apters that Nature does not appear to
be just from our point of view; but we have absolutely no means of
judging whether she be not just from her own. The fact that she pays
no heed to the morality of our actions does not warrant the inference
that she has no morality, or that ours is the only one there can be.
We are entitled to say that she is indifferent as to whether our
intentions be good or evil, but have not the right to conclude that she
has therefore no morality and no equity; for that would be tantamount
to affirming that there are no more mysteries or secrets, and that we
know all the laws of the universe, its origin and its end. Her mode of
action is different from our own, but, I say it once more, we know not
what her reason may be for acting in this different fashion; and we
have no right to imitate what seems to us iniquitous and cruel, so long
as we have no precise knowledge of the profound and salutary reasons
that may underlie such action. What is the aim of Nature? Whither do
the worlds tend that stretch across eternity? Where does consciousness
begin, and is its only form that which it assumes in ourselves? At
what point do physical laws become moral laws? Is life unintelligent?
Have we sounded all the depths of Nature, and is it only in our
cerebro-spinal system that she becomes mind? And finally, what is
justice when viewed from other heights? Is the intention necessarily
at its centre; and can no regions exist where intentions no longer
shall count? We should have to answer these questions, and many
others, before we could tell whether Nature be just or unjust from the
point of view of masses whose vastness corresponds to her own. She
disposes of a future, a space, of which we can form no conception; and
in these there exists, it may be, a justice proportioned to her
duration, to her extent and aim, even as our own instinct of justice is
proportioned to the duration and narrow circle of our own life. The
wrong that she may for centuries commit she has centuries wherein to
repair; but we, who have only a few days before us, what right have we
to imitate what our eye cannot see, understand, or follow? By what
standard are we to judge her, if we look away from the passing hour?
For instance, considering only the imperceptible speck that we form in
the worlds, and disregarding the immensity that surrounds us, we are
wholly ignorant of all that concerns our possible life beyond the tomb;
an