cieties that compose it. The spiritual
element, the really important part of religion, has no concern with Time
and Space, temporary mundane laws, or conduct. It concerns itself only
with the eternal properties of things. Its business is the contemplation
and worship of the mystery of life, "the mystery we make darker with a
name."

Now, great popular religions, designed as they are for the discipline
and control of the great brute masses of humanity, are almost entirely
occupied with morality, and what passes in them for spirituality is
merely mythology, an element of picturesque supernaturalism calculated
to enforce the morality with the multitude. Christianity is such a
religion. It is mostly a matter of conduct here and now upon the earth.
Its mystic side does not properly belong to it, and is foreign to, not
to speak of its being practically ignored by, the average "Christian."
It is a religion designed to work hand in hand with a given state of
society, making for the preservation of such laws and manners and
customs as are best fitted to make that society a success here and now,
a worldly success in the best sense of the term. Mohammedanism is a
similar religion calculated for the needs of a different society.
Whatever the words or intentions of the founders of such religions,
their kingdoms are essentially of this world. They are not mystic, or
spiritual, or in anyway concerned with infinite and eternal things.
Their business is the moral policing of humanity. Morality, as of course
its name implies, is a mere matter of custom, and therefore varies with
the variations of races and climates. It has nothing to do with
spirituality, and, in fact, the best morals are often the least
spiritual, and _vice versa_. It will be understood then that any force
which is apt to disturb this moral, or more exactly speaking social,
order will meet at once with the opposition of organized "religions" so
called, and the more spiritual it is, the greater will be the
opposition, for it will thus be the more dangerous.

Now one begins to see why Beauty is necessarily the bugbear, more or
less, of all religions, or, as I prefer to regard them, "organized
moralities"; for Beauty is neither moral nor immoral, being as she is a
purely spiritual force, with no relations to man's little schemes of
being good and making money and being knighted and so forth. For those
who have eyes to see, she is the supreme spiritual vision vouchsafed to