The Angel in the Cloud. Edwin W. Fuller

Yet adds its mite towards its government;

       Here, in this motive circle, lies all Fate.

       Our fellow-men with motives furnish us,

       While we contribute to their motive fund.

       The real power, hidden deep within,

       Escapes the eye of careless consciousness;

       Who proudly tells us we are action’s cause.

       Upon this error men, mistaken, raise

       The edifice of law in all its forms;

       That yet performs its varied functions well,

       Because it offers motives that restrain,

       Till stronger overcome, and crime ensues.

       The motive gibbet lifts its warning arms;

       The pillory gapes its scolloped lips for necks;

       The lash grows stiff with blood and shreds of flesh;

       The treadmill yields beneath the wearied feet;

       And Sabbath after Sabbath preachers tell

       Of judgment, and of awful Hell, and Heaven;

       All these, to stronger make, than lust of sin.

       And yet, to lead my reasoning to its end,

       I find a chaos of absurdity.

       If I am by an unruled motive driven,

       Why act at all? Why passive not recline

       Upon the lap of destiny, and wait her arms?

       Why struggle to acquire means of life,

       When Fate must fill our mouths or let us die?

       Why go not naked forth into the world,

       And trust to Fate for clothes? Why spring aside

       From falling weight, or flee a burning house,

       Or fight with instinct strength the clasp of waves?

       Because we cannot help it; every act

       Behind it has a motive, whose command

       We, willing or unwilling, must obey.

      Law governs motives, motives create law;

       Between the reflex action man is placed,

       The helpless shuttlecock of unjust Fate!

       Now passive driven to commit a crime,

       Then by the driver laid upon the rack;

       A Zeno’s slave, compelled by Fate to steal,

       And then compelled by Fate to bear the lash!

      What gross injustice is the rule of life!

       A sentient being made without a will,

       And placed a cat’s-paw in the hands of Fate,

       Who rakes the moral embers for a sin,

       That, found, must burn the helpless one alone.

       All right and wrong, and whate’er makes man man,

       Are gone, and language is half obsolete;

       No need of words to tell of moral worth

       Existing not, nor e’en conceivable;

       No words of blame or commendation, given

       According to the intention of a deed;

       No words of cheer or comfort, to incite,

       For man must act without our useless tongues;

       No words of prayer, if Fate supplies our wants;

       No words of prayer, if Fate locks up her store;

       No words of love, for fondest love were loathed

       If fanned by Fate to flame. No words of hate,

       For all forgive a wrong when helpless done;

       The buds that bloom upon the desert heart

       Lose all their sweetness when they’re forced to grow;

       All pleasure’s marred because it is not earned,

       And pain more painful since ’tis undeserved.

      Man falling from his high estate, becomes

       A brute with keener sensibilities;

       Endowed with mind, upon whose plastic face

       Fate writes its batch of lies; poor man believes,

       And prates of moral agency, and cants

       Of good he does, and evil that he shuns. With blind content, he rests in false belief, And happy thus escapes the mental rack— The consciousness of what he really is.

      And yet why false belief? The world believes,

       And acting, moves in general harmony;

       Could harmony from such an error flow?

       Would all believe, would not some one

       Have doubted by his works as well as faith?

       The veriest skeptic walks the earth to-day,

       As if he held the seal of freest will,

       And shapes its course, and judges all mankind

       By freedom’s rule.

       Then may not that be true

       Which most believe, and those who doubt profess

       In every act; as that which few believe

       And to which none conform?

       Two paths I see,

       One marked Free-Will, the other Fate. The first,

       Extending far as human thought can reach,

       Through lovely meads with sweetest flowers, and fruits

       Of actions clearly shown as right and wrong,

       Because of choice ’twixt the two; of laws

       With sanction suiting agents who are free;

       Of courts acquitting the insane of crime,

       Of crime made crime, alone, when done as crime,

       Of judgment passed by public sentiment

       On action in the ratio of liberty.

       Delightful view; but seek an entrance there—

       The towering bars of unruled motive stand

       Before the path, and none can overleap.

      The field of Fate lies open; nothing bars

       Our progress there. A thousand different ways

       The path diverges. Every by-path leads

       To some foul pit or bottomless abyss.

       Along each side are strewed the whitening bones

       Of venturous pilgrims, lost amid its snares,

       Some broken on the rocks of gross decree,

       Who hold an unchanged destiny from birth;

       Who will not take a medicine if sick,

       Who cant of “To be, will be,” and the time

       Unalterably set to each man’s life.

       Some stranded on the finer form of Fate,

       Who say it works by means. Hence they believe

       In using all preventives to disease,

       In going boating in a rubber belt,

       In placing Franklin rods upon a house,

       In preaching, and in praying men repent.

       These, when one dies, cry out, “It was his time.”

       Or if he should recover, “It was not.”

       Their fate is always ex post facto fate,