[447W-{2/50} Art and Climate: PW Vol. I, p. 252]
[P. 252] {FEUER} “Yet where Climatic Nature draws Man beneath the all-sheltering influence of her rankest prodigality, and rocks him in her bosom as a mother rocks her child, -- where we must therefore place the cradle of newborn mankind: -- there has Man remained a child forever – as in the Tropics, -- with all an infant’s good and evil qualities. First where she drew this all-conditioning, over-tender influence back, when she handed Man, like a prudent mother her adult son, to himself and his own free self-devisings, -- where Man, then, mid the waning warmth of the directly fostering care of Climate, was forced to cater for himself, -- do we see him ripening to the full unfoldment of his being. Only through the force of such a Need as surrounding Nature did not, like an over-careful mother, both listen for and still at once ere it had scarcely risen, but for whose appeasement he must himself provide, did he gain consciousness not only of that need but also of his power. This consciousness he reached through learning the distinction between himself and Nature; and thus it was that she, who no more offered him the stilling of his need, but from whom he now must wrest it, became the object of his observation, inquiry, and dominion.
{FEUER} The progress of the human race in the development of its innate capabilities of winning from Nature the contentment of those needs that waxed with its ever-waxing powers, is the history of Culture. In it Man evolves his own qualities in counterpoise to Nature, and thus acquires independence of her.” [447W-{2/50} Art and Climate: PW Vol. I, p. 252]
[448W-{2/50} Art and Climate: PW Vol. I, p. 252-253]
[P. 252] {FEUER} “Only man become independent of Nature by his personal energy, is the historical Man; and only the historical Man has summoned Art to life, but not the primitive Man in Nature’s leading-strings.
{FEUER} Art is the highest common life expression of the man who, after self-fought-out contentment of his natural needs, displays himself to Nature in all the flush of triumph. His art-works as though fill up the gaps which she had [P. 253] left for Man’s free personal activity … . Wherefore, where Nature in her overfill was All, we neither light upon free Man nor genuine Art; but where … she left those empty gaps, where she thus made room for the free self-evolution of Man and of his need-grown energy, was Art first born.
{FEUER} Granted, that Nature has also had her share in the birth of Art, just as the highest expression of the latter is the brilliant ‘close,’ the conscious reunion of Nature with Man, effected by his understanding of her. Her share, however, was this: that she abandoned Man, the creator of Art, to the conditions which must necessarily spur him on to self-gained consciousness. (…) From the over-tender mother, she became to him a bashful bride, whom he now must win by vigour and love-worthiness for his – endlessly enhanced – fruition; a bride who, vanquished thus by mind and valour, made offering of herself to Love’s embraces.” [448W-{2/50} Art and Climate: PW Vol. I, p. 252-253]
[449W-{2/50} Art and Climate: PW Vol. I, p. 255]
[P. 255] {FEUER} “But the voiding of that overfill was also the death-knell of this art-creative man: the more he strewed his seed beyond the confines of his Hellenic motherland, the farther he shed this overfill toward Asia, and led back thence its lavish stream into the pragmatic-prosaic and grossly sensual world of Rome: so much the more visibly did his creative force die out; to make
