There is no effort in it, no whip of the will driving the unwilling energies to an activity from which they shrink; one plays as the bird sings and the brook runs and the sun shines--not with conscious purpose, but from the simple overflow.

In this sense Nature never works, she is always at play.

In perfect unconsciousness, without friction or effort, her mightiest movements are made and her sublimest tasks accomplished.

Throughout the whole range of her activity one never comes upon any trace of effort, any sign of weariness; one is always impressed--as Ruskin said long ago of works of genius--that he is standing in the presence, not of a great effort, but of a great power; that what has been done is only a single manifestation of the play of an inexhaustible force.

There is somewhere in the universe an infinite fountain of life and beauty which overflows and floods all worlds with divine energy and loveliness.
When the tide recedes it pauses but a moment, and then the music of its returning waves is heard along all shores, and its shining edges move irresistibly on until they have bathed the roots of the solitary flower on the highest Alp.
It is this divine method of growth which Nature opposes to our mechanisms; it is this inexhaustible life, overflowing in unconsciousness and boundless fulness, that she forever reveals.