That God had died for me as my Saviour,--I could
not understand what it meant; it was an idea that conveyed nothing to
me.
And I wondered whether the inhabitants of another planet would be able
to understand how on the Earth that which was contrary to all reason was
considered the highest truth.
XIX.
With Pantheism likewise I was on my guard against its being lack of
courage, rather than a conviction of its untruth, which held me back
from embracing it. I thought it a true postulate that everything seemed
permeated and sustained by a Reason that had not human aims in front of
it and did not work by human means, a Divine Reason. Nature could only
be understood from its highest forms; the Ideal, which revealed itself
to the world of men at their highest development, was present, in
possibility and intent, in the first germ, in the mist of primeval
creation, before it divided itself into organic and inorganic elements.
The whole of Nature was in its essence Divine, and I felt myself at
heart a worshipper of Nature.
But this same Nature was indifferent to the weal or woe of humans. It
obeyed its own laws regardless of whether men were lost thereby; it
seemed cruel in its callousness; it took care that the species should be
preserved, but the individual was nothing to it.
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