He finds out, soon enough for his weal and his bane, that he is stronger
than Nature; and right tyrannously and irreverently he lords it over her,
clearing, delving, diking, building, without fear or shame. He knows of no
natural force greater than himself, save an occasional thunder-storm; and
against that, as he grows more cunning, he insures his crops. Why should
he reverence Nature? Let him use her, and eat. One cannot blame him. Man
was sent into the world (so says the Scripture) to fill and subdue the
earth. But he was sent into the world for other purposes, which the
lowlander is but too apt to forget. With the awe of Nature, the awe of the
unseen dies out in him. Meeting with no visible superior, he is apt to
become not merely unpoetical and irreverent, but somewhat of a sensualist
and an atheist. The sense of the beautiful dies out in him more and more.
He has little or nothing around him to refine or lift up his soul, and
unless he meet with a religion and with a civilization which can deliver
him, he may sink into that dull brutality which is too common among the
lowest classes of the English lowlands, and remain for generations gifted
with the strength and industry of the ox, and with the courage of the
lion, and, alas! with the intellect of the former, and the self-restraint
of the latter.
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