Chapter XVI: Book III: The Châlet in the Jura Mountains

“_He (man) first clothes the gods in the image of his own
innermost nature; he personifies them as modes of his own greater
consciousness. All this was native to him when he still felt
himself kin with Nature; when he felt rather than thought, when
he followed instinct rather than ratiocination. But for long
centuries this feeling of kinship with Nature has been gradually
weakened by the powerful play of that form of mind peculiar to
man; until he has at last reached a stage when he finds himself
largely divorced from Nature, to such an extent indeed that he
treats her as something foreign and apart from himself...._

“_He seems at present, at any rate in the persons of most of
the accredited thinkers of the West, to be absolutely convinced
that no other mode of mind can exist except his own mode....
To say that Nature thinks, he regards as an entire misuse of
language.... That Nature has feelings even, he will not allow; to
speak of love and hate among the elements is for him a puerile
fancy the cultured mind has long outgrown._

“_The sole joy of such a mind would almost seem to be the delight
of expelling the life from all forms and dissecting their dead
bodies._”--“Some Mystical Adventures” (G. R. S. Mead).