tra-human outside, and has no concern with man."
In this statement he shows how entirely he has failed to grasp the secret
of the compelling power of the Earth--a secret into which Thoreau entered
so fully.

Why should the elemental forces of Nature appeal so strongly to us? Why
does the dweller in the open air feel that an unseen bond of sympathy
binds him to the lowest forms of sentient life? Why is a St. Francis
tender towards animals? Why does a Thoreau take a joy in the company of
the birds, the squirrels, and feel a sense of companionship in the very
flowers? Nay, more: what is it that gives a Jefferies this sense of
communion? why, if the Earth has no "concern with man," should it soothe
with its benison, and fire his being with such ecstatic rapture? If this
doctrine of a Universal Brotherhood is a sentimental figment, the
foundation is swept away at once of Jefferies' Nature creed. His sense
of happiness, his delight in the Earth, may no doubt afford him
consolation, but it is an irrational comfort, an agreeable delusion.

And yet no one can read a book of Jefferies without realizing that here
is no sickly fancy--however sickness may have imparted a hectic colouring
here and there--but that the instinct of the Artist is more reliable than
the theory of the Thinker. Undoubtedly his Nature creed is less
comprehensive than Thoreau's. Jefferies regarded many animals as "good
sport"; Thoreau as good friends. "Hares," he says, "are almost formed on
purpose to be good sport." The remark speaks volumes. A man who could
say that has but a poor philosophic defence to offer for his rapt
communion with Nature.

How can you have communion with something "anti- or ultra-human"? The
large utterance, "All things seem possible in the open air" dwindles down
rather meanly when the speaker looks at animals from the sportsman's
point of view. Against his want of sympathy with the lower forms of
creation one must put his warm-hearted plea for the agricultural poor.
In his youth there was a certain harsh intolerance about his attitude
towards his fellows, but he made ample amends in _Hodge and his Master_,
still more in _The Dewy Morn_, for the narrow individualism of his
earlier years.

One might criticize certain expressions as extravagant when he lashed out
against the inequalities in society. But after all there is only a
healthy Vagabond flavour about his fling at "modern civilization," and
the genuine humanit