I say of positive evidence there is nothing whatsoever. The whole thing is as much like sober history as “Jack and the Beanstalk.” It is invented from beginning to end.

Mr. Wells is less to blame for this absurdity than if he had made it up himself out of his own head, and I hasten to spare him such ridicule. He did no more than copy it out of other people’s old books. But he cannot be spared the ridicule of having copied it. He had far better for his reputation have left it alone. It looks silly enough to-day, and in a few years’ time it will look far sillier.

But the reader here may say, “It is true that those whom our Author copies had no evidence for the theory that primitive man suffered from base illusions, out of which grew up the illusion of a general God. But neither have we any evidence to show that early man had intuitions of the One God.”

But is that so? Have we, indeed, no evidence leading towards, probably, a true answer?

Now, in the nature of things, evidence of such a sort must be vague in quality and very insufficient in amount. But it is converging evidence, and it is striking.

In the first place, we also are men. We can examine our own minds and find how they work upon the matter. The old-fashioned doctrinaires, the “Natural Selection” men, who are now rapidly becoming museum specimens, may tell us that such an examination is no guide because man is always changing; so what we feel to-day is no guide to what our remote forefathers felt. But they have been proved wrong. Man is a fixed type. We have just as much right to infer Early Man from ourselves as we have to infer the reindeer he hunted from the reindeer of to-day.

It is the neglect of this elementary truth that Man is a fixed type which renders ridiculous all the monstrous recent mythology on man. And, indeed, why is it that they only apply this mythology to man? They infer the habits and reactions of all other existing animals in the remote past from their present habits and reactions. Why is man alone treated as an unique anomaly, perpetually changing not his implements but the very nature of his mind, and changing vastly in a few centuries, while his fellow creatures stand unchanged for countless generations? Because their theories have for object a denial of man’s Divine connection, and these theories break down unless facts are twisted to fit them.

Whether Man became a fixed type by this or by that process may be debated, but that when he had once appeared as true Man he remained a fixed type is certain.

Now when we consult our own Man-mind upon this problem of God and ask ourselves (as we are perfectly capable of doing), “How should I have felt about it had I not the traditions and teaching which I have had?” the answer is not far to seek. We should wonder at the unity and diversity of life of the world around us. We should suppose an origin for such things. Probably we should think of it vaguely, but undoubtedly we should think of it personally. We should conceive governance and a Being behind it all.

Here is another line of approach.