rk on earth, gave
light, heat, life, growth, fruits. It was quite natural, then, to pay
great honour to the sun; to be grateful to it, to appeal to it for light,
heat, and increase. And therefore the sun became a God, _e.g._ a Deva
(deus), which originally meant nothing more than light. But even then an
old Inca in Peru observed that the sun was not free; could not, therefore,
be a being, to whom man could be grateful, to whom he could pray. It is,
said he, like a beast of burden, which must daily tread its appointed
round. And although the worship of the sun was the religion of his
country, and he himself was worshipped as a child of the sun, he renounced
the ancient faith of his country, and became what is now frequently called
an atheist; that is, he longed after a truer God. What say you to this
Inca? This same thing occurred also in other lands, and instead of
continuing to worship the sun and moon, the dawn, the storm-wind, or the
sky, they worshipped that which must be behind it all, which was called
Heaven-Father, Jupiter, and every conceivable name. These names were no
longer to indicate the visible object, but Him who had thought and created
the object, the thinker and ruler of the world. This is the fundamental
idea from which all religions have arisen: not animism, fetishism,
totemism, or whatever the little tributaries may be called, which have
poured for thousands of years into the main stream. Every people has
produced its own religion, its own language, in the course of thousands of
years; later, religions have been framed for all mankind, and we are still
engaged in that task, even in what you call that clap-trap of Chicago.
Even though we have all been born and educated in some religion, we
nevertheless have the right, even the duty, like the old Inca, to examine
every article of our hereditary religion, to retain it or to cast it
aside, according to our own judgment and conception of the truth. Only the
fundamental principle must remain; there is a thinker and a ruler of the
universe. Of Pontius Pilate and Caiaphas, of Joseph and Mary, of the
resurrection and ascension, let each one believe what he will, but the
highest commandment applies to all, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself.'

"You see, therefore, that I, too, am a God-romancer. And what objection
can you raise against it? You are of opinion that to love God and your
neighbour is equivalent to bei