if
you like to regard God as the sanction and source of morality, or if you
like to call the moral drift in human affairs God, it is possible to
consider this "Sphere of Morality" from His point of view. His "point of
view" is precisely what, in an instructive fable, we may present as the
determining factor in morality. When He walked in the garden or lurked
hardly distinguishable among the sticks and stones of the forest,
morality was just an understanding between a man and his neighbour, a
temporary agreement entered on by any two hunting savages whom He might
happen to espy between the tree-trunks. When He dwelt among the peaks of
Sinai or Olympus, the sphere of morality had extended to the whole tribe
that occupied the subjacent valley. It came to include the nation, all
the subjects of each sovereign state, by the time He had receded to some
heavenly throne above the dark blue sky. And it is to be hoped that He
may yet take a broader view, so that His survey will embrace the whole
of mankind, if only we can banish Him to a remoter altitude in the
frozen depths of space, whence He can contemplate human affairs without
being near enough to interfere.

The moral of this little myth of the Receding God may be that the Sphere
of Morality is extended in inverse proportion to the intensity of
theological interference. Not that theology necessarily or always
deliberately limits the domain of morality: but because the extension of
moral relations and the relegation of anthropomorphic theology are
co-ordinate steps in human advancement.

Sec. 4

The Philosopher looks at Society

The philosopher is apt to explain the growth and interrelation of ideas
by tabulating them in an historical form, which may not be narrowly,
chronologically, or "historically" true. The notion of the Social
Contract may be philosophically true, though we are not to imagine the
citizens of Rousseau's State coming together on a certain day to vote by
show of hands, like the members of the Bognor Urban District Council. So
we may illustrate a theory of moral or social evolution by a sort of
historical pageant, which will not be journalistically exact, but will
give a true picture of an ideal development, every scene of which can be
paralleled by some actually known or inferred form of human life.

Sec. 5

Homo Homini Lupus

Our imagination, working subconsciously on a number of laboriously
accumulated hints, a roomful of chipped or polished