ly Presence 109-120

Chapter IX. Home Beauty. One's own country--Woman's beauty
--Love and beauty--Their Divine Source--Wedding--Divine union
--The Inmost Heart of Nature 121-134

Chapter X. The Nature of Nature. A spiritual background--Purpose
in Nature--Higher beings--No confining plan--Immanent Spirit
--Collective personality--England a Person--Nature a Person--Moved
by an ideal--The ideal in plants--The ideal in animals--The ideal in
the world 135-160

Chapter XI. Nature's Ideal. Battling with physical Nature--Battling
with man--In tune with Nature--At the heart of the Universe is
Love--Divine fellowship is Nature's Ideal 161-171

Chapter XII. The Heart of Nature. Picturing the Ideal--The Ideal
Man--Man and woman--Perfecting the Ideal--Discipline necessary
--Leadership--Nature's method--Our own responsibility--The
lovability of nature--God at the Heart of Nature 172-192

PART II

Natural Beauty and Geography

Presidential Address to the Royal Geographical Society 195-216

An Address to the Union Society of University College, London
217-235

PREFACE

The value of Knowledge and Character is duly impressed upon us.
Of the value of Freedom we are told so much that we have come to
regard it as an end in itself instead of only a means, or necessary
condition. But Beauty we are half-inclined to connect with the
effeminate. Poetry, Music, and Literature are under suspicion with
the average English schoolboy, whose love of manliness he will
share with nothing else. Yet love of Beauty persists in spite of all
discouragement, and will not be suppressed. Natural Beauty,
especially, insists on a place in our affections, derived originally
from Love, and essentially and inseparably connected with it,
Natural Beauty acknowledges supremacy to Love alone. And it
deserves our generous recognition, for it is wholesome and
refreshing for our souls.

The acute observation and telling description of Natural Beauty is at
least as necessary for the enjoyment of life as the pursuit of Natural
Science to which so much attention is paid. For the concern of the
former is the character, and of the latter only the cause of natural
phenomena; and of the two, character is the more important. It is,
indeed, high time that we Englishmen were more awake than we are
to the value of Natural Beauty. For we are born lovers of Nature,
and no more poetic race than ourselves exists. Our country at its best,
on an early summer day,