410 Life as a Fine Art. 



the mandates of conscience a profounder insight into those 

 uniformities of conduct which were revealed to his clearer 

 vision in the commanding features of the Moral Law. 

 Herein lay the germ of a wiser foresight, a true prophetic 

 outlook, and of a more orderly and progressive individual 

 and social life. 



Scarcely can we exaggerate the importance and signifi- 

 cance of this step in human evolution. By it, how many 

 irrational fears of the childhood of the race were dissipated ; 

 how much larger and grander became the universe ; what 

 increase of courage and cheer entered into individual lives ; 

 how much more lively and profound became man's sense of 

 responsibility for his actions ! In the new conception of the 

 universality and imperative nature of law lay the germs of 

 all the sciences, of more intimate human relationships, of a 

 deepening sense of moral obligation, of an advancing and 

 triumphant civilization. In this and in the allied concep- 

 tion of an indwelling and all-comprehensive unity of force 

 and being lay the possibilities of a new theology, spiritual, 

 universal, monotheistic, which must of necessity become a 

 solvent of national antipathies and a beneficent impulse 

 toward the solidarity and brotherhood of the race. 



It is easy to understand, however, that man had not yet 

 taken his final step in intellectual progress. Implied in the 

 new thought were certain dangers and limitations as well as 

 inspirations. It is evident that it might become the source 

 of an intellectual bondage scarcely less oppressive than that 

 of the ignorant empiricism of superstition which it had 

 measurably superseded. Man might easily picture himself 

 in the grasp of inexorable and unmoral forces. Law might, 

 to his spiritual nature, become a weary burden rather than 

 an uplifting helper. His conception of the one Absolute 

 Being would naturally retain a strong residuum of the 

 primitive anthropomorphism, and his God would come to 

 be regarded as the stern lawgiver, the arbitrary and unyield- 

 ing autocrat of the universe. A sterile monotheism, as un- 

 der the cultus of Islam, might deliver man over to the rule 

 of an iron and unyielding fate. In philosophy a harsh real- 

 ism might easily degenerate into a crude materialism, as 

 empty of inspiration toward ideal excellence in character 

 and achievement as it is full of the delusions of intellectual 

 conceit. Under the unopposed and uncounteracted sway 

 of such an intellectual impulse, life would become an ha- 



