THEOPHOBIA: ITS NEMESIS 47 



blank negation ; to-day it tends, as we shall see, 

 to be spiritualism ; to-morrow it might be 

 earnest faith : let us hope so. And as to Cal- 

 vinism, all this was post hoc of course ; propter hoc 

 also as I think. 



What followed ? That is what we now have 

 to consider. The first thing which happened 

 was the very natural discovery that science cannot 

 explain everything ; has in fact a strictly limited 

 range of country to deal with. This discovery 

 began to sap the foundations of materialism. 

 Then there came the further discovery that all 

 was not well, as so many supposed that it would 

 be, under a scheme of life divorced from all con- 

 nection with religion. Mr. Lucas, who has given 

 the world many pleasant books, none of them 

 with any obvious bias in favour of religion, in 

 Over Bemertons (one of the most pleasant) makes 

 one of his characters, Mr. Dabney, deplore the 

 loss of the seriousness of the Victorian era : " We 

 believe only in pleasure and success ; our one 

 ideal is getting wealth." Parenthetically, is not 

 that just what might be expected ? If there is 

 really nothing but this world, what better can 

 we seek than as much pleasure as we can get out 

 of it ? Over Bemertons was first published in 

 1908, and the remedy which Mr. Dabney then 

 suggested, with a really curious prophetical 

 insight, has just been vigorously applied. That 

 remedy was " War, nothing more or less. A 

 bloody war not a punitive expedition or^ a sort 

 of a war ' " (he quoted these words with white fury) 

 " ' that might get us right again.' * At great cost/ 



