Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/239

Rh thing is accomplished with no finite, private, individual will; all is mechanism, the brute, involuntary, unconscious action of matter passively obedient to the mind and will of God. There God is the only actor; all else is tool: He is the only workman; nature is all engine and God the engineer. Accordingly, in the world of matter there is a harmony of forces; but not a harmony of purpose, of will, of thought, of feeling,—because there is only one purpose, will, thought, feeling. God alone is the consciousness of the material world; matter obeys His laws, but wills not, knows not. The ideal of nature resides in God^s consciousness; only its actual in itself. The two are one; but the material things do not know of that oneness; only God knows thereof. Nature knows nothing of God, nothing of His laws, nothing of itself;—because therein God is the only cause, the only providence, the only consciousness.

On the other hand, in the human world, man is an actor as well as a tool; he is in part engine, in part also engineer. The ideal of man’s conduct, character, and destination, resides in God; but thence it is transferred to the mind of man by man's own instinct and reflection; and it is to become actual by man's thought, man's will, man's work. The human race comes to consciousness in itself, and not merely to consciousness in God. So in virtue of the superior nature and destination of man, between him and God there is to be not merely a harmony of forces, but a harmony of feeling, thought, will, purpose, and thence of act. Man is to obey the natural laws as completely as that leaf obeyed them, falling from my hand. But, unlike the leaf, man is to know that he obeys; he must will to obey. So he is to form in his own mind an ideal of the character which he should observe, and then by his own will he is to make that ideal his actual. This is the dignity of man,—he is partial cause and providence of his own affairs.

In general, man has powers sufficient to find out the natural mode of operation of all his human forces, all the natural laws of his conduct, his natural ideal. Narrow this down to a small compass, and take one portion of these powers,—the moral part of man, and thereof this only,—that portion which relates to his dealing with his fellowmen.

There is a moral faculty called conscience. Its function