“All spiritual truths ought to be conveyed by a voice speaking out of a dark void. As Hardy wants his spirits to speak in the ‘Dynasts.’ Failing that, why should we not deal with these questions through the anonymity of a gramophone?…
“A modern religion founded on a mysterious gramophone which was discovered carefully packed in a box of peculiar construction on a seat upon Primrose Hill….
“How well the great organized religions have understood this! How sound is the effort to meet it by shaving a priest’s head or obliging him to grow a beard, putting him into canonicals, drilling him and regimenting him, so as to make him into a mere type….
“If I were to found a religion, I think I should insist upon masked priests….”
§ 2
This idea that the defensive instinct of the individuality, Jealousy, is constantly at war not only with other individualities but with all the great de-individualizing things, with Faith, with Science, with Truth, with Beauty; that out of its resentments and intricate devices one may draw the explanation of most of the perplexities and humours of the intellectual life, indeed the explanation of most life and of most motives, is the quintessence of Boon. The Mind of the Race toils through this jungle of jealous individuality to emerge. And the individual, knowing that single-handed he hasn’t a chance against the immortal, allies himself with this and that, with sham immortalities, and partially effaced and partially confuted general things. And so it sets up its Greatnesses, to save it from greatness, its solemnities to preserve it from the overwhelming gravity of truth. “See,” it can say, “I have my gods already, thank you. I do not think we will discuss this matter further.”
I admit the difficulty of following Boon in this. I admit, too, that I am puzzled about his Mind of the Race. Does he mean by that expression a Great Wisdom and Will that must be, or a Great Wisdom and Will that might be?
But here he goes on with the topic of Hallery again.
“I invented Hallery to get rid of myself, but, after all, Hallery is really no more than the shadow of myself, and if I were impersonal and well bred, and if I spoke behind a black screen, it would still be as much my voice as ever. I do not see how it is possible to prevent the impersonal things coming by and through persons; but at any rate we can begin to recognize that the person who brings the message is only in his way like the messenger-boy who brings the telegrams. The writer may have a sensitive mind, the messenger-boy may have nimble heels; that does not make him the creator of the thing that comes. Then I think people will be able to listen to such lectures as this of Hallery’s without remembering all the time that it’s a particular human being with a white face and a lisp…. And perhaps they will be able to respect literature and fine thought for the sake of the general human mind for which they live and for the sake of their own receptiveness….”