Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • proper noun The sum of natural forces reified and considered as a sentient being, will, or principle.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The will of the individual, even when completely free, could not act in an isolated independence, because the individual being and nature are included in the universal Being and Nature and dependent on the all-overruling Transcendence...

    Sri Aurobindo cures us of angst, alienation, and uncertainty Tusar N Mohapatra 2008

  • Social nature, like Nature herself, is a great forgetter.

    Modeste Mignon 2007

  • VIEW FAVORITES yahooBuzzArticleHeadline = 'New Bush Theme Song - Nature Bush'; yahooBuzzArticleSummary = 'In The Garlic\'s ongoing quest, to keep our Court-Appointed-President bathed in theme music, we found ourselves humming the Nat King Cole gem, \'Nature Boy\' most of the day.

    OpEdNews - Quicklink: New Bush Theme Song - Nature Bush 2006

  • Also in early phases of thought the powers of nature became the minds of Nature--minds bestial, ruthless, and yet placable.

    From the Shambles The Daily Growler 2006

  • For nature wishes every thing to remain itself; and whilst every individual strives to grow and exclude and to exclude and grow, to the extremities of the universe, and to impose the law of its being on every other creature, Nature steadily aims to protect each against every other.

    Representative Men 2006

  • Many other axioms there are touching the managing of exercise and custom, which being so conducted doth prove indeed another nature; but, being governed by chance, doth commonly prove but an ape of Nature, and bringeth forth that which is lame and counterfeit.

    The Advancement of Learning 2003

  • Many things come before our eyes from time to time which are thought to be beyond the law of nature, and deemed to be the mocking activities of demons, even though Nature -- the parent of all things -- has produced them from definite causes not difficult to understand. 13

    To Prevent a "Shipwreck of Souls": Johann Weyer and "De Praestigiis Daemonum." Elisa Slattery Elisa Slattery 1994

  • Thoreau's moral view of man's relationship with nature, recognizing an obligation toward it and a spiri - tual enrichment to be derived from it, is carried on by George Perkins Marsh whose Man and Nature

    Dictionary of the History of Ideas RAYMOND F. DASMANN 1968

  • Physis, dreaming of the construction of man through the power of nature, sees the radiance of Urania re - flected much as Nature sees the reflection of man in the Hermetica.

    HERMETICISM BLOSSOM FEINSTEIN 1968

  • It is further assumed that man and nature do not work at cross purposes, an assump - tion which has rapidly broken down during the last one hundred years (Marsh's Man and Nature, 1864, is an excellent landmark) with accumulating knowledge of man's destructiveness of the natural environment.

    ENVIRONMENT AND CULTURE CLARENCE J. GLACKEN 1968

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