Nature and our Ideals

In your philosophical poem “Nature”—so rich in thoughts—you have given expression to the basic mood asserting itself in modern man. This mood arises when he permits himself to be influenced by certain ideas about nature and spirit extant in our time and if he has a depth of feeling sufficient to make him recognize the discord between those ideas and the ideals of his heart and mind. Indeed those times are gone when a thoughtless, shallow optimism, relying on the belief that we are children of god, distracted man from perceiving the discord of nature and spirit. Those times are gone when it was possible to be so superficial as to lightheartedly look away from the thousands of wounds from which the world is bleeding. Our ideals are no longer superficial enough to be satisfied by a reality so often shallow and empty.