cams_benton_b028_f015_001_027

27 [centered]

poetical and beautiful aspects,
not to say ethical as well as aesthet-
-ical adaptations & tendencies, though its
ethics must be those of the Stoics,
and the reigning idea must be fate.

But, on whatever scale of grandeur
and of splendor the unfolding, devel-
-opment, decline, and dissolution,
and re-development may be, the
theory is a theory of pantheism and is
open, like the other style of pantheism,
to the fatal objection of an aimless,
infinite series, which is absurd.

A symbol of all pantheism is
that of the serpent which swallows
itself tail foremost, and shortly reappears
in perfect form to swallow itself again.