EDGAR FAWCETT--a great poet, a metaphysician and logician--has been for
years engaged in exploring that strange world wherein are supposed to
be the springs of human action. He has sought for something back of
motives, reasons, fancies, passions, prejudices, and the countless tides
and tendencies that constitute the life of man.
He has found some of the limitations of mind, and knows that beginning
at that luminous centre called consciousness, a few short steps bring
us to the prison wall where vision fails and all light dies. Beyond this
wall the eternal darkness broods. This gloom is "the other world" of the
supernaturalist. With him, real vision begins where the sight fails. He
reverses the order of nature. Facts become illusions, and illusions the
only realities. He believes that the cause of the image, the reality, is
behind the mirror.
A few centuries ago the priests said to their followers: The other world
is above you; it is just beyond where you see. Afterward, the astronomer
with his telescope looked, and asked the priests: Where is the world
of which you speak? And the priests replied: It has receded--it is just
beyond where you see.
As long as there is "a beyond," there is room for the priests' world.
Theology is the geography of this beyond.
Between the Christian and the Agnostic there is the difference of
assertion and question--between "There is a God" and "Is there a
God?" The Agnostic has the arrogance to admit his ignorance, while the
Christian from the depths of humility impudently insists that he knows.
Mr. Fawcett has shown that at the root of religion lies the coiled
serpent of fear, and that ceremony, prayer, and worship are ways and
means to gain the assistance or soften the heart of a supposed deity.
He also shows that as man advances in knowledge he loses confidence in
the watchfulness of Providence and in the efficacy of prayer.