# Seeing the tree through its nymph

Commentary on Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.

On [CH04.P007](https://glosses.org/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH04.P007/#char=1398,1451): "the old Greeks could not see the trees for the dryads"

The joke turns the familiar complaint about missing the wood for the trees into a claim that mythical beings can intensify attention to nature. A concrete ancient comparison is the *Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite*, lines 256–273: the mountain nymphs who will rear Aphrodite's child have lives joined to particular trees. Trees grow when they are born; human beings treat the groves as sacred and refrain from cutting them; tree and nymph eventually die together. The mythical presence therefore carries an attention to growth, vulnerability and restraint, rather than simply obscuring the vegetation. [Hymn V, Evelyn-White translation, p. 425](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Hesiod,_The_Homeric_Hymns,_and_Homerica.djvu/479). This illustrates Chesterton's point without establishing his generalization about all ancient or modern poets. The inspected witness is the 1920 reprint of Hugh G. Evelyn-White's translation, first printed in 1914; it is evidence for the ancient story, not a source available to *Orthodoxy* in 1908.

## Sources

- [Homeric Hymn V, To Aphrodite, translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Hesiod,_The_Homeric_Hymns,_and_Homerica.djvu/479), lines 256–273; printed p. 425; 1920 reprint
- [Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica: title and publication pages](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Hesiod,_the_Homeric_Hymns_and_Homerica), title dated MCMXX; verso: First printed 1914, Reprinted 1920

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