The ancient poets have the freshness and the fragrance
of the springtime of the world [2]. Or take another
sort of instance. Take the pleasures which nature
spreads before us with a generous hand, hills and
fields and woods and rocks, flowers and the songs
of birds, the ever-shifting aspects of clouds and of
landscapes under light and shadow. How few persons
in most countries—for there is in this
respect a difference between different peoples—notice
these things. Everybody sees them few observe
them or derive pleasure from them. Is not this
largely because attention has not been properly called
to them? They have not been taught to look at
natural objects closely and see the variety there
is in them. Persons in whom no taste for pictures
has ever been formed by their having been taken to
see, good pictures and told what constitutes merit,
are, when led into a picture gallery, usually interested
in the subjects. They like to see a sportsman
shooting wild fowl, or a battle scene, or even a prize
fight, or a mother tending a sick child, because these
incidents appeal to them. But they seldom see
in a picture anything but the subject; they do not
appreciate: imaginative quality or composition,
or colour, or light and shade or indeed anything except
exact imitation of the actual. So in nature the
average man is; struck by something so exceptional
as a lofty rock, like Ailsa Craig or the Needles off
the Isle of Wight, or an eclipse of the moon, or perhaps
a blood-red sunset; but he does not notice and consequently
draws no pleasure from landscapes in general, whether
noble; or quietly beautiful. The capacity for
taking pleasure, in all these things may not be absent.
There is reason: to think that most children possess
it, because when they are shown how to observe they
usually respond, quickly perceiving, for instance,
the differences between one flower and another, quickly,
even when quite young, learning the distinctive characters
and names of each, enjoying the process of recognising
each when they walk along the lanes, as indeed every
intelligent child enjoys the exercise of its observing
powers. The disproportionate growth of our urban
population, a thing regrettable in other respects
also, has no doubt made it more difficult to give young
people a familiar knowledge of nature, but the facilities
for going into the country and the happy lengthening
of summer holidays render it easier than formerly
to provide opportunities for Nature Study, which,
properly conducted, is a recreation and not a lesson.
There is no source of enjoyment which lasts so keen
all through life or which fits one better for other
enjoyments, such as those of art and of travel.
Of the value of the habit of alert observation for
other purposes I say nothing, wishing here to insist
only upon what it may do for delight.