Sunday, March 26, 2023

an infinite storm of beauty











No dogma taught by the present civilization seems to form so insuperable

 an obstacle in the way of a right understanding of the relations 
which culture sustains to wildness as that which regards the world
 
 as made especially for the uses of man.
 
 Every animal, plant, and crystal controverts it in the plainest terms.
 Yet it is taught from century to century as something ever new and precious, 
and in the resulting darkness the enormous conceit is allowed to go unchallenged.

I have never yet happened upon a trace of evidence that seemed to show
 that any one animal was ever made for another as much as it was made for itself.
 Not that Nature manifests any such thing as selfish isolation. 
In the making of every animal the presence of every other animal has been recognized.
 Indeed, every atom in creation may be said to be acquainted with 
and married to every other, but with universal union there is a division
 sufficient in degree for the purposes of the most intense individuality; 
no matter, therefore, what may be the note which any creature forms
 in the song of existence, it is made first for itself, then more and more remotely
 for all the world and worlds.
 
The scenery of the ocean, however sublime in vast expanse, 
seems far less beautiful to us dry-shod animals than that of the land 
seen only in comparatively small patches; but when we contemplate 
the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents
 and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together
 as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.
 
 
 
 
 ~ John Muir
from Nature Writings
 
 
 

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