In that sense of
responsibility is the confession of sin and in the confession of sin
is the acknowledgment of the impotence of the sinner.
"The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on
Nor all your wit nor all your tears, can wash a line of it."
Man cannot, unaided, make his connection with this higher power. The
world is at fault, yes, but we are at fault, something both within and
without dreadfully needs explaining. So man is subdued and troubled by
the infinite mystery; and he cannot accept the place in which he finds
himself in that mystery; he is ashamed of it.
Vivid, then, is his sense of helplessness! It makes him resent the
humanist, who bids him, unaided, solve his fate and be a man. That is
giving him stones when he asks for bread. He knows that advice makes
an inhuman demand upon the will; it assumes a reasonableness, an
insight and a moral power, which for him do not exist; it ignores
or it denies the reality and the meaning of this inner gulf. It is
important to note that even as philosophy and art and literature soon
parted company with the naturalist, so, to a large degree, they part
company with the humanist, too. They do not know very much of an
harmonious and triumphant universe. Few of the world's creative
spirits have ever denied that inner chasm or minimized its tragic
consequences to mankind.
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