ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



and thus shirking the labors and cares of parent- 

 hood, and we should expect the jays and crows to 

 have scruples about eating up the eggs and young 

 of their feathered neighbors, if they, too, were 

 endowed with conscience. But none of them are 

 troubled in this way, for the simple reason that 

 they are not human beings. They live below the 

 plane of man's moral conscience. Chemistry and 

 the elementary forces have no scruples. Powder or 

 dynamite will blow up its maker as soon as it will 

 any one else. The rain does not scruple to spoil the 

 farmer's hay, or the floods to wash away his house 

 and destroy its inmates. 



We are childish when we marvel at the unscrupu- 

 lousness of Nature. Emerson often appealed to the 

 nature of things. It is in the nature of things that 

 they should be what we name unscrupulous; cer- 

 tainly Nature "is no saint," and it is well for us that 

 she is not. If we identify Nature with what we call 

 God, as many do, then I am saying that it is well 

 for us that the Eternal is "no saint." I suspect that 

 if the drama of life which has been enacted upon 

 the globe, and is still being enacted, had been 

 modeled upon the principle of sainthood, you and 

 I would not now be here. More's the pity, you may 

 say, but there is no pity in Nature. 



ii 

 Is Nature then of the Devil? If we choose to name 



74 



