At the edge of the forest then this creature uncontrollably impelled
to emerge from the waving green sea of leaves as of old it had been
driven to quit the rolling blue ocean of waters: Man at the dawn of
our history of him.
And if the first set of race memories--Sea Memories--still endure
within him, how much more powerful are the second set--the Forest
Memories!
So powerful that since the dawn of history millions have perished as
forest creatures only; so powerful that there are still remnant races
on the globe which have never yet snapped the primitive tether and
will become extinct as mere forest creatures to the last; so powerful
that those highest races which have been longest out in the open--as
our own Aryan race--have never ceased to be reached by the influence
of the woods behind them; by the shadows of those tall morning trees
falling across the mortal clearings toward the sunset.
These Master Memories, he said, filtering through the sandlike
generations of our race, survive to-day as those pale attenuated
affections which we call in ourselves the Love of Nature; these
affections are inherited: new feelings for nature we have none. The
writers of our day who speak of civilized man's love of nature as a
developing sense err wholly.
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