Shall not these results be as true for the world of to-day
as for the flourishing times of old-world Miletus?
CHAPTER XXVI
WINDS AND CLOUDS
The recognition of the mystic element in external nature has had
its fluctuations in most ages and climes, and not least so in
England. Marvel, in his day, felt the numbness creeping on that
comes of divorce from nature, and uttered his plaint of "The
Mower against Gardens."
"Tis all enforced, the fountain and the grot,
While the sweet fields do lie forgot,
Where willing nature does to all dispense
A wild and fragrant innocence."
And declared of the polished statues made to adorn the gardens,
that
"howsoe'er the figures do excel,
The gods themselves with us do dwell."
His protests, however, did not avail to ward off the artificiality
of the reign of Pope. Here are two lines from the "Essay on
Man."
"Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears Him in the wind."
"Untutored!" The poor Indian could have taught Pope many
things, and perhaps made a nobler man of him! For the poetry
and mystic influence of the winds were experienced and
expressed with a fullness of experience and feeling to which the
town-bred poet was all too great a stranger. The range, the
beauty and vigour of the myth of the four winds as developed
among the native races of America (says Tylor) had scarcely a
rival elsewhere in the mythology of the world.
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