le the
vast apocalypse of the observatory and the laboratory is proceeding
with unexampled speed, thinking people may prefer to await its
developments, rather than pin their faith to an interim, synthetic
God, whom his own still, small voice must, in moments of candor,
confess to be merely make-believe? Is it the fact that men, or even
women, of our race are, as a rule, absolutely dependent for courage,
energy, self-control and self-devotion, upon some "great brother"
outside themselves, "a strongly-marked personality, loving, inspiring
and lovable," whom they conceive to be always within call? In making
this assumption, is not Mr. Wells ignoring the great mass of paganism
in the world around him--not all of it, or even most of it,
self-conscious and self-confessed, but none the less real on that
account? He makes a curious remark as to the personage whom he calls
"the benevolent atheist," which is, I take it, his nickname for the
man who is not much interested in midway Gods between himself and the
Veiled Being. This hapless fellow-creature, says Mr. Wells, "has not
really given himself or got away from himself. He has no one to whom
he can give himself. _He is still a masterless man_" (p. 83). As Mr.
Wells has evidently read a good deal about Japan, he no doubt takes
this expression from Japanese feudalism, which made a distinct class
of the "ronin" or masterless man, who had, by death or otherwise, lost
his feudal superior. But is it really, to our Western sense, a
misfortune to be a masterless man? Does the healthy human spirit
suffer from having no one to bow down to, no one to relieve it of the
burden of choice, responsibility, self-control? If our feudal
allegiance has terminated through the death of the Gods who asserted a
hereditary claim upon it, must we make haste to build ourselves an
idol, or synthetize a mosaic ikon, to serve as the recipient of our
obeisances, genuflexions, osculations? I cannot believe that this is a
general, and much less a universal, tendency. If any one is irked by
the condition of a "masterless man," the Roman Catholic Church holds
wide its doors for him. It seems very doubtful whether any less
ancient, dogmatic, hieratic, spectacular form of make-believe will
serve his turn.

It has sometimes seemed to me that the one great advantage of Western
Christianity lies in the fact that nobody very seriously believes in
it. "Nobody" is not a mathematically accurate expression, but it is
q