turist with strong
and willing hands, and must have had some need of agricultural
implements such as those with which the least civilized of his
descendants have been wont to till the soil. Still, without art or
with very little of it, he could enjoy all that is beautiful and grand
in nature, and could rise from the observation of nature to communion
with God. We need the more to realize this, inasmuch as there seems so
strong a tendency to confound material civilization with higher
culture, and to hold that man primeval must have been low and debased
simply because he may have had no temples and no machinery. We must
remember that he had nature, which is higher than fine art, and that
when in harmony with his surroundings he may have had no need either
of exhausting labor or of mechanical contrivances. Farther, in the
contemplation of nature and in seeking after God, he had higher
teachers than our boasted civilization can claim.

Alas for fallen man, with his poor civilization gathered little by
little from the dust of earth, and his paltry art that halts
immeasurably behind nature. How little is he able even to appreciate
the high estate of his great ancestor. The world of fallen men has
worshipped art too much, reverenced and studied God and nature too
little. The savage displays the lowest taste when he admires the rude
figures which he paints on his face or his garments more than the
glorious painting that adorns nature; yet even he acknowledges the
pre-eminent excellence of nature by imitating her forms and colors,
and by adapting her painted plumes and flowers to his own use. There
is a wide interval, including many gradations, between this low
position and that of the cultivated amateur or artist. The art of the
latter makes a nearer approach to the truly beautiful, inasmuch as it
more accurately represents the geometric and organic forms and the
coloring of nature; and inasmuch as it devises ideal combinations not
found in the actual world; which ideal combinations, however, are
beautiful or monstrous just as they realize or violate the harmonies
of nature. It is only the highest culture that brings man back to his
primitive refinement.

Art takes her true place when she sits at the feet of nature, and
brings her students to drink in its beauties, that they may endeavor,
however imperfectly, to reproduce them. On the other hand, the student
of nature must not content himself with "writing Latin names on whit