Nature does not produce beauty for humans but simply is beauty itself.

Evidence

Sometimes we think in our egotism that nature has provided these beauties as a special act on our behalf. If I may be allowed a harmless bit of fantasy, I shall imagine a conversation you might have with nature on this point. After hearingyou patiently on the subject of beauty, nature would perhaps say something like this: … “I see the source of your error. It derives from your very limited knowledge. You are thinking that I have a Department of Beauty—that I deal with beauty as one of my activities. Really, I do not intend beauty. I am beauty. I am beauty and many other things, such as you are trying to express by your abstractions like Order, Harmony, Truth, Love. What you see in my scenic manifestations is the glamour behind which lies an Absolute Beauty of which I myself am an expressive part. You do not understand? Naturally it is difficult. But you are trying : I do like that in you, little man.” — Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage, 624

Categorization

• FICTION: The imagined dialogue with a personified nature giving gentle correction is a directly usable device for interpretive writing or fictional scenes.
• XREF: The personified nature speaking down to the ‘little man’ echoes the transcendentalist voice of Emerson and Thoreau that Tilden elsewhere draws on. — connects to: Parks’ finest purpose is spiritual uplift via beauty — Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage, 526; Ugliness, like raw scenic beauty, needs no interpretation — Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage, 641
• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source