"To thee as our Father we bow,
Forbidden thy Father to see,
Who is older and greater than thou, as thou
Art greater and older than we."
The sun, at any rate, is not a figure of speech, and is a symbol which runs no risk of being mistaken for a portrait. If Mr. Wells would be content with some such "bright sciential idolatry," I would willingly declare myself a co-idolater. But alas! he is the hierophant of the Invisible King, and prayer to that impotent potentate is to me a moral impossibility. I would rather face damnation, especially in the mild form threatened by Mr. Wells, which consists (pp. 148-149) in not knowing that you are damned.
And if Mr. Wells maintains that in the worship of the non-moral Veiled Being there is no practical, pragmatic comfort, I reply that I am not so sure of that. When all is said and done, is there not more hope, more solace, in an enigma than in a façon de parler? I should be quite willing to accept the test of the reeling aeroplane. The aviator can say to his soul: "Here am I, one of the most amazing births of time, the culmination of an endless series of miracles. Perhaps I am on the verge of extinction—if so, what does it all matter? But perhaps, on the contrary, I am about to plunge into some new adventure, as marvellous as this. More marvellous it cannot be, but it may perhaps be more agreeable. At all events, there is something fascinating in this leap in the dark. Good bye, my soul! Good-bye, my memory!
'If we should meet again, why, we shall smile;
If not, why then this parting was well made.'"
I cannot but think that there is as much religion and as much solace in such a shaking-off of "the bur o' the world" as in the thought that the last new patent God is going to die with you, and that you, unconsciously and indistinguishably merged in him, are going to live for ever.
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Edited by Alfred Kreymborg
1917 Issue