n intellect
who will fight till the end on this vital point, whether Easter is to
be congratulated on fitting in with the Spring—or the Spring on
fitting in with Easter.

The only two things that can satisfy the soul are a person and a
story; and even a story must be about a person. There are indeed
very voluptuous appetites and enjoyments in mere abstractions like
mathematics, logic, or chess. But these mere pleasures of the mind
are like mere pleasures of the body. That is, they are mere pleasures,
though they may be gigantic pleasures; they can never by a mere increase
of themselves amount to happiness. A man just about to be hanged may
enjoy his breakfast; especially if it be his favourite breakfast; and
in the same way he may enjoy an argument with the chaplain about heresy,
especially if it is his favourite heresy. But whether he can enjoy
either of them does not depend on either of them; it depends upon his
spiritual attitude towards a subsequent event. And that event is really
interesting to the soul; because it is the end of a story and (as some
hold) the end of a person.

Now it is this simple truth which, like many others, is too simple for
our scientists to see. This is where they go wrong, not only about
true religion, but about false religions too; so that their account of
mythology is more mythical than the myth itself. I do not confine myself
to saying that they are quite incorrect when they state (for instance)
that Christ was a legend of dying and reviving vegetation, like Adonis
or Persephone. I say that even if Adonis was a god of vegetation,
they have got the whole notion of him wrong. Nobody, to begin with, is
sufficiently interested in decaying vegetables, as such, to make any
particular mystery or disguise about them; and certainly not enough to
disguise them under the image of a very handsome young man, which is a
vastly more interesting thing. If Adonis was connected with the fall
of leaves in autumn and the return of flowers in spring, the process of
thought was quite different. It is a process of thought which springs
up spontaneously in all children and young artists; it springs up
spontaneously in all healthy societies. It is very difficult to explain
in a diseased society.

The brain of man is subject to short and strange snatches of sleep. A
cloud seals the city of reason or rests upon the sea of imagination; a
dream that darkens as much, whether it is a nightmare of atheism or a