all your walking knee-deep in perfect six-rayed crystals of surpassing beauty but of ephemeral duration, which have fallen from the sky. January 30, 1860
Summer is gone with all its infinite wealth, and still nature is genial to man. Still he beholds the same inaccessible beauty around him. Simply to see to a distant horizon through a clear air, – the fine outline of a distant hill or a blue mountain-top through some new vista, -– this is wealth enough for one afternoon. November 22, 1860
*****
There once was a time
when the beauty and the music
were all within me.
I sat and listened
to a positive though faint
and distant music.
I sat and listened
possessed by the melody,
a song in my thoughts.
This was a time when
I felt a joy that knew not
its own origin.
A pleasure, a joy,
an existence which I had
not procured myself.
Astonished, I saw
that I am dealt with by
superior powers.
That this earth is a
musical instrument, and
I its audience.
zphx 20190521
See also
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, I am a rock
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Reminiscence and Prompting
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Nature is genial to man (the anthropic principle)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality.”
~ edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2022
https://tinyurl.com/HDTanthropic
-L
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