iness to notice a fellow when he is going to bed. This will bring
indescribable comfort to simian hearts; and a god that neglects this
duty won't last very long, no matter how competent he may be in other
respects.

But one must reciprocate. For the maker of the Cosmos, as they see him,
wants noticing too; he is fond of the deference and attention that
simians pay him, and naturally he will be angry if it is withheld;--or
if he is not, it will be most magnanimous of him. Hence prayers and
hymns. Hence queer vague attempts at communing with this noble kinsman.

To desire communion with gods is a lofty desire, but hard to attain
through an ignobly definite creed. Dealing with the highest, most
wordless states of being, the simians will attempt to conceive them in
material form. They will have beliefs, for example, as to the
furnishings and occupations in heaven. And why? Why, to help men to
have religious conceptions without themselves being seers,--which in
any true sense of "religious" is an impossible plan.

* * * * *

In their efforts to be concrete they will make their creeds amusingly
simian. Consider the simian amorousness of Jupiter, and the brawls on
Olympus. Again, in the old Jewish Bible, what tempts the first pair?
The Tree of Knowledge, of course. It appealed to the curiosity of their
nature, and who could control _that_!

And Satan in the Bible is distinctly a simian's devil. The snake, it is
known, is the animal monkeys most dread. Hence when men give their
devil a definite form they make him a snake. A race of super-chickens
would have pictured their devil a hawk.

_SEVENTEEN_

What are the handicaps this race will have in building religions? The
greatest is this: they have such small psychic powers. The
over-activity of their minds will choke the birth of such powers, or
dull them. The race will be less in touch with Nature, some day, than
its dogs. It will substitute the compass for its once innate sense of
direction. It will lose its gifts of natural intuition, premonition,
and rest, by encouraging its use of the mind to be cheaply incessant.

This lack of psychic power will cheat them of insight and poise; for
minds that are wandering and active, not receptive and still, can
seldom or never be hushed to a warm inner peace.

One service these restless minds however will do: they eventually will
see through the religions they themselves invented.