to anything but its own little
party-theory. And behold! poor Lancelot found himself of no party
whatsoever. He was in a minority of one against the whole world, on
all points, right or wrong. He had the unhappiest knack (as all
geniuses have) of seeing connections, humorous or awful, between the
most seemingly antipodal things; of illustrating every subject from
three or four different spheres which it is anathema to mention in
the same page. If he wrote a physical-science article, able editors
asked him what the deuce a scrap of high-churchism did in the middle
of it? If he took the same article to a high-church magazine, the
editor could not commit himself to any theory which made the earth
more than six thousand years old, and was afraid that the public
taste would not approve of the allusions to free-masonry and Soyer's
soup. . . . And worse than that, one and all--Jew, Turk, infidel,
and heretic, as well as the orthodox--joined in pious horror at his
irreverence;--the shocking way he had of jumbling religion and
politics--the human and the divine--the theories of the pulpit with
the facts of the exchange. . . . The very atheists, who laughed at
him for believing in a God, agreed that that, at least, was
inconsistent with the dignity of the God--who did not exist. . . .
It was Syncretism . . . Pantheism. . . .

'Very well, friends,' quoth Lancelot to himself, in bitter rage, one
day, 'if you choose to be without God in the world, and to honour
Him by denying Him . . . do so! You shall have your way; and go to
the place whither it seems leading you just now, at railroad pace.
But I must live. . . . Well, at least, there is some old college
nonsense of mine, written three years ago, when I believed, like
you, that all heaven and earth was put together out of separate
bits, like a child's puzzle, and that each topic ought to have its
private little pigeon-hole all to itself in a man's brain, like
drugs in a chemist's shop. Perhaps it will suit you, friends;
perhaps it will be system-frozen, and narrow, and dogmatic, and
cowardly, and godless enough for you.' . . . So he went forth with
them to market; and behold! they were bought forthwith. There was
verily a demand for such; . . . and in spite of the ten thousand
ink-fountains which were daily pouring out similar Stygian liquors,
the public thirst remained unslaked. 'Well,' thought Lancelot, 'the
negro race is not