S6 



masters of morals who pretend to found on Fatalism the 

 morality of the future ; see them when they are victims of in- 

 justice, wounded in their self-interest or their pride, what do 

 they do ? "Why ! they are indignant, they are angry. Oh 1 

 strange simplicity — angry? with an irresponsible Being ? Accuse 

 a senseless machine because it crushes a human existence 

 beneath its wheels ? Denounce the instincts of the beast which 

 devours because it is carnivorous ? The Fatalists, when with 

 extreme inconsistency they rise in protest against injustice 

 of which they are victims, give the lie emphatically to their 

 own system ; they show involuntary respect to human nature, 

 for to protest against crime is to honour man. 



I am not conjuring np vain phantoms, these ideas are rapidly 

 becoming popular, although we may not happen to have come 

 across them; our sons may some day give expression to them 

 in the language of the schools, and the very handicraftsman 

 who works for you may be reading them greedily, presented to 

 him, as they are, in the most agreeable form. But, even if we 

 do not accept the system, we may be accepting its results. How 

 sweet to rid ourselves of the burden of responsibility ! How 

 sweet when enslaved by a passion we do not care to fly, to lay 

 the blame on a peculiar state of circumstances or on nature ! It 

 is so convenient thus to escape the importunity of conscience to 

 say that we do not do it, but it is the result of irresistible 

 influences. In this way Fatalism will always be tacitly popular. 

 The dogma was born on the day when the first sinner laid the 

 blame of his act on God, and it always will remain the 

 philosophy of sin, for it alone can give it the semblance of law. 



Faith in Providence may be said to have entered the world 

 with the advent of Christianity ; up to that time men did not 

 believe in it. Paganism admitted certain tutelary deities of 

 the country, or the family, but above them, nay, above Jupiter 

 himself, they placed the cold, motionless, impassible figure of 

 destiny or fate; although the belief in a supreme God may be 

 pretty clearly traced in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. 

 Philosophers cannot be said to have admitted that the world 

 was guided by a beneficent Will to an end mysterious, but 

 definite. Never were the now widely-spread ideas of progress, 

 Divine training, providential plan, even once enunciated during 

 the ages of human existence. The most careful search into the 

 literature of antiquity will not bring to light a page or a line 

 which, however remotely, indicates such a behef. 



No Pagan ever heard the beatings of the universal Father's 

 heart in his own, or in the world's history never did it occur to 

 his mind to seek from tliis Father strength under trial ; and 

 when overwhelmed by misfortune his sole consolation lay in 



