As for the babe of love, we’re simply tired of changing its napkins. Put the brat down, and let it learn to run about, and manage its own little breeches.
But it’s nice to think that all the gods are God all the while. And if a god only genuinely feels to you like God, then it is God. But if it doesn’t feel quite, quite altogether like God to you, then wait awhile, and you’ll hear him fizzle.
The novel knows all this, irrevocably. “My dear,” it kindly says, “one God is relative to another god, until he gets into a machine; and then it’s a case for the traffic cop!”
“But what am I to do!” cries the despairing novelist. “From Amon and Ra to Mrs. Eddy, from Ashtaroth and Jupiter to Annie Besant, I don’t know where I am.”
“Oh yes you do, my dear!” replies the novel. “You are where you are, so you needn’t hitch yourself on to the skirts either of Ashtaroth or Eddy. If you meet them, say how-do-you-do! to them quite courteously. But don’t hook on, or I shall turn you down.”
“Refrain from hooking on!” says the novel.
“But be honorable among the host!” he adds.
Honour! Why, the gods are like the rainbow, all colours and shades. Since light itself is invisible, a manifestation has got to be pink or black or blue or white or yellow or vermilion, or “tinted”.
You may be a theosophist, and then you will cry: Avaunt! Thou dark-red aura! Away!!!—Oh come! Thou pale-blue or thou primrose aura, come!
This you may cry if you are a theosophist. And if you put a theosophist in a novel, he or she may cry avaunt! to the heart’s content.