There is a constant analogy between the growth of this feeling and that of general culture.

As each nation and time has its own mode of thought, which is constantly changing, so each period has its ‘landscape eye.’  The same rule applies to individuals.  Nature, as Jean Paul said, is made intelligible to man in being for ever made flesh.  We cannot look at her impersonally, we must needs give her form and soul, in order to grasp and describe her.

Vischer says[1] ’it is simply by an act of comparison that we think we see our own life in inanimate objects.’  We say that Nature’s clearness is like clearness of mind, that her darkness and gloom are like a dark and gloomy mood; then, omitting ‘like,’ we go on to ascribe our qualities directly to her, and say, this neighbourhood, this air, this general tone of colour, is cheerful, melancholy, and so forth.  Here we are prompted by an undeveloped dormant consciousness which really only compares, while it seems to take one thing for another.  In this way we come to say that a rock projects boldly, that fire rages furiously over a building, that a summer evening with flocks going home at sunset is peaceful and idyllic; that autumn, dripping with rain, its willows sighing in the wind, is elegiac and melancholy and so forth.

Perhaps Nature would not prove to be this ready symbol of man’s inner life were there no secret rapport between the two.  It is as if, in some mysterious way, we meet in her another mind, which speaks a language we know, wakening a foretaste of kinship; and whether the soul she expresses is one we have lent her, or her own which we have divined, the relationship is still one of give and take.

Let us take a rapid survey of the course of this feeling in antiquity.  Pantheism has always been the home of a special tenderness for Nature, and the poetry of India is full of intimate dealings between man and plants and animals.

They are found in the loftiest flights of religious enthusiasm in the Vedas, where, be it only in reference to the splendour of dawn or the ‘golden-handed sun,’ Nature is always assumed to be closely connected with man’s inner and outer life.  Later on, as Brahminism appeared, deepening the contemplative side of Hindoo character, and the drama and historical plays came in, generalities gave way to definite localizing, and in the Epics ornate descriptions of actual landscape took independent place.  Nature’s sympathy with human joys and griefs was taken for granted, and she played a part of her own in drama.

In the Mahabharata, when Damajanti is wandering in search of her lost Nala and sees the great mountain top, she asks it for her prince.

    Oh mountain lord! 
  Far seen and celebrated hill, that cleav’st
  The blue o’ the sky, refuge of living things,
  Most noble eminence, I worship thee!... 
  O Mount, whose double ridge stamps on the sky
  Yon line, by five-score splendid pinnacles
  Indented; tell me, in this gloomy wood
  Hast thou seen Nala?  Nala, wise and bold! 
  Ah mountain! why consolest thou me not,
  Answering one word to sorrowful, distressed,
  Lonely, lost Damajanti?