thout creeds or beliefs. So they'll get
beliefs first. Ah, poor creatures! The cart before the horse! Ah, the
blasphemy (pitiful!) of their seeking high spiritual temples, with
god-maps or bibles about them, made below in advance! Think of their
entering into the presence of Truth, declaring so loudly and boldly
they know her already, yet far from willing to stand or fall by her
flames--to rise like a phoenix or die as an honorable cinder!--but
creeping in, clad in their queer blindfolded beliefs, designed to
shield them from her stern, bright tests! Think of Truth sadly--or
merrily--eyeing such worms!

_SIXTEEN_

Imagine you are watching the Bandarlog at play in the forest. As you
behold them and comprehend their natures, now hugely brave and
boastful, now full of dread, the most weakly emotional of any
intelligent species, ever trying to attract the notice of some greater
animal, not happy indeed unless noticed,--is it not plain they are
bound to invent things called gods? Don't think for the moment of
whether there are gods or not; think of how sure these beings would be
to invent them. (Not wait to find them.) Having small self-reliance
they can not bear to face life alone. With no self-sufficingness, they
must have the countenance of others. It is these pressing needs that
will hurry the primates to build, out of each shred of truth they can
possibly twist to their purpose, and out of imaginings that will
impress them because they are vast, deity after deity to prop up their
souls.

What a strange company they will be, these gods, in their day, each of
them an old bearded simian up in the sky, who begins by fishing the
universe out of a void, like a conjurer taking a rabbit out of a hat.
(A hat which, if it resembled a void, wasn't there.) And after creating
enormous suns and spheres, and filling the farthest heavens with vaster
stars, one god will turn back and long for the smell of roast flesh,
another will call desert tribes to "holy" wars, and a third will grieve
about divorce or dancing.

All gods that any groups of simians ever conceive of, from the
woodenest little idol in the forest to the mightiest Spirit, no matter
how much they may differ, will have one trait in common: a readiness to
drop any cosmic affair at short notice, focus their minds on the
far-away pellet called Earth, and become immediately wholly concerned,
aye, engrossed, with any individual worshipper's woes or desires,--a
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