prompting. These myths are simply "fancies"; the "feelings" are
simply those of "the poet." The wider view adopted by so many
philosophers and scientists (as was shown in the chapter on
animism) does not seem to have won his adherence--perchance
was not known to him. And yet in sentence after sentence he
hovers on the brink of genuine Nature Mysticism. His sympathy
with the leaping rill and the rushing river is deep and
spontaneous; he is evidently well pleased to open afresh "the
world-old book of nature," and to read it in the light of
"childhood's fancy." The nature-mystic avers that what he
deemed a recurrence of meaningless, if pleasant, "well-worn
thoughts" was really an approach to the heart of nature from
which an imperfect understanding of the place and function of
science had carried him away. Not that the old forms should be
perpetuated, but that the childlike insight should be cherished.

Water in movement in brooks and streams! Have we discovered
the secret of it when we tell of liquids in unstable equilibrium
which follow lines of least resistance? It is a valuable advance
to have gained such abstract terms and laws, so long as we
remember they _are_ abstractions. But it is a deadly thing to
rest in them. How infinitely wiser is Walt Whitman, in his
address to a brook he loved, than the man who coldly analyses,
with learned formulae to help him, and sees and feels nothing
beyond. "Babble on, O brook" (Walt Whitman cries), "with that
utterance of thine! . . . Spin and wind thy way--I with thee a
little while at any rate. As I haunt thee so often, season by
season, thou knowest, reckest not me (yet why be so certain--
who can tell?)--but I will learn from thee, and dwell on thee--
receive, copy, print, from thee."