The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and Modern Times

d with ecclesiastical dogma--man's relation, not only to God, but to the one saving Church--and had little interest for Science and Art; and the great achievement of the fifteenth ce

individual stamp such as she had never known before, characters of original and marked physiognomy, it was no time for the quiet contemplation of Nature. Mental life was stimulat

l freedom was contained in the general trend of the time, which was striving to free itself from the fetters of the Middle Ages in customs and education as well as dogma. It was chiefly a polemical movement, a fight between contentious savants. The writi

eed, as an observer of Nature, and still more as a follower and furtherer of the scholastic Aristotelian natural philosophy, he shewed a leaning towards the theory of development, for, according to him, the more highly organized structures proceed from those of lower organization, and these again form the inorganic under the influence of meteors and stars. The poet laureate Conrad Celtes (b. 1459), a singer of love and composer of four books about it, was a true poet. His incessant wan

cal feeling for Nature, or rather a magical knowledge of her, flourished in Germany at this time among the learned, both among Protestants and those who were partially true to Catholicism. One of the strangest exponents of such ideas was Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim of Cologne[3] (1535). His system of the world abounded in such fantastic caprices as these: everything depends on harmony and sympathy; when one of Nature's strings i

s von Hohenheim (1541), ranked Nature and the Bible, like Agrippa

ntry is only one leaf in the book of creation. The eyes that find pleasure in this t

Frank of Donauw?rth (1543) looked upon the whole world as an open book and living Bible, in which to study the power and art of God and learn His will: everything wa

istic. But he was very far from the standpoint of the great Italian philosophers, Giordano Bruno and Campanella. Bruno, a poet

things issues from

h a master hand in h

e and gifted wit

s own material, n

lter or doubt,

ely, as fire bu

ly, as light sp

s forces, but stabl

poses of every

mage in Nature. He personified everything in her; nothing was without feeling; the very movemen

theist at once, his mind was a ferment of different systems of thought. It is very difficult to un

eart or sour

s the bo

his whole being, so the Holy Ghost fills all Nature, and i

easure, in which are all the powers, as in al

the tree of life, the creatures His branches, a

passion, will, and love, often in

another; and as one springs into being as another dies, causing constant use and work, so it is in still greater degree with the begetting of the holy mysteries[5

f the German race, was Luther. That maxim of Goethe's for teaching and ethics,' C

n had much

, had to free himself from mental slavery

e incarnation of the modern man, had to shake off the a

open to the influence of Nature, and, characteristically, the Psalter was his favo

e could not have enough of the wonders of creation, great or small. 'By God's mercy we begin to see the splendour of His works and wonders in the little flowers, as we consider how kind and almighty He is; therefore we praise and thank Him. In His creatu

onfidence in the fatherly goodness of God. He

ch pillars and are very anxious to seize them and feel them, and because they cannot, fidget and tremble as if the skies would certainly fall ... the other, I also saw great thick clouds sweep over our heads, so heavy that they might be compared to a grea

hat we lie and rot in the earth; when our summer comes, our grain will spring up--rain,

thanksgiving psalms: 'There one looks into the hearts of the saints as into bright and beautiful gardens-

uite free from platonic and mystical speculation as to God's relation to His universe; and Protes

e a like feeling was nowhere else to be found, the Volkslieder expressed the simple familiar relationship of the child of Nature to

f the eighth and ninth centuries, about a great quarrel between Spring, crowned with flowers, an

master, Winter, then takes up the word, and menaces Spring with the approach of frost, who will slight and imprison him

rses in praise of

he breezes

lts from th

lift their

little wood

from the gro

erybody

nce, and the wrongs it has wrought are poured out to Summ

ttle ow

l alone through

want to perch

es are a

is full

for bringing good news, or ma

ly to his heart

take a bride. The starling shall saddle the horses, for he has a grey mantle; the beaver with the cap of marten fur must be driver, the hare with hi

honoured before all the winged things; she is called

d out the green wood; fair Nightingale, thou

against false love, or is t

little maid is there,' etc. 'And were my love a brooklet cold, and sprang out of a stone, little should I grieve if I were but a green wood; green is the wood, the brooklet is cold, my love is

ther roses by night, for then all the leaves are covered with cooling dew.' 'The roses are ready to be gathered, so gather them to-day. He who does not gather in summer,

are

ime tree in

hat does

help me

have no

e last time I shall see my beloved? Sun, moon, an

s and other flowers and grasses laugh, the trees creak and

of all nations, that out of the grave of two lovers, lilies and

tones as these, although honest Hans Sachs shews joy in Nature here and there; most charmingly in the fam

tooping to the west, the day is rising from the east, the morning red is leaping from the clouds, the sun looks through. The moon quenches her li

re; but in Simplicissimus, on the other hand, that monument of literature which reflected contemporary culture to a

d fled into the forest, he came upon a hermit who took car

gale, comfort

in a song of joy, co

are sound asleep a

ning in the sky i

ird, we will not be

e will beguile th

reshes the de

n song, and if ever I had been able to hear the morning star, or to try to imitate the melody on my bagpipe

idyllic, partly theosophically mystical; Shakespeare's plays had brought sympathy to maturity in England; the Netherlands had given birth to landscape painting, and Fra

through resisting layers; it is long before any new gain in culture becomes the common property of the educated, and hence opposite extremes are often found side by side--taste for what is natural with taste for what is artificial. Garden style is always a delicate test of feeling for Nature, shewing, as it does, whether we respect her ways or wish to impose our own. The impulse towards the modern French gardening came from Italy. Ancient and modern times both had to do with it. At the Renaissance there was a return to Pliny's st

e symmetrical plan, the focus of which was the house, standing free from trees, and visible from every point. Farther off, radiating avenues led the eye in the same direction, and every little intersecting alley, true to the same principle, ran to a definite object--obelisk, temple, or what not. There was no lack of bowers, giant shrubberies, and water-courses running canal-wise through the park, but they all fell into straight lines; every path was ruled by a ruler, the

ecreed; cypresses were made into pillars or hearts with the apex above or below; and the art of topiary even achieved complete hunting scenes, with hunters, stags, dogs, and hares in f

out of leafage, and theatres with stage and wings in which silk and velvet marquises with full-bottomed

d: the story of Daphne and Apollo appeared in one alley, Meleager and Atalanta in another, all Olympus was set in motion to f

eat periwig shrivelled to a pigtail, and petty

ure, though he saw her with the intoxicated eye of a lover who forgets the individual but keeps a glorified impression of her beauty, whereas Boucher's rosy-blue landscapes look as if he had never seen their originals. His world had nothing in common with Nature, and with reality only this, that its sen

, affected, feeling and form alike were forced, not spontaneous. Verses were turned out by machinery and glued together. Martin Opitz,[14] th

n sense. He took warmer interest in the bucolic side of country life; rhyming about the delightful places, dwellings of peace, with their myrtles, mountains, valleys, stones, and flowers,

is on the, fields again. Seed is growing vigorously, grass greening in all its spl

algia than feeling

s, waste places, woods an

better dwelling-p

nores) his pastorals have all the sentim

x, Sch?ferei von der sch?nen Juliana, since 1595; Urfé's Astrée and Mon

ence wrote, not to mention little pastorals such as Daphne, Galate

. He tells how he did not wake 'until night, the mother of the stars, had gone mad

un, which looked down from the tops of the mount

ds on virtue, love, and travelling, till the nymph Hercynia appeared and shewed him the source of the Silesian stream. One of the shepherds, Bu

l Oreads, Dryads, Castor and Pollux to his aid. He rarely reached the simple purity of his fine sonnet An Sich, or the feeling in this: 'De

ch (to which Fleming contributed) were full of feeling, a

out-weigh whole volumes of contemporary rhy

e woods ar

and stilln

and city, m

faint bea

n stars a

r dark-b

like him than any one el

for the most part, it was an idle tinkle of words without feeling, empty artificial stuff with hig

s joyous pleasant March; ah! see spring is

ainly aimed high, striving for simplicity and clearness of express

beds of tulips, birds' songs, and echoes. Idyllic pastoral life was the fashion--people of distinction gave themselves up to

y conditions in the way of her marriag

ound it, and through it, made it look beautiful ... the celestial Rosemund had taken up her abode in a little shepherd hut on the slope of a little hill by a water-course, and shaded by some lime tr

the trees. The following description of a walk with her sister Stillmuth and

in the warmth of the sun, and first sat down by the stream, then went to the grottos, where Markhold particularly admired the shell decorations. When this charming party had had enough of both, they finally betook themselves to a leaf

he used comparisons from Natu

red as blooms in the meadow of her cheeks, no civet rose is so milk-white, no lily so delicate and spotle

ker than white; her cheeks were a pleasant Paradise where rose and lily bloomed together in beauty--yea, love itself seemed to pasture there.' Elsewhere too this writer, so highly esteemed by the s

often takes one into woods and fields; already griefs and cares were carried to

a pleasant breadth about his drawing--for exampl

making a pleasant murmur. Whilst the ear was thus contented, a distant landscape delighted

surrounded by nothing but mountains, where the shepherds tended their flocks

is mixed here with s

kiss. Thou, clear brook, often bearest away the passionate words of my son of I

, and they were much admired. What is still more astonishing, Lohenstein's writings were the model for thirty years, and it was the fashion for any one who wrote more simply to ap

this is from Lohenstein's Prai

ueen of flowe

n, world's treasur

hs, and I myself,

is golden, and her

emerald, her brillia

ossess only si

he rose beautiful

hamed, an

the other flowers sta

ds the reflection o

t Love's spirit

of love burn in

light can noth

ew from Phoebus

he beauteous g

n her by night w

h to pleas

es, tulips in her

vine stock

es round the

ears when they a

lowers burn wit

that shews the

not of all flo

eauty child of

highest pitch in these poets, and fe