problems of that amazing creed were intensified. "Fallen" human
nature remained the same, whether in the crowded cosmopolitan
streets of Holland and London, or upon the desolate shores of
Cape Cod. But the moral strain of the old insoluble conflict
between "fixed fate" and "free will" was heightened by the
physical loneliness of the colonists. Each soul must fight its
own unaided, unending battle. In that moral solitude, as in the
physical solitude of the settlers upon the far northwestern
prairies of a later epoch, many a mind snapped. Unnatural tension
was succeeded by unnatural crimes. But for the stronger
intellects New England Calvinism became a potent spiritual
gymnastic, where, as in the Swedish system of bodily training,
one lifts imaginary and ever-increasing weights with imaginary
and ever-increasing effort, flexor and extensor muscles pulling
against one another, driven by the will. Calvinism bred athletes
as well as maniacs.

The new situation, again, turned many of the theoretical
speculations of the colonists into practical issues. Here, for
example, was the Indian. Was he truly a child of God, possessing
a soul, and, if so, had he partaken of the sin of Adam? These
questions perplexed the saintly Eliot and the generous Roger
Williams. But before many years the query as to whether a Pequot
warrior had a soul became suddenly less important than the
practical question as to whether the Pequot should be allowed any
further chances of taking the white man's scalp. On this last
issue the colonists were unanimous in the negative.

It would be easy to multiply such instances of a gradual change
of view. But beneath all the changes and all the varieties of