The New Gospel

Morality must not lower herself.  Her own nature must be her recommendation.  All else, even divine reward, is as nothing beside her, for only morality makes us worthy of happiness … It [moral goodness] is more potent and appealing in its simple purity than when it is bedecked with allurements, whether of reward or punishment.

It is, I mean, quite certain that we can never get a sufficient knowledge of organized beings and their inner possibility, much less get an explanation of them, by looking merely to mechanical principles of nature.  Indeed, so certain is it, that we may confidently assert that it is absurd for men even to entertain any thought of so doing or to hope that maybe another Newton may some day arise to make intelligible to us even the genesis of but a blade of grass from natural laws that no design has ordered.