"You looked decidedly miserable just now, all the same, when you were thinking them over."
"Oh, bless you, John, I wasn't thinking of myself at all! I was thinking of the awful state of mind the world was in, and how it suffered! Of all the horror and misery and shame; all that misplaced, unnecessary cruelty we called punishment; the Dark Ages we were still in, in spite of all we had to boast of. However, this new perception came."
I interrupted him.
"What came? Who came? Did you have a new revelation? Who did it? What do you call it? Nobody seems to be able to give me definite information."
He smiled broadly. "You're a beautiful proof of the kind of mental jumble I spoke of. Knowledge of evolution did not come by a revelation, did it? Or did any one man, or two, give it to us? Darwin and Wallace were not the only minds that helped to see and express that great idea; and many more had to spread it. These great truths break into the world-mind through various individuals, and coalesce so that we cannot disconnect them. We have had many writers, preachers, lecturers, who discoursed and explained; this new precept as to the relation between man and God came with such a general sweep that no one even tries to give personal credit for it. These things are not personal—they are world-percepts."
"But every religion has had its Founder, hasn't it?"
"I don't call it a religion, my dear fellow! It's a science, like any other science. Ethics is The Science of Human Relation. It is called Applied Sociology—that's all."
"How does a thing like that touch one, personally?" I asked.
"How does any science touch one personally? One studies a science, one teaches a science, one uses a science. That's the point—the use of it. Our old scheme of religion was a thing to 'believe,' or 'deny'; it was a sort of shibboleth, a test question one had to pass examination in to get good marks! What I'm telling you about is a general recognition of right behavior, and a general grasp of the necessary power."
"You leave out entirely the emotional side of religion."