,
readily lend themselves to such an interpretation.

So ineffective is the current eschatology, in its bearing on
conduct, that the latent energy of Man's nature--his latent desire to
have a central purpose in life--is compelling him to work out for
himself another and a more mundane conception of salvation, to set
before himself as the end of life the winning of certain temporal
prizes, and to keep this end steadily in view from day to day and
from year to year. Such a conception of salvation has always had a
strong attraction for him, though in his more orthodox days he found
it desirable to subordinate it to, or if possible harmonise it with,
the conception which his religion dictated to him; and of late its
attractiveness has been increased by the fact that he is beginning to
throw his eschatology (even in its present emasculated form) to the
winds.

So far, I have had in my mind those quarters of Western thought in
which the belief in the reality of the soul and the kindred belief
in immortality still survive. But in point of fact both beliefs
are dying before our eyes,--dying as a dumb protest against the
inadequacy of the popular philosophy, against the intrinsic
incredibility of its premises, against its fundamental misconception
of the meaning of life and the nature and conditions of salvation,
above all against the way in which the beliefs themselves have been
persistently misinterpreted and travestied. And where the beliefs are
dying, the latent externalism and materialism of Western thought and
Western life are able to assert themselves without let or hindrance.
"To be saved," as the phrase is now widely understood, means to get
on in life, to succeed in business or in a profession, to make money,
to rise in the social scale (if necessary, on the shoulders of
others), to force one's way to the front (if necessary, by trampling
down others), to be talked about in the daily papers, to make a
"splash" in some circle or coterie,--in these and in other ways to
achieve some measure of what is called "success."

And in proportion as this mundane conception of salvation tends to
establish itself, so does the drift towards social and political
anarchy, which is now beginning to alarm all the lovers of order and
"progress," tend to widen its range and accelerate its movement. For
though the current idea of achieving salvation through "success" is a
comfortable doctrine for the successful few, it is the reverse of