Man and Nature

Nature – an all-pervading phenomenon

Nature is an all-pervading phenomenon. We are on all sides surrounded by nature. Nature is working within us and outside us. We cannot do without nature, though nature can do without us. This aspect of nature at once diminishes our ego and contemplation of this quality of nature cuts us to size with one stroke.

Man’s helplessness before nature

Man has, in fact, never been a part of the scheme of nature. Even his emergence on earth is just an accident. Even a brave, handsome prince at best may be only a little more than an invisible bacterium or germ or a small worm to nature.

Man’s foolish ego

With all our prescriptions for longevity, good health, and diabolic sins and crimes that we commit against our fellow men in an effort to prolong our existence, decay we must in the long run. No amount of prayers, penitence, life-saving drugs and anti-oxidants, tonics, and oxygenated or gluconated hospital devices can save us from final death and decay.

The futility of man’s cruelties and selfish motives and machinations.

Then, why all these cruelties? Why all these perpetrations of heinous crimes? Why all this talk of war, of mutual or self-destruction. Finally, our own mother earth that gave birth to us is there to take us back in her womb whether we wish it or not. Why all these forgeries, deceptions, falsehoods, and dishonest unethical practices? Just to add a few years to our existence or to cut short the lives of others ones? Fie on us!

Man – the destroyer of nature, environment, and earth

We thank neither God nor nature for her bounties. We are out to destroy nature with our full might. We want to let loose a hell on earth for our fellow men. We want to grab everything for ourselves alone. We are playing havoc with the environment. We should remember that every action of ours that concerns nature – positive or negative ipso facto calls for a corresponding reaction from nature. Our vehemence against nature will be in equal measure nature’s vehemence against us.

Man’s emotional side is in consonance with nature.

According to a noted writer, there is a great affinity between trees and men. They grow at much the same pace, if they are not hurt, or starved, or cut down. Whatever is true of trees is true of all objects of nature. Wordsworth, the famous English poet of nature, calls nature “the nurse, the guide, the guardian of my heart and soul.” Nature may sometimes or in some aspects be “red in tooth and claw” as Tennyson says but it is also very salubrious to us.

Nature not only assuages our hurt sentiments and feelings but also teaches us in many ways. That is why we may feel tempted to quote Wordsworth again –

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

– In “The Tables Turned”

by William Wordsworth