s pure, less profound, because of the
disinterestedness it has thus acquired? Has the loss of an
overwhelming dread robbed mankind of a single precious, indispensable
feeling? And must not life itself find gain in the importance wrested
from death? Surely: for the neutral forces we hold in reserve within
us are waiting and ready; and every discouragement, sorrow, or fear
that departs has its place quickly filled by a certitude, admiration,
or hope.

27

The poet is inclined to personify fatality and justice, and give
outward form to forces really within us, for the reason that to show
them at work in ourselves is a matter of exceeding difficulty; and
further, that the unknown and the infinite, to the extent that they
_are_ unknown and infinite--_i.e._ lacking personality, intelligence,
and morality--are powerless to move us. And here it is curious to note
that we are in no degree affected by material mystery, however
dangerous or obscure, or by psychological justice, however involved its
results. It is not the incomprehensible in nature that masters and
crushes us, but the thought that nature may possibly be governed by a
conscious, superior, reasoning will; one that, although superhuman, has
yet some kinship with the will of man. What we dread, in a word, is
the presence of a God; and speak as we may of fatality, justice, or
mystery, it is always God whom we fear: a being, that is, like
ourselves, though almighty, eternal, invisible, and infinite. A moral
force that was not conceived in the image of man would most likely
inspire no fear. It is not the unknown in nature that fills us with
dread; it is not the mystery of the world we live in. It is the
mystery of another world from which we recoil; it is the moral and not
the material enigma. There is nothing, for instance, more obscure than
the combination of causes which produce the earthquake, that most
terrible of all catastrophes. But the earthquake, though it alarm our
body, will bring no fear to our mind unless we regard it as an act of
justice, of mysterious vengeance, of supernatural punishment. And so
it is, too, with the thunderstorm, with illness, with death, with the
myriad phenomena and accidents of life. It would seem as though the
true alarm of our soul, the great fear which stirs other instincts
within us than that of mere self-preservation, is only called forth by
the thought of a more or less determinate God, of a mysterious
conscious