Every object in nature is a word to signify some fact in the mind. But when that fact is not yet put into English words, when I look at the tree or the river and have not yet definitely made out what they would say to me, they are by no means unimpressive. I wait for them, I enjoy them be-fore they yet speak. I feel as if I stood by an ambassador charged with the message of his king, which he does not deliver because the hour when he should say it is not yet arrived.
The great question of Nature has always faced us, whether it was called by this name, or by any name. If, with Buber[1], we divide the world into “Thou” and “It,” we still must leave room for that unfathomable “I” that stands in opposition (It) or relationship (Thou) to the other. The question of Nature speaks to the distinctness of this “I” for it asks of its boundaries, or if it is separate at all. Surrounded as we are by the man-molded world of things, we separate ourselves from that which would speak so that even our bodies become “It,” and mute. Even my body, as Nature, poses this question. Is that tumor, I? Can I control even that which seems to be most intimately part of myself, my body?
[1] Martin Buber (1878 – 1965), Jewish philosopher, translator, and educator, whose most famous work Ich und Du (1923) was translated into English as I and Thou. Martin Buber, I and Thou (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970).
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