beliefs.’
‘I do not know myself, Sir. I believe not. I believe I have indeed been led by my studies—by my observations—to believe that we are all the products of the inexorable laws of the behaviour of matter, of transformations and developments, and that is all. Whether I
really
believe this in my heart of hearts I do not know. I do not think that such a belief comes naturally to mankind. Indeed, I would agree that the religious sense—in some form or another—is as much part of the history of the development of mankind as the knowledge of cooking food, or the tabu against incest. And in that sense, what my reason leads me to believe is constantly modified by my instincts.’
‘That sense that the idea of the Creator is as natural to man as his instincts will play an important part in what I hope to write. I am in a great puzzle about the relations between instinct and intelligence in all the creatures: does the beaver
design
the dam, does the bee understand—or in any way
think
—the intricate hexagonal geometry of her cells, which always are adapted to their space, however that is formed? It is our own free intelligence, Mr Adamson, that leads us to find it impossible to conceive this infinitely wonderful universe, and our own intelligence within it, lookingbefore and after, reflecting, contriving, contemplating, reasoning—
without
a Divine Intelligence as source of all our lesser ones. We
cannot conceive of it
, and there can be only two reasons for this incapacity. One, because
it is so
, the Divine First Cause is intelligent, and IS. Two, the opposite, which has been better and better argued of late—that we are limited beings, like any arthropod or stomach-cyst. We make God in our image, because we cannot do otherwise. I cannot believe that, Mr Adamson. I cannot. It opens the path to a dark pit of horrors.’
‘My own lack of faith’, said William hesitantly, ‘comes partly from the fact that I grew up amongst a very different sort of Christian from yourself. I remember one particular sermon, on the subject of eternal punishment, in which the preacher bade us imagine that the whole earth was merely a mass of fine sand, and that at the end of a thousand years, a grain of this sand flew away into space. Then we were told to imagine the slow advance of ages—grain by grain—and the
huge
time before the earth would even appear to be a little diminished, and then thousands of millions of millions of aeons—until the globe was smaller—and so on and on until at last the final grain floated away, and then we were told that all this unimaginable time was itself only
one grain
in the endless time of infinite punishment—and so on. And we were given a horribly lively, exceedingly imaginative picture of the infinite torment: the hissing of burning flesh, the tearing of nerves, the piercing of eyeballs, the desolation of the spirit, the unceasing liveliness of the response of body and soul to pure pain, which never dulled nor failed through all those millennia of ingenious cruelty—
‘Now
that
I think is a God made in the image of the worst of men, whose excesses we all tremble at, yet,’ in a lower voice, ‘I think I have perceived from time to time that cruelty too is instinctive in some of our species at least. I have seen slavery in action, Sir Harald, I have seen a little of what ordinary men may do to men when it is permitted by custom—
‘I felt cleansed when I rejected that God, Sir, I felt free, and in the clear light, as another man might feel upon suffering a blinding conversion. I know a lady who was driven to suicide by such fears. I should add that my father has completely cut me off and rejected me, in consequence. That is a further reason for my present poverty.’
‘I hope you are happy here.’
‘Indeed I am. You have been most kind.’
‘I should like to propose that you assist me also with the book. No, no—do not mistake me—not with the writing. But with debate from
‘I do not know myself, Sir. I believe not. I believe I have indeed been led by my studies—by my observations—to believe that we are all the products of the inexorable laws of the behaviour of matter, of transformations and developments, and that is all. Whether I
really
believe this in my heart of hearts I do not know. I do not think that such a belief comes naturally to mankind. Indeed, I would agree that the religious sense—in some form or another—is as much part of the history of the development of mankind as the knowledge of cooking food, or the tabu against incest. And in that sense, what my reason leads me to believe is constantly modified by my instincts.’
‘That sense that the idea of the Creator is as natural to man as his instincts will play an important part in what I hope to write. I am in a great puzzle about the relations between instinct and intelligence in all the creatures: does the beaver
design
the dam, does the bee understand—or in any way
think
—the intricate hexagonal geometry of her cells, which always are adapted to their space, however that is formed? It is our own free intelligence, Mr Adamson, that leads us to find it impossible to conceive this infinitely wonderful universe, and our own intelligence within it, lookingbefore and after, reflecting, contriving, contemplating, reasoning—
without
a Divine Intelligence as source of all our lesser ones. We
cannot conceive of it
, and there can be only two reasons for this incapacity. One, because
it is so
, the Divine First Cause is intelligent, and IS. Two, the opposite, which has been better and better argued of late—that we are limited beings, like any arthropod or stomach-cyst. We make God in our image, because we cannot do otherwise. I cannot believe that, Mr Adamson. I cannot. It opens the path to a dark pit of horrors.’
‘My own lack of faith’, said William hesitantly, ‘comes partly from the fact that I grew up amongst a very different sort of Christian from yourself. I remember one particular sermon, on the subject of eternal punishment, in which the preacher bade us imagine that the whole earth was merely a mass of fine sand, and that at the end of a thousand years, a grain of this sand flew away into space. Then we were told to imagine the slow advance of ages—grain by grain—and the
huge
time before the earth would even appear to be a little diminished, and then thousands of millions of millions of aeons—until the globe was smaller—and so on and on until at last the final grain floated away, and then we were told that all this unimaginable time was itself only
one grain
in the endless time of infinite punishment—and so on. And we were given a horribly lively, exceedingly imaginative picture of the infinite torment: the hissing of burning flesh, the tearing of nerves, the piercing of eyeballs, the desolation of the spirit, the unceasing liveliness of the response of body and soul to pure pain, which never dulled nor failed through all those millennia of ingenious cruelty—
‘Now
that
I think is a God made in the image of the worst of men, whose excesses we all tremble at, yet,’ in a lower voice, ‘I think I have perceived from time to time that cruelty too is instinctive in some of our species at least. I have seen slavery in action, Sir Harald, I have seen a little of what ordinary men may do to men when it is permitted by custom—
‘I felt cleansed when I rejected that God, Sir, I felt free, and in the clear light, as another man might feel upon suffering a blinding conversion. I know a lady who was driven to suicide by such fears. I should add that my father has completely cut me off and rejected me, in consequence. That is a further reason for my present poverty.’
‘I hope you are happy here.’
‘Indeed I am. You have been most kind.’
‘I should like to propose that you assist me also with the book. No, no—do not mistake me—not with the writing. But with debate from
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