The point is that while Mr. Wells worships his god (who is not his
creator or even necessarily his overlord) there is nothing to prevent
Mr. William Archer, also emancipated, from adoring another god in
another temple; or Mr. Arnold Bennett, should he similarly liberate
his mind, from bowing down to a third god in a third temple.
My imagination rather fails me, I confess, in evoking the image
and symbolism of Mr. Bennett's or Mr. Archer's idolatries;
and if I had to choose between the three, I should probably be found
as an acolyte in the shrine of Mr. Wells. But, anyhow, the trend
of all this is to polytheism, rather as it existed in the old
civilisation of paganism.
There is the same modern mark in Spiritualism. Spiritualism also
has the trend of polytheism, if it be in a form more akin to
ancestor-worship. But whether it be the invocation of ghosts or of gods,
the mark of it is that it invokes something less than the divine;
nor am I at all quarrelling with it on that account. I am merely
describing the drift of the day; and it seems clear that it is towards
the summoning of spirits to our aid whatever their position in the
unknown world, and without any clear doctrinal plan of that world.
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