nature does not always prostrate her beauties to the naked view

An example of personification in historical writing about nature,

"…if Aristotle found nature's face under covert of a veil, he hath not removed the old, but made her a new one

He that looks for perfection, must seek it above the empyreum; it is reserved for glory. It's that alone, which needs not the advantage of a foil: defects seem as necessary to our now happiness, as their opposites. The most refulgent colours are the result of light and shadows: Venus was never the less beautiful for her mole. And 'tis for the majesty of nature, like the Persian kings, sometimes to cover, and not alway to prostrate her beauties to the naked view: yea, they contract a kind of splendour from the seemingly obscuring veil; which adds to the enravishments of her transported admirers. He alone sees all things with an unshadowed comprehensive vision, who eminently is all: only the God of nature perfectly knows her: and light without darkness is the incommunicable claim of him, that dwells in light inaccessible. 'Tis no disparagement to philosophy, that it cannot deify us, or make good the impossible promise of the primitive deceiver. It is that, which she owns, above her, that must perfectly remake us after the image of our maker. "
pp.108-109

Joseph Glanvill (1661) Scepsis Scientifica; or, The Vanity of Dogmatizing.

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Author: Keith

Former school and college science teacher, teacher educator, research supervisor, and research methods lecturer. Emeritus Professor of Science Education at the University of Cambridge.