78 ESSAYS IN rillLOSOPHY 



Shadow of Death. Yes, we must go still farther, 

 and say that even should the science of Nature 

 prove pantheism true, this would only array the 

 interests of science against the interests of man — • 

 the interests that man can never displace from their 

 supreme seat in his world, except by abdicating his 

 inmost nature and putting his conscience to an open 

 shame. A pantheistic edict of science would only 

 proclaim a deadlock in the system and substance 

 of truth itself, and herald an implacable -conflict 

 between the law of Nature and the law written 

 indelibly in the human spirit. The heart on which 

 the vision of a possible moral perfection has once 

 arisen, and in whose recesses the still and solemn 

 voice of Duty has once resounded with its majestic 

 sweetness, can never be reconciled to the decree, 

 though this issue never so authentically from Nature, 

 that bids it count responsible freedom an illusion 

 and surrender existence on that mere threshold of 

 moral development which the bound of our present 

 life affords. 



Such a defeat of its most sacred hopes the con- 

 science can neither acquiesce in nor tolerate. Nor 

 can it be appeased or deluded by the pretext that 

 annihilation may be accepted devoutly, as self-sacri- 

 fice in behalf of an infinite "fulness of life" for 

 the universe — a life in which the individual con- 

 science is to have no continued livinsf share. The 



