philosophies, some belief that man is
not quite alone in the universe, but is met in his endeavours towards
the good by some external help or sympathy. We find it everywhere in the
unsophisticated man. We find it in the unguarded self-revelations of the
most severe and conscientious Atheists. Now, the Stoics, like many other
schools of thought, drew an argument from this consensus of all mankind.
It was not an absolute proof of the existence of the Gods or Providence,
but it was a strong indication. The existence of a common instinctive
belief in the mind of man gives at least a presumption that there must
be a good cause for that belief.

"This is a reasonable position. There must be some such cause. But it
does not follow that the only valid cause is the truth of the content of
the belief. I cannot help suspecting that this is precisely one of those
points on which Stoicism, in company with almost all philosophy up to
the present time, has gone astray through not sufficiently realising its
dependence on the human mind as a natural biological product. For it is
very important in this matter to realise that the so-called belief is
not really an intellectual judgment so much as a craving of the whole
nature.

"It is only of very late years that psychologists have begun to realise
the enormous dominion of those forces in man of which he is normally
unconscious. We cannot escape as easily as these brave men dreamed from
the grip of the blind powers beneath the threshold. Indeed, as I see
philosophy after philosophy falling into this unproven belief in the
Friend behind phenomena, as I find that I myself cannot, except for a
moment and by an effort, refrain from making the same assumption, it
seems to me that perhaps here too we are under the spell of a very old
ineradicable instinct. We are gregarious animals; our ancestors have
been such for countless ages. We cannot help looking out on the world as
gregarious animals do; we see it in terms of humanity and of fellowship.
Students of animals under domestication have shown us how the habits
of a gregarious creature, taken away from his kind, are shaped in
a thousand details by reference to the lost pack which is no longer
there--the pack which a dog tries to smell his way back to all the time
he is out walking, the pack he calls to for help when danger threatens.
It is a strange and touching thing, this eternal hunger of the
gregarious animal for the herd of friends who ar