OCR Text |
Show 63, to struggle with a duality between body and soul, a doctrine which he found difficult to transcend. He knew this much: when he wandered in the mountains, he found no walls that he could not cross on his own two feet. And so he began to wonder whether his finite body could be a means for reaching the infinite. His body, which experienced pleasure, had contact with Nature, was a part of Nature. But his soul was a part of the Spirit of Creation. He had been taught that the world was composed of matter and spirit. Did they have to be separate? He would have to study himself more carefully before he could answer that question. For now he would follow the paths of the glaciers. METHOD OF STUDY This was my "method of study:" I drifted about from rock to rock, from stream to stream, from grove to grove. Where night found me, there I camped. When I discovered a new plant, I sat down beside it for a minute or a day, to make its acquaintance and hear what it had to tell. When I came to moraines, or ice-scratches upon the rocks, I traced them back, learning what I could of the glacier that made them. I asked the bowlders I met, whence they came and whither they were going. I followed to their fountains the traces of the various soils upon which forests and meadows are planted; and when I discovered a mountain or rock of marked form |