ot nature any more than the copper wire is the
electric fluid which it carries--a force which was before it, which
moves within it, which shall be after it.

So poet and believer and mystic find the key to nature, the
interpretation of that alien and cruel world, not by sinking to its
indifferent level, not by sentimental exaltation of its specious
peace, its amoral cruelty and beauty, but by regarding it as the
expression, the intimation rather, of a purposive Intelligence, a
silent and infinite Force, beyond it all. So the pagan effuses over
nature, gilding with his sentimentality the puddles that the beasts
would cough at. And the scientist is interested in efficient causes,
seeing nature as an unbroken sequence, an endless uniformity of cause
and effect, against whose iron chain the spirit of mankind wages a
foredoomed but never ending revolt. But the religionist, confessing
the ruthless indifference, the amorality which he distrusts and
fears, and not denying the majestic uniformity of order, nevertheless
declares that these are not self-made, that the amorality is but
one half and that the confusing half of the tale. The whole creation
indeed groaneth and travaileth in pain, but for a final cause, which
alone interprets or justifies it, and which eventually shall set it
free. As a matter of fact, nearly all poets and artists thus view
nature in the light of final causes, though often instinctively and
unconsciously so. For what they sing or paint or mould is not the
landscape that we see, the flesh we touch, but the life behind it,
the light that never was on land or sea. What they give us is not
a photograph or an inventory--it is worlds away from such naive and
lying realism. But they hint at the inexpressible behind expression;
paint the beauty which is indistinguishable from nature but not
identical with Nature. They make us see that not she, red in tooth and
claw, but that intangible and supernal something-more, is what gives
her the cleansing bath of loveliness. No reflective or imaginative
person needs to be greatly troubled, therefore, by any purely
mechanical or materialistic conception of the universe. They who
would commend that view of the cosmos have not only to reckon with
philosophical and religious idealism, but also with all the bright
band of poets and artists and seers. Such an issue once resolutely
forced would therewith collapse, for it would pit the qualitative
standards against the quantita