s. The necessity of
religious belief as a practical basis of civilization is restated. The
absurdity of all current attempts on the part of clerical apologists to
revindicate it by scientific reason is set forth in detail. The true
vindication is shown to reside in the fact that religious belief works,
and that scientific negation does not work, and that here we have the
practical test by which the validity of the former is to be established,
though the process by which this fact will be apprehended by the modern
world may be slow.

[3] In an early chapter of _The Veil of the Temple_ one of the
characters describes the situation as follows:

"(For a long time after the death of Hegel) these separate living
species seemed radically separated from one another, or connected only
as contrivances of the same deity. Thus the different kinds of life--in
especial the life of man--seemed to stand up alone above the waters of
science, like island peaks above the sea, the objects of a separate
knowledge. But all this while the waters of science were rising slowly
like a flood, and were signalizing their rise by engulfing from time to
time some stake or landmark that a moment before was protruding from
them, or by suddenly pouring over a barrier and submerging some new
area. No doubt even by this process many people were frightened, but
there was no more general panic than there was in the days of Noah. Men
from their superior status watched the tide in security. They ate, they
drank at their old sacramental altars. They were married before them and
given in marriage. But one fine day--as we look back on it now it seems
the work of a moment--something happened which, as I often amused myself
by thinking, would have been for a transhuman spectator the finest stage
effect in the world. The gradual rise of the waters gave place to a
cataclysm. The fountains of the great deep were broken up when Darwin
struck the rock, and an enormous wave washed over the body of man,
covering him up to his chin, leaving only his head visible, while his
limbs jostled below against the carcasses of the drowned animals. His
head, however, was visible still, and in his head was his mind--that
mind antecedent to the universe--that redoubtable, separate
entity--staring out of his eyes over the deluge, like a sailor on a
sinking ship. Then came one crisis more. The waters rose an inch or two
higher, and all at once, like a sponge, the substance of his head