,,god ,,and ,,mr4 ,,wells ,a ,,critical ,,examination ,,of ,,god ,,the ,,invisible ,,king ,,god ,,and ,,mr4 ,,wells ,a ,,critical ,,examination ,,of ,,god ,,the ,,invisible ,,king ,by ,,william ,,archer ,,new ,,york ,,alfred ,a4 ,,knopf #aiag ,,copyright1 #aiag1 ,,by ,,alfred ,a4 ,,knopf ,published1 ,september1 #aiag ,,printed ,,in ,,the ,,united ,,states ,,of ,,america ,,foreword ,as ,i look through the proofs of this little treatise1 a twinge of compunction comes upon me4 ,that humane philosopher ,mr4 ,dooley has somewhere a saying to this effect3 ,when an astronomer tells me that he has discovered a new planet1 ,i would be the last man to brush the fly off the end of his telescope4 ,would not this have been a good occasion for a similar exercise of urbanity8 ,nay1 may it not be said that my criticism of ,god the ,invisible ,king is a breach of discipline1 like duelling in the face of the enemy8 ,i am proud to think that ,mr4 ,wells and ,i are soldiers in the same army2 ought we not at all costs to maintain a united front8 ,on the destructive side 7which ,i have barely touched upon7 his book is brilliantly effective2 on the constructive side1 if unconvincing1 it is thoughtful1 imaginative1 stimulating1 a thing on the whole to be grateful for4 ,ought one not rather to hold one's peace than to afford the common enemy the encouragement of witnessing a squabble in the ranks8 ,but we must not yield to the obsession of military metaphor4 ,it is not what the enemy thinks or what ,mr4 ,wells or ,i think that matters--it is what the men of the future ought to think1 as being consonant with their own nature and with the nature of things4 ,ideas1 like organisms1 must abide the struggle for existence1 and if the ,invisible ,king is fitted to survive1 my criticism will reinforce and not invalidate him4 ,even if he should come to life in a way one can scarcely anticipate1 his proceedings will have to be carefully watched4 ,he cannot claim the reticences of a party truce4 ,he will be all the better for a candid1 though ,i hope not captious1 ,opposition4 ,i thought of printing on my title-page a motto from ,mr4 ,bernard ,shaw2 but it will perhaps come better here4 ,the fact1 says ,mr4 ,shaw1 that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one4 ,the happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness1 and by no means a necessity of life4 ,whether ,socrates got as much happiness out of life as ,wesley is an unanswerable question2 but a nation of ,socrateses would be much safer and happier than a nation of ,wesleys2 and its individuals would be higher in the evolutionary scale4 ,at all events1 it is in the ,socratic man and not in the ,wesleyan that our hope lies now4 ,besides1 it has yet to be proved that the believer in the ,invisible ,king is happier than the sceptic4 ,,london1 ,may #bd1 #aiag4 ,,contents ,i ,the ,great ,adventurer #a ,,ii ,a ,god ,who ,growed #c ,,iii ,new ,myths for ,old #h ,,iv ,the ,apostle's ,creed #cb ,v ,when ,is a ,god ,not a ,god8 #dg ,,vi ,for and ,against ,personification #gc ,,vii ,back to the ,veiled ,being #aja ,,god ,,and ,,mr4 ,,wells ,i ,,the ,,great ,,adventurer ,when it was known that ,mr4 ,h4 ,g4 ,wells had set forth to discover ,god1 all amateurs of intellectual adventure were filled with pleasurable excitement and anticipation4 ,for is not ,mr4 ,wells the great ,adventurer of latter-day literature8 ,no quest is too perilous for him1 no forlorn-hope too daring4 ,he led the first explorers to the moon4 ,he it was who lured the ,martians to earth and exterminated them with microbes4 ,he has ensnared an angel from the skies and expiscated a mermaid from the deep4 ,he has mounted a ,time ,machine 7of his own invention7 and gone careering down the vistas of the ,future4 ,but these were comparatively commonplace feats4 ,after all1 there had been a ,jules ,verne1 there had been a ,gulliver and a ,peter ,wilkins1 there had been a ,more1 a ,morris and a ,bellamy4 ,it might be that he was fitted for far greater things4 ,there remains1 we said to ourselves1 the blue ribbon of intellectual adventure1 the unachieved ,north ,pole of spiritual exploration4 ,he has had countless predecessors in the enterprise1 some of whom have loudly claimed success2 but their log-books have been full of mere hallucinations and nursery tales4 ,what if it should be reserved for ,mr4 ,wells to bring back the first authentic news from a source more baffling than that of ,nile or ,amazon--the source of the majestic stream of ,being8 ,what if it should be given him to sign his name to the first truly-projected chart of the scheme of things8 ,we almost held our breath in eager anticipation1 just as we did when there came from ,america a well-authenticated rumor that the problem of flying had at last been solved4 ,were we on the brink of another and much more momentous discovery8 ,was ,mr4 ,wells to be the ,peary of the great quest8 ,or only the last of a thousand ,dr4 ,cooks8 ,,ii ,a ,,god ,,who ,,growed ,our excitement1 our suspense1 were so much wasted emotion4 ,mr4 ,wells's enterprise was not at all what we had figured it to be4 ,,god ,,the ,,invisible ,,king is a very interesting1 and even stimulating disquisition1 full of a fine social enthusiasm1 and marked1 in many passages1 by deep poetic feeling4 ,but it is not a work of investigation into the springs of ,being4 ,mr4 ,wells explicitly renounces from the outset any dealings with cosmogony4 ,it is a description of a way of thinking1 a system of nomenclature1 which ,mr4 ,wells declares to be extremely prevalent in the modern mind1 from which he himself extracts much comfort and fortification1 and which he believes to be destined to regenerate the world4 ,but ,mr4 ,wells will not have it that what is involved is a mere system of nomenclature4 ,he avers that he1 in common with many other like-minded persons1 has achieved1 not so much an intellectual discovery as an emotional realisation1 of something actual and objective which he calls ,god4 ,he does not1 so far as ,i remember1 use the term objective2 but as he insists that ,god is a spirit1 a person1 a strongly marked and knowable personality 7p4 #e71 a single spirit and a single person 7p4 #ah71 a great brother and leader of our little beings 7p4 #bd7 with much more to the same purpose1 it would seem that he must have in his mind an object external to us1 no mere subjective stream of tendency1 or anything of that sort4 ,it would of course be foolish to doubt the sincerity of the conviction which he so constantly and so eagerly asserts4 ,nevertheless1 one cannot but put forward1 even at this stage1 the tentative theory that he is playing tricks with his own mind1 and attributing reality and personality to something that was in its origin a figure of speech4 ,he has been hypnotized by the word ,god3 ,as when we dwell upon a word we know1 ,repeating1 till the word we know so well ,becomes a wonder1 and we know not why4 ,at all events1 ,god the ,invisible ,king is not the creator and sustainer of the universe4 ,as to the origin of things ,mr4 ,wells professes the most profound agnosticism4 ,at the back of all known things1 he says1 there is an impenetrable curtain2 the ultimate of existence is a ,veiled ,being1 which seems to know nothing of life or death or good or ill4444 ,the new religion does not pretend that the ,god of its life is that ,being1 or that he has any relation of control or association with that ,being4 ,it does not even assert that ,god knows all1 or much more than we do1 about that ultimate ,being 7p4 #ad74 ,very good2 but--here is the first question which seems to arise out of the ,wellsian thesis--are we not entitled to ask of the new religion some more definite account of the relation between ,god and the ,veiled ,being8 ,surely it is not enough that it should simply refrain from asserting anything at all on the subject4 ,if ,god is outside ourselves 7a ,being1 not us but dealing with us and through us1 p4 #f7 we cannot leave him hanging in the void1 like the rope which the ,indian conjurer is fabled to throw up into the air till it hooks itself on to nothingness4 ,if we are to believe in him as a lever for the righting of a world that has somehow run askew1 we want to know something of his fulcrum4 ,is it possible thus to dissociate him from the ,veiled ,being1 and proclaim him an independent1 an agnostic ,god8 ,do we really get over any difficulty--do we not rather create new difficulties1--by saying1 as ,mr4 ,wells practically does1 ,our ,god is no metaphysician4 ,he does not care1 and very likely does not know1 how this tangle of existence came into being4 ,he is only concerned to disentangle it a little1 to reduce the chaos of the world to some sort of seemliness and order8 ,is it an idle and presumptuous curiosity which enquires whether we are to consider him co-ordinate with the ,veiled ,being1 and in that case probably hostile1 or subordinate1 and in that case instrumental8 ,are we1 in a word1 to consider the earth a little rebel state in the gigantic empire of the universe1 working out its own salvation under its ,invisible ,king8 ,or are we to regard ,god as the ,viceroy of the ,veiled ,being1 to whom1 in that case1 our ultimate allegiance is due8 ,i talked the other day to a young ,australian who had been breaking new land for wheat-growing4 ,what do you do8 ,i asked1 with the stumps of the trees you fell8 ,it must be a great labour to clear them out4 ,we don't clear them out1 he replied4 ,we use ploughs that automatically rise when they come to a stump1 and take the earth again on the other side4 ,i cannot but conjecture that ,mr4 ,wells's thinking apparatus is fitted with some such automatic appliance for soaring gaily over the snags that stud the ploughlands of theology4 ,,iii ,,new ,,myths ,,for ,,old ,before examining the particular attributes and activities of the ,invisible ,king1 let us look a little more closely into the question whether a ,god detached alike from man below and 7so to speak7 from heaven above1 is a thinkable ,god in whom any satisfaction can be found4 ,mr4 ,wells must not reply 7he probably would not think of doing so7 that satisfaction is no test3 that he asserts an objective truth which exists1 like the ,nelson ,column or the ,atlantic ,ocean1 whether we find satisfaction in it or not4 ,though he does not mention the word pragmatism1 his standards are purely pragmatist4 ,he offers no jot or tittle of evidence for the existence of the ,invisible ,king1 except that it is a hypothesis which he finds to work extremely well4 ,satisfaction and nothing else is the test he applies4 ,so we have every right to ask whether the renunciation of all concern about the ,veiled ,being1 and concentration upon the thought of a finite ,god1 practically unrelated to the infinite1 can bring us any reasonable sense of reconciliation to the nature of things4 ,for that1 ,i take it1 is the essence of religion4 ,it was in no spirit of irony that ,i began this essay by expressing the lively interest with which ,i learned that ,mr4 ,wells was setting out on the quest for ,god4 ,the dogmatic agnosticism which declares it impossible ever to know anything about the whence1 how and why of the universe does not seem to me more rational than any other dogma which jumps from not yet to never4 ,mr4 ,wells himself disclaims that dogma4 ,he says3 ,it may be that minds will presently appear among us of such a quality that the face of that ,unknown will not be altogether hidden 7p4 #ajh74 ,and in another place 7p4 #ae7 he suggests that our ,god1 the ,captain of ,mankind1 may one day enable us to pierce the black wrappings1 or1 in other words1 to get behind the veil4 ,there is nothing1 then1 unreasonable or absurd in man's incurable inquisitiveness as to ,god1 in the non-,wellsian sense of the term4 ,god simply means the key to the mystery of existence2 and though the keys hitherto offered have all either jammed or turned round and round without unlocking anything1 it does not follow that no real key exists within the reach of human investigation or speculation4 ,therefore one naturally feels a little stirring of hope at the news that a fresh and keen intellect1 untrammelled by the folk-lore theologies of the past1 is applying itself to the problem4 ,it is always possible1 however improbable1 that we may be helped a little forwarder on the path towards realization4 ,one comes back to the before-mentioned analogy of flying4 ,we had been assured over and over again1 on the highest authority1 that it was an idle dream4 ,when we wanted to express the superlative degree of the impossible1 we said ,i can no more do it than ,i can fly4 ,but the irrepressible spirit of man was not to be daunted by priori demonstrations of impossibility4 ,one day there came the rumour that the thing had been achieved1 followed soon by ocular demonstration2 and now we rub shoulders every day with men who have outsoared the eagle1 and--alas6--carried death and destruction into the hitherto stainless empyrean4 ,it would seem1 then1 that there is no reason absolutely to despair of some advance towards a conception of the nature and reason of the universe4 ,and it is certain that ,mr4 ,wells's ,god would stand a better chance of satisfying the innate needs of the human intelligence if he had not 7apparently7 given up as a bad job the attempt to relate himself to the causal plexus of the ,all4 ,is he outside that causal plexus1 self-begotten1 self-existent8 ,then he is the miracle of miracles1 a second mystery superimposed on the first4 ,if1 on the other hand1 he falls within the system1 he might surely manage to convey to his disciples some glimmering notion of his place in it4 ,the birth-stories of ,gods are always grotesque and unedifying1 but that is because they belong to folk-lore4 ,if this ,god does not belong to folk-lore1 surely his relation to the ,veiled ,being might be indicated without impropriety4 ,mr4 ,wells1 as we have seen1 hints that his reticence may be due to the fact that he does not know4 ,in that case this modern ,god is suspiciously like all the ancient ,gods1 whose most unfortunate characteristic was that they never knew anything more than their worshippers4 ,the reason was not far to seek--namely1 that they were mere projections of the minds of these worshippers1 fashioned in their own image4 ,but ,mr4 ,wells assures us that this is not the case of the ,invisible ,king4 ,mr4 ,wells will scarcely deny that if it were possible to compress his mythology and merge his ,invisible ,king in his ,veiled ,being1 the result would be a great simplification of the problem4 ,but this is not1 in fact1 possible2 for it would mean the positing of an all-good and all-powerful ,creator1 which is precisely the idea which ,mr4 ,wells rebels against1#a in common with every one who realizes the facts of life and the meaning of words4 ,short of this1 however1 is no other simplification possible8 ,would it not greatly clarify our thought if we could bring the ,invisible ,king into action1 not1 indeed1 as the creator of all things1 but as the organizer and director of the surprising and almost incredible epiphenomenon which we call life8 ,our scheme would then take this shape3 an inconceivable unity behind the veil1 somehow manifesting itself1 where it comes within our ken1 in the dual form of a great ,artificer and a mass of terribly recalcitrant matter--the only medium in which he can work4 ,in other words1 the ,veiled ,being would be as inscrutable as ever1 but the ,invisible ,king1 instead of dropping in with a certain air of futility1 like a doctor arriving too late at the scene of a railway accident1 would be placed at the beginning1 not of the universe at large1 but of the atomic re-arrangements from which consciousness has sprung4 ,can we1 on this hypothesis 7which is practically that of ,manichanism7 hazard any guess at the motives or forces actuating the ,invisible ,king1--or1 to avoid confusion1 let us say the ,artificer--which should acquit him of the charge of being a callous and mischievous demon rather than a well-willing ,god8 ,can we not only place pain and evil 7a tautology7 to the account of sluggish1 refractory matter1 but also conjecture a sufficient reason why the ,artificer should have started the painful evolution of consciousness1 instead of leaving the atoms to whirl insentiently in the figures imposed on them by the stupendous mathematician behind the veil8 #a ,in ,mr4 ,britling ,sees ,it ,through1 which is in some sense a prologue to ,god the ,invisible ,king1 we find an emphatic renunciation of the all-good and all-powerful ,god4 ,the theologians1 says ,mr4 ,britling1 have been extravagant about ,god4 ,they have had silly1 absolute ideas--that he is all powerful4 ,that he's omni-everything4444 ,why6 if ,i thought there was an omnipotent ,god who looked down on battles and deaths and all the waste and horror of this war--able to prevent these things--doing them to amuse himself--,i would spit in his empty face 7p4 #djf74 ,a complete answer to this question would be a complete solution of the riddle of existence4 ,that1 if it be ever attainable1 is certainly far enough off4 ,but there are some considerations1 not always sufficiently present to our minds1 which may perhaps help us1 not to a solution1 but to a rational restatement1 of the riddle4 ,it is possible to suppose1 in the first place1 that the ,artificer1 though entirely well-meaning1 was not a free agent4 ,we can construct a myth in which an ,elder ,power should announce to a ,younger ,power his intention of setting a number of sentient puppets dancing for his amusement1 and regaling himself with the spectacle of their antics1 in utter heedlessness of the agonies they must endure1 which would1 indeed1 lend an additional savor to the diversion4 ,this ,elder ,power1 with the sportsman's preference for pigeons as against clay balls1 would be something like the ,god of ,mr4 ,thomas ,hardy4 ,then we can imagine the ,younger ,power1 after a vain protest demanding1 as it were1 the vice-royalty of the new kingdom1 in order that he might shape its polity to high and noble ends1 educe from tragic imperfection some approach to perfection1 and1 in short1 make the best of a bad business4 ,we should thus have 7let us say7 ,marcus ,aurelius claiming a proconsulate under ,nero1 and1 with very limited powers1 gradually substituting order and humanity for oppression and rapine4 ,this fairy-tale is not unlike ,mr4 ,wells's2 but ,i submit that it has the advantage of placing the ,invisible ,king1 or his equivalent1 in a conceivable relation to the whole mundane process4 ,now let us proceed to the alternative hypothesis4 ,let us suppose that the ,artificer was a free agent1 and that he voluntarily1 and in full view of the consequences1 engineered the conjunction of atoms from which consciousness arose4 ,he could have let it alone1 he could have suffered life to remain an abortive1 slumbering potentiality1 like the fire in a piece of flint2 yet he deliberately clashed the flint and steel and kindled the torch which was to be handed on1 not only from generation to generation1 but from species to species1 through all the stages of a toilsome1 slaughterous1 immeasurable ascent4 ,if we accept this hypothesis1 can we acquit the ,artificer of wanton cruelty8 ,can we view his action with approval1 even with gratitude8 ,or must we1 like ,mr4 ,wells1 if we wish to find an outlet for religious emotion1 postulate another1 subsequent1 intermeddling ,power--like1 say1 an ,american consul at the scene of the ,turkish massacre--wholly guiltless of the disaster of life1 and doing his little best to mitigate and remedy it8 ,in the present state of our knowledge1 it is certainly very difficult to see how the kindler of the vitai lampada1 supposing him to have been responsible for his actions1 can claim from a jury of human beings a verdict of absolute acquittal4 ,but we can1 even now1 see certain extenuating circumstances1 which evidence not yet available may one day so powerfully reinforce as to enable him to leave the ,court without a stain on his character4 ,for one thing1 we are too much impressed and oppressed by the ideas of magnitude and multitude4 ,since we have realized the unspeakable insignificance of the earth in relation to the unimaginable vastness of star-sown space1 we have come to feel such a disproportion between the mechanism of life and its upshot1 as known in our own experience1 that we have a vague sense of maleficence1 or at any rate of brutal carelessness1 in the responsible ,power1 whoever that may be4 ,what is it all1 we say1 but a trouble of ants in the gleam of a million million of suns8 ,we feel like insects whom the foot of a heedless giant may at any moment crush4 ,we dream of the swish of a comet's tail wiping out organic life on the planet1 and we see1 as a matter of fact1 great natural convulsions1 such as the earthquake of ,lisbon or the eruption of ,mont ,ple1 treating human communities just as an elephant might treat an ant-hill4 ,it is this sense of the immeasurable disproportion in things that a pessimist poet has expressed in the well-known sonnet3-- ,know you1 my friend1 the sudden ecstasy ,of thought that time and space annihilates1 ,creation in a moment uncreates1 ,and whirls the mind1 from secular habit free1 ,beyond the spheres1 beyond infinity1 ,beyond the empery of the eternal ,fates1 ,to where the ,inconceivable ruminates1 ,the unthinkable ,to be or not to be8 ,then1 as ,existence flickers into sight1 ,a marsh-flame in the night of ,nothingness-- ,the great1 soft1 restful1 dreamless1 fathomless night-- ,we know the ,affirmative the primal curse1 ,and loathe1 with all its imbecile strain and stress1 ,this ostentatious1 vulgar ,universe4 ,the mood here recorded is one that must be familiar to most thinking people4 ,the undevout astronomer is mad1 said eighteenth-century deism3 to-day we are more apt to think that the uncritical astronomer is dense4 ,there is a sort of colossal stupidity about the stars in their courses that overpowers and disquiets us4 ,if 7as ,alfred ,russel ,wallace has argued7 the geocentric theory was not so far out after all1 and the earth1 holding a specially favored place in the universe1 is the only home of life1 then the disproportion of mechanism to result seems absolutely appalling4 ,if1 on the other hand1 all the million million of suns are pouring out vital heat to a like number of inhabited planetary systems1 the sheer quantity of life1 of struggle1 of suffering implied1 seems a thought at which to shudder4 ,we are inclined to say to the inventor of sentience3 ,since this ingenious combination of yours was at best such a questionable boon1 surely you might have been content with one experiment4 ,but all such criticism rests upon a fallacy1 or rather a brace of interrelated fallacies4 ,there can be no disproportion between consciousness and the unconscious1 because they are absolutely incommensurable2 and number1 in relation to consciousness1 is an illusion4 ,consciousness1 wherever it exists1 is single1 indivisible1 inextensible2 and other consciousnesses1 and the whole external universe1 are1 to the individual percipient1 but shapes in a more or less protracted dream4 ,why should we trouble about vastness--mere extension in space8 ,there is a sense in which the infinitesimally small is more marvellous1 more disquieting1 than the infinitely great4 ,the ant1 the flea1 nay1 the phagocyte in our blood1 is really a more startling phenomenon than all the mechanics and chemistry of the heavens4 ,in worrying about the bigness and the littleness of things1 we are making the human body our standard--the body whose dimensions are no doubt determined by convenience in relation to terrestrial conditions1 but have otherwise no sort of sanctity or superiority1 rightness or fitness4 ,it happens to be the object to which is attached the highest form of consciousness we know2 but consciousness itself has neither parts nor magnitude4 ,and consciousness itself is essentially greater than the very vastness which appals us1 seeing that it embraces and envelops it4 ,enormous depths of space are pictured in my brain1 through my optic nerve2 and what eludes the magic mirror of my retina1 my mind can conceive1 apprehend1 make its own4 ,it is not even true to say that the mind cannot conceive infinity--the real truth 7if ,i may for once be ,chestertonian71 the real truth is that it can conceive nothing else4 ,when ,berkeley said there was no matter--it mattered greatly what he said4 ,nothing can be more certain than that1 apart from percipience1 there is no matter that matters4 ,from the point of view of pantheism 7the only logical theism7 ,god1 far from being a ,veiled ,being1 or an ,invisible ,king1 is precisely the mind which translates itself into the visible1 sensible universe1 and impresses itself1 in the form of a never-ending pageant1 upon our cognate minds4 ,it has been thought that human consciousness may have come into being because ,god wanted an audience4 ,he was tired of being a cinematograph-film unreeling before empty benches4 ,some people have even carried the speculation further1 and wondered whether the attachment of percipience to organized matter1 as in the case of human beings1 may not be a necessary stage in the culture of a pure percipience1 capable of furnishing the pageant of the universe with a permanent and appreciative audience4 ,in that case the ,scottish ,catechism would be justified1 which asks ,what is the chief end of man8 and answers 7as ,stevenson says7 nobly if obscurely3 ,to glorify ,god and to enjoy ,him forever4 ,but enough of these idle fantasies4 ,what is certain is that we can hold up our heads serenely among the immensities1 knowing that we are immenser than they4 ,even if they were malevolent--and that they do not seem to be--they are no more terrible than the familiar dangers of our homely earth4 ,they cannot hurt us more than we can be hurt--an obvious truism but one which is often overlooked4 ,and this brings us to the consideration of the second fallacy which sometimes warps our judgment as to the responsibility of the ,power which invented life4 ,we are all apt to speak and think as though sentience were an article capable of accumulation1 like money or merchandise1 in enormous aggregates--as though pleasure1 and more particularly pain1 were subject to the ordinary rules of arithmetic1 so that minor quantities1 added together1 might mount up to an indefinitely gigantic total4 ,poets and philosophers1 time out of mind1 have been heartbroken over the enormous mass of evil in the world1 and have spoken as though animated nature were one great organism1 with a brain in which every pang that afflicted each one of its innumerable members was piled up into a huge1 pyramidal agony4 ,but this is obviously not so4 ,that very individuation which to some philosophies is the primal curse--the condition by all means to be annulled and shaken off#b--;forbids the adding up of units of sentience4 ,if individuation is the source of human misery 7which seems a rather meaningless proposition7 it is beyond all doubt its boundary and limit4 ,we are each of us his own universe4 ,with each of us the universe is born afresh2 with each of us it dies--assuming1 that is to say1 that consciousness is extinguished at death4 ,there never has been and never can be in the world more suffering than a single organism can sustain--which is another way of saying that nothing can hurt us more than we can be hurt4 ,is this an optimistic statement8 ,far from it4 ,the individual is capable of great extremities of suffering2 and though not all men1 or even most1 are put to the utmost test in this respect1 there are certainly cases not a few in which a man may well curse the day he was born1 and see in the universe that was born with him nothing but an instrument of torture4 ,but such an one must speak for himself4 ,it is evident that1 take them all round1 men accept life as no such evil gift4 ,it cannot even be said that1 in handing it on to others1 they are driven by a fatal instinct which they know in their hearts to be cruel1 and would resist if they could4 ,the vast majority have been1 and still are1 entirely light-hearted about the matter1 thus giving the best possible proof that they cherish no grudge against the source of being1 but find it1 on the balance1 acceptable enough4 ,if it be said that this is due to stupidity1 then stupidity is one of the factors in the case which the great ,artificer must be supposed to have foreseen and reckoned upon4 ,all these considerations must be taken into account when we try to sum up the responsibility of an organizer and director of life1 acting of his own free will1 although he knew that the conditions under which he had to work would make the achievement of any satisfactory result a slow1 laborious and painful business4 #b ,mr4 ,wells himself is not far from this view4 ,see ,god the ,invisible ,king1 pp4 #gc1 #gf1 and this book1 pp4 #ci-dj4 ,but sympathy6 it may be said--,you have left sympathy out of the reckoning4 ,unless we are not only 'individuals' but iron-clad egotists1 we suffer with others more keenly1 sometimes1 than in our own persons4 ,sympathy1 no doubt1 is1 like the summer sun and the frost of winter1 a fact of common experience causing us alternate joy and pain2 but it means no sort of breach in the wall of individuation4 ,our nearest and dearest are simply factors in our environment1 most influential factors1 but as external to us as the trees or the stars4 ,we cannot1 in any real sense1 draw away their pains and add them to our own1 any more than they1 in their turn1 can relieve us of our toothache or our sciatica4 ,they are the points1 doubtless1 at which our environment touches us most closely1 but neither incantation nor ,act of ,parliament1 neither priest nor registrar1 can make even man and wife really one flesh4 ,it was necessary for the conservation of the species that a strict limit should be set to the operation of sympathy4 ,had that emotion been able to pierce the shell of individuality1 so that one being could actually add the sufferings of another1 or of many others1 to his own1 life would long ago have come to an end4 ,as it is1 sympathy implies an imaginative extension of individuality1 which is of enormous social value4 ,but we remain1 none the less1 isolated each in his own universe1 and our fellow-men and women are but shapes in the panorama1 the strange1 fantastic dream1 which the ,veiled ,showman unrolls before us4 ,in these post-,darwinian days1 moreover1 we are inclined to give way to certain morbid and sentimental exaggerations of sympathy1 which do some injustice to the great ,artificer whom we are for the moment assuming to be responsible for sentient life4 ,many of us are much concerned about nature1 red in tooth and claw4 ,it is a sort of nightmare to us to think of the tremendous fecundity of swamp and jungle1 warren and pond1 and of the ruthless struggle for existence which has made earth1 air1 and sea one mighty battle-ground4 ,in this we are again letting the fallacy of number take hold of us4 ,there can be no aggregate of suffering among lower1 any more than among higher1 organisms2 and the amount of pain which individual animals have to endure--even animals of those species which we can suppose to possess a certain keenness of sensibility--is probably1 in the vast majority of cases1 very trifling4 ,half the anguish of humanity proceeds from the power of looking before and after4 ,the animal1 though he may suffer from fear of imminent1 visible danger1 cannot know the torture of long-drawn apprehension4 ,for most of his life he is probably aware of a vague well-being2 then of a longer or shorter--often a very short--spell of vague ill-being2 and so1 the end4 ,nor is it possible to doubt that the experience of some animals includes a great deal of positive rapture4 ,if the lark be not really the soul of joy1 he is the greatest hypocrite under the sun4 ,many insects seem to be pin-points of vibrant vitality which we can scarcely believe to be unaccompanied by pleasurable sensation4 ,the mosquito which ,i squash on the back of my hand1 and which dies in a bath of my own blood1 has had a short life but doubtless a merry one4 ,the moths which1 in a tropic night1 lie in calcined heaps around the lamp1 have probably perished in pursuit of some ecstatic illusion4 ,it does not seem1 on the whole1 that we need expend much pity on the brute creation1 or make its destinies a reproach to the great ,artificer4 ,which is not to say1 of course1 that we ought not to detest and try with all our might to abolish the cruelties of labor1 commerce1 sport and war4 ,again1 as to the great calamities--the earthquakes1 shipwrecks1 railway accidents1 even the wars--which are often made a leading count in the arraignment of the ,author of ,sentience1 we must not let ourselves be deceived by the fallacy of number4 ,their spectacular1 dramatic aspect naturally attracts attention2 but the death-roll of a great shipwreck is in fact scarcely more terrible than the daily bills of mortality of a great city4 ,it is true that a violent death1 overtaking a healthy man1 is apt to involve moments1 perhaps hours1 of acute distress which he might have escaped had he died of gradual decay or of ordinary well-tended disease2 and a very short space of the agony sometimes attendant upon 7say7 a railway accident1 probably represents itself to the sufferer as an eternity4 ,but there is also another side to the matter4 ,instantaneous death in a great catastrophe must be reckoned as mere euthanasia2 and even short of this1 the attendant excitement has often the effect of an anodyne4 ,in the upshot1 no doubt1 such occurrences are rightly called disasters1 since their tendency is to cause needlessly painful death1 under circumstances1 which in the main1 enhance its terrors2 but the sufferings of the victims cannot be added together because they occur within a limited area1 any more than if they had been spread over an indefinite tract of space4 ,as for war1 it increases the liability of every individual who comes within its wide-flung net to intense bodily and mental suffering1 and to premature and painful death4 ,moreover1 it destroys social values which can be added up4 ,in this respect it leaves the world face to face with an appalling deficit4 ,but we must not let it weigh upon us too heavily1 or make it too great a reproach to the ,artificer of human destiny4 ,for the soldier1 like every other sentient organism1 is immured in his own universe1 and his individual debit-and-credit account with the ,power which placed him there would be no whit different if he were indeed the only real existence1 and the world around him were naught but a dance of shadows4 ,if there were a country of a hundred million people1 in which every citizen was born to an allowance of five pounds1 which in all his life he could not possibly increase1 or invest in joint-stock enterprises1 though he might leave some of it unexpended--we should not1 in spite of the #ejj1jjj1jjj of its capital1 call that a wealthy country4 ,its effective wealth would be precisely a five-pound note4 ,similarly1 given a world in which every one is born with a limited capacity of sentience1 inalienable1 incommunicable1 unique1 we should do wrong to call that world a multi-millionaire in misery1 even if it could be proved that in each individual account the balance of sensation was on the wrong side of the ledger4 ,it is true that if1 in one man's account1 the balance were largely to the bad1 he would be entitled to reproach the ,veiled ,banker1 even though five hundred or five thousand of his fellows declared themselves satisfied with the result of their audit4 ,but if the ,banker1 in opening business1 had good reason to think that1 in the long run1 the contents would largely outvote the non-contents1 we could scarcely blame him for going ahead4 ,and what if1 for contents and malcontents alike1 he had an uncovenanted bonus up his sleeve8 99 99 99 99 99 ,in this disquisition1 with its shifting personifications1 its ,artificer1 ,author1 ,banker and the like1 we may seem to have wandered far away from ,mr4 ,wells and his ,invisible ,king2 but ,i hope the reader has not wholly lost the clue4 ,let us recapitulate4 ,starting from the idea that its total renunciation of metaphysics1 its incuriousness as to causation1 was a weakness in ,mr4 ,wells's system1 inasmuch as an eager curiosity as to these matters is an inseparable part of our intellectual outfit1 we set about enquiring whether it might not be possible to abandon the notions of omnipotence1 omniscience and omni-benevolence1 and yet to conceive a doctrine of origins into which a well-willing ,god should enter1 not1 like the ,invisible ,king1 as a sort of remedial afterthought1 but as a prime mover in this baffling business of life4 ,we put forward two hypotheses1 each of which seemed more thinkable1 less in the air1 so to speak1 than ,mr4 ,wells's scheme of things4 ,we imagined a wholly callous1 unpitying ,power1 wantonly setting up combinations in matter which it knew would work out in cruelty and misery1 and another co-ordinate though not quite equal ,power interfering from the first to introduce into the combinations of the ,elder ,deity a slow but sure bias towards the good4 ,then we proposed an alternative hypothesis1 logically simpler1 though more difficult from the moral point of view4 ,we conceived at the source of organic life an intelligent and well-willing ,power constrained1 by some necessity behind the veil1 to carry out his purposes through the sluggish1 refractory1 hampering medium of matter4 ,supposing this ,power free to act or to refrain from acting1 we asked whether he could take the affirmative course--choose the ,everlasting ,yea as ,carlyle would phrase it--without forfeiting our esteem and disqualifying for the post of ,invisible ,king in the ,wellsian sense of the term4 ,in a tentative way1 not exempt1 perhaps1 from a touch of special pleading1 we advanced certain considerations which seemed to suggest that his decision to kindle the torch of life might1 after all1 be justified4 ,our provisional conclusion was that though1 as at present advised1 we might not quite see our way to hail him as a beneficent ,invisible ,king1 yet we need not go to the opposite extreme of writing him down a mere ,ogre ,god1 indifferent to the vast and purposeless process of groaning and travail1 begetting and devouring1 which he had wantonly initiated4 ,that is the point at which we have now arrived4 ,i hope it need not be said ,i do not attribute any substantive value to the hypothetical myths here put forward and discussed--that ,i do not accept either of them1 or propose that anyone else should accept it1 as a probable adumbration of what actually occurred in the beginning--a first chapter in a new ,book of ,genesis4 ,my purpose was simply1 since myth-making was the order of the day1 to hint a criticism of ,mr4 ,wells's myth1 by placing beside it one or two other fantasies1 perhaps as plausible as his1 which had the advantage of not entirely eluding the question of origins4 ,i submit1 with great respect1 that my ,artificer comes a little less out of the blue than his ,invisible ,king--that is all ,i claim for him4 ,but here ,mr4 ,wells puts in a protest1 not without indignation4 ,myth-making1 he declares1 is not the order of the day4 ,had he wanted to indulge in myth-making1 he could easily have found some metaphysical affiliation for his ,invisible ,king4 ,what he has done is to record a profound spiritual experience1 common to himself and many other good men and true1 which has culminated in the recognition of an actual ,power1 objectively extant in the world1 to which he has felt it a sacred duty to bear witness4 ,very good2 so be it2 let us now look more in detail into the gospel according to ,wells4 ,,iv ,,the ,,apostle',s ,,creed ,a gospel it is1 in all literalness2 an evangel2 a message of glad tidings4 ,it is not merely a truth1 it is the ,truth 7p4 #a74 ,let there be no mistake about it3 ,mr4 ,wells's ambition is to rank with ,st4 ,paul and ,mahomet1 as the apostle of a new world-religion4 ,he does not in so many words lay claim to inspiration1 but it is almost inevitably deducible from his premises4 ,he is uttering the first clear and definite tidings of a ,god who is endowed with personality1 character1 will and purpose4 ,to that ,deity he has submitted himself in enthusiastic devotion4 ,if the ,god does not seize the opportunity to speak through such a marvellously suitable1 such an ideal1 mouthpiece1 then practical common-sense cannot be one of his attributes4 ,which of the other ,gods who have announced themselves from time to time has found such a megaphone to reverberate his voice8 ,st4 ,paul was a poor tent-maker1 whose sermons were not even reported in the religious press1 while his letters probably counted their public by scores1 or at most by hundreds4 ,mr4 ,wells1 from the outset of his mission1 has the ear of two hemispheres4 ,what1 then1 does he tell us of his ,god8 ,the first characteristic which differentiates him from all the other ,gods with a big ,g--for of course we pay no heed to the departmental gods of polytheism--the first fact we must grasp and hold fast to1 is that he lays no claim to infinity4 ,this new faith 444 worships a finite ,god 7p4 #e2 ,mr4 ,wells's italics74 ,he has begun and he never will end 7p4 #ah74 ,he is within time and not outside it 7p4 #g74 ,nothing can be more definite than that4 ,there was a time when ,god did not exist2 and then somehow1 somewhen1 he came into being4 ,perhaps to ask ,when8 would be to trespass on the department of origins1 from which we are explicitly warned off4 ,it would be to trench upon cosmogony4 ,yet we are not quite without guidance4 ,the renascent religion1 we are told1 has always been here2 it has always been visible to those that had eyes to see 7p4 #a74 ,always1 in this context1 can only mean during the whole course of human history4 ,therefore ,god must have come into being some time between the issue of the creative fiat and the appearance of man on the planet4 ,this is a pretty wide margin1 but it is something to go upon4 ,he may have been contemporary with the amoeba1 or with the ichthyosaurus1 or haply with the earliest quadrumana4 ,at the very latest 7if always is accurate7 he must have made his appearance exactly at the same time as man2 and if ,i were to give my opinion1 ,i should say that was extremely probable4 ,at all events1 even if he preceded man by a few thousand or million years1 we are compelled to assume that he came in preparation for the advent of the human species1 determined to be on hand when wanted4 ,for we do not gather that the lower animals stand in need of his services1 or are capable of benefiting by them4 ,one might be tempted to conceive him as guiding the course of evolution and hastening its laggard process2 but 7as we shall see7 he scorns the rle of ,providence1 and resolutely abstains from any intromission in organic or meteorological concerns4 ,it would be pleasant to think that he had something to do with 7for instance7 the retreat of the ice-cap in the northern hemisphere2 but we are not encouraged to indulge in any such speculation4 ,it would appear that the activity of ,god is purely psychical and moral--that he has no interest in biology1 except as it influences1 and is influenced by1 sociology4 ,in short1 from all that one can make out1 this ,god is strictly correlative to ,man2 and that is a significant fact which we shall do well to bear in mind4 ,as we have already seen1 the ,infinite 7or ,veiled7 ,being is not ,god 7p4 #ac72 nor is ,god the ,life ,force1 the impulse thrusting through matter and clothing itself in continually changing material forms 444 the ,will to ,be 7pp4 #ae-af74 ,as we have also seen1 ,mr4 ,wells refuses to define the relation of his ,god1 this spirit1 this single spirit and single person1 to either of these inscrutable entities4 ,god1 he says1 comes to us neither out of the stars nor out of the pride of life1 but as a still small voice within 7p4 #ah74 ,it is by faith that we find him 7p4 #ac72 but ,mr4 ,wells doubts if faith can be complete and enduring if it is not secured by the definite knowledge of the true ,god 7p4 #ace74 ,what1 then1 is faith in this context8 ,it would be too much to say1 with the legendary schoolboy1 that it is believing what you know isn't true4 ,the implication seems rather to be that if you begin by believing on inadequate grounds1 you will presently attain to belief on adequate grounds1 or1 in other words1 knowledge4 ,thus1 when you go to a spiritual sance in a sceptical frame of mind1 the chill of your aura frightens the spirits away1 and you obtain no manifestations2 but if you go in a mood of faith1 which practically means confident expectation1 the phenomena follow1 and you depart a convert4 ,i use this illustration in no scoffing spirit4 ,the presupposition is not irrational4 ,it amounts1 in effect1 to saying that you must go some way to meet ,god before ,god can or will come to you4 ,this seems a curious coyness2 but as ,god is finite and conditioned1 a bit of a character 7a strongly marked and knowable personality1 p4 #e71 there is nothing contradictory in it4 ,even when we read that the true ,god goes through the world like fifes and drums and flags1 calling for recruits along the street 7p4 #dj71 we must not seize upon the letter of a similitude1 and talk about inconsistency4 ,you must go out to meet even the ,salvation ,army4 ,it offers you salvation in vain if you obstinately bolt your door1 and insist that an ,englishman's house is his castle4 ,the finding of this ,god is very like what revivalists call conversion 7p4 #ba74 ,you are oppressed by the futility of the individual life2 you fall into a state of helpless self-disgust 7p4 #ba72 you are1 in short1 in the condition described by ,hamlet when he says3 ,it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame the earth seems to me a sterile promontory2 this most excellent canopy the air1 look you1 this brave o'erhanging firmament1 this majestical roof fretted with golden fire1 why it appears no other thing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors4 ,the condition may result1 as in ,hamlet's case1 from an untoward conjunction of outward circumstances2 or it may be of physiological 7liverish7 origin4 ,the methods of treatment are many--some of them 7such as the administration of alcohol in large doses7 disastrously unwise4 ,in some states of society and periods of history1 religion is the popular specific2 and there have been1 and are1 forms of religion to which alcohol would be preferable4 ,fortunately1 one can say without a shadow of hesitancy that the modern religion lies under no such suspicion4 ,as dispensed by ,mr4 ,wells1 it is entirely wholesome4 ,if it is found to cheer1 it will certainly not inebriate4 ,indeed1 the doubt one feels as to its popular success lies in the very fact that it contains but an innocuous proportion of alcohol4 ,you find yourself1 then1 in the distressful case described by ,hamlet and ,mr4 ,wells4 ,man delights you not1 no1 nor woman neither4 ,you cannot muster up energy even to kill ,king ,claudius4 ,you go about gloomily soliloquizing on suicide and kindred topics4 ,then1 in some way the idea of ,god comes into the distressed mind 7p4 #ba74 ,it develops through various stages1 outlined by ,mr4 ,wells in the passage cited4 ,in the modern man1 it would seem1 one great difficulty lies in a curious resistance to the suggestion that ,god is truly a person 7p4 #bb74 ,it is here1 no doubt1 that faith comes in2 at all events1 you ultimately get over this stumbling-block4 ,then suddenly1 in a little while1 in his own time1 ,god comes4 ,the cardinal experience is an undoubting immediate sense of ,god4 ,it is the attainment of an absolute certainty that one is not alone in oneself 7p4 #bc74 ,you have come1 in fact1 to the gate of ,damascus4 ,you have found salvation4 ,yes1 salvation6--there is no other word for it4 ,mr4 ,wells does not hesitate to use both that word and its correlative1 damnation4 ,from what1 then1 are you saved8 ,why1 from quite a number of things4 ,you are saved from the purposelessness of life 7p4 #ah74 ,god's immortality has taken the sting from death 7p4 #bb74 ,you have escaped from the painful accidents and chagrins of individuation 7p4 #gc74 ,salvation is to lose oneself 7p4 #gc72 it is a complete turning away from self 7p4 #hd74 ,damnation is really over-individuation1 and salvation is escape from self into the larger being of life 7p4 #gf74 ,in another place we are told that salvation is escape from the individual distress at disharmony and the individual defeat by death1 into the ,kingdom of ,god1 and damnation can be nothing more and nothing less than the failure or inability or disinclination to make that escape 7p4 #adh74 ,on the next page we have another definition of damnation 7borrowed1 it would seem1 from ,mr4 ,clutton ,brock71 with which ,i hasten to express my cordial and enthusiastic agreement3 ,satisfaction with existing things is damnation4 ,i have always thought that hell was the headquarters of conservatism1 and am delighted to find such influential backing for that pious opinion4 ,as for sin1 it seems to be a falling away from the state of grace attained through conversion4 ,you can and do sin while you are still unconverted2 for we are told that repentance is the beginning and essential of the religious life 7p4 #afe74 ,probably 7though this is not clear7 your unregenerate condition is in itself sinful1 individuation being not very different from the ,original ,sin of the theologians4 ,but it is sin after regeneration that really matters4 ,salvation leaves us still disharmonious1 and adds not one inch to our spiritual and moral nature 7p4 #adf74 ,it is the amazing and distressful discovery of every believer so soon as the first exaltation of belief is past1 that one does not remain always in touch with ,god 7p4 #adi74 ,one backslides4 ,one reverts to one's unregenerate type4 ,the old ,adam makes disquieting resurgences in the swept and garnished mansion from which he seemed to have been for ever cast out4 ,this is the personal problem of ,sin4 ,here prayer avails2 here ,god can help us 7p4 #aej74 ,and what is still more consoling1 though you sin seventy times seven times1 ,god will still forgive the poor rest of you4444 ,there is no sin1 no state that1 being regretted and repented of1 can stand between ,god and man 7p4 #aef74 ,we shall have to consider later what useful purpose 7if any7 is served by this free-and-easy use of the dialect of revivalism4 ,in the meantime1 one would be sorry to seem to write without respect of the depth of conviction which ,mr4 ,wells throws into his account of the supreme spiritual experience of finding ,god4 ,thereafter1 he says1 one goes about the world like one who was lonely and has found a lover1 like one who was perplexed and has found a solution 7pp4 #bc-bd74 ,god is a huge friendliness1 a great brother and leader of our little beings 7p4 #bd74 ,he is a stimulant2 he makes us live immortally and more abundantly4 ,i have compared him to the sensation of a dear strong friend who comes and stands quietly beside one1 shoulder to shoulder 7p4 #ci74 ,it certainly takes some courage for a modern ,englishman1 not by profession a licensed dealer in spiritual sentimentality1 to write like this4 ,and now comes the question1 ,what does ,god do8 ,what does he aim at8 ,and how does he effect his purposes8 ,the answer seems to be that1 in a literal1 tangible sense1 he does nothing4 ,he operates solely in and through the mind of man2 and even through the mind of man he does not influence external events4 ,this1 it may be said1 is impossible1 since all those external events which we call human conduct flow from the mind of man4 ,perhaps it would be correct to say 7for here ,mr4 ,wells gives us no explicit guidance7 that external events are only a by-product of the influence of ,god3 that1 having begotten a certain spiritual state which he feels to be generally desirable1 he takes no responsibility for the particular consequences that are likely to flow from it4 ,so1 at least1 one can best interpret ,mr4 ,wells's repeated disclaimer of the idea that ,god is ,magic or ,god is ,providence 7p4 #bg71 that all the time1 incalculably1 he is pulling about the order of events for our personal advantages 7p4 #ce-f74 ,commenting on ,mr4 ,edwyn ,bevan's phrase for ,god1 the ,friend behind phenomena1 ,mr4 ,wells insists that the expression carries with it no obligation whatever to believe that this ,friend is in control of the phenomena 7p4 #hg74 ,perhaps not2 but it is a question for after consideration whether lucidity is promoted by giving the name ,god to a ,power which has no power--which does not seem even to make directly purposive use of the influence which it possesses over the minds of believers4 ,once1 in a coasting steamer on the ,pacific1 ,i nearly died of sea-sickness4 ,a friend was with me1 the soul of kindness1 such a lovable old man that ,i write this down partly for the pleasure of recalling him4 ,he used to come to my cabin every hour or so1 shake his head mournfully1 and go away again4 ,i felt his good will and was grateful for it2 but it would be affectation to pretend that ,i would not have been still more grateful had he possessed some control of phenomena--had he brought with him a remedy4 ,since those days1 more than one efficacious preventive of sea-sickness has been discovered2 and ,i own to counting the nameless chemists who have achieved this marvel among the most authentic friends to poor humanity of whom we have any knowledge4 ,where is the ,god 7as ,mr4 ,zangwill has pertinently enquired7 who will give us a cure for cancer8 ,this1 however1 is a digression1 or at any rate an anticipation4 ,what the ,invisible ,king actually does1 without meddling with phenomena1 is to assume the captaincy of the racial adventure in which we are engaged 7p4 #gf74 ,god must love his followers as a great captain loves his men 444 whose faith alone makes him possible4 ,it is an austere love4 ,the ,spirit of ,god will not hesitate to send us to torment and bodily death 7p4 #fg74 ,and what is this racial adventure8 ,it is1 in the first place1 the achievement of ,mr4 ,wells's political ideals--an object which has all my sympathy1 since they happen to be1 generally speaking1 my own4 ,as a knight in ,god's service1 says ,mr4 ,wells1 ,i take sides against injustice1 disorder1 and against all those temporal kings1 emperors1 princes1 landlords1 and owners1 who set themselves up against ,god's rule and worship 7p4 #ig74 ,by all means6 ,only one does not see how1 if the kings1 emperors and landlords declare that they1 too1 have found ,god1 and found him on the side of monarchy and landlordism1 this contention of theirs is to be confuted4 ,if ,god does not control phenomena1 the actual controllers of events will be able to maintain in the future1 as in the past1 that he is on the side of the big battalions--an argument which it will be hard to meet1 except by raising bigger battalions4 ,in the meantime we have to note that ,god's political opinions are only provisional1 and that he himself is open to conviction4 ,the first purpose of ,god is the attainment of clear knowledge1 of knowledge as a means to more knowledge1 and of knowledge as a means to power 7p4 #ih-i74 ,and the object to which he will apply this power is the conquest of death3 first the overcoming of death in the individual by the incorporation of the motives of his life into an undying purpose1 and then the defeat of that death which seems to threaten our species upon a cooling planet beneath a cooling sun 7p4 #ii74 ,ultimately1 then1 it would seem that ,god does intend to undertake the control of phenomena4 ,dealing with ice-caps is not so entirely outside his province as one had hastily assumed4 ,the ,invisible ,king is not1 after all1 a roi fainant4 ,he will begin to do things as soon as he knows how3 any other course would be obviously rash4 ,one would like to live a few hundred thousand years1 to see him come into overt action4 ,yet1 in this far-reaching program1 there seems to lurk a certain contradiction1 or at least an ambiguity4 ,if1 for the believer in ,god1 death has1 here and now1 lost its sting--if we come staggering through into the golden light of his kingdom1 to fight for his kingdom henceforth1 until1 at last1 we are altogether taken up into his being 7p4 #fh7--one does not quite see the reason for this long campaign against death4 ,surely the logical consummation would be an ultimate racial euthanasia1 an absorption of humanity into ,god1 a vast apotheosis-nirvana1 after which the earth and sun could go on cooling at their leisure4 99 99 99 99 99 ,apart from one or two irrepressible asides1 ,i have attempted in this chapter to let ,mr4 ,wells speak for himself1 proclaim the faith that is in him1 and draw the portrait of his ,god4 ,many details are of course omitted1 for which the reader must turn to the original text4 ,he will find it a pleasant and profitable task4 ,the remainder of my present undertaking falls into three parts4 ,first ,i must ask the reader to consider with me whether ,mr4 ,wells's gospel can be accepted as a real addition to knowledge1 like 7say7 the discovery of radium1 or whether it is only a re-description in new language 7or old language slightly refurbished7 of familiar facts of spiritual experience4 ,in the second place1 assuming that we have to fall back on the latter alternative1 we shall enquire whether anything would be gained by the general acceptance of this new-old1 highly emotionalized terminology4 ,thirdly1 ,i shall venture to suggest that when ,mr4 ,wells says ,the first purpose of ,god is the attainment of clear knowledge1 of knowledge as a means to more knowledge1 and of knowledge as a means to power1 he is only choosing a mythological way of expressing the fact that if ,god 7in the ordinary1 non-,wellsian sense of the word7 is ever to be found1 it must be through patient investigation of the phenomena in which he clothes himself4 ,v ,,when ,,is ,a ,,god ,,not ,a ,,god8 ,though many of ,mr4 ,wells's asseverations of the substantive reality of his ,invisible ,king have been quoted above1 it would be easy to lengthen their array4 ,there is nothing on which he is so insistent4 ,for example1 ,god is no abstraction nor trick of words4444#c ,he is as real as a bayonet thrust or an embrace 7p4 #ef74 ,and again1 on the same page3 ,he feels us and knows us2 he is helped and gladdened by us4 ,he hopes and attempts4 ,there is no limit to the anthropomorphism of the language which ,mr4 ,wells currently employs4 ,or rather1 there is only one limit3 he disclaims the notion that his ,god is actually existent in space1 that he has parts and dimensions1 and inhabits a form in any way analogous to ours4 ,he is the ,invisible ,king1 not merely1 like the ,spanish ,fleet1 because he is not yet in sight1 but because he has no material or astral integument4 ,being outside space 7though inside time7 he can be omnipresent 7p4 #fa74 ,but of course ,mr4 ,wells would not pretend that no deity can be called anthropomorphic who is not actually conceived as incarnate in the visible figure of a man4 ,an anthropomorphic ,god is one who reflects the mental characteristics of his worshippers2 and that ,mr4 ,wells's ,god does1 if ever ,god did in this world4 #c ,the words here omitted1 no ,infinite1 are nothing to the present purpose4 ,mr4 ,wells has started by making this declaration1 which we accept without difficulty4 ,no one will suspect the ,invisible ,king of being an ,infinite in disguise4 ,yet almost in the same breath in which he is claiming for his ,god the fullest independent reality--thinking of him as having moods and aspects1 as a man has1 and a consistency we call his character 7p4 #fc7--;he will use language implying that he is that very abstraction of the better parts of human nature which has been proposed for worship in all the various religions of humanity1 ethical churches1 and so forth1 for two or three generations past4 ,listen to this3 ,though he does not exist in matter or space1 he exists in time1 just as a current of thought may do2 he changes and becomes more even as a man's thought gathers itself together2 somewhere in the dawning of mankind he had a beginning1 an awakening1 and as mankind grows he grows4444 ,he is the undying human memory1 the increasing human will 7p4 #fa74 ,when1 in the last chapter1 ,i discussed the date of the divinity's birth1 ,i had overlooked this text4 ,here we have it in black and white that he did not precede mankind--that1 of course1 would have implied independence--but began with the dawning of the race1 and has grown with its growth4 ,moreover1 the analogy of a current of thought is expressly suggested--reinforcing the suspicion which has all along haunted us that the ,god of ,mr4 ,wells is nothing else than what is known to less mythopoeic thinkers as a stream of tendency4 ,but ,mr4 ,wells will by no means have it so4 ,indeed he evidently regards this as the most annoying1 and perhaps damnable1 of heresies4 ,on the very next page he proceeds to rule out the suggestion that ,god is the collective mind and purpose of the human race4 ,you may declare1 he says1 that this is no ,god1 but merely the sum of mankind4 ,but those who believe in the new ideas very steadfastly deny that4 ,god is1 they say1 not an aggregate but a synthesis4 ,and he goes on to suggest various analogies3 a temple is more than a gathering of stones1 a regiment more than an accumulation of men3 we do not love the soil of our back garden1 or the chalk of ,kent1 or the limestone of ,yorkshire2 yet we love ,england1 which is made up of these things4 ,so ,god is more than the sum or essence of the nobler impulses of the race3 he is a spirit1 a person1 a friend1 a great brother1 a captain1 a king3 he is love and goodness 7p #hj72 and without him the ,service of ,man is no better than a hobby1 a sentimentality or a hypocrisy 7p4 #ie74 ,let us reflect a little upon these analogies1 and see whether they rest on any solid basis4 ,why is a temple more than a heap of stones8 ,because human intelligence and skill have entered into the stones and organized them to serve a given purpose or set of purposes3 to delight the eye1 to elevate the mind1 to express certain ideas1 to afford shelter for worshippers against wind1 rain and sun4 ,why is a regiment more than a mob8 ,again because it has been deliberately and elaborately organized to fulfil certain functions4 ,why is ,england more than the mere rocks of which it is composed8 ,because these materials have been grouped1 partly by nature1 but very largely by the labor of untold generations of our fathers1 into forms which give pleasure to the eye and appeal to our most intimate and cherished associations4 ,besides1 when we speak of ,england1 we do not think only or mainly of its physical aspects4 ,we think of it as a great community1 with an ancient1 and in some ways admirable1 tradition of political life1 with a splendid record of achievement in both material and spiritual things1 with a great past1 and 7we hope7 a greater future4 ,in all these cases the parts have been fused into a whole by human effort1 either consciously or instinctively applied2 and it is in virtue of this effort alone that the whole transcends its parts4 ,but in the case of a ,god synthetized out of the thought and feeling of untold generations of men1 the analogy breaks down at every point4 ,to assume that portions of psychic experience are capable of vital coalescence1 is to beg the whole question4 ,we know that stone can be piled on stone1 that men can be trained to form a platoon1 a cohort1 a phalanx2 but that detached fragments of mind are capable of any sort of cohesion and organization we do not know at all4 ,and1 even if this point could be granted1 where is the organizing power8 ,we should have to postulate another ,god to serve as the architect or the drill-sergeant of our synthetic divinity4 ,nor would it help matters to suggest that the ,god 7as it were7 crystallized himself2 for that is to assume structural potentialities in his component parts which must have come from somewhere1 so that again we have to presuppose another ,god4 ,it is true1 no doubt1 that portions of thought and feeling can be collected1 arranged1 edited1 in some sense organized1 by human effort2 but the result is an encyclopdia1 a thesaurus1 an anthology1 a liturgy1 a bible--not a ,god4 ,it may1 like the ,vedas1 the ,hebrew ,scriptures and the ,koran1 become an object of idolatry2 but even its idolaters see in it only an emanation from ,god1 not the ,god himself4 ,all this argument may strike the reader as extremely nebulous1 but ,i submit that the fault is not mine4 ,it was not ,i who sought to demonstrate the reality of a figure of speech by placing it on all fours with a cathedral and a regiment4 ,the whole contention is so baffling that reason staggers and flounders as in a quicksand4 ,it rests upon a mixture of categories1 as palpable and yet as elusive as anything in ,the ,hunting of the ,snark4 ,if you tell me that ,public ,opinion is a ,god1 ,i am quite willing to consider whether the metaphor is a luminous and helpful one4 ,but if you protest that it is no metaphor at all1 but a literal statement of fact1 like the statement that ,mr4 ,woodrow ,wilson is ,president of the ,united ,states1 ,i no longer know where we are4 ,mr4 ,wells's undying human memory and increasing human will cannot exactly be identified with ,public ,opinion1 but it belongs to the same order of ideas4 ,here there is an actual workable analogy4 ,but there is no practicable analogy between a purely mental concept and a physical construction4 ,you will not help me to believe in 7say7 the doctrine of ,original ,sin1 by assuring me that it is built1 like the ,tower ,bridge1 on the cantilever principle4 ,it is quite certain that1 if passionate conviction and the free use of anthropomorphic language can make a figure of speech a ,god1 the ,invisible ,king is an individual entity1 as detached from ,mr4 ,wells as ,michelangelo's ,moses from ,michelangelo4 ,paradoxically enough1 he has put on individuation that his worshippers may escape from it4 ,mr4 ,wells's book teems with expressions--,i have given many examples of them--which are wholly inapplicable to any metaphor1 however galvanized into a semblance of life by ecstatic contemplation in the devotional mind4 ,for example1 when we are told that it is doubtful whether ,god knows all1 or much more than we do1 about the ultimate ,being1 the mere assertion of a doubt implies the possibility of knowledge of a quite different order from any that exists in the human intelligence4 ,mr4 ,wells explicitly assures us that knowledge of the ,veiled ,being is 7for the present at any rate7 inaccessible to our faculties2 but he implies that such knowledge may be possessed by the ,invisible ,king2 and as knowledge cannot possibly be a synthesis of ignorances1 it follows that the ,invisible ,king has powers of apprehension quite different from1 and independent of1 any operation of the human brain4 ,these powers may not1 as a matter of fact1 have solved the enigma of existence2 but it is clearly implied that they might conceivably do so2 and indeed the text positively asserts that ,god knows something more of the ,veiled ,being than we do1 though perhaps not much4 ,in view of this passage1 and many others of a like nature1 we cannot fall back on the theory that ,mr4 ,wells is merely trying1 by dint of highly imaginative writing1 to infuse life into a deliberate personification1 like ,robespierre's ,goddess of ,reason or ,matthew ,arnold's ,zeitgeist4 ,however difficult it may be1 we must accustom ourselves to the belief that his assertions of the personal existence of his ,god represent the efficient element in his thought1 and that if other passages seem inconsistent with that idea--seem to point to mere abstraction or allegorization of the mind of the race--it is these passages1 and not the more full-blooded pronouncements1 that must be cancelled as misleading or inadequate4 ,there can be no doubt that the ,god to whom ,mr4 ,wells seeks to convert us is 7in his apostle's conception7 much more of a ,president ,wilson than of a ,zeitgeist4 99 99 99 99 99 ,it would be possible1 of course1 for a ,god1 however dubious and even inconceivable the method of his synthesis1 to manifest himself in his effects--to prove his existence by his actions4 ,but this1 as we have seen1 the ,invisible ,king scorns to do4 ,his adherents1 we are told1 advance no proof whatever of the existence of ,god but their realization of him 7p4 #ih74 ,there is a sort of implication that the ,deity will not descend to vulgar miracle-working4 ,an evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign2 and there shall no sign be given to it--not even the sign of ,jonah the prophet4 ,but to ask for some sort of visible or plausibly conjecturable effect is not at all the same thing as to ask for miracles4 ,mr4 ,wells proclaims with all his might that the ,invisible ,king works the most marvellous and beneficent changes in the minds of his devotees2 why1 then1 do these changes produce no recognizable effect on the course of events8 ,the ,god who can work upon the human mind has the key to the situation in his hands--why1 then1 does he make such scant use of it8 ,is ,god only a luxury for the intellectually wealthy8 ,the champagne of the spiritual life8 ,a stimulant and anodyne highly appreciated in the best circles1 but inaccessible to the man of small spiritual means1 whether he be a dweller in palaces or in the slums8 ,to say that a given ,power can and does potently affect the human mind1 and yet cannot1 or at least does not1 produce any appreciable or demonstrable effect on the external aspects of human life1 is like asking us to believe that a man is a heaven-born conductor who can get nothing out of his orchestra but discords and cacophonies4 ,mr4 ,wells may perhaps reply that his ,god does recognizably influence the course of events--indeed1 that everything in history which we see to be good and desirable is the work of the ,invisible ,king--but that he does not advance this fact as a proof of ,god's existence1 because it is discernible only to the eye of faith and cannot be brought home to unregenerate reason4 ,i do not imagine that he will take this line1 for it would come dangerously near to identifying ,god with ,providence--a heresy which he abhors4 ,but supposing some other adept in modern religion were to make this claim on behalf of the ,invisible ,king1 would it go any way towards persuading us that we owe him our allegiance8 ,the assumption would be1 as ,i understand it1 that of a finite ,god1 unable to modify the operations of matter1 but with an unlimited1 or at any rate a very great1 power of influencing the workings of the human mind4 ,he would have no control over meteorological conditions3 he could not ride in the whirlwind and direct the storm2 he could not subdue the earthquake or prevent the ,greenland glacier from calving icebergs into the ,atlantic4 ,he could not release the human body from the rhythms of growth and decay2 he could not eradicate that root of all evil1 the association of consciousness with a mechanism requiring to be constantly stoked with a particular sort of fuel which exists only in limited quantities4 ,if ,god could arrange for life to be maintained on a diet of inorganic substances--if he could enable animals1 like plants1 to go direct to minerals and gases for their sustenance1 instead of having it1 so to speak1 half-digested in the vegetable kingdom--or even if1 under the present system1 he could make fecundity1 in any given species1 automatically proportionate to the supply of food--he would at one stroke refashion earthly life in an extremely desirable sense4 ,but this we assume to be beyond his competence3 the ,veiled ,being has autocratically imposed the struggle for existence as an inexorable condition of the ,invisible ,king's activities1 except in so far as it can be eluded by and through the human intelligence4 ,his problem1 then1 will be to guide the minds of men towards a realization that their higher destiny lies in using their intelligence to substitute ordered co-operation for the sanguinary competition above which merely instinctive organism are incapable of rising4 ,observe that in exercising this power of psychical influence there would be no sort of miracle-working1 no interference with the order of nature4 ,the influence of mind upon mind1 even without the intervention of words or other symbols1 is a part of the order of nature which no one to-day dreams of questioning4 ,hypnotic suggestion is a department of orthodox medical practice1 and telepathy is more and more widely admitted1 if only as a refuge from the hypothesis of survival after death4 ,if1 then1 we have a divine mind applying itself to the problems of humanity1 and capable of suggesting ideas to the mind of man--appealing1 as a still small voice 7p4 #ah71 to his intelligence1 his emotions and his will--one cannot but figure its power for good as almost illimitable4 ,what is to prevent it from achieving a very rapid elimination of the ape and the tiger1 the ,junker and the ,tory1 and substituting social enthusiasms for individual passions as the motive-power of human conduct8 ,we may admit that the brain of man must first be developed up to a certain point before divine suggestion could effectively work upon it4 ,but we know that men and races of magnificent brainpower must have existed on the planet thousands and thousands of years ago4 ,what1 then1 has the ,invisible ,king made of his opportunities8 ,frankly1 he has made a terrible hash of them4 ,it is hard to see how the progress of the race could possibly have been slower1 more laborious1 more painful than in fact it has been4 ,no doubt there have been a few splendid spurts1 which we may1 if we please1 trace to the genial goading of the ,invisible ,king4 ,but all the great movements have dribbled away into frustration and impotence4 ,there was1 for example1 the glorious intellectual efflorescence of ,greece4 ,there1 you may say1 the ,invisible ,king was almost visibly at work4 ,but1 after all1 what a flash-in-the-pan it was6 ,hellas was a little island of light surrounded by gloomy immensities of barbarism2 yet1 instead of stablishing and fortifying a political cosmos1 its leading men had nothing better to do than to plunge into the bloody chaos of the ,peloponnesian ,war1 and set back the clock of civilization by untold centuries4 ,what was the ,invisible ,king about when that catastrophe happened8 ,similarly1 the past two centuries1 and especially the past seventy-five years1 have witnessed a marvellous onrush in man's intellectual apprehension of the universe and mastery over the latent energies of matter4 ,but because moral and political development has lagged hopelessly behind material progress1 the world is plunged into a war of unexampled magnitude and almost unexampled fury1 wherein the heights of the air and depths of the sea are pressed into the service of slaughter4 ,where was the ,invisible ,king in ,july1 #aiad8 ,or1 for that matter1 what has he been doing since ,july1 #ahgj8 ,either he was musing1 or he was on a journey1 or peradventure he slept4 ,truly it would seem that he might have advised ,mr4 ,wells to wait for the ,cease fire6 before proclaiming his godhead4 ,of course ,mr4 ,wells will remind me that he claims for him no material potency2 and ,i must own that no happier moment could have been chosen for the annunciation of an impotent ,god4 ,but the plea does not quite tally with the facts4 ,in the first place 7as we have seen7 the ,invisible ,king is going to do things--he is going to do very remarkable things as soon as he knows how4 ,and in the second place it is impossible to conceive that the tremendous psychical influence which is claimed for this ,god can be exercised without producing external reactions4 ,why1 he is actually stated to be--like another ,god1 his near relative1 whom he rather unkindly disowns--he is stated to be the light of the world 7p4 #ah74 ,is there any meaning in such a statement if it be not pertinent to ask what sort of light has led the world into the ghastly quagmire in which it is to-day agonizing8 ,the truth is that ,mr4 ,wells attributes to his ,god powers which1 even if he had no greater knowledge than ,mr4 ,wells himself possesses1 could be used to epoch-making advantage4 ,fancy an omnipresent ,h4 ,g4 ,wells1 able to speak in a still small voice to all men of good-will throughout the world6 ,what a marvellous revolution might he not effect6 ,mr4 ,wells himself has outlined such a revolution in one of his most thoughtful romances1 ,in the ,days of the ,comet4 ,from the fact that it does not occur1 may we not fairly suspect that the ,invisible ,king is a creation of the same mythopoeic faculty which engendered the wonder-working comet with its aura of sweet-reasonableness8 ,if we turn to ,mr4 ,britling1 we find that that eminent publicist was distressed by a sense of the difficulty of conveying ,god's message to the world2 only he modestly attributed it to defects in his own equipment rather than to powerlessness on the part of ,god4 ,we read on page #dbg3--,never had it been so plain to ,mr4 ,britling that he was a weak1 silly1 ill-informed and hasty-minded writer1 and never had he felt so invincible a conviction that the ,spirit of ,god was in him1 and that it fell to him to take some part in the establishment of a new order of living upon the earth4444 ,always he seemed to be on the verge of some illuminating and beautiful statement of his cause2 always he was finding his writing inadequate1 a thin treachery to the impulse of his heart4 ,have we not in such an experience an irrefutable proof of the inefficacy of ,mr4 ,britling's ,god8 ,always the world has been all ears for a clear1 convincing1 compulsive message from ,god2 always1 or at any rate for many thousands of years1 there have been men who seemed the predestined mouthpieces of such a message2 always what purported to be the word of ,god has proved to be either powerless to make itself heard1 or powerful only to the begetting of hideous moral and social corruptions4 ,god spoke 7it is said7 through the ,vedic rishis1 the sages of the ,himalayas--and the result has been caste1 cow-worship1 suttee1 abominations of asceticism1 and nameless orgies of sensuality4 ,god spoke through ,moses1 and the result was--,judaism6 ,god spoke through ,jesus1 and the result was ,arianism and ,athanasianism1 the ,papacy1 the ,holy ,office1 the ,thirty ,years' ,war1 massacres beyond computation1 and the slowly calcined flesh of an innumerable army of martyrs4 ,all this1 no doubt1 was due to gross and palpable misunderstanding of the message delivered through ,jesus2 but since it was so fatally open to misunderstanding1 would it not better have remained undelivered8 ,could the world have been appreciably worse off without it8 ,the question is rather an idle one1 since it turns on might have beens4 ,that the element of good in the message of ,jesus has been to some extent efficient1 no one would deny4 ,but the alloy of potential evil has made itself so overpoweringly actual that to strike a balance between the two forces is impossible1 and the question is generally decided by throwing a solid chunk of prejudice into one scale or the other4 ,there has never been a time when a really well-informed revelation1 uttered with charm and power1 might not have revolutionized the world4 ,a well-informed revelation6 the reader may cry3 ,what terrible bathos6 ,mr4 ,wells1 moreover1 speaks slightingly of revelation 7pp4 #ai1 #afc7 in a tone that seems to imply that modern religion would have nothing to do with it even if it could4 ,but the demand for a revelation is eminently reasonable and justified2 and the only trouble about the historic revelations is that they have all been so shockingly ill-informed1 and have revealed nothing to the purpose4 ,robert ,louis ,stevenson anticipated ,mr4 ,wells's view of the matter when he wrote ironically3-- ,it's a simple thing that ,i demand1 ,though humble as can be-- ,a statement fair in my ,maker's hand ,to a gentleman like me-- ,a clean account1 writ fair and broad1 ,and a plain apologee-- ,or deevil a ceevil word to ,god ,from a gentleman like me4 ,but why this irony8 ,what an infinity of trouble and pain would have been saved if such a clean account1 writ fair and broad1 had been vouchsafed1 and had been found to tally with the facts6 ,nor have the reputedly wise and good of this world seen any presumption in desiring such a communiqu4 ,most of them thought they had received it1 and many wasted half their lives in attempting to reconcile new knowledge with old ignorance1 promulgated under the guarantee of ,god4 ,i cannot but think that the poet got nearer the heart of the matter who wrote3-- ,was ,moses upon ,sinai taught ,how ,sinai's mighty ribs were wrought8 ,did ,buddha1 'neath the bo-tree's shade1 ,learn how the stars were poised and swayed8 ,did ,jesus still pain's raging storm1 ,and dower the world with chloroform8 ,or ,mahomet a jehad decree ',gainst microbe-harboring gnat and flea8 ,has revelation e'er revealed ,aught from its age and hour concealed8 ,or miracle1 since time began1 ,conferred a single boon on ,man8 ,truly1 we may agree with ,mr4 ,wells that the ,invisible ,king was probably not in the secrets of the ,veiled ,being1 else he could scarcely have kept them so successfully4 ,but have we any use for a ,god who can teach us nothing8 who has to be taught by us before he can do anything worth mentioning8 ,the old ,gods who professed to teach were much more rational in theory1 if only their teaching had not been all wrong4 ,man has built up his knowledge of the universe he lives in by slow1 laborious degrees1 not helped1 but constantly and cruelly hindered1 by his ,gods4 ,yet ,mr4 ,wells will surely not deny that an approximately true conception of the process of nature1 and of his own origin and history1 was an indispensable basis for all right and lasting social construction4 ,what colossal harm has been wrought1 for instance1 by the fairy-tale of the ,fall1 and all its theological consequences6 ,yet1 age after age1 the ,invisible ,king did nothing to shake its calamitous prestige4 ,of late it is true that the progress of knowledge has seemed no longer slow1 but amazingly rapid2 but that is because the amount of energy devoted to it has been multiplied a hundredfold4 ,each new step is still a very short one3 it is generally found that several investigators have independently arrived at the verge of a new discovery1 and it is often a matter of chance which of them first crosses the line and is lucky enough to associate his name with the completed achievement4 ,all this means that to-day1 as from the beginning1 man has to wring her secrets from ,nature in the sweat of his brain1 and without the smallest assistance from any ,invisible ,king or other potentate4 ,to-day there are doubtless beneficent secrets under our very noses1 so to speak1 which one word of a still small voice might enable us to grasp1 but which may remain undiscovered1 to our great detriment1 for centuries to come4 ,there is1 in short1 no single point1 either in history or in contemporary life1 where the light of the world can be shown1 or plausibly conjectured1 to have lighted us to any practical purpose4 ,and it is futile to urge1 ,i repeat1 that it could not have done so without a miraculous disturbance of the order of nature4 ,the influence of mind upon mind1 however conveyed1 is the most natural thing in the world2 and1 short of transplanting mountains1 inhibiting earthquakes1 and teaching people to subsist on air1 there is nothing that mind cannot do4 ,besides1 when we come to think of it1 why this prejudice against miracles8 ,why is ,mr4 ,wells so sternly opposed to the bare idea of ,providence8 ,fear and feebleness1 he says1 go straight to the ,heresies that ,god is ,magic or that ,god is ,providence 7p4 #bg7--;as though it were disgracefully pusillanimous to prefer a well-governed to an ungoverned world4 ,god1 in the ordinary sense of the word1 the sense we all understand1 is unquestionably magic1 whether we like it or not4 ,he is none the less magic because he works through one great spell1 and not through a host of minor1 petti-fogging miracles4 ,upon the matter of fact we are all agreed1 ,mr4 ,chesterton only dissenting2 but ,mr4 ,wells writes as if it were an essentially godlike thing1 and greatly to the credit of any and every ,god1 to give ,nature its head1 and take no further trouble about the matter4 ,i cannot share that view4 ,my only objection to ,providence is that it manifestly does not exist4 ,if it did exist1 and made the world an appreciably better place to live in1 why should we grudge it a few miracles8 ,there is a touch of the sour-grapes philosophy in the rationalist attitude on this matter which ,mr4 ,wells attributes to his ,invisible ,king4 ,because we can't have any miracles1 we say we don't want them4 ,also1 no doubt1 we see that the alleged miracles of the past were childish futilities1 doing at most a little temporary good to individuals1 never rendering any permanent service to a city or a nation1 and much less to mankind at large4 ,they were a sort of niggardly alms from omnipotence1 not a generous endowment or a liberal compensation4 ,but is that any reason why an intelligent ,power should be unable to devise a really helpful miracle8 ,another plausible objection is that1 even if we could admit the justice of a system of rewards and punishments1 good and evil are so inextricably intermixed in this world that it is impossible to distribute benefits on a satisfactory moral scheme4 ,it is impossible to manipulate the rainfall so that the righteous farmer shall have just what he wants at the appropriate seasons1 while his wicked neighbour suffers from alternate drought and floods2 nor can it be arranged that the midday express shall convey all the good people safely1 while the #d4ae1 which is wrecked1 carries none but undesirable characters4 ,to this it might be replied that the inconceivable complexity of the chess-board of the world exists only in relation to our human faculties2 but what is far more to the point is the indubitable fact that many salutary miracles might be wrought which would raise no question whatever as to the moral merits or defects of the beneficiaries4 ,miracles of alleged justice may reasonably be deprecated2 but where is the objection to miracles of mercy1 falling1 like the blessed rain from heaven1 on both just and unjust8 ,the haughty soul of ,mr4 ,wells may prefer a deity who offers us no tangible bribes--who not only does not work miracles1 but will not even utilize to material ends that great system of wireless telegraphy between his mind and ours which he has1 by hypothesis1 at his disposal4 ,mine1 ,i confess1 is a humbler spirit4 ,i should be perfectly willing to accept even thaumaturgic benefits if only they came in my way2 and ,i cannot regard it as a merit in a ,god that he should carefully abstain from using even his powers of suggestion to do some practical good in the world1 and1 incidentally1 to demonstrate his own existence4 99 99 99 99 99 ,it is difficult1 in the course of a long discussion1 to keep the attention fixed on the precise point at issue4 ,i therefore sum up in a few words the argument of this chapter4 ,in the first place1 ,i have shown that1 if words mean anything1 ,mr4 ,wells does actually wish us to believe that his ,god is not a figure of speech1 but a person1 an individual1 as real and independent an entity as the ,kaiser or ,president ,wilson4 ,in the second place1 ,i have enquired whether anything he says enables us to conceive priori the possibility of such an entity disengaging itself from the mind of the race1 and have regretfully been led to the conclusion that the genesis of this ,god remains at least as insoluble a mystery as that of any other ,god ever placed before a confiding public4 ,thirdly1 ,i have approached the question posteriori and enquired whether history or present experience offers any evidence from which we can reasonably infer the existence and activity of such a ,god--arriving once more at a negative conclusion4 ,with the best will in the world1 ,i can discover nothing in this ,invisible ,king but a sort of new liqueur--or old liqueur with a new label--suited1 no doubt1 to the constitutions of certain very exceptional people4 ,mr4 ,wells avers that he himself finds it supremely grateful and comforting1 and further appeals to the testimony of a number of other 7unnamed7 believers--,english1 ,americans1 ,bengalis1 ,russians1 ,french 444 ,positivists1 ,baptists1 ,sikhs1 ,mohammedans 7p4 #d7--;a quaint ,pentecostal gathering4 ,it is true1 of course1 that the proof of the pudding is in the eating1 and of the liqueur in the drinking4 ,but some of us are inveterately sceptical of the virtues of alcohol1 even in non-intoxicant doses1 and are apt to think that the man who discovers a remedy for sea-sickness or a prophylactic against typhoid is a greater benefactor of the race than a ,god whose special characteristic it is to be not only invisible himself but equally imperceptible in his workings4 ,,vi ,,for ,,and ,,against ,,personification ,for those of us who cannot accept ,mr4 ,wells's ,invisible ,king as a ,god in any useful or even comprehensible sense of the term1 there remains the question whether he is a useful figure of speech4 ,metaphors and personifications are often things of great potency1 whether for good or evil4 ,it might quite well happen that1 if we wholly rejected ,mr4 ,wells's gospel1 on account of a mere squabble as to the meaning of the word ,god1 we should thereby lose something which might have been of the utmost value to us4 ,let us not run the risk of throwing out the baby with the bath-water4 ,take the case of a very similar personification with which we are all familiar--to wit1 ,john ,bull4 ,is he a helpful or a detrimental synthesis8 ,it is not quite easy to say4 ,there is a certain geniality1 a bluff wholesomeness1 a downright honesty about him1 which has doubtless its value2 but on the other hand he is the incarnation of ,philistinism and ,toryism1 the perfect expression of the average sensual man4 ,i am told that in one of his avatars he has something like two million worshippers1 on whom his influence is of the most questionable1 precisely because they have implicit faith in him1 and regard him as a ,friend behind phenomena1 a great brother1 a strongly marked and knowable personality1 loving1 inspiring1 and lovable4 ,that is an illustration of the dangers which may lurk in prosopopoeia4 ,but in the main we can regard ,john ,bull without too much misgiving1 because we cannot regard him seriously4 ,his worship will always be seasoned with the saving grace of humor4 ,he can do service in two capacities--sometimes as an ideal1 often as a deterrent4 ,whatever religious revolutions may await us1 we are not likely to see ,st4 ,paul's ,cathedral solemnly re-dedicated to the worship of ,john ,bull4 ,he and his sister divinity1 ,mrs4 ,grundy1 have never lacked adorers in that basilica2 but their cult is probably not on the increase4 ,the ,invisible ,king1 on the other hand1 is a personage to be taken with the utmost seriousness4 ,if he has anything like the success ,mr4 ,wells anticipates for him1 it is quite on the cards that he might oust the present ,reigning ,family from one or all of the cathedrals4 ,it is true that ,mr4 ,wells deprecates any ritual worship2 but religious thought finely expressed would always be in order2 and he does not see why there should not be1 under ,god1 associations for building cathedrals and such like great still places urgent with beauty1 into which men and women may go to rest from the clamor of the day's confusions 7p4 #afh74 ,if cathedrals may be built1 all the more clearly may they be appropriated--if you can convert or evict the dean and chapter4 ,if the ,invisible ,king should take the fancy of the nation and the world1 as ,mr4 ,wells would have us think that he is already doing1 he is bound to become the object of a formal cult4 ,we shall very soon see a prayer-book of the modern religion with marriage1 funeral and perhaps baptismal services1 with daily lessons1 and with suitable forms of prayer for persons who cannot trust themselves to extempore communings even with a great brother4 ,well1 there might be no great harm in this4 ,some solemn form for the expression of cosmic1 and even of mundane or political1 emotion would doubtless be useful2 and if the modern religion could be saved from degenerating into a hysterical superstition on the one hand1 or a petrified1 persecuting orthodoxy on the other1 it would certainly be a vast improvement on many of the religions of to-day4 ,but the ambitions of the ,invisible ,king go far beyond the mere presidency of an ,ethical ,church on an extended scale4 ,he is to be a ,king and no mistake2 not even a ,king of ,kings1 but sole ,monarch of the universal earth4 ,autocracies1 oligarchies1 and democracies are alike to be swept out of his path4 ,the implicit command of the modern religion to all its adherents is to make plain the way to the world theocracy 7p4 #ig74 ,how the fiats of the ,invisible ,king are to be issued1 we are not informed4 ,if through the ballot-box--vox populi1 vox dei--then the distinction between theocracy and democracy will scarcely be apparent to the naked eye4 ,and one does not see how1 in the transition stage at any rate1 recourse to the ballot-box is to be avoided1 if only as a lesser evil than recourse to howitzers1 tanks and submarines4 ,we read that if you do not feel ,god then there is no persuading you of him2 but if you do1 you will realize more and more clearly1 that thus and thus and no other is his method and intention 7p4 #ih74 ,now1 assuming 7no slight assumption7 that the oracles of ,god1 the message of the still small voice1 will be identically interpreted by all believers1 the unbelievers1 those who do not feel ,god1 have still to be dealt with2 and1 as they are not open to persuasion1 it would seem that the faithful must be prepared either to shoot them down or to vote them down--whereof the latter seems the humaner alternative4 ,it is true that ,mr4 ,wells's ,god is a man of war2 like that other whom he disowns but strangely resembles1 he brings mankind not rest but a sword 7p4 #if74 ,but we may confidently hold that this1 at any rate1 is but a manner of speaking4 ,even if the ,god is real1 his sword is metaphoric4 ,mr4 ,wells is not seriously proposing to take his cue from his ,mohammedan friends1 raise the cry of ,allahu ,akbar6 and propagate his gospel scimitar in hand4 ,it is hard to see1 then1 what other method there can be of dealing with the heathen1 except the method of the ballot-box--of course with proportional representation4 ,when there are no more heathen--when the whole world can read the will of ,god by direct intuition1 as though it were written in letters of fire across the firmament--then1 indeed1 the ballot-box may join the throne1 sceptre and crown in the historical museum4 ,but even the robust optimism of the gottestrunken ,mr4 ,wells can scarcely conceive this millennium to be at hand4 ,so that in the meantime it seems unwise to speak slightingly of democracy1 lest we thereby help the ,powers1 both here and elsewhere1 which are fighting for something very much worse4 ,for ,i take it that the worst enemy of the ,wellsian ,god is the ,superman1 who has quite a sporting chance of coming out on top1 if not actually in this ,war1 at least in the welter that will succeed it4 ,but seriously1 is any conceivable sort of theocracy a desirable ideal8 ,or1 to put the same question in more general terms1 is it wise of ,mr4 ,wells to make such play with the word ,god8 ,he himself admits that ,god trails with him a thousand misconceptions and bad associations3 his alleged infinite nature1 his jealousy1 his strange preferences1 his vindictive ,old ,testament past 7p4 #h7--;and1 it may fairly be added1 his blood-boltered1 ,kultur-stained present4 ,is it possible to deodorize a word which comes to us redolent of good1 thick stupefying incense-smoke1 mingled with the reek of the auto-da-f8 ,can we beat into a ploughshare the sword of ,st4 ,bartholomew1 and a thousand other deeds of horror8 ,god has been by far the most tragic word in the whole vocabulary of the race--a spell to conjure up all the worst fiends in human nature3 arrogance and abjectness1 fanaticism1 hatred and atrocity4 ,religious reformers--with ,jesus at their head--have time and again tried to divest it of some1 at least1 of its terrors1 but they have invariably failed4 ,will ,mr4 ,wells succeed any better8 ,is it not apparent in the foregoing discussion that1 even if the word had no other demerits1 it leads us into regions in which the mind can find no firm foothold8 ,i have done my best to accept ,mr4 ,wells's definitions1 but ,i am sure he feels that ,i have constantly slipped from the strait and narrow path4 ,has he himself always kept to it8 ,i think not4 ,and1 waiving that point1 is it at all likely that people in general will be more successful than ,i have been in grasping and holding fast to the differentiating attributes of ,mr4 ,wells's divinity8 ,if the word is at best a confusion and at worst a war-whoop1 should we not try to dispense with it1 to avoid it1 to find a substitute which should more accurately1 if less truculently1 express our idea8 ,is it wise or kind to seek to impose on the future an endless struggle with its sinister ambiguities8 ,there are1 no doubt1 regions of thought from which it is extremely difficult to exclude the word2 but these1 fortunately1 are regions in which it is almost necessarily divested of its historical associations4 ,as a term of pure philosophy1 if safeguarded by careful definition1 it is a convenient piece of shorthand1 obviating the necessity for a constant recourse to cumbrous formulas4 ,but politics is not one of these regions of thought2 and it is precisely in politics that the intervention of ,god has from of old been most disastrous4 ,theocracy has always been the synonym for a bleak and narrow1 if not a fierce and blood-stained1 tyranny4 ,why seek to revive and rehabilitate a word of such a dismal connotation8 ,i suggest that even if the ,invisible ,king were a ,god1 it would be tactful to pretend that he was not4 ,as he is not a ,god1 in any generally understood sense of the term1 it seems a curious perversity to pretend that he is4 99 99 99 99 99 ,even in the region of morals it is a backward step to restore ,god to the supremacy from which he has with the utmost difficulty been deposed4 ,i am sure ,mr4 ,wells does not in his heart believe that any theological sanction is required for the plain essentials of social well-doing1 or any theological stimulus for the rare sublimities of virtue4 ,incalculable mischief has been wrought by the clerical endeavour to set up a necessary association between right conduct and orthodoxy1 between heterodoxy and vice4 ,this ,mr4 ,wells knows as well as ,i do2 yet he can use such phrases as ,without ,god1 the ',service of ,man' is no better than a hobby or a sentimentality or a hypocrisy4 ,no doubt he has carefully explained that he does not mean by ,god or religion what the clergy mean2 but can he be sure that by imitating their phrases he may not imperceptibly slide into their frame of mind8 or at any rate tempt the weaker brethren to do so8 ,in using such an expression he comes perilously near the attitude adopted by the ,bishop of ,london in a recent address to the sailors of the ,grand ,fleet4 ,his ,lordship told his hearers--we have it on his own authority--that there was in everyone a good man and a bad man4 ,and ,i have not known a case1 he added1 where the good man conquered the bad man without religion4 ,can there be any doubt that the ,bishop was either telling--well1 not the truth--or shamelessly playing with words8 ,of course it may be said that any man who keeps his lower instincts in control does so by aid of a feeling that there are higher values in life than sensual gratification or direct self-gratification of any sort2 and we may1 if we are so minded1 call this feeling religion4 ,but it is a very inconvenient meaning to attach to the word1 and we cannot take it to be the meaning the ,bishop had in view4 ,what he meant1 in all probability--what he desired his simple-minded hearers to understand--was that he had never known a good man who did not believe1 if not in all the dogmas of the ,church of ,england1 at any rate in the ,christian ,trinity1 the fall of man1 redemption from sin1 and the inspiration of the ,scriptures4 ,he meant that no man could be good who did not believe that ,god has given us in writing a synopsis of his plan of world-government1 and has himself sojourned on earth and submitted to an appearance of death1 some two thousand years ago1 in fulfilment of the said plan4 ,if he did not mean that1 he was1 ,i repeat1 playing with words and deceiving his hearers1 who would certainly understand him to mean something to that effect2 and if he did mean that1 he departed very palpably from the truth4 ,the ,bishop of ,london is no recluse1 shut up in a monastery among men of his own faith4 ,he is a man of the modern world1 and he must know1 and know that he knows1 scores of men as good as himself who have no belief in anything that he would recognize as religion4 ,perhaps he was not directly conscious of telling a falsehood1 for faith plays such havoc with the intellect that men cease to attach any living meaning to words1 and come to deal habitually in those unrealized phrases which we call cant4 ,but whatever may have been his excuses to his conscience1 he was saying a very noxious thing to the simple1 gallant souls who heard him4 ,many of them must have been well aware that they had no faith that would have satisfied the ,bishop of ,london1 and that whatever religious ideas lurked in their minds were of very little use to them in struggling with the temptations of a sailor's life4 ,where was the sense in telling them that the ordinary motives which make for good conduct--prudence1 self-respect1 loyalty1 etc41 etc4--are of no avail1 and that they must inevitably be bad men if they had not found religion8 ,if such talk does no positive harm1 it is only because men have learnt to discount the patter of theology4 ,yet here we find ,mr4 ,wells1 after vigorously disclaiming any participation in the ,bishop's beliefs1 falling into the common form of episcopal patter1 and telling me1 for example--a benighted but quite well-intentioned heathen--that ,i can do no good in my generation unless ,i believe in a ,god whom he and a number of ,eastern sages1 ,parthians1 ,medes1 ,elamites and dwellers in ,mesopotamia1 have recently synthetized out of their inner consciousnesses6 ,it is not ,mr4 ,wells's fault if ,i do not abandon the steep and thorny track of austerity which ,i have hitherto pursued1 invest all my spare cash either in whiskey or in whiskey shares1 and go for my philosophy in future to the inspiring author of ,musings without ,method in ,blackwood4 ,it is not quite clear why ,mr4 ,wells should accept so large a part of the ,christian ethic and yet refuse to identify his ,invisible ,king with ,christ4 ,one would have supposed it quite as easy to divest the ,christ-figure of any inconvenient attributes as to eliminate omniscience and omnipotence from the ,god-idea4 ,mr4 ,wells constantly allows his thoughts to run into the stereotype moulds of biblical phraseology4 ,we have seen how he talks of the still small voice1 of the light of the world1 taking the sting from death and of ,god coming in his own time and bringing not rest but a sword4 ,to those instances may be added such phrases as death will be swallowed up in victory 7p4 #ci71 by the grace of the true ,god 7p4 #dd71 ,god is ,love 7p4 #fe71 the ,son of ,man 7p4 #hf71 ,i become my brother's keeper 7p4 #ig71 he it is who can deliver us 'from the body of this death' 7p4 #ii74 ,but the clearest indication of ,christian influence is to be found in ,mr4 ,wells's unhesitating and emphatic adoption of the idea that ,salvation is indeed to lose oneself 7p4 #gc74 ,the difference1 he says1 between 444 the unbeliever and the servant of the true ,god is this 444 that the latter has experienced a complete turning away from self4 ,this only difference is all the difference in the world 7p4 #hd74 ,it is curious what a fascination this turn of phrase has exercised upon many and diverse intelligences4 ,mr4 ,bernard ,shaw1 for instance1 adopts it with enthusiasm4 ,henrik ,ibsen--if it is ever possible to tie a true dramatist down to a doctrine--preaches in ,peer ,gynt that to be thyself is to slay thyself4 ,mr4 ,wells has a cloud of witnesses to back him up2 and yet it is very doubtful whether the turn of phrase is a really helpful one--whether it does not rather get in the way of the natural man in his quest for a sound rule of life4 ,it is a commonplace that the entirely self-centred man--the ,robinson ,crusoe of a desert island of egoism--is unhappy4 ,at least if he is not he belongs to a low intellectual and moral type3 the proof being that all development above the level of the oyster and the slug has involved more or less surrender of the immediate claims of number one to some larger unity4 ,progress has always consisted1 and still consists1 in the widening of the ideal concept which appeals to our loyalty4 ,is it not ,mr4 ,wells's endeavour in this very book to claim our devotion for the all-embracing and ultimate ideal--the human race8 ,so far1 we are all at one4 ,but when we are told that conversion or salvation consists in a complete turning away from self1 common sense revolts4 ,it is not true either in every-day life or in larger matters of conduct4 ,in every-day life the incurably unselfish person is an intolerable nuisance4 ,here the common-sense rule is very simple3 you have no right to seek your own salvation1 or1 in non-theological terms1 your own self-approval1 at the cost of other people's2 you have no business to offer sacrifices which the other party ought not to accept4 ,it is true that in the application of this simple rule difficult problems may arise2 but a little tact will generally go a long way towards solving them4 ,in these matters an ounce of tact is worth a pound of casuistry4 ,and in our every-day ,england1 in all classes1 it is my profound conviction that a reasonable selflessness is very far from uncommon1 very far from being confined to the converted of any religion4 ,for forty years ,i have watched it growing and spreading before my very eyes4 ,reading the other way ,the ,roundabout ,papers1 ,i was greatly struck by the antiquated cast of the manners therein described4 ,of course ,thackeray1 in his day1 was reputed a cynic1 and supposed to have an over-partiality for studying the seamy side of things4 ,but even if that had been true 7which ,i do not believe7 it would not have accounted for all the difference between the world he saw and that in which we move to-day4 ,i suggest1 then1 that so far as the minor moralities are concerned1 no new religion is required1 and we have only to let things pursue their natural trend4 ,and what of the great selflessnesses8 ,what of the ideal loyalties8 ,what of the long-accumulated instincts which tell a man1 in tones which brook no contradiction1 that the shortest life and the cruellest death are better than the longest life of sensual self-contempt8 ,here1 as it seems to me1 ,mr4 ,wells's apostolate of a new religion is very conspicuously superfluous--much more so than it would have been five years ago4 ,for have not he and ,i been privileged to witness one of the most beautiful sights that the world ever saw--the flocking of ,young ,england1 in its hundreds upon hundreds of thousands1 to endure the extremity of hardship and face the high probability of a cruel death1 not for ,england alone1 not even for ,england1 ,france and ,belgium1 but for what they obscurely but very potently felt to be the highest interests of the very same ideal entity which ,mr4 ,wells proposes to our devotion--the human race8 ,i am sure he would be the last to minimize the significance of that splendid uprising4 ,no doubt there were other motives at work3 in some1 the mere love of change and adventure2 in others1 the pressure of public opinion4 ,but my own observation assures me that1 on the whole1 these unideal motives played a very small part4 ,the young men simply felt that he who held back was unfaithful to his fathers and unworthy of his sons2 and they turned away from self without a moment's hesitation1 and streamed to the colors with all the more eagerness the longer the casualty-lists grew1 and the more clearly the horrors they had to face were brought home to them4 ,has there been any voluntary slaying of self on so huge a scale since the world began8 ,i have not heard of it4 ,and ,mr4 ,wells will scarcely tell me that these young men went through the experiences he describes as conversion1 and escaped from the burden of over-individuation by throwing themselves into the arms of a synthetic ,god6 ,many of them1 no doubt1 would have expressed their idealism1 had they expressed it at all1 in terms of ,christianity2 but that1 we are told1 is a delusion1 and the only true ,god is the ,invisible ,king4 ,if that be so1 the conclusion would seem to be that1 in the present stage of the evolution of human character1 no ,god at all is needed to enable millions of men1 in whom the blood runs high and the joy of life is at its keenest1 to achieve the conquest of self in one of its noblest forms4 ,or 7what comes to the same thing7 any sort of ,god will serve the purpose4 ,your ,god 7divested of metaphysical attributes7 is simply a name for your own better instincts and impulses4 ,many people1 perhaps most1 share ,mr4 ,wells's tendency to externalize1 objectivate1 personify these impulses2 and there may be no harm in doing so4 ,but when it comes to asserting that your own personification is the only true one1 then--,i am not so sure4 ,finally there arises the question whether the personification of the ,invisible ,king can really1 in any comprehensible sense1 and for any considerable number of normal human beings1 rob death of its sting1 the grave of its victory8 ,on this point discussion cannot possibly be conclusive1 for the ultimate test is necessarily a personal one4 ,if any sane and sincere person tells me that a certain idea1 or emotion1 or habit of mind1 or even any rite or incantation1 has deprived death of its terrors for him1 ,i can only congratulate him1 even if ,i have to confess that my own experience gives me no clue to his meaning4 ,it is not even very profitable to enquire whether a man can be confident of his own attitude towards death unless he has either come very close to its brink himself1 or known what it means to witness the extinction of a life on which his whole joy in the present and hope for the future depended4 ,all one can do is to try to ascertain as nearly as possible what the contemner of death really means1 and to consider whether his individual experience or feeling is1 or is likely to become1 typical4 ,one thing we must plainly realize1 and that is that1 for the purposes of his present argument1 ,mr4 ,wells conceives death to be a real extinction of the individual consciousness4 ,he does not formally commit himself to a denial of personal immortality1 but it is a contingency which he declines to take into account4 ,oddly enough1 in trying to acclimatize our minds to the idea of such an absolutely incorporeal and immaterial1 yet really existent1 being as his ,invisible ,king1 he comes near to clearing away the one great obstacle to belief in survival after death4 ,from the earliest ages1 he says1 man's mind has found little or no difficulty in the idea of something essential to the personality1 a soul or a spirit or both1 existing apart from the body and continuing after the destruction of the body1 and being still a person and an individual 7p4 #ei74 ,he does not actually say that there is no difficulty about this conception3 he only says that1 as a matter of history1 the great mass of men have found it easy and natural to believe in ghosts4 ,but it is hard to see any force in his argument at this point unless he means to imply that he himself finds little or no difficulty in conceiving the continued existence of a spiritual consciousness and individuality after the dissolution of the body to which it has been attached2 and if he does mean this1 it is hard to see why he does not take his stand beside ,sir ,oliver ,lodge on the spiritist platform4 ,to many of us1 the extreme difficulty of such a conception is the one great barrier to the acceptance of the spiritist theory1 for which remarkable evidence can certainly be adduced4 ,this1 however1 is a digression4 ,so far as ,god the ,invisible ,king is concerned1 ,mr4 ,wells must be taken as ignoring1 if not rejecting1 the idea of personal immortality4 ,the victory over death1 then1 which the ,invisible ,king is said to achieve1 does not consist in its abolition4 ,it may probably be best defined as the perfect reconcilement of the believer to the extinction of his individual consciousness4 ,and what are the grounds of that reconcilement8 ,let us search the scriptures4 ,where the steps are described by which the catechumen approaches the full realization of ,god1 it is said that at that stage he feels that if there were such a being he would supply the needed consolation and direction1 his continuing purpose would knit together the scattered effort of life1 his immortality would take the sting from death 7p4 #ba-bb74 ,a little further on1 the idea is elaborated in a high strain of mysticism4 ,god1 who captains us but does not coddle us 7p4 #db71 will by no means undertake to hold the believer scatheless among the pitfalls and perils that beset our earthly pilgrimage4 ,but ,god will be with you nevertheless4 ,in the reeling aeroplane1 or the dark ice-cave1 ,god will be your courage4 ,though you suffer or are killed1 it is not an end4 ,he will be with you as you face death2 he will die with you as he has died already countless myriads of brave deaths4 ,he will come so close to you that at the last you will not know whether it is you or he who dies1 and the present death will be swallowed up in his victory 7p4 #ci74 ,the passage has already been quoted in which it is written that1 at the end of the fight for ,god's ,kingdom1 we are altogether taken up into his being 7p4 #fh74 ,in a discussion of the religion of atheists we are told that unregenerate man is acutely aware of himself as an individual and unawakened to himself as a species1 wherefore he finds death frustration4 ,his mistake is in not seeing that his own frustration may be the success and triumph of his kind 7p4 #gb74 ,at the point where we are told that the first purpose of ,god is the attainment of clear knowledge1 we are further informed that he will apprehend more fully as time goes on the purpose to which this knowledge is to be applied4 ,but already it is possible to define the broad outlines of his purpose4 ,it is the conquest of death2 first the overcoming of death in the individual by the incorporation of the motives of his life into an undying purpose 7p4 #ii71 and then1 as we saw before1 the defeat of the threatened extinction of life through the cooling of the planet4 ,these1 ,i think1 are the chief texts bearing directly on this particular matter2 but there is one other remark which must not be overlooked4 ,a convicted criminal1 frankly penitent1 we are told1 444 may still die well and bravely on the gallows1 to the glory of ,god4 ,he may step straight from that death into the immortal being of ,god4 ,to what1 now1 does all this amount8 ,is there any more substantial solace in it than in the ,oh1 may ,i join the ,choir ,invisible aspiration of mid-nineteenth-century positivism8 ,far be it from me to speak contemptuously of that aspiration4 ,it gives a new orientation and consistency to thought and effort during life2 and to the man who feels that his little note will melt into the world-harmony that is to be1 that thought may impart a certain serenity under the shadow of the end4 ,it is certainly better to feel at night1 ,i have done a fair day's work1 than to lie down with the confession1 ,my day has been wasted1 and worse4 ,no one wants1 ,i suppose1 to say with ,peer ,gynt3-- ,thou beautiful earth1 be not angry with me1 ,that ,i trampled thy grasses to no avail2 ,thou beautiful sun1 thou hast squandered away ,thy glory of light in an empty hut4 ,beautiful sun and beautiful earth1 ,you were foolish to bear and give light to my mother4 ,but there is also another side to the question4 ,the more surely you believe that through the ages one increasing purpose runs--the more intimately you have merged your individual will in what ,mr4 ,wells would call the will of the ,invisible ,king--the less do you relish the thought that you can never see that will worked out4 ,the intenser your interest in the play1 the greater your disinclination to leave the theatre just as the plot is thickening4 ,nor does it afford much consolation to know that the ,producer is just 7as it were7 getting into his stride1 and that1 if the house should become too cold for comfort1 arrangements will be made for the transference of the production to another theatre1 with a better heating-apparatus4 ,is there any real escape from the fact that for each of us the one thing that actually exists is our individual consciousness8 ,it is our universe2 and if its trembling flame is blown out1 that particular universe is no more4 ,if its limits of individuation are irrecoverably lost1 what avails it to tell us that the flame is absorbed into the light of the world or the dayspring on high8 ,is it possible to imagine that the rain-drop which falls in the ,atlantic thrills with a great rapture as its molecules disperse in the moment of coalescence1 because it is now part of an infinite and immortal entity8 ,yes1 it is possible to imagine it rejoicing that its chagrins of egotism1 as an individual drop1 are now over2 in fact1 this is precisely the sort of thing that some poets love to imagine2 but has it any real relevance to our sublunary lot8 ,can it minister any substantial comfort or fortification to the normal man in the moment of peril or agony8 ,i ask2 ,i do not answer4 ,can ,mr4 ,wells put in the witness-box any flight-lieutenant who will swear that in his reeling aeroplane1 as death seemed on the point of engulfing him1 he felt uncertain whether it was ,god or he that was about to die1 and gloriously certain that in any case he was about to step straight into the immortal being of ,god8 ,and even if1 in the excitement of violent action1 such hallucinations do mean something to a peculiar type of mind1 has any one dying of pneumonia or ,bright's disease been known to declare that1 though his mortal spark was on the point of extinction1 he felt that by the incorporation of the motives of his life into an undying purpose he had triumphed over death and the grave8 ,the simple soul who says ,we shall meet in ,heaven no doubt enjoys such a triumph--and even if he fails to keep the appointment1 no one is any the worse4 ,but where are the men and women who feel the immortality of ,god1 however we define or construct him1 a rich compensation for their own mortality8 ,it may be said that ,i am applying shockingly terrestrial tests to ,mr4 ,wells's soaring transcendentalisms4 ,i am simply asking3 ,will they work8 ,a world-religion cannot be what ,i have called a luxury for the intellectually wealthy4 ,it must be within the reach of plain men and women2 and plain men and women cannot1 as the ,french say1 pay themselves with words4 ,take them all round1 they do not make too much of death4 ,with or without the aid of religion1 they generally meet it with tolerable fortitude4 ,but it will be hard to persuade them that annihilation is a thing to be faced with rapture1 because a synthetic ,god is indestructible2 or that death is not death because other people will be alive a hundred or a thousand years hence4 ,even if you cannot offer them another life1 you may tell them of the grave as a place where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest1 and they will understand4 ,but will they understand if you tell them that we triumph over the grave because ,god dies with us and yet never dies8 ,i fear it will need something clearer and more credible than this to make the undertaker a popular functionary4 ,the doctrines of the modern religion may give us a new motive for living2 but how can they at the same time diminish our distaste for dying8 ,that might be their effect1 no doubt1 in cases where we felt that our death was promoting some great and sacred cause more than our life could have done2 but such cases must always be extremely rare4 ,even the soldier on the battlefield will help his country more by living than by dying1 if he can do so without failing in his duty4 ,his death is not a triumph1 but only a lesser evil than cowardice and disgrace4 ,and what shall we say1 for example1 of the case of a young biologist who dies of blood-poisoning on the eve of a great and beneficent discovery8 ,is not this a case in which the modern ,god might with advantage have swerved from his principles and 7for once7 played the part of ,providence8 ,it is better1 no doubt1 to die in a good cause than to throw away life in the pursuit of folly or vice2 but is it not playing with words to say that even the end of a martyr to science like ,captain ,scott1 or a martyr to humanity like ,edith ,cavell1 is a triumph over death and the grave8 ,it is a triumph over cowardice1 baseness1 the love of ease and safety1 all the paltrier aspects of our nature2 but a triumph over death it is not4 ,if it be true 7which ,i do not believe7 that ,german soldiers sign a declaration devoting the glycerine in their dead bodies to their country's service1 one may imagine that some of them feel a species of satisfaction in resolving upon this final proof of patriotism2 but it will be a gloomy satisfaction at best2 there will be a lack of exhilaration about it2 if the ,herr ,hauptmann who witnesses their signatures congratulates them on having triumphed over death1 they will be apt to think it a rather empty form of words4 ,if they had had the advantage of reading ,jane ,austen1 they would probably say with ,mr4 ,bennet1 ,let us take a more cheerful view of the subject1 and suppose that ,i survive4 ,i fear that not even the companionship offered by the modern ,god in the act of dissolution will make death a cheerful experience1 or induce ordinary1 unaffected mortals to glory in their mortality4 ,it is too much the habit of ,gods to pretend to die when they don't really die at all--when1 in fact1 the whole idea is a mere intellectual hocus-pocus4 ,,vii ,,back ,,to ,,the ,,veiled ,,being ,why has ,mr4 ,wells partly goaded and partly hypnotized himself into the belief that he is the predestined prolocutor of a new hocus-pocus8 ,rightly or wrongly1 ,i diagnose his case thus3 ,what he really cares for is the future of humanity1 or1 in more concrete language1 social betterment4 ,he suffers more than most of us from the spectacle of the world of to-day1 because he has the constructive imagination which can place alongside of that chaos of cupidities and stupidities a vision of a rational world-order which seems easily attainable if only some malignant spell could be lifted from the spirit of man4 ,but he finds himself impotent in face of the crass inertia of things-as-they-are4 ,except the gift of oratory1 he has all possible advantages for the part of a social regenerator4 ,he has the pen of a ready and sometimes very impressive writer2 he has a fair training in science2 he has a fertile and inventive brain2 his works of fiction have won for him a great public1 both in ,europe and ,america2 yet he feels that his social philosophy1 his ardent and enlightened meliorism1 makes no more impression than the buzzing of a gnat in the ear of a drowsy mastodon4 ,at the same time he has persuaded himself1 whether on internal or on external evidence--partly1 ,i daresay1 on both--that men cannot thrive1 either as individuals or as world-citizens1 without some relation of reverence and affection to something outside and above themselves4 ,he foresees that ,christianity will come bankrupt out of the ,war1 and yet that the huge1 shattering experience will throw the minds of men open to spiritual influences4 ,at the same time 7of this one could point to several incidental evidences7 he has come a good deal in contact with ,indian religiosity1 and learnt to know a type of mind to which ,god1 in one form or another1 is indeed an essential of life1 while the particular form is a matter of comparative indifference4 ,then the idea strikes him3 ,have we not here a great opportunity for placing the motive-power of spiritual fervor behind1 or within1 the sluggish framework of social idealism8 ,here it lies1 well thought-out1 carefully constructed1 but inert1 like an aeroplane without an engine4 ,by giving the glow of supernaturalism1 of the worship of a personal ,god1 to the good old ,religion of ,humanity1 may we not impart to our schemes for a well-ordered world precisely the uplift they at present lack8 ,it was all very well for chilly ,new ,england transcendentalism to 'hitch its waggon to a star1' but the result is that ,boston is governed by a ,roman ,catholic ,archbishop4 ,it is really much easier and more effective to hitch our waggon to ,god1 who1 being a synthesis of our own higher selves1 will naturally pull it in whatever direction we want4 ,thus the mass of mankind will escape from that spiritual loneliness which is so discomfortable to them1 and will find1 in one and the same personification1 a deity to listen to their prayers1 and a 'boss1' in the ,tammany sense of the term1 to herd them to the polling-booths4 ,what we want is collectivism touched with emotion4 ,by proclaiming it to be the will of ,god1 and identifying sound politics with ecstatic piety1 we may shorten by several centuries the path to a new world-order4 ,this is a translation into plain ,english of the thoughts which would seem to have possessed ,mr4 ,wells's mind during the past year or so4 ,i do not for a moment mean that he put them to himself in plain ,english4 ,that would be to accuse him of insincerity--a thought which ,i most sincerely disclaim4 ,i have not the least doubt that the ,invisible ,king does actually supply a felt want in his spiritual outfit1 and that he is perfectly convinced that most other people are similarly constituted and will welcome this new object of loyalty and devotion4 ,time will show whether his psychology is correct4 ,if it is1 then he has indeed made an important discovery4 ,to use a very homely illustration3 a carrot dangled from the end of a stick before a donkey's nose makes no mechanical difference in the problem of traction presented by the costermonger's barrow4 ,if anything1 it adds to the weight to be drawn4 ,but if the sight of it cheers1 heartens1 and inspires the donkey1 helping him to overcome those fits of lethargy so characteristic of his race1 then the carrot may quite appreciably accelerate the general rate of progress4 ,it all depends on the psychology of the donkey4 ,moses doubtless did very wisely in going up into ,mount ,sinai and abiding there forty days and forty nights4 ,whatever he may have seen and heard1 the semblance of communion with a ,higher ,power unquestionably lent a prestige to his scheme of social reform which it could never have attained had he offered it on its inherent merits1 as the project of a mere human legislator1 or 7still worse7 of a man of letters4 ,moses1 in fact1 knew his ,children of ,israel4 ,does ,mr4 ,wells know his modern ,englishmen or ,anglo-,americans8 ,that is the question4 ,mr4 ,bernard ,shaw has made a similar and very ingenious attempt1 not exactly to found a new religion1 but to place his ideas in a religious atmosphere4 ,in the preface to ,androcles and the ,lion 7a disquisition just about as long as ,god the ,invisible ,king7 he propounds the question1 ,why not give ,christianity a trial8 and opens the discussion thus3 ,the question seems a hopeless one after #b1jjj years of resolute adherence to the old cry of ',not this man1 but ,barabbas4' ,yet it is beginning to look as if ,barabbas was a failure1 in spite of his strong right hand1 his victories1 his empires1 his millions of money1 and his moralities and churches and political constitutions4 ',this man' has not been a failure yet2 for nobody has ever been sane enough to try his way4 ,then he goes on to shew1 by a course of very plausible reasoning1 that the teaching of ,jesus was1 in all essentials1 an exact anticipation of the economic and social philosophy of ,g4 ,b4 ,s42 so that1 in giving political expression to that philosophy1 we should be1 for the first time1 establishing the ,kingdom of ,christ upon earth4 ,it is true that there are passages in the ,gospels which no more accord with ,mr4 ,shaw's sociology than do omnipotence and omniscience with the theology of ,mr4 ,wells4 ,but these passages do not embarrass ,mr4 ,shaw4 ,he simply points out that1 at ,matthew xvi1 #af1 where ,peter hailed him as the ,christ1 the ,son of the living ,god1 ,jesus went mad4 ,up to that fatal moment his history is that of a man sane and interesting apart from his special gifts as orator1 healer and prophet2 but from that point onward he set to work to live up to his destiny as a god1 part of which was to be killed and to rise again4 ,many other prophets have gone mad--for instance1 ,ruskin and ,nietzsche4 ,therefore we can have no difficulty in simply eliminating as a morbid aberration whatever is un-,shavian in the message of ,jesus1 and accepting the rest as the sincere milk of the word4 ,mr4 ,shaw's attempt to place his philosophy under divine patronage is not so serious as ,mr4 ,wells's2 for ,mr4 ,shaw can never take himself quite seriously for five pages together4 ,but the motive1 in each case1 in manifestly the same--to obtain for a system of ideas the prestige1 the power of insinuation1 penetration1 and stimulation1 that attaches to the very name of religion4 ,the notion is a very tempting one4 ,what every prophet wants1 in the babel of latter-day thought1 is a magic sounding-board which shall make his voice carry to the ends of the earth and penetrate to the dullest understanding4 ,the more he believes in his own reason1 the more he yearns for some method of out-shouting the unreason of his neighbours4 ,german philosophy thought it had discovered the ideal reverberator in the artillery of ,herr ,krupp von ,bohlen2 but the world is curiously indisposed to conversion by cannon1 and has retorted in a still louder roar of high-explosive arguments4 ,god1 as a politico-philosophical ally1 is certainly cheaper than ,herr ,krupp2 and1 divested of his medival sword and tinder-box1 he is decidedly humaner4 ,but is the glamour of his name quite what it once was8 ,or can it be restored to its pristine potency8 ,on a question1 such as this1 on which the evidence is too vague1 too voluminous and too complex to be interpreted with any certainty1 our wishes are apt to take control of our thoughts4 ,making all allowance for this source of error1 ,i nevertheless venture to suggest to ,mr4 ,wells that we may perhaps be passing out of1 not into1 an age of religiosity4 ,may it not be that the time has come to give the name of ,god a rest8 ,is it not possible1 and even probable1 that1 while the vast apocalypse of the observatory and the laboratory is proceeding with unexampled speed1 thinking people may prefer to await its developments1 rather than pin their faith to an interim1 synthetic ,god1 whom his own still1 small voice must1 in moments of candor1 confess to be merely make-believe8 ,is it the fact that men1 or even women1 of our race are1 as a rule1 absolutely dependent for courage1 energy1 self-control and self-devotion1 upon some great brother outside themselves1 a strongly-marked personality1 loving1 inspiring and lovable1 whom they conceive to be always within call8 ,in making this assumption1 is not ,mr4 ,wells ignoring the great mass of paganism in the world around him--not all of it1 or even most of it1 self-conscious and self-confessed1 but none the less real on that account8 ,he makes a curious remark as to the personage whom he calls the benevolent atheist1 which is1 ,i take it1 his nickname for the man who is not much interested in midway ,gods between himself and the ,veiled ,being4 ,this hapless fellow-creature1 says ,mr4 ,wells1 has not really given himself or got away from himself4 ,he has no one to whom he can give himself4 ,he is still a masterless man 7p4 #hc74 ,as ,mr4 ,wells has evidently read a good deal about ,japan1 he no doubt takes this expression from ,japanese feudalism1 which made a distinct class of the ronin or masterless man1 who had1 by death or otherwise1 lost his feudal superior4 ,but is it really1 to our ,western sense1 a misfortune to be a masterless man8 ,does the healthy human spirit suffer from having no one to bow down to1 no one to relieve it of the burden of choice1 responsibility1 self-control8 ,if our feudal allegiance has terminated through the death of the ,gods who asserted a hereditary claim upon it1 must we make haste to build ourselves an idol1 or synthetize a mosaic ikon1 to serve as the recipient of our obeisances1 genuflexions1 osculations8 ,i cannot believe that this is a general1 and much less a universal1 tendency4 ,if any one is irked by the condition of a masterless man1 the ,roman ,catholic ,church holds wide its doors for him4 ,it seems very doubtful whether any less ancient1 dogmatic1 hieratic1 spectacular form of make-believe will serve his turn4 ,it has sometimes seemed to me that the one great advantage of ,western ,christianity lies in the fact that nobody very seriously believes in it4 ,nobody is not a mathematically accurate expression1 but it is quite in the line of the truth4 ,you have to go to ,asia to find out what religion means4 ,if you cannot get so far1 ,russia will serve as a half-way house2 but to study religion on its native heath1 so to speak1 you must go to ,india4 ,of course there may be some illusion in the matter1 due to one's ignorance of the languages and inability to estimate the exact spiritual significance of outward manifestations2 but ,i cannot believe that1 anywhere between ,suez and ,singapore1 there exists that healthy godlessness1 that lack of any real effective dependence on any outward ,power dal tetto in su1 which is so common in and around all ,christian churches4 ,in ,china and ,japan it is another matter4 ,there1 ,i fancy1 religious ronins are common enough4 ,but in the lands of the ,crescent and the land of ,,om1 anything like freedom of the human spirit is probably very rare and very difficult4 ,the difference does not arise from any lesser stringency in the claims of ,christianity to spiritual dominion1 but rather1 ,i imagine1 from a deep-seated divergence in racial heredity4 ,we ,western ,aryans have behind us the serene and splendid rationalisms of ,greece and ,rome4 ,we are accustomed from childhood to the knowledge that our civilization was founded by two mighty aristocracies of intellect1 to whom the religions of their day were1 as they are to us1 nothing but more or less graceful fairy-tales4#d ,we know that many of the greatest men the world ever saw1 while phrasing their relation to the deus absconditus in various ways1 were utterly free from that penitential1 supplicatory abjectness which is the mark of ,asian salvationism4 ,and though of course the conscious filiation to ,greece and ,rome is rare1 the habit of mind which holds up its head in the world and feels no childish craving to cling to the skirts of a ,god1 is not rare at all4 ,therefore ,i conceive that people who are shaken out of their conventional1 unrealized ,christianity by the earthquake of the war will not1 as a rule1 be in any hurry to rush into the arms of the great brother constructed for them by ,mr4 ,wells4 ,it is easier to picture them flocking to the banner of the ,fabian ,jesus--the ,christ uncrucified1 and restored to sanity1 of ,mr4 ,bernard ,shaw4 #d ,namque deos didici securum agere aevum1 nec1 siquid miri faciat natura1 deos id tristes ex alto caeli demittere tecto4 ,,horace1 ,satires ,i41 #e4 99 99 99 99 99 ,does it really seem to ,mr4 ,wells an arid and damnable atheism that finds in the very mystery of existence a subject of contemplation so inexhaustibly marvellous as to give life the fascination of a detective story8 ,when ,mr4 ,wells tells us that the first purpose of ,god is the attainment of clear knowledge1 of knowledge as a means to more knowledge1 and of knowledge as a means to power1 he states what is1 to many of us1 the first and last article of religion--only that we prefer to steer clear of hocus-pocus and substitute ,man for ,god4 ,if we are almost1 or even quite1 reconciled to the cruelties and humiliations of life by the thought of its visual glories1 its intellectual triumphs1 and the mysteries with which it is surrounded1 is that frame of mind wholly unworthy to be called religious8 ,if it is1 ,i1 for one1 shall not complain2 for religion1 like ,god1 is a word that has been-- ,defamed by every charlatan ,and soil'd with all ignoble use4 ,but it will be difficult to persuade me of the loftier spirituality1 or even the more abiding solace1 involved in ecstatic devotion to a figure of speech4 ,there are two elements of consolation in life3 the things of which we are sure1 and the things of which we are unsure4 ,we are sure that man has somehow been launched upon the most romantic adventure that mind can conceive4 ,he has set forth to conquer and subdue the world1 including the stupidities and basenesses of his own nature4 ,at first his progress was incalculably slow2 then he came on with a rush in the great sub-tropical river basins2 and presently1 where the brine of the gean got into his blood1 he achieved such miracles of thought and art that his subsequent history1 for well-nigh two thousand years1 bore the appearance of retrogression4 ,i have already asked what the ,invisible ,king was about when he suffered the glory that was ,athens to sink in the fog-bank that was ,alexandria4 ,at all events1 that wonderful false-start came to nothing4 ,rome succeeded to the world-leadership2 and ,rome1 though energetic and capable1 was never brilliant4 ,with her1 ,european free thought1 investigation1 science flickered out1 and ,asian religion took its place4 ,truly the slip-back from antiquity to the dark ages offers a specious argument to the atheists--the true and irredeemable atheists--who deny the reality of progress4 ,specious1 but quite insubstantial2 for we can analyze the terrestrial conditions which led to that catastrophe1 and assure ourselves that the bugbear of their recurrence is nothing more than a bugbear4 ,the printing-press alone is an inestimable safeguard4 ,if the ,greeks had hit upon the idea of movable types--and it is little to the credit of the ,invisible ,king that they did not--the onrush of barbarism and ,byzantinism would not have been half so disastrous4 ,and even through the ,dark ,ages the bias towards betterment is still perceptible1 though its operation was terribly hampered4 ,then1 at last1 the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries took up the thread of progress where antiquity had dropped it4 ,science revived1 and bade defiance to dogma4 ,the garnering of knowledge began afresh2 and true knowledge has this to distinguish it from pseudo-sciences like astrology1 theology1 and philately1 that it is instinct with procreative vigour4 ,knowledge breeds knowledge with ever-increasing rapidity2 and the result is that the past hundred years have seen additions to man's control over the powers of nature which outstrip the wildest imaginings of ,eastern romance4 ,when ,mr4 ,gladstone first went to ,rome in #ahcb1 his transportation was no swifter and scarcely more comfortable than that of ,csar in the fifties before ,christ4 ,today he could fly over the ,matterhorn and ,monte ,rosa1 and then cover the distance from ,milan onwards at the rate of seventy miles an hour in a limousine as luxurious as an ,empress's boudoir4 ,we are piling up the knowledge which is power at an enormous rate--indeed rather too rapidly1 since we have not yet the sense to discriminate between power for good and power for evil4 ,but burnt bairns dread the fire1 and after the present awful experience1 there is fair ground for hope that measures will be taken to provide strait-waistcoats for the criminal lunatics whose vanity and greed impel them to let loose the powers of destruction4 ,can any thinking man say that the world is quite the same to him since the invention of wireless telegraphy8 ,true it is only one among the multitude of phenomena behind which the ,veiled ,being dissembles himself4 ,but is it not a phenomenon of a new and perhaps an epoch-marking order8 ,it may not make the veil more diaphanous1 but it somehow suggests an alteration--perhaps a progressive alteration--in its texture4 ,when we say we are sure of the fact of progress1 the atheist comes down on us with the retort that we thereby confess ourselves nave and credulous optimists4 ,as well say that when we express our confidence that the ,north ,western ,railway will carry us to ,manchester1 we thereby imply the belief that ,manchester is the ,earthly ,paradise4 ,it is quite possible--any one who is so minded may say it is quite probable--that progress means advance towards disillusion4 ,what we are sure of is merely this3 that life may be1 and ought to be1 a very different thing from what it now is1 and that it is in our own power to make it so4 ,we have not the least doubt that the generations which come after us will say3-- ,we will not cease from mortal strife1 ,nor shall the sword slip from our hand1 ,till we have built ,jerusalem ,in ,england's green and pleasant land4 ,but whether1 when they have built it1 they will think ,jerusalem worth the building is quite a different matter4 ,it may be that ,leopardi was right when he said1 ,men are miserable by necessity1 but resolute in believing themselves to be miserable by accident4 ,that is a proposition which the individual can accept or reject so far as his own little span is concerned1 but on which the race1 as such1 can pass no valid judgment4 ,life has never had a fair chance4 ,it has always been so beset with accidental and corrigible evils that no man can say what life1 in its ultimate essence1 really is4 ,all we know is that many of its miseries are factitious1 inessential1 eminently curable2 and till these are eradicated1 how are we to determine whether there are other evils too deep-rooted for our surgery8 ,it may be1 for example1 that the elimination of ,pain would only leave a vacuum for ,tedium to rush in2 but how are we to decide this priori8 ,let us learn what are the true potentialities of life before we undertake to declare whether it is worth living or not4 ,perhaps ,i may be allowed to quote at this point some words of my own which express the idea ,i am trying to convey as clearly as ,i am capable of putting it4 ,they are part of the last paragraph of an address entitled ,knowledge and ,character3 ,the ,straight ,road in ,education3#e ,the great1 dominant1 all-controlling fact of this life is the innate bias of the human spirit1 not towards evil1 as the theologians tell us1 but towards good4 ,but for this bias1 man would never have been man2 he would only have been one more species of wild animal ranging a savage1 uncultivated globe1 the reeking battle-ground of sheer instinct and appetite4 ,but somehow and somewhere there germinated in his mind the idea that association1 co-operation1 would serve his ends better than unbridled egoism in the struggle for existence4 ,instead of each man for himself his motto became each man for his family1 or his tribe1 or his nation1 or--ultimately--for humankind4 ,and1 at a very early stage1 what made for association1 co-operation1 brotherhood1 came to be designated good1 while that which sinned against these upward tendencies was stigmatized as evil4 ,from that moment the battle was won1 and the transfiguration of human life became only a matter of time4 ,the prejudice in favour of the idea of good is the fundamental fact of our moral nature4 ,it has an irresistible1 a magical prestige4 ,we have made1 and are still making1 a myriad mistakes--tragic and horrible mistakes--in striving for good things which are evils in disguise4 ,a few of us 7though relatively not very many7 try to overcome the prejudice altogether1 and say1 ,evil1 be thou my good6 ,but even these recreants and deserters from the great army of humanity have to express themselves in terms of good1 and to take their stand on a sheer contradiction4 ,evil1 as such1 has simply not a fighting chance4 ,the prestige of good is stupendous4 ,we are all hypnotized by it2 and the reason we are slow in realizing the ideal is1 not that we are evil1 but that we are stupid4 #e ,london3 ,george ,allen and ,unwin1 #aiaf4 ,mit der ,dummheit kmpfen ,gtter selbst vergebens--no one had a better right to say that than a ,german poet4 ,but though the ,invisible ,king has made a poor fight against human stupidity1 it is not really unconquerable4 ,if ,gods cannot conquer it1 men can4 ,its strongholds are falling one by one1 and1 though a long fight is before us1 its end is not in doubt4 ,we may even hope1 not without some plausibility1 that moral progress may be all the more rapid in the future because the limit of what may be called mechanical progress cannot be so very far off4 ,the conquest of distance is the great material fact that makes for world-organization2 and distance cannot1 after all1 be more than annihilated--it cannot be reduced to a minus quantity4 ,now that we can whisper round the globe as we whisper round the dome of ,st4 ,paul's1 we cannot get much further on that line of advance1 until immaterial thought-transference shall enable us to flash through one another in a moment as we will4 ,we may before long have reduced the crossing of the ,atlantic from five days to one1 or even less2 but in that direction1 too1 there is a limit to progress2 no invention will enable us to arrive before we start4 ,the conquest of physical disease seems to be well within view2 the possibilities of intensive cultivation and selective breeding in plants and animals are likely to be rapidly developed4 ,when such material problems cease to exercise the first fascination upon the enquiring mind1 the mental sciences1 psychology and sociology1 with the great neglected art of education1 may come into their kingdom4 ,then the atheism which avers that the world stands still1 or moves only in a circle1 will no longer be possible4 ,then all reasonable men will feel themselves soldiers in a mighty army which has won splendid victories 7though here and there chequered with defeats7 on its march out of the dim and tragic past1 and is clearly destined to far greater triumphs in the future1 if only each man does1 with unflinching loyalty1 the duty assigned to him4 ,that loyalty will then be the conscious and acknowledged rule of life1 as it is now in an instinctive and half-realized fashion4 ,it will help us1 more than all the personifications in the world1 to turn away from self4 ,it will not take the sting from death1 but it will enable us to feel that we have earned our rest1 and brought no disgrace upon the colors of our regiment4 ,is it necessary to protest once more that this assurance of progress towards the good is not to be confounded with optimism8 ,for it is clear that good is a question-begging word4 ,the only possible definition of good is that which makes for life--for life1 not only measured by quantity1 but by quality and intensity--that ye may have life more abundantly4 ,why is egoism evil8 ,because a world in which it reigned supreme would very soon come to an end1 or at any rate could not support anything like the abundance of life which is rendered possible by mutual aid and co-operation4 ,why are order1 justice1 courage1 humanity good8 ,because they enable more people to lead fuller lives than would be possible in the absence of such guiding principles4 ,but in all this we assume the validity of the standard--life--which is precisely what pessimism denies4 ,and pessimism may quite conceivably be in the right on't4 ,it is quite conceivable that1 having made the best that can possibly be made of life1 a world-weary race might decide that the best was not good enough1 and deliberately turn away from it4 ,but that is a contingency1 a speculation1 which no sane man would allow to affect his action here and now1 or to impair his loyalty to his comrades in the great terrestrial adventure4 ,and is not this question of the ultimate value of life precisely one of the uncertainties which lend--if the flippancy may be excused--a sporting interest to our position8 ,i have said that we have two elements of consolation3 the things which are sure and the things which are unsure3 in other words1 the axioms and the mysteries4 ,reason is all very well so far as it goes1 and we do right to trust to it2 but it may prove1 after all1 that the things that are behind and beyond and above reason are the things that really matter4 ,does this seem a concession to obscurantism8 ,not at all--for the things obscurantism glories in are things beneath reason1 which is quite another affair4 ,at the same time1 we are too apt to think that reason has drawn a complete outline-map of its sphere of influence1 in which there are many details to be filled in1 but no boundaries to be shifted1 no regions wholly unexplored4 ,it is1 for instance1 very unreasonable to hold that we can draw a hard and fast line between the materially possible and impossible4 ,there is certainly a curious ragged edge to our purely scientific knowledge1 and it may well be that in following up the frayed-out threads we may come upon things very surprising and important4 ,for example1 the question whether consciousness can exist detached from organized matter1 or attached to some form of matter of which we have no knowledge1 ,i regard as purely a question of evidence2 and ,i not only admit but assert that the evidence pointing in that direction is worthy of careful examination4 ,the interpretation which sees in it a proof of personal immortality may be wrong1 but that does not prove that the right interpretation is not worth discovering4 ,the spiritist voyagers may not have reached the ,indies of their hopes1 yet may have stumbled upon an unsuspected ,america4 ,nor does the fact that they are eager and credulous invalidate the whole1 or anything like the whole1 of their evidence4 ,after all1 is it a greater miracle that consciousness should exist detached from matter than that it should exist attached to matter8 ,yet the latter miracle nobody doubts1 except in the nursery games of the metaphysicians4 ,to define1 or rather to adumbrate1 the realm of mystery1 which is yet as indisputably real as the realm of reason and sense1 we naturally turn to the poets1 the seers4 ,here is a glimpse of it through the eyes of ,francis ,thompson1 that creature of transcendent vision who made a strange pretence of wearing the blinkers of the ,roman ,catholic ,church4 ,thus he writes in his ,anthem of ,earth3-- ,ay1 ,mother6 ,mother6 ,what is this ,man1 thy darling kissed and cuffed1 ,thou lustingly engender'st1 ,to sweat1 and make his brag1 and rot1 ,crowned with all honour and all shamefulness8 ,from nightly towers ,he dogs the secret footsteps of the heavens1 ,sifts in his hands the stars1 weighs them as gold-dust1 ,and yet is he successive unto nothing ,but patrimony of a little mould1 ,and entail of four planks4 ,thou hast made his mouth ,avid of all dominion and all mightiness1 ,all sorrow1 all delight1 all topless grandeurs1 ,all beauty and all starry majesties1 ,and dim transtellar things2--even that it may1 ,filled in the ending with a puff of dust1 ,confess--,it is enough4 ,the world left empty ,what that poor mouthful crams4 ,his heart is builded ,for pride1 for potency1 infinity1 ,all heights1 all deeps1 and all immensities1 ,arras'd with purple like the house of kings1-- ,to stall the grey rat1 and the carrion-worm ,statelily lodge4 ,mother of mysteries6 ,sayer of dark sayings in a thousand tongues1 ,who bringest forth no saying yet so dark ,as we ourselves1 thy darkest6 ,surely this is the very truth4 ,man is a hieroglyph to which reason supplies no key--nay1 reason itself is the heart of the enigma4 ,and does not this lend a strange fascination to the adventure of life8 ,another singer1 in a very much simpler strain1 puts something of the same idea3-- ,marooned on an isle of mystery1 ,from a stupor of sleep we woke1 ,and gazed at each other wistfully1 ,a wondering1 wildered folk4 ,there were flowery valleys and mountains blue1 ,and pastures1 and herds galore1 ,and fruits that were luscious to bite into1 ,though bitter at the core4 ,so we plucked up heart1 and we dree'd our weird ,through flickering gleam and gloom1 ,and still for rescue we hoped--or feared-- ,from our island home and tomb4 ,but never over the sailless sea ,came messenger bark or schooner ,with news from the far-off realm whence we ,set sail for that isle of mystery1 ,or a whisper of apology ,from our mute1 malign marooner4 ,the strain of pessimism in this is even more marked than in ,thompson's ,anthem2 and indeed it is hard to deny that the resolute silence of the ,veiled ,being1 the ,invisible ,king1 and all the ,gods and godlings ever propounded to mortal piety1 is one of their most suspicious characteristics4 ,yet it may be that this reproach1 however natural1 does the ,veiled ,being--or the ,younger ,power of our alternative myth--a measure of injustice4 ,it may be that the great ,dramaturge keeps his plot to himself precisely in order that the interest may be maintained up to the fall of the curtain4 ,it may be that its disclosure would upset the conditions of some vast experiment which he is working out4 ,where would be the interest of a race if its result were a foregone conclusion8 ,where the passion of a battle if its issue were foreknown8 ,what if we should prove to be somnambulists treading some dizzy edge between two abysses1 and able to reach the goal only on condition that we are unconscious of the process8 ,perhaps the sanest view of the problem is that presented in ,bliss ,carman's haunting poem ,,the ,,juggler ,look how he throws them up and up1 ,the beautiful golden balls6 ,they hang aloft in the purple air1 ,and there never is one that falls4 ,he sends them hot from his steady hand1 ,he teaches them all their curves2 ,and whether the reach be little or long1 ,there never is one that swerves4 ,some1 like the tiny red one there1 ,he never lets go far2 ,and some he has sent to the roof of the tent ,to swim without a jar4 ,so white and still they seem to hang1 ,you wonder if he forgot ,to reckon the time of their return ,and measure their golden lot4 ,can it be that1 hurried or tired out1 ,the hand of the juggler shook8 ,o never you fear1 his eye is clear1 ,he knows them all like a book4 ,and they will home to his hand at last1 ,for he pulls them by a cord ,finer than silk and strong as fate1 ,that is just the bid of his word4 ,was ever there such a sight in the world8 ,like a wonderful winding skein1-- ,the way he tangles them up together ,and ravels them out again6 99 99 99 99 99 ,if ,i could have him at the inn ,all by myself some night1-- ,inquire his country1 and where in the world ,he came by that cunning sleight6 ,where do you guess he learned the trick ,to hold us gaping here1 ,till our minds in the spell of his maze almost ,have forgotten the time of year8 ,one never could have the least idea4 ,yet why he disposed to twit ,a fellow who does such wonderful things ,with the merest lack of wit8 ,likely enough1 when the show is done ,and the balls all back in his hand1 ,he'll tell us why he is smiling so1 ,and we shall understand4 ,i am not1 perhaps1 very firmly assured of this consummation4 ,yet ,i am much more hopeful of one day understanding the ,juggler and the ,balls than of ever getting into confidential relations with ,mr4 ,wells's ,invisible ,king4 99 99 99 99 99 ,one is conscious of a sort of churlishness in thus rejecting the advances of so amiable a character as the ,invisible ,king4 ,but is ,mr4 ,wells1 on his side1 quite courteous1 or even quite fair1 to the ,veiled ,being8 ,riddle me no riddles6 he seems to say2 ,i am tired of your guessing games4 ,let us have done with 'distressful enquiry into ultimate origins1' and 'bring our minds to the conception of a spontaneous and developing ,god'--one of whose existence and benevolence we are sure1 since we made him ourselves4 ,i want something to worship1 to take me out of myself1 to inspire me with brave phrases about death4 ,how can one worship an insoluble problem8 ,will an enigma die with me in a reeling aeroplane8 ,while you lurk obstinately behind that veil1 how can ,i even know that your political views are sound8 ,whereas the ,invisible ,king gives forth oracles of the highest political wisdom1 in a voice which ,i can scarcely distinguish from my own4 ,you are a remote1 tantalizing entity with nothing comforting or stimulating about you4 ,but as for my ,invisible ,king1 ',closer is he than breathing1 and nearer than hands and feet4' ,a little way back1 ,i compared ,mr4 ,wells to ,moses2 but1 looked at from another point of view1 he and his co-religionists may rather be likened to the ,children of ,israel4 ,tired of waiting for news from the ,god on the cloudy mountain-top1 did they not make themselves a synthetic deity1 finite1 friendly1 and very like the ,invisible ,king1 inasmuch as he seems to have worked no miracles1 and done1 in fact1 nothing whatever8 ,but the ,god on the mountain-top was wroth1 and accused them of idolatry1 surely not without reason4 ,for what is idolatry if it be not manufacturing a ,god1 whether out of golden earrings or out of humanitarian sentiments1 and then bowing down and worshipping it8 ,the wrath of the tribal ,god against his bovine rival was certainly excessive--yet we cannot regard idolatry as one of the loftier manifestations of the religious spirit4 ,the man who can bow down and worship the work of his hands shows a morbid craving for self-abasement4 ,it is possible1 no doubt1 to plead that the graven image is a mere symbol of incorporeal1 supersensible deity2 and the plea is a good one1 if1 and in so far as1 we can believe that the distinction between the sign and the thing signified is clear to the mind of the devotee4 ,the difficulty lies in believing that the type of mind which is capable of focussing its devotion upon a statuette is also capable of distinguishing between the idea of a symbol and the idea of a portrait4 ,but when we pass from the work of a man's hands to the work of his brain--from an actual piece of sculpture to a mental construction--the plea of symbolism can no longer be advanced4 ,this graven image of the mind1 so to speak1 is the veritable ,god1 or it is nothing2 and ,mr4 ,wells1 as we have seen1 is profuse in his assurances that it is the veritable ,god4 ,that is what makes his whole attitude and argument so baffling4 ,one can understand an idolater who says ,i believe that my ,god inhabits yonder image1 or ,yonder image is only a convenient point of concentration for the reverence1 gratitude1 and love which pass through it to the august and transcendent ,spirit whom it symbolizes4 ,but how are we to understand the idolater who adores1 and claims actual divinity for1 an emanation from his own brain and the brains of a certain number of like-minded persons8 ,is it not as though a ventriloquist were to prostrate himself before his own puppet8 ,this craving for something to worship points to an almost uncanny recrudescence of the spirit of ,asia in a fine ,european intelligence4 ,for my own part1 as above stated1 ,i cannot believe ,mr4 ,wells's case to be typical2 but in that ,i may be mistaken4 ,it is possible that an epidemic of ,asiatic religiosity may be one of the sequels of the ,war4 ,if that be so--if there are many people who shrink from the condition of the spiritual ronin1 and are in search of a respectable daimio to whom to pay their devotion--,i beg leave strongly to urge the claims of the ,veiled ,being as against the ,invisible ,king4 ,he has at the outset the not inconsiderable advantage of being an entity instead of a non-entity4 ,whoever or whatever he may be1 we are compelled by the very constitution of our minds to assume his 7or its7 existence2 whereas there is manifestly no compulsion to assume the existence of the ,invisible ,king4 ,then1 again1 the ,veiled ,being is entirely unpretentious4 ,there is no bluster and no cant about him4 ,he does not claim our gratitude for the doubtful boon of life4 ,he does not pretend to be just1 while he is committing1 or winking at1 the most intolerable injustices4 ,he does not set up to be long-suffering1 while in fact he is childishly touchy4 ,he does not profess to be merciful1 while the incurable ward1 the battlefield--nay1 even the maternity home and the dentist's parlor--are there to give him the lie4 7,here1 of course1 ,i am not contrasting him with the ,invisible ,king1 but with more ancient and still more ,asian divinities47 ,it is the moral pretensions tagged on by the theologians to metaphysical ,godhead that revolt and estrange reasonable men--,mr4 ,wells among the rest4 ,if you tell us that behind the ,veil we shall find a good-natured1 indulgent old man1 who chastens us only for our good1 is pleased by our flatteries 7with or without music71 and is not more than suitably vexed at our naughtinesses in the ,garden of ,eden and elsewhere--we reply that this is a nursery tale which has been riddled1 time out of mind1 not by wicked sceptics1 but by the spontaneous1 irrepressible criticism of babes and sucklings4 ,but if you divest the ,veiled ,being of all ethical--or in other words of all human--attributes1 then there is no difficulty whatever in admiring1 and even adoring1 the marvels he has wrought4 ,tennyson went deeper than he realized into the nature of things when he wrote-- ,for merit lives from man to man1 ,but not from man1 ,o ,lord1 to thee4 ,once put aside all question of merit and demerit1 of praise and blame1 and more especially 7but this will shock ,mr4 ,wells7 of salvation and damnation--and nothing can be easier than to pay to the works of the ,veiled ,being the meed of an illimitable wonder4 ,when we think of the roaring vortices of flame that spangle the heavens night by night1 at distances that beggar conception3 when we think of our tiny earth1 wrapped in its little film of atmosphere1 spinning safely for ages untold amid all these appalling immensities3 and when we think1 on the other hand1 of the battles of claw and maw going on1 beneath the starry vault1 in that most miraculous of jewels1 a drop of water3 we cannot but own that the ,power which set all this whirl of atoms agoing is worthy of all admiration4 ,and approbation8 ,ah1 that is another matter2 for there the moral element comes in4 ,it is possible 7and here lies the interest of the enigma7 that the ,veiled ,being may one day justify himself even morally4 ,perhaps he is all the time doing so behind the veil4 ,but on that it is absolutely useless to speculate4 ,light may one day come to us1 but it will come through patient investigation1 not through idle pondering and guessing4 ,in the meantime1 poised between the macrocosm and the microcosm1 ourselves including both extremes1 and being1 perhaps1 the most stupendous miracle of all1 we cannot deny to this amazing frame of things the tribute of an unutterable awe4 ,if that be religion1 ,i profess myself as religious as ,mr4 ,wells4 ,i am even willing to join him in some outward1 ceremonial expression of that sentiment1 if he can suggest one that shall not be ridiculously inadequate4 ,what about kneeling through the ,c ,minor ,symphony8 ,that seems to me about as near as we can get4 ,or ,i will go with him to ,primrose ,hill some fine morning 7like the ,persian ,ambassador fabled by ,charles ,lamb7 and worship the ,sun1 chanting to him ,william ,watson's magnificent hymn3-- ,to thee as our ,father we bow1 ,forbidden thy ,father to see1 ,who is older and greater than thou1 as thou ,art greater and older than we4 ,the sun1 at any rate1 is not a figure of speech1 and is a symbol which runs no risk of being mistaken for a portrait4 ,if ,mr4 ,wells would be content with some such bright sciential idolatry1 ,i would willingly declare myself a co-idolater4 ,but alas6 he is the hierophant of the ,invisible ,king1 and prayer to that impotent potentate is to me a moral impossibility4 ,i would rather face damnation1 especially in the mild form threatened by ,mr4 ,wells1 which consists 7pp4 #adh-adi7 in not knowing that you are damned4 ,and if ,mr4 ,wells maintains that in the worship of the non-moral ,veiled ,being there is no practical1 pragmatic comfort1 ,i reply that ,i am not so sure of that4 ,when all is said and done1 is there not more hope1 more solace1 in an enigma than in a faon de parler8 ,i should be quite willing to accept the test of the reeling aeroplane4 ,the aviator can say to his soul3 ,here am ,i1 one of the most amazing births of time1 the culmination of an endless series of miracles4 ,perhaps ,i am on the verge of extinction--if so1 what does it all matter8 ,but perhaps1 on the contrary1 ,i am about to plunge into some new adventure1 as marvellous as this4 ,more marvellous it cannot be1 but it may perhaps be more agreeable4 ,at all events1 there is something fascinating in this leap in the dark4 ,good bye1 my soul6 ,good-bye1 my memory6 ',if we should meet again1 why1 we shall smile2 ,if not1 why then this parting was well made4' ,i cannot but think that there is as much religion and as much solace in such a shaking-off of the bur o' the world as in the thought that the last new patent ,god is going to die with you1 and that you1 unconsciously and indistinguishably merged in him1 are going to live for ever4 ,,the ,,newest ,,borzoi ,,books ,,lustra ,by ,ezra ,pound ,,dandelions ,by ,coulson ,t4 ,cade ,a ,,chaste ,,man ,by ,louis ,wilkinson ,,god ,,and ,,mr4 ,,wells ,by ,william ,archer ,,martin ,,rivas ,by ,alberto ,blest-,gana ,,beating ',,em ,,to ,,it ,by ,chester ,cornish ,a ,,book ,,of ,,prefaces ,by ,h4 ,l4 ,mencken ,,the ,,three ,,black ,,pennys ,by ,joseph ,hergesheimer ,,interpreters ,,and ,,interpretations ,by ,carl ,van ,vechten ,,mr4 ,,george ,,jean ,,nathan ,,presents ,by ,george ,jean ,nathan ,,others3 ,,an ,,anthology ,,of ,,the ,,new ,,verse ,edited by ,alfred ,kreymborg #aiag ,issue ,,transcriber',s ,,notes #a4 ,passages in italics are surrounded by underscores4 #b4 ,the words amoeba1 mythopoeic and prosopopoeia use oe ligature in the original text4 #c4 ,the following misprints have been corrected3 blackslides corrected to backslides 7page #dj7 annhilated corrected to annihilated 7page #aai7 #d4 ,other than the corrections listed above1 printer's inconsistencies in spelling1 punctuation1 hyphenation1 and ligature usage have been retained4