There are men of almost divine intelligence, men of
almost devilish instincts, men of more or less clouded mind; and they
are such at birth, so deeply has nature stamped into them heredity,
circumstance, and the physical conditions of sanity, morality and
wholesomeness, in the body which is her work. Such differences do exist,
and conditions vary the world over, whence nature, which accumulates
inequalities in the struggle for life, "with ravin shrieks against our
creed." But we have not now to learn for the first time that nature,
though not the enemy of the human spirit, is indifferent to all the soul
has erected in man's own realm, peculiar to humanity. What has nature
contributed to the doctrine of freedom or of fraternity? Man's life to
her is all one, tyrant or slave, friend or foe, wise or foolish,
virtuous or vicious, holy or profane, so long as her imperative physical
conditions of life, the mortal thing, are conformed to; society itself
is not her care, nor civilization, nor anything that belongs to man
above the brute. Her word, consequently, need not disturb us; she is
not our oracle.
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