“I don’t see how, if they accept Cave.”
“Neither do I, but for the time being that’s our line.”
“Then there’s to be a fight with the churches?”
Paul nodded grimly. “And it’s going to be a honey. People don’t take all the supernatural junk seriously these days but they do go for the social idea of the church, the uplift kind of thing: that’s where we’ll have to meet them, where we’ll have to lick them at their own game.”
I looked at him for one long moment: I had of course anticipated something like this from the moment that Cave had become an organization and not merely one man talking. I had realized that expansion was inevitable: the rule of life is more life and of organization more organization, increased dominion. Yet I had not suspected Paul of having grasped this so clearly, using it so promptly to his, to our advantage. The thought that not only was he cleverer than I had suspected but that he might, indeed, despite his unfortunate approach, be even cleverer than myself, disagreeably occurred to me. I had until then regarded myself as the unique intellectual of the Cavites, the one sane man among maniacs and opportunists: it seemed now that there were two of us with open eyes and, of the two, he alone possessed ambition and energy, qualities neither of which I possessed to any useful degree.
“You mean this to be a religion, Paul?”
He smiled, “Maybe, yes ... something on that order perhaps. Something workable, though, for now: I’ve thought about what you said the other night.”
“Does Cave want this?”
Paul shrugged. “Who can tell. I should think so but this is not really a problem for him to decide. He has happened. Now we respond. Stokharin feels that a practical faith, a belief in ways of behavior which the best modern analysts are agreed on as being closest to ideal, might perform absolute miracles. No more guilt-feeling about sex if Cave were to teach that all is proper when it does no harm to others ... and the desire to do harm to others might even be partly removed if there were no false mysteries, no terrible warnings in childhood and so on. Just in that one area of behavior we could work wonders! Of course there would still be problems but the main ones could be solved if people take to Cave and to us. Cavesword is already known and it’s a revelation to millions ... we know that. Now they are looking to him for guidance in other fields. They know about death at last. Now we must tell them about living and we are lucky to have available so much first-rate scientific research in the human psyche. I suspect we can even strike on an ideal behavior pattern by which people can measure themselves.”
“And to which they will be made to conform?” Direction was becoming clear already.