The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Development of the Feeling for Nature in
the Middle Ages and Modern Times, by Alfred Biese

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Title: The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and
Modern Times

Author: Alfred Biese

Release Date: October 20, 2004 [eBook #13814]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FEELING FOR
NATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND MODERN TIMES***

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THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FEELING FOR NATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES
AND MODERN TIMES

by

ALFRED BIESE

Director of the K. K. Gymnasium at Neuwied

Authorized translation from the German

1905

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

The encouraging reception of my "Development of the Feeling for
Nature among the Greeks and Romans" gradually decided me, after some
years, to carry the subject on to modern tunes. Enticing as it was, I
did not shut my eyes to the great difficulties of a task whose
dimensions have daunted many a savant since the days of Humboldt's
clever, terse sketches of the feeling for Nature in different times
and peoples. But the subject, once approached, would not let me go.
Its solution seemed only possible from the side of historical
development, not from that of _a priori_ synthesis. The almost
inexhaustible amount of material, especially towards modern times,
has often obliged me to limit myself to typical forerunners of the
various epochs, although, at the same time, I have tried not to lose
the thread of general development. By the addition of the chief
phases of landscape, painting, and garden craft, I have aimed at
giving completeness to the historical picture; but I hold that
literature, especially poetry, as the most intimate medium of a
nation's feelings, is the chief source of information in an enquiry
which may form a contribution, not only to the history of taste, but
also to the comparative history of literature. At a time too when the
natural sciences are so highly developed, and the cult of Nature is
so widespread, a book of this kind may