An Away-From-Nature Movement

OF the multiplication of organizations there seems to be no end. It is with great temerity, therefore, that I am proposing one more. The one I am sponsoring is not a reform movement; it is not a political party; it is not of a religious, sociological, scientific, or literary nature. My proposed movement is prompted by sheer loneliness. Just as a small boy who is separated from his companions in the midst of a forest calls at the top of his voice to see if he can find company, so I am sending out this call to know if I am absolutely alone in not being a worshiper of Nature, with a capital N.

Let me explain at once what I mean. There is a growing tendency to make a cult of worshiping Nature after the manner of Wordsworth. The devotees of this cult have waxed so numerous and so — bigoted, shall I say? — that they show less tolerance than did the lawmakers of Tennessee in outlawing Darwin. Nobody can aspire to be anybody unless he worships at the shrine of Nature, unless he gets a thrill from watching Growing Things grow.

The attitude of these apostles of culture has been expressed for them by Mr. John Powys, in his delightful book, The Meaning of Culture. A few extracts from the ninth chapter of the book will illustrate: —

‘No refining of one’s taste in matters of art or literature, no sharpening of one’s powers of insight in matters of science or psychology, can ever take the place of one’s sensitiveness to the life of the earth. This is the beginning and the end of a person’s true education.’ ‘Cultured people are thrilled through and through by the shadow of a few waving grass-blades upon a little fiat stone, or by a single dock-leaf growing under the railings of some city square.’ Speaking of scenery, ‘One ought to touch it, to taste it, to embrace it, to eat it, to drink it, to make love to it.’ ‘The real initiates of this cult will never sit down to breakfast without having walked at least a few steps in the open air.’ ‘He would be an arrogant fool who dared to call himself a cultured man without ever having made an intense and special cult of enjoying these rare moments’ (when he was especially close to Nature).

Now because I believe Mr. Powys, personally, to be the embodiment of the culture he so charmingly describes in his book, and hence possessed of the tolerance that goes with it, I am sure he will not object to a dissenting opinion. For the first eight chapters of Mr. Powys’s book, I was beginning to flatter myself that I might claim a slight degree of culture; but that devastating ninth chapter blasted all these hopes. I may as well admit, and be done with it, that I am not ‘sensitive to the life of the earth.’ I get absolutely no thrill from the shadow of any number of waving grassblades upon flat stones. I do not even know what a dock-leaf is, nor can I find its definition in the Standard Dictionary. I do not enjoy tasting, touching, embracing, eating, drinking, or making love to mere scenery. The exacting claims of my profession do not permit me to leave the telephone long enough before breakfast to take a walk in the open air. And to make an intense and special cult of enjoying rare moments of communion with Nature would make me feel, not an arrogant, but a plain or garden variety of fool.

An indifferent attitude to Nature which I freely admit — for I would rather be an outcast from culture than a hypocrite — illustrates a principle of modern psychiatry. In my childhood the Fifth Commandment was still respectable. My mother loved flowers and plants, and grew them by the hundreds, in pots, jars, buckets, tubs, and in the yard. As the oldest child and the only son, it was my duty to minister to their wants — and those wants, while simple, were exacting. My shoulders ached with the weary weight of gallons and gallons of water drawn from the well and carried to quench their insatiable thirst. If it threatened to turn cold, dozens of huge ferns must be carried into the house, only to be carried out again to bask in the sun. Those plants required long hours of attention, grudgingly taken from my beloved books — for I can subscribe heartily to all Mr. Powys says in chapter ten of his book, ‘Culture and the Art of Reading.’

Perhaps this early aversion to ‘growing things’ was responsible in high-school days for a hearty dislike of Wordsworth — the very high priest of the cult of Nature worship. And my youthful chivalry never quite forgave the poet for admitting that on his wedding journey, when there was a two hours’ delay for changing horses, he wrote a sonnet, and a very poor one at that, ‘to beguile the time’ — and in it his bride was never once mentioned. I strongly suspect that Mr. Powys, as his ardent disciple, was apologizing for this very incident when he says, ‘The real Nature-worship is ... so important to the person who practises it that he is prepared to sacrifice many precious feelings for the sake of the sensations he loves. There are passages in Wordsworth, for instance, that seem to lead ... to an inhuman subsuming of all natural personal affections in a certain feeling for the mysterious Earth-Spirit.’

Now I am quite willing to concede to Mr. Powys and followers of Wordsworth their right to worship Nature as devoutly as they please, though I have a strong suspicion that many who profess to love Nature do so for the same reason that most women rushed to have their hair and their skirts shortened. I am wondering, however, if there are any others besides myself who are willing to admit frankly that they prefer a good book by a warm fireside, or the stimulating conversation of their intellectual equals or superiors, to listening to the singing of birds, the rustling of leaves, or the chirp of crickets.

If there are not enough of us to form our own cult of culture, at least let us petition Mr. Powys to modify his entrance requirements by making Nature worship an elective instead of a required subject for admission to real culture. Or, if this point be not conceded, let us ask that degrees of culture be recognized, somewhat after the plan of Masonry. I am not a Mason, but it is no secret that, while there are thirtythree degrees in that order, one may be recognized as a member without attaining them all. I am quite willing for Nature worship to be the thirty-third degree of culture, for I never aspire to be more than the lowliest of her disciples; but it does seem too much to make it both ’the beginning and the end of a person’s true education.’

WINGATE M. JOHNSON