elf disclaims that
dogma. He says: "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" (p. 108). And in another place (p. 15) he suggests that "our
God, the Captain of Mankind," may one day enable us to "pierce the
black wrappings," or, in other words, to get behind the veil. There is
nothing, then, unreasonable or absurd in man's incurable
inquisitiveness as to God, in the non-Wellsian sense of the term. God
simply means the key to the mystery of existence; and though the keys
hitherto offered have all either jammed or turned round and round
without unlocking anything, it does not follow that no real key exists
within the reach of human investigation or speculation. Therefore one
naturally feels a little stirring of hope at the news that a fresh and
keen intellect, untrammelled by the folk-lore theologies of the past,
is applying itself to the problem. It is always possible, however
improbable, that we may be helped a little forwarder on the path
towards realization. One comes back to the before-mentioned analogy of
flying. We had been assured over and over again, on the highest
authority, that it was an idle dream. When we wanted to express the
superlative degree of the impossible, we said "I can no more do it
than I can fly." But the irrepressible spirit of man was not to be
daunted by _a priori_ demonstrations of impossibility. One day there
came the rumour that the thing had been achieved, followed soon by
ocular demonstration; and now we rub shoulders every day with men who
have outsoared the eagle, and--alas!--carried death and destruction
into the hitherto stainless empyrean.

It would seem, then, that there is no reason absolutely to despair of
some advance towards a conception of the nature and reason of the
universe. And it is certain that Mr. Wells's God would stand a better
chance of satisfying the innate needs of the human intelligence if he
had not (apparently) given up as a bad job the attempt to relate
himself to the causal plexus of the All. Is he outside that causal
plexus, self-begotten, self-existent? Then he is the miracle of
miracles, a second mystery superimposed on the first. If, on the other
hand, he falls within the system, he might surely manage to convey to
his disciples some glimmering notion of his place in it. The
birth-stories of Gods are always grotesque and unedifying, but that is
because they belong to fo