He admits, indeed, that 'the disease
and deformity around us certify that infraction of natural,
intellectual, and moral laws, and often violation on violation to breed
such compound misery.' The way of Providence, he says in another place,
is a little rude, through earthquakes, fever, the sword of climate, and
a thousand other hints of ferocity in the interiors of nature.
Providence has a wild rough incalculable road to its end, and 'it is of
no use to try to white-wash its huge mixed instrumentalities, or to
dress up that terrific benefactor in a clean shirt and white neckcloth
of a student of divinity.' But he only drew from the thought of these
cruelties of the universe the practical moral that 'our culture must
not omit the arming of the man.' He is born into the state of war, and
will therefore do well to acquire a military attitude of soul. There is
perhaps no better moral than this of the Stoic, but greater
impressiveness might have marked the lesson, if our teacher had been
more indulgent to the man's sense of tragedy in that vast drama in which
he plays his piteous part.
In like manner, Emerson has little to say of that horrid burden and
impediment on the soul, which the churches call Sin, and which, by
whatever name we call it, is a very real catastrophe in the moral nature
of man. He had no eye, like Dante's, for the vileness, the cruelty, the
utter despicableness to which humanity may be moulded.
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