The Outermost House - III
“Our fantastic civilization has fallen out of touch with many aspects of
nature, and with none more completely than with night. Primitive folk,
gathered at a cave mouth round a fire, do not fear night; they fear,
rather, the energies and creatures to whom night gives power; we of the
age of the machines, having delivered ourselves of nocturnal enemies,
now have a dislike of night itself. With lights and ever more lights, we
drive the holiness and beauty of night back to the forests and the sea;
the little villages, the crossroads even, will have none of it. Are
modern folk, perhaps, afraid of night? Do they fear that vast serenity,
the mystery of infinite space, the austerity of stars? Having made
themselves at home in a civilization obsessed with power, which explains
its whole world in terms of energy, do they fear at night for their
dull acquiescence and the pattern of their beliefs? Be the answer what
it will, to-day's civilization is full of people who have not the
slightest notion of the character or the poetry of night, who have never
even seen night. Yet to live thus, to know only artificial night, is as
absurd and evil as to know only artificial day.”
― Henry Beston, The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod
― Henry Beston, The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod
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