ch he kept in a hovel. One day the shanty caught fire from a
defective flue and his idol was burned and there was no insurance. The
philosopher was too lazy to make another and too poor to buy one, for
the idol makers by that time were charging high prices. So the lazy fool
sat out on a stump and dreamed how to get another idol without working
to pay for it.

"His thoughts, as I read them at that time, ran something like this: 'An
idol is a material creature of wood or stone or metal, which is used by
the worshiper as a material nucleus to concentrate the attention and
stimulate the imagination. The imagination constructs an immaterial
being or god to dwell within the material idol. As this imagined god is
the creature that answers supplications and heaps curses on one's
enemies, therefore the benefits to the worshiper must come from the use
of his own imagination. Now it would be more difficult to imagine a god
without having the idol to start from, hence if one could achieve it he
would use his imagination more and thereby get a better god.'

"So the philosopher set his imagination to work and imagined himself a
god without going to the expense of buying an idol. He was so well
pleased with his wholly imagined god that he went out and proclaimed to
others, and soon he had a host of lazy chaps who agreed to pay him for
the privilege of worshiping his imagined god and thus saving the cost of
idols.

"The scheme was so lucrative that other philosophers set up other
psychic idols, and that is what they have down there now. If you doubt
me, look over there in the left corner of the nearer hemisphere and you
can see the smoke of a war. Those people are fighting, trying to make
each other accept their particular psychic idols."

Gud looked and saw the war, that it was great and that there was much
smoke; and even a faint stench was wafted up to him of the flesh of
unbelievers being burned by the faithful.

Gud looked also toward another quarter and saw other smoke. "And what is
that war?" he asked, pointing it out.

"That," replied the old ghost, "is a war between two groups who both
want to worship the same psychic idol, but one group wishes to worship
it in silence and meditation and the other wishes to worship it with
drums and cymbals."

Gud sniffed the ether from that direction and found that it also smelled
of burning flesh. He did not like the odor and he arose as if to go
toward the unhappy world.

"Where a