Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/267

No. 3.] the mountain throws its shadow on the plain, covering with its cloud homesteads, as well as pastures and their flocks, so the antipathy to pain like a dark shadow is seen spreading everywhere. This antipathy discovers Nature's deeper law, carrying us further into the knowledge of the fixed order of the universe than does the bright sunshine itself.

What in surface form appears as antipathy to Nature's laws, in deeper significance is sympathy with Nature itself. It is the witness of recoil, for an advance which is not impossible, but is progressing even while we shrink from sight of the procedure, — it is coming through all this suffering which we deplore. Here, as often, the shadow which crosses our spirits helps us to see more readily the brightness still remote. We must learn this lesson of Nature's teaching, — through suffering and through death lies the pathway of progress.

Thus, even in physical law, we find some trace of moral law, — some adumbration bearing witness for a higher order. All this holds good, while we exonerate animals from responsibility for the relentless passion which conquers by cruelty, and even by destroying life.

If we cannot carry moral law so low in the scale as Herbert Spencer thinks we may, at least we can agree with him that we find in Nature the links which connect the physical with the ethical. Thereby, we perceive the inner meaning of Nature as a whole, recognizing an Immanent Deity, ruling and reigning in combinations often bewildering to us, — not unfrequently causing us to shrink with sense of pain. We see the unity of Nature in structure and in history. With such vision of the grand order maintained everywhere, we are warned of the incompleteness of that speculation, — creature of despair, — which calls itself pessimistic. No less clearly are we warned of the inadequacy and inconsistency of this speculation, which adopts the language of optimism, yet cannot proclaim finality. But we can speak, as Spencer obviously desires to do, of the "meliorist view of life in general," of the steady advance towards better things, and of the large expectation with which a rational life may contemplate Nature's future. And if, while valuing