[30] I am reminded as I write that out of this very conscience, or
idea of conscience, of intense moral right, and in its name and
strain'd construction, the worst fanaticisms, wars, persecutions,
murders, &c., have yet, in all lands, in the past, been broach'd, and
have come to their devilish fruition. Much is to be said--but I may
say here, and in response, that side by side with the unflagging
stimulation of the elements of religion and conscience must henceforth
move with equal sway, science, absolute reason, and the general
proportionate development of the whole man. These scientific
facts, deductions, are divine too--precious counted parts of moral
civilization, and, with physical health, indispensable to it, to
prevent fanaticism. For abstract religion, I perceive, is easily led
astray, ever credulous, and is capable of devouring, remorseless, like
fire and flame. Conscience, too, isolated from all else, and from the
emotional nature, may but attain the beauty and purity of glacial,
snowy ice. We want, for these States, for the general character,
a cheerful, religious fervor, endued with the ever-present
modifications of the human emotions, friendship, benevolence, with a
fair field for scientific inquiry, the right of individual judgment,
and always the cooling influences of material Nature.
[31] The culmination and fruit of literary artistic expression, and
its final fields of pleasure for the human soul, are in metaphysics,
including the mysteries of the spiritual world, the soul itself, and
the question of the immortal continuation of our identity.
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