Page:Alaska days with John Muir.djvu/111

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
The Discovery
97

camp just the place he wished to be. He always claimed that there was more of pure ethics and even of moral evil and good to be learned in the wilderness than from any book or in any abode of man. He was fond of quoting Wordsworth's stanza:

"One impulse from a vernal wood
       Will teach you more of man,
 Of moral evil and of good,
       Than all the sages can."

Muir was a devout theist. The Fatherhood of God and the Unity of God, the immanence of God in nature and His management of all the affairs of the universe, was his constantly reiterated belief. He saw design in many things which the ordinary naturalist overlooks, such as the symmetry of an island, the balancing branches of a tree, the harmony of colors in a group of flowers,