Those amorous nations were consistent; with
them all was God, even Fear and its dastardy, even crime and its
bacchanals. If we accept pantheism,--the religion of many a great
human genius,--who shall say where the greater reason lies? Is it with
the savage, free in the desert, clothed in his nudity, listening to
the sun, talking to the sea, sublime and always true in his deeds
whatever they may be; or shall we find it in civilized man, who
derives his chief enjoyments through lies; who wrings Nature and all
her resources to put a musket on his shoulder; who employs his
intellect to hasten the hour of his death and to create diseases out
of pleasures? When the rake of pestilence and the ploughshare of war
and the demon of desolation have passed over a corner of the globe and
obliterated all things, who will be found to have the greater
reason,--the Nubian savage or the patrician of Thebes? Your doubts
descend the scale, they go from heights to depths, they embrace all,
the end as well as the means.
"But if the physical world seems inexplicable, the moral world
presents still stronger arguments against God. Where, then, is
progress? If all things are indeed moving toward perfection why do we
die young? why do not nations perpetuate themselves? The world having
issued from God and being contained in God can it be stationary? Do we
live once, or do we live always? If we live once, hurried onward by
the march of the Great-Whole, a knowledge of which has not been given
to us, let us act as we please.
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