sentences quoted just above are from those sections of this work
which deal with man's aesthetic relation to nature; and it is with
their teaching on the subject that this chapter will be chiefly
concerned.

Here is a statement which raises a clear issue. The influence of
nature, says Wundt, is not immutable. "The same mountains and
rivers and forests lie before the modern European that lay
before his ancestors thousands of years ago; but the effect
which they produce is very different. In this change there is
reflected a change in man's _aesthetic_ view of the world, itself
connected with a change in his moral apprehension of life."
Now every word of this passage may be welcomed by the
nature-mystic without his thereby yielding his contention that
mountains and rivers and forests have a definite and immanent
objective significance of their own. The phenomena of sunrise
and sunset, which lay before our European ancestors thousands
of years ago, are the same as those which present themselves to
the modern astronomer, and yet how differently interpreted!
Does the difference imply that the early observer had no
objective facts before him, and that modern astronomy has
advanced to a freedom which enables it to frame hypotheses at
its sovereign will? Such a conclusion is just possible as we
meditate on the mutability of many scientific concepts! Still, the
conclusion would be regarded as somewhat violent. But if it is
allowed that in the latter case, the basis of objective fact gives
continuity to the development of astronomic lore, why should
the same privilege not be accorded to the objective element
in the continuity of mystical lore? As knowledge grows,
interpretations become more adequate to the objective facts, but