Nature is a book, a letter, a fairy tale (in the philosophical sense) or whatever you want to call it.
Interpretation
Nature can be viewed in many ways, much like different forms of literature that convey deeper meanings.
In this quote, Johann Georg Hamann suggests that nature is rich with metaphorical content, resembling a book or a story that offers insights and lessons. By acknowledging its various interpretations, he highlights the idea that nature holds significance beyond its physical presence, inviting us to explore its philosophical dimensions and the interconnectedness of all life.
In practice
During a nature walk, one can reflect on how landscapes tell their stories.
Being, belief and reason are pure relations, which cannot be dealt with absolutely, and are not things but pure scholastic concepts, signs for understanding, not for worshipping, aids to awaken our attention, not to fetter it.
The weakness of ourselves and of our reason makes us see flaws in beauties by making us consider everything piece by piece.
The product of paper and printed ink, that we commonly call the book, is one of the great visible mediators between spirit and time, and, reflecting zeitgeist, lasts as long as ore and stone.
Every phenomenon of nature was a word, - the sign, symbol and pledge of a new, mysterious, inexpressible but all the more intimate union, participation and community of divine energies and ideas.
Everything is vain and tortures the spirit instead of calming and satisfying it.
Not only the entire ability to think rests on language... but language is also the crux of the misunderstanding of reason with itself.
He stood breathing, and the more he breathed the land in, the more he was filled up with all the details of the land. He was not empty. There was more than enough here to fill him. There would always be more than enough.
Live on, survive, for the earth gives forth wonders. It may swallow your heart, but the wonders keep on coming. You stand before them bareheaded, shriven. What is expected of you is attention.
What did the earth teach the trees? _x000D_ How to speak to the sky.
That afternoon the sky was scattered with black clouds galloping in from the sea and clustering over the city. Flashes of lightening echoed on the horizon and a charged warm wind smelling of dust announced a powerful summer storm. When I reached the station I noticed the first few drops, shiny and heavy, like coins falling from heaven...Night seemed to fall suddenly, interrupted only by the lightning now bursting over the city, leaving a trail of noise and fury.
What does autumn go on paying for with so much yellow money?
The greatest delight the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me and I to them.
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