We seek renewed reverence for the biosphere as
the ultimate context for human existence....
We seek renewed reverence for the biosphere as
the ultimate context for human existence....
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DEVOTION TO TRUTHHow much is in a name! When we call the power back of all God, it smells of creeds and systems, of superstition, intolerance, persecution; but when we call it Nature, it smells of spring and summer, of green fields and blooming groves, of birds and flowers and sky and stars. I admit that it smells of tornadoes and earthquakes, of jungles and wildernesses, of disease and death to, but these things make it all the more real to us. The word God has so long stood for the conception of a being who sits apart from Nature, who shapes and rules it as its maker and governor. It is part of the conception of a dual or plural universe, God and Nature. This offends my sense of the oneness of creation. It seems to me that there is no other adequate solution of the total problem of life and Nature than what is called pantheism, which identified mind and matter, finite and Infinite, and sees in all these diverse manifestations one absolute being. As Emerson truly says, pantheism does not belittle God, it magnifies him. God becomes the one and ultimate fact that fills the universe and from which we can no more be estranged than we can be estranged from gravitation. The Pantheist sees all life as a whole. Man is not an exception, but part of the total scheme. The life-principle is the same in him as in all else that lives. In the weed, the tree, and in man, the principle is the same. What has set up this organizing power and so impressed it that it goes on from lower to higher forms, and unfolds the whole drama of evolution through the geologic ages, is the mystery of mysteries. To solve this mystery, mankind invented gods and acts of creation. But a god apart from Nature is to me unthinkable, and science finds no beginning of anything. It finds change, transformation, only. Men are fast coming to see that devotion to the truth is the essence of true religion, and that the worst form of irreligion is the acceptance of creeds and forms without examining them, or upon the sole authority of some book or sect. The responsibility rests upon ourselves. When we project ourselves into Nature out of which we came, or when we see ourselves there objectively - our virtues, our aspirations, our vices, and our wickedness - we sow the seeds of our religion. So do we make the world in which we live, and it in turn makes us. So does the divine in us keep pace with the divine we see in Nature. So does the beauty of our own characters grow as we see beauty in the character of others. So do our love, faith, hope, charity, develop and augment as we see these things in the world about us. The universe is thus constituted, and that is all we can say about it. We seek more and more a naturalistic basis for our rules of conduct, for our altruism, for our cultural institutions, for our whole ethical system. Any principle that squares with natural law is indeed founded upon a rock. The stars in their courses fight for the cause that is founded upon natural rights, which in human relations does not mean the right of the strong to trample upon the weak, but the right of all - man, animal, plant alike - to their full measure of free development. Universal Nature, as it appears among non-living bodies and forces, knows neither right nor wrong; it knows only might. Physics and chemistry, machines and industry have no consciousness; but man has, and this fact will in time determine the course of human well-being and survival. Pantheism makes for right-mindedness as surely as it makes for health and diversity. Whatever triumph arrogance and destructiveness may meet with, they must in time meet with defeat, else Evolution has miscarried, and its latest product, manĒs moral nature, is but dust and ashes. - John Burroughs, Accepting the Universe,1920 |
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