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.
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