ene in
Faust, had reached a very modern degree of development in
antiquity.[10]

Gregory of Nyssa was still more sentimental and plaintive than Basil
and Gregory Nazianzen:

When I see every ledge of rock, every valley and plain, covered
with new-born verdure, the varied beauty of the trees, and the
lilies at my feet decked by Nature with the double charms of
perfume and of colour, when in the distance I see the ocean,
towards which the clouds are onward borne, my spirit is
overpowered by a sadness not wholly devoid of enjoyment. When in
autumn the fruits have passed away, the leaves have fallen, and
the branches of the trees, dried and shrivelled, are robbed of
their leafy adornments, we are instinctively led, amid the
everlasting and regular change in Nature, to feel the harmony of
the wondrous powers pervading all things. He who contemplates
them with the eye of the soul, feels the littleness of man amid
the greatness of the universe.

Are not these thoughts, which Humboldt rightly strings together,
highly significant and modern? Especially in view of the opinion
which Du Bois Reymond, for example, expresses: 'In antiquity,
mediaeval times, and in later literature up to the last century, one
seeks in vain for the expression of what we call a feeling for
Nature.'[11]

Might not Werther have written them? They have all his sentimental
melancholy, coupled with that 'delight of sorrow' which owes its name
(Wonne der Wehmuth) to Goethe, although its meaning was known to
Euripides.

Yet it was only in rare cases, such as Seneca and Aristotle, that
classic writers combined such appreciation of Nature's individual
traits with that lofty view of the universe which elevates and
humbles at once.

Gregory shewed the blending of Christian with classic feeling; and
the deepening of the inner life through the new faith is quite as
clear in patristic writings as their close relationship to the
classic.

But the thinkers and poets of the Middle Ages did not always see
Nature under the brilliant light of Hellenic influence; there were
wide spaces of time in which monkish asceticism held sway, and she
was treated with most unscientific contempt. For the development of
feeling did not proceed in one unswerving line, but was subject to
backward movements. The rosy afterglow of the classic world was upon
these Greek Fathers; but at the same time they suffered from the
sorrow