*

Does it really seem to Mr. 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 story? When Mr. Wells tells us that "the first purpose of
God is the attainment of clear knowledge, of knowledge as a means to
more knowledge, and of knowledge as a means to power," he states what
is, to many of us, the first and last article of religion--only that
we prefer to steer clear of hocus-pocus and substitute "Man" for
"God." If we are almost, or even quite, reconciled to the cruelties
and humiliations of life by the thought of its visual glories, its
intellectual triumphs, and the mysteries with which it is surrounded,
is that frame of mind wholly unworthy to be called religious? If it
is, I, for one, shall not complain; for religion, like God, is a word
that has been--

Defamed by every charlatan
And soil'd with all ignoble use.

But it will be difficult to persuade me of the loftier spirituality,
or even the more abiding solace, involved in ecstatic devotion to a
figure of speech.

There are two elements of consolation in life: the things of which we
are sure, and the things of which we are unsure. We are sure that man
has somehow been launched upon the most romantic adventure that mind
can conceive. He has set forth to conquer and subdue the world,
including the stupidities and basenesses of his own nature. At first
his progress was incalculably slow; then he came on with a rush in the
great sub-tropical river basins; and presently, where the brine of the
AEgean got into his blood, he achieved such miracles of thought and art
that his subsequent history, for well-nigh two thousand years, bore
the appearance of retrogression. 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 Alexandria. At all events, that
wonderful false-start came to nothing. Rome succeeded to the
world-leadership; and Rome, though energetic and capable, was never
brilliant. With her, European free thought, investigation, science
flickered out, and Asian religion took its place. 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
progress. Specious, but quite insubstantial; for we can analyze the
terrestrial conditions which led to t