quote · Legacy record

The Cynic in society becomes the Pessimist in religion. The large embrace of sympathy, which fails him as interpreter of human life, will no less be wanting when he reads the meaning of the universe. The harmony of the great whole escapes him in his hunt for little discords here and there. He is blind to the august balance of nature, in his preoccupation with some creaking show of defect. He misses the comprehensive march of advancing purpose, because while he himself is in it, he has found some halting member that seems to lag behind. He picks holes in the universal order; he winds through its tracks as a detective, and makes scandals of all that is not to his mind; trusts nothing that he cannot see: and he sees chiefly the exceptional, the dubious, the harsh. The glory of the midnight heavens affects him not, for thinking of a shattered planet or the uninhabitable moon. He makes more of the flood which sweeps the crop away, than of the perpetual river that feeds it year by year. For him the purple bloom upon the hills, peering through the young green woods, does but dress up a stony desert with deceitful beauty; and in the new birth of summer, he cannot yield himself to the exuberance of glad existence for wonder why insects tease and nettles sting. Nothing is so fair, nothing so imposing, as to beguile him into faith and hope.... In selfish minds the same temper resorts to the pettiest reasons for the most desolating thoughts: “If God were good, why should I be born with a club-foot? If the world were justly governed how could my merits be so long overlooked?”

The Cynic in society becomes the Pessimist in religion. The large embrace of sympathy, which fails him as interpreter of human life, will no less be wanting when he reads the meaning of the universe. The harmony of the great whole escapes him in his hunt for little discords here and there. He is blind to the august balance of nature, in his preoccupation with some creaking show of defect. He misses the comprehensive march of advancing purpose, because while he himself is in it, he has found some halting member that seems to lag behind. He picks holes in the universal order; he winds through its tracks as a detective, and makes scandals of all that is not to his mind; trusts nothing that he cannot see: and he sees chiefly the exceptional, the dubious, the harsh. The glory of the midnight heavens affects him not, for thinking of a shattered planet or the uninhabitable moon. He makes more of the flood which sweeps the crop away, than of the perpetual river that feeds it year by year. For him the purple bloom upon the hills, peering through the young green woods, does but dress up a stony desert with deceitful beauty; and in the new birth of summer, he cannot yield himself to the exuberance of glad existence for wonder why insects tease and nettles sting. Nothing is so fair, nothing so imposing, as to beguile him into faith and hope.... In selfish minds the same temper resorts to the pettiest reasons for the most desolating thoughts: “If God were good, why should I be born with a club-foot? If the world were justly governed how could my merits be so long overlooked?”

In print by 1921 AD · modern

Recorded in a printed collection by this date; the original date of these words is still unknown.