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The sectarian, church and doctrinal, follies, crimes, fanaticisms,
aggregate and individual, so rife all thro' history, are proofs of
the radicalness and universality of the indestructible element of
humanity's Religion, just as much as any, and are the other side of
it. Just as disease proves health, and is the other side of it....
The philosophy of Greece taught normality and the beauty of life.
Christianity teaches how to endure illness and death. I have wonder'd
whether a third philosophy fusing both, and doing full justice to
both, might not be outlined.
It will not be enough to say that no Nation ever achiev'd
materialistic, political and money-making successes, with general
physical comfort, as fully as the United States of America are to-day
achieving them. I know very well that those are the indispensable
foundations--the _sine qua non_ of moral and heroic (poetic) fruitions
to come. For if those pre-successes were all--if they ended at
that--if nothing more were yielded than so far appears--a gross
materialistic prosperity only--America, tried by subtlest tests, were
a failure--has not advanced the standard of humanity a bit further
than other nations. Or, in plain terms, has but inherited and enjoy'd
the results of ordinary claims and preceding ages.
Nature seem'd to use me a long while--myself all well, able, strong
and happy--to portray power, freedom, health. But after a while she
seems to fancy, may-be I can see and understand it all better by being
deprived of most of those.
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