Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/238

226 quite mistaken. It is vaguely imagined that the worship of Nature is neither more nor less than classical paganism, and that to adopt it would be to revive the "golden years" Shelley sings of, to substitute a Madre Natura for the Christian Church, and Pan or Apollo for Christ. This is a misconception of precisely the same sort as that which regards Nature as pitiless and inhuman. Let us always remember that Nature, as we are using that most ambiguous of words, is opposed simply to the supernatural. Sometimes, as I pointed out, it is opposed to man. When paganism is said to be a worship of Nature, the word is used in a third sense, and one somewhat indeterminate. It is opposed rather to civilization. Paganism did not confine itself to the worship of inanimate Nature. It deified, to be sure, the sun and moon, the sky, the morning and evening star, and all the principal phenomena of inanimate Nature. But it worshiped also certain deities who were supposed to preside over human life, powers of birth, marriage, and death, protectors of tribes and cities, powers of war and commerce, powers of the human mind. When we call it Nature-worship, therefore, we are not using the word Nature simply as opposed to man. But it so happened, we may say quite accidentally, that in its worship of the phenomena of man paganism paused abruptly. The worshiping disposition in the ancient nations decayed as society advanced; they ceased to increase their Pantheon as human phenomena became known to them. The consequence is, that the deities that have to do with human life in paganism concern only what is most elementary and primitive in human life. To people in the tribal stage paganism would have seemed to embrace the whole of humanity as well as inanimate Nature. But when nations had left that stage far behind them, when they had devised complicated politics, and invented arts and sciences, paganism still remained in its old condition. It did not progress, and in the last ages of the ancient world the traditional religions reflected the image of a much simpler time. This in reality deprived them of all influence except with the rural population, but at the same time it gave them a charm to all those who were influenced by that reaction against civilization and progress which is always going on. The same charm is felt by us when we look back upon paganism. When we see statues of Pan or Faunus, when we read Homer, we feel the fascination of naïveté and simplicity. And to express what we feel we fall back upon the unfortunate and overworked word Nature. We say these old pagans worshiped Nature, meaning apparently to say that their thoughts and feelings had not been much modified by the influence of thinkers, inventors, systematizers, that in fact their minds were in a childlike state, and had the freshness and joyousness of childhood.

Evidently Nature here is not in any way opposed to the supernatural. The supernatural could not enter into any creed more than it entered into the creeds of these so-called worshipers of Nature.