g is
it to have satisfied others.

We look back upon our life only as on a thing of broken pieces, because
our misses and failures are always the first to strike us, and outweigh
in our imagination what we have done and attained.

Nature! We are surrounded by her and locked in her clasp--powerless to
leave her, and powerless to come closer to her. Unasked and unwarned she
takes us up into the whirl of her dance, and hurries on with us till we
are weary and fall from her arms.

We live in the midst of her and are strangers. She speaks to us
unceasingly and betrays not her secret.

We are always influencing her and yet can do her no violence.

Individuality seems to be all her aim, and she cares naught for
individuals. She is always building and always destroying, and her
work-shop is not to be approached.

Nature lives in her children only, and the mother, where is she? She is
the sole artist--out of the simplest materials the greatest diversity;
attaining, with no trace of effort, the finest perfection, the closest
precision, always softly veiled. Each of her works has an essence of its
own; every shape that she takes is in idea utterly isolated; and yet all
forms one.

She plays a drama; whether she sees it herself, we know not; and yet she
plays it for us who stand but a little way off.

She has thought, and she ponders unceasingly; not as a man, but as
Nature. The meaning of the whole she keeps to herself, and no one can
learn it of her.

She rejoices in illusion. If a man destroys this in himself and others,
she punishes him like the hardest tyrant. If he follows her in
confidence, she presses him to her heart as if it were her child.

Her children are numberless. To no one of them is she altogether
niggardly; but she has her favorites, on whom she lavishes much, and for
whom she makes many a sacrifice. Over the great she has spread the
shield of her protection.

She spurts forth her creatures out of nothing, and tells them not whence
they come and whither they go. They have only to go their way; she knows
the path.

The drama she plays is always new, because she is always bringing new
spectators. Life is her fairest invention, and Death is her device for
having life in abundance.

She envelops man in darkness, and urges him constantly to the light. She
makes him dependent on the earth, heavy and sluggish, and always rouses
him up afresh.

She creates wants, because she loves movement. How marvelo