Well: the world would yet
be a place of peace if we were all peacemakers, and gentle service
should we have of its creatures if we gave them gentle mastery. But so
long as we make sport of slaying bird and beast, so long as we choose
to contend rather with our fellows than with our faults, and make
battlefield of our meadows instead of pasture--so long, truly, the
Flaming Sword will still turn every way, and the gates of Eden remain
barred close enough, till we have sheathed the sharper flame of our
own passions, and broken down the closer gates of our own hearts.
I have been led to see and feel this more and more, as I consider the
service which the flowers and trees, which man was at first appointed
to keep, were intended to render to him in return for his care; and
the services they still render to him, as far as he allows their
influence, or fulfils his own task towards them. For what infinite
wonderfulness there is in this vegetation, considered, as indeed it
is, as the means by which the earth becomes the companion of man--his
friend and his teacher! In the conditions which we have traced in its
rocks, there could only be seen preparation for his existence;--the
characters which enable him to live on it safely, and to work with it
easily--in all these it has been inanimate and passive; but vegetation
is to it as an imperfect soul, given to meet the soul of man.
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