Yet on the very next night I would steal out again and go to
the spot where the effect was strongest, which was usually among the
large locust or white acacia trees, which gave the name of Las Acacias
to our place. The loose feathery foliage on moonlight nights had a
peculiar hoary aspect that made this tree seem more intensely alive
than others, more conscious of my presence and watchful of me.
I never spoke of these feelings to others, not even to my mother,
notwithstanding that she was always in perfect sympathy with me with
regard to my love of nature. The reason of my silence was, I think, my
powerlessness to convey in words what I felt; but I imagine it would
be correct to describe the sensation experienced on those moonlight
night among the trees as similar to the feeling a person would have
if visited by a supernatural being, if he was perfectly convinced that
it was there in his presence, albeit silent and unseen, intently
regarding him, and divining every thought in his mind. He would be
thrilled to the marrow, but not terrified if he knew that it would
take no visible shape nor speak to him out of the silence.
This faculty or instinct of the dawning mind is or has always seemed
to me essentially religious in character; undoubtedly it is the root
of all nature-worship, from fetishism to the highest pantheistic
development.
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