48 THEOPHOBIA AND NEMESIS 



I said. ' A surgical operation,' he replied, c if 

 the only means of saving life, cannot be called 

 expensive.' ' 



Finally the discovery was made that mankind 

 will not for long be content to do altogether with- 

 out religion ; a need for something more than 

 bread alone being ingrained in his nature. Thus 

 even the professedly materialistic societies try to 

 afford something in the way of religious exercises. 

 I have recently seen a notice of one of the so-called 

 Ethical Societies in which the members (at their 

 meetings, I take it) are "requested to silently 

 meditate for five minutes on the good life." l It 

 would seem to be quite as beneficial and more 

 practical to meditate on split infinitives. A 

 substitute for religion has to be found ; what is it 

 to be ? In the years before the war Mr. Masefield 

 published a very interesting book called Multitude 

 and Solitude, which narrates the trials and troubles 

 of two young Englishmen who make a perilous 

 journey to Africa in search of the secret of the 

 sleeping-sickness. In all their trials they never 

 seem to have thought of prayer, in which it may 

 be assumed they did not believe, but when they 

 returned to England it occurred to one of them 

 that there was something wanting in their life, 

 and he propounded to his friend the view that " the 

 world is just coming to see that science is not a 

 substitute for religion," which is one of the things 

 urged in this paper. He then proceeded to the 



1 Dr. Johnson once remarked that " to find a substitution 

 for violated morality was the leading feature in all perversions 

 of religion." 



