To us,
from the beginning, nature has been but a poor plastic thing, to be toyed
with this way or that, as man happens to please his deity or not; to go to
church or not; to say his prayers right or not; to travel on a Sunday or
not. Was it possible for us in an instant to see Nature as she is--the
flowing vestment of an unchanging reality? When the soul breaks free from
the arms of a superstition, bits of the claws and talons break themselves
off in him. It is not the work of a day to squeeze them out.
And so, for us, the human-like driver and guide being gone, all existence,
as we look out at it with our chilled, wondering eyes, is an aimless rise
and swell of shifting waters. In all that weltering chaos we can see no
spot so large as a man's hand on which we may plant our foot.
Whether a man believes in a human-like God or no is a small thing. Whether
he looks into the mental and physical world and sees no relation between
cause and effect, no order, but a blind chance sporting, this is the
mightiest fact that can be recorded in any spiritual existence. It were
almost a mercy to cut his throat, if indeed he does not do it for himself.
We, however, do not cut our throats. To do so would imply some desire and
feeling, and we have no desire and no feeling; we are only cold. We do not
wish to live, and we do not wish to die.
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