“In the oldest religion, everything was alive, not supernaturally but naturally alive. There were only deeper and deeper streams of life, vibrations of life more and more vast.
So rocks were alive, but a mountain had a deeper, vaster life than a rock, and it was much harder for a man to bring his spirit, or his energy, into contact with the life of the mountain, and so draw strength from the mountain, as from a great standing well of life, than it was to come into contact with a rock. And he had to put forth a great religious effort.
For the whole life-effort of man was to get his life into direct contact with the elemental life of the cosmos, mountain-life, cloud-life, thunder-life, air-life, sun-life. To come into immediate felt contact, and so derive energy, power, and a dark sort of joy.”
— D.H. Lawrence
[Art: Caspar David Friedrich, “Wanderer Above The Sea of Fog” (1818)]
