Yet in the face of all this splendour the pessimist dares to find flaws:
The mountains praise thee, O Lord!
But what if a mountain said,
"I praise thee;
But put a pine-tree halfway up on the left
It would be much more effective, believe me."
It is time that the religion of prayer gave
place to the religion of praise.
If the mountains must praise God, if the religion of praise expresses the truth of things, how much more does it express the truth of humanity—or rather of men, for he saw humanity not as an abstraction but as the sum of human and intensely individual beings:
Once I found a friend
"Dear me," I said "he was made for me."
But now I find more and more friends
Who seem to have been made for me
And more and yet more made for me,
Is it possible we were all made for each other
all over the world?
And on another page comes perhaps the most significant phrase in the book: "I wonder whether there will ever come a time when I shall be tired of any one person." Hence a fantastic thought of a way of making the discovery of more people to know and to like:
THE HUMAN CIRCULATING LIBRARY NOTES
Get out a gentleman for a fortnight, then change him for a lady, or your ticket. No person to be kept out after a fortnight, except with the payment of a penny a day. Any person morally or physically damaging a man will be held responsible. The library omnibus calls once a week leaving two or three each visit. Man of the season—old standard man.
Or better still:
My great ambition is to give a party at which everybody should meet everybody else and like them very much.