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* Does it really seem to Mr. Wells an arid and damnable "atheism" that finds in the very mystery of existence a subject of contemplation so inexhaustibly marvellous as to give life the fascination of a detective story? When Mr. Wells tells us that "the first purpose of God is the attainment of clear knowledge, of knowledge as a means to more knowledge, and of knowledge as a means to power," he states what is, to many of us, the first and last article of religion--only that we prefer to steer clear of hocus-pocus and substitute "Man" for "God." If we are almost, or even quite, reconciled to the cruelties and humiliations of life by the thought of its visual glories, its intellectual triumphs, and the mysteries with which it is surrounded, is that frame of mind wholly unworthy to be called religious? If it is, I, for one, shall not complain; for religion, like God, is a word that has been-- Defamed by every charlatan And soil'd with all ignoble use. But it will be difficult to persuade me of the loftier spirituality, or even the more abiding solace, involved in ecstatic devotion to a figure of speech. There are two elements of consolation in life: the things of which we are sure, and the things of which we are unsure. We are sure that man has somehow been launched upon the most romantic adventure that mind can conceive. He has set forth to conquer and subdue the world, including the stupidities and basenesses of his own nature. At first his progress was incalculably slow; then he came on with a rush in the great sub-tropical river basins; and presently, where the brine of the AEgean got into his blood, he achieved such miracles of thought and art that his subsequent history, for well-nigh two thousand years, bore the appearance of retrogression. I have already asked what the Invisible King was about when he suffered the glory that was Athens to sink in the fog-bank that was Alexandria. At all events, that wonderful false-start came to nothing. Rome succeeded to the world-leadership; and Rome, though energetic and capable, was never brilliant. With her, European free thought, investigation, science flickered out, and Asian religion took its place. Truly the slip-back from antiquity to the dark ages offers a specious argument to the atheists--the true and irredeemable atheists--who deny the reality of progress. Specious, but quite insubstantial; for we can analyze the terrestrial conditions which led to t
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