But with that part of the Palestinian story which is told in the
New Testament I am not directly concerned till the next chapter;
and the matter here is a more general one. The truth is that through
a thousand channels something has returned to the modern mind.
It is not Christianity. On the contrary, it would be truer
to say that it is paganism. In reality it is in a very special
sense paganism; because it is polytheism. The word will startle
many people, but not the people who know the modern world best.
When I told a distinguished psychologist at Oxford that I differed
from his view of the universe, he answered, "Why universe?
Why should it not be a multiverse?" The essence of polytheism is
the worship of gods who are not God; that is, who are not necessarily
the author and the authority of all things. Men are feeling more
and more that there are many spiritual forces in the universe,
and the wisest men feel that some are to be trusted more than others.
There will be a tendency, I think, to take a favourite force,
or in other words a familiar spirit. Mr. H. G. Wells, who is,
if anybody is, a genius among moderns and a modern among geniuses,
really did this very thing; he selected a god who was really
more like a daemon.
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