lnshire: "I shall delight to hear
the ocean roar, or see the stars twinkle, in the company of men
to whom Nature does not spread her volumes or utter her voice
in vain." And let us observe, that the naturalness of his feeling
keeps him to the simplest, almost monosyllabic, English!

CHAPTER XVI

THALES

In an earlier chapter mention was made of that truly remarkable
group of thinkers who, in the sixth century before the Christian
era, made the momentous transition from mythology and
tradition to philosophy and science. It was also pointed out that
these pioneers, bold as they were, could not shake themselves
free from the social and intellectual conditions of their day. And
it is precisely this fact of what may be termed contemporary
limitations that makes a review of their speculations so valuable
to a student of Nature Mysticism. For they lived in times when
the old spontaneous nature beliefs were yielding to reflective
criticism. Their philosophising took its spring from the fittest
products of the mytho-poeic faculty, and thus remained in living
contact with the primitive past, while reaching forward, in the
spirit of the future, to an ordered knowledge of an ordered
whole. The chief object of their search was the _Welt-stoff_--
the substance of the universe--and they were guided in their
search by the dominating concepts which had emerged in the
long course of the animistic and mythological stages. Certain
forms of external existence have impressed themselves upon the
general mind, notably those of water, air, and fire; and to these
the reflecting mind naturally turned in its earliest efforts to
discover the Ground of things. The interest taken by the
nature-mystic in this group of thinkers is twofold. Firstly, he
finds that in their speculations there is a large element of
primitive intuition, embodied in concepts fashioned by the
spontaneous play of reflective thought and free imagination.
Closeness to nature is thus secured. And secondly, he rejoices
in the fact that these speculations, crude and premature as
they inevitably were, contained germs of thought and flashes
of insight which anticipate the most advanced speculative science
and philosophy of the present day. He maintains that here is
corroboration of his view of intuition. Nature was the teacher--
and it was to intuition that she chiefly addressed herself; and the
intellect--keen and fresh, but untrained--was able to seize upon
the material