his difference between the spirit of the ancients and
the modern spirit? How comes it that, being, for all that relates to
nature, incomparably below the ancients, we are superior to them
precisely on this point, that we render a more complete homage to nature;
that we have a closer attachment to it; and that we are capable of
embracing even the inanimate world with the most ardent sensibility. It
is because nature, in our time, is no longer in man, and that we no
longer encounter it in its primitive truth, except out of humanity, in
the inanimate world. It is not because we are more conformable to
nature--quite the contrary; it is because in our social relations, in our
mode of existence, in our manners, we are in opposition with nature.
This is what leads us, when the instinct of truth and of simplicity is
awakened--this instinct which, like the moral aptitude from which it
proceeds, lives incorruptible and indelible in every human heart--to
procure for it in the physical world the satisfaction which there is no
hope of finding in the moral order. This is the reason why the feeling
that attaches us to nature is connected so closely with that which makes
us regret our infancy, forever flown, and our primitive innocence. Our
childhood is all that remains of nature in humanity, such as civilization
has made it, of untouched, unmutilated nature. It is, therefore, not
wonderful, when we meet out of us the impress of nature, that we are
always brought back to the idea of our childhood.

It was quite different with the Greeks in antiquity. Civilization with
them did not degenerate, nor was it carried to such an excess that it was
necessary to break with nature. The entire structure of their social
life reposed on feelings, and not on a factitious conception, on a work
of art. Their very theology was the inspiration of a simple spirit, the
fruit of a joyous imagination, and not, like the ecclesiastical dogmas of
modern nations, subtle combinations of the understanding. Since,
therefore, the Greeks had not lost sight of nature in humanity, they had
no reason, when meeting it out of man, to be surprised at their
discovery, and they would not feel very imperiously the need of objects
in which nature could be retraced. In accord with themselves, happy in
feeling themselves men, they would of necessity keep to humanity as to
what was greatest to them, and they must needs try to make all the rest
approach it; while we, who are not i