Vischer says[1] 'it is simply by an act of comparison that we think
we see our own life in inanimate objects.' We say that Nature's
clearness is like clearness of mind, that her darkness and gloom are
like a dark and gloomy mood; then, omitting 'like,' we go on to
ascribe our qualities directly to her, and say, this neighbourhood,
this air, this general tone of colour, is cheerful, melancholy, and
so forth. Here we are prompted by an undeveloped dormant
consciousness which really only compares, while it seems to take one
thing for another. In this way we come to say that a rock projects
boldly, that fire rages furiously over a building, that a summer
evening with flocks going home at sunset is peaceful and idyllic;
that autumn, dripping with rain, its willows sighing in the wind, is
elegiac and melancholy and so forth.

Perhaps Nature would not prove to be this ready symbol of man's inner
life were there no secret rapport between the two. It is as if, in
some mysterious way, we meet in her another mind, which speaks a
language we know, wakening a foretaste of kinship; and whether the
soul she expresses is one we have lent her, or her own which we have
divined, the relationship is still one of give and take.

Let us take a rapid survey of the course of this feeling in
antiquity. Pantheism has always been the home of a special tenderness
for Nature, and the poetry of India is full of intimate dealings
between man and plants and animals.

They are found in the loftiest flights of religious enthusiasm in the
Vedas, where, be it only in reference to the splendour of dawn or the
'golden-handed sun,' Nature is always assumed to be closely connected
with man's inner and outer life. Later on, as Brahminism appeared,