that lie behind us and that have left their intoxicating influence
in our blood.
We are willing to be made out of the dust of the earth when God
makes us, the God we have made ourselves out of our dreams and fears
and aspirations, but we are not willing to be made out of the dust
of the earth when the god called Evolution makes us. An impersonal
law or process we cannot revere or fear or worship or exalt; we can
only study it and put it to the test. We can love or worship only
personality. This is why science puts such a damper upon us; it
banishes personality, as we have heretofore conceived it, from the
universe. The thunder is no longer the voice of God, the earth is no
longer his footstool. Personality appears only in man; the universe
is not inhuman, but unhuman. It is this discovery that we recoil
from, and blame science for; and until, in the process of time, we
shall have adjusted our minds, and especially our emotions, to it,
mankind will still recoil from it.
We love our dreams, our imaginings, as we love a prospect before our
houses. We love an outlook into the ideal, the unknown in our lives.
But we love also to feel the solid ground beneath our feet.
Whether life loses in charm as we lose our illusions, and whether it
gains in power and satisfaction as we more and more reach solid
ground in our beliefs, is a question that will be answered
differently by different persons.
We have vastly more solid knowledge about the universe amid which we
live than had our fathers, but are we happier, better, stronger? May
it not be said that our lives consist, not in the number of things
we know any more than in the number of things we possess, but in the
things we love, in the depth and sincerity of our emotions, and in
the elevation of our aspirations? Has not science also enlarged the
sphere of our love, and given us new grounds for wonder and
admiration? It certainly has, but it as certainly has put a damper
upon our awe, our reverence, our veneration. However valuable these
emotions are, and whatever part they may have played in the
development of character in the past, they seem doomed to play less
and less part in the future. Poetry and religion, so called, seem
doomed to play less and less part in the life of the race in the
future. We shall still dream and aspire, but we shall not tremble
and worship as in the past.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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