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The Dream Chapter the Second - The Beginning of the Dream Parts 3 and 4 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Section three of The Dream, a novel. This is a
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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  Speaker 1: The Dream, a Novel by H. G. Wells. Chapter the
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  Speaker 1: second the Beginning of The Dream, Parts three and four.
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  Speaker 1: Part three. You must not judge the religion of an
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  Speaker 1: age by its temples and churches, said Sarnak. An unhealthy
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  Speaker 1: body may have many things in it that it cannot
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  Speaker 1: clear away, and the weaker it is, the less it
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  Speaker 1: can prevent abnormal and unserviceable growths, which sometimes may be
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  Speaker 1: in themselves quite bright and beautiful growths. But let me
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  Speaker 1: describe to you the religious life of my home and upbringing.
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  Speaker 1: There was a sort of state church in England, but
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  Speaker 1: it had lost most of its official standing in regard
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  Speaker 1: to the community as a whole. It had two buildings
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  Speaker 1: in Cherry Gardens, one an old one dating from the
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  Speaker 1: Hamlet days, with a square tower and rather smallest churches went,
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  Speaker 1: and the other new and spacious with a spire. In addition,
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  Speaker 1: there were the chapels of two other Christian communities, the
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  Speaker 1: Congregationalists and the Primitive Methodists. And also one belonging to
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  Speaker 1: the old Roman Catholic Communion. Each professed to present the
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  Speaker 1: only true form of Christianity, and each maintained a minister,
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  Speaker 1: except the larger Church of England Place, which had two,
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  Speaker 1: the vicar and the curate. You might suppose that, like
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  Speaker 1: the museums of history and the temples of vision we
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  Speaker 1: set before our young people, these places would display, in
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  Speaker 1: the most moving and beautiful forms possible, the history of
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  Speaker 1: our race and the great adventure of life in which
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  Speaker 1: we are all engaged. They would remind us of our
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  Speaker 1: brotherhood and lift us out of selfish thoughts. But let
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  Speaker 1: me tell you how I saw it. I don't remember
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  Speaker 1: my first religious instruction. Very early I must have learnt
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  Speaker 1: to say a rhymed prayer to Gentle Jesus, meek and
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  Speaker 1: mild look on me a little child, and also another
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  Speaker 1: prayer about trespassing, which I thought referred to going into
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  Speaker 1: fields or woods where there was no public footpath, and
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  Speaker 1: which began with the entirely incomprehensible words, our Father, charding, Heaven,
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  Speaker 1: hallowed be thy name. Also one asked for one's daily
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  Speaker 1: bread and that God's kingdom should come. I learned these
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  Speaker 1: two prayers from my mother at an incredibly early age,
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  Speaker 1: and said them every night and sometimes in the morning.
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  Speaker 1: She held these words in far too great reverence to
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  Speaker 1: explain them, and when I wanted to ask for my
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  Speaker 1: daily bread and butter, she scolded me bitterly. I also
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  Speaker 1: wanted to ask what would happen to good Queen Victoria
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  Speaker 1: when God's Kingdom came, But I never mustered courage to
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  Speaker 1: ask my mother that I had a curious idea that
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  Speaker 1: there could be a marriage, but that nobody had thought
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  Speaker 1: of that solution. This must have been very early in
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  Speaker 1: my life, because Victoria the Good died when I was five,
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  Speaker 1: during the course of a long, far away and now
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  Speaker 1: almost forgotten struggle called the Boer War. These infantile perplexities
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  Speaker 1: deepened and then gave way to a kind of self
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  Speaker 1: protective apathy. When I was old enough to go to
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  Speaker 1: church and Sunday school, Sunday morning was by far the
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  Speaker 1: most strenuous part of all the week for my mother.
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  Speaker 1: We had all had a sort of bath overnight in
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  Speaker 1: the underground kitchen, except my father and mother, who I
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  Speaker 1: don't think ever washed all over I don't know for certain,
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  Speaker 1: And on Sunday morning, we rose rather later than usual
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  Speaker 1: and put on our clean things and our best clothes.
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  Speaker 1: Everybody in those days wore a frightful lot of clothes.
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  Speaker 1: You see, they were all so unhealthy they could not
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  Speaker 1: stand the least exposure to wet or cold. Breakfast was
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  Speaker 1: a hurried and undistinguished meal on the way to greater things.
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  Speaker 1: Then we had to sit about, keeping out of harm's way,
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  Speaker 1: avoiding all crumpling or dirt, and pretending to be interested
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  Speaker 1: in one of the ten or twelve books our home
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  Speaker 1: possessed until church time. Mother prepared this Sunday meal, almost
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  Speaker 1: always a joint of meat in a baking dish, which
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  Speaker 1: my elder sister took into the baker's next door, but
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  Speaker 1: one to be cooked while we worshiped. Father rose later
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  Speaker 1: than anyone and appeared strangely transformed in a collar, dicky
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  Speaker 1: and cuffs and a black coat, and his hair smoothed
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  Speaker 1: down and parted. Usually some unforeseen delay rose one of
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  Speaker 1: my sisters had a hole in her s, or my
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  Speaker 1: boots wouldn't button and nobody could find the button hook,
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  Speaker 1: or a prayer book was mislaid. This engendered an atmosphere
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  Speaker 1: of flurry. There were anxious moments when the church bell
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  Speaker 1: ceased to ring and began a monotonous tolling in. Oh,
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  Speaker 1: we shall be late again, said my mother. We shall
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  Speaker 1: be late again. I'll go on with prue. My father
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  Speaker 1: would say, me too, said Fanny. Not till you've found
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  Speaker 1: that button hook, Miss Huzzy, My mother would cry for
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  Speaker 1: will I know you've had it? Fanny would shrug her shoulders.
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  Speaker 1: Why he can't have lace up shoes to his feet
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  Speaker 1: like any other kid, I can't understand, My father would
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  Speaker 1: remark unhelpfully. My mother, ashen white with flurry, would WinCE
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  Speaker 1: and say, lace up shoes at his age, let alone
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  Speaker 1: that he'd break the laces. What's that in the chiff
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  Speaker 1: on ear? Fanny would ask abruptly, Ah, naturally, you know, naturally?
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  Speaker 1: I use my eyes, Teja got your answer ready? Oh,
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  Speaker 1: you wicked girl. Fanny would shrug her shoulders again and
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  Speaker 1: stare out of the window. There was more trouble a
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  Speaker 1: foot than a mislaid button hook between her and my
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  Speaker 1: mother overnight. Miss Huzzy had been abroad long after twilight,
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  Speaker 1: a terrible thing from a mother's point of view. As
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  Speaker 1: I will make plain to you later. My mother breathing hard,
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  Speaker 1: would button my boots in a punitive manner, and then
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  Speaker 1: off we would go, prue hanging on to father ahead,
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  Speaker 1: Fanny a little apart and scornful, and I trying to
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  Speaker 1: wriggle my little white cotton gloved hands out of my
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  Speaker 1: mother's earnest grip. We had what was called a sitting
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  Speaker 1: at church, a long seat with some hassocks and a
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  Speaker 1: kind of little praying ledge at the back of the seat.
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  Speaker 1: In front. We filed into our sitting and knelt and
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  Speaker 1: rose up and were ready for the function known as
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  Speaker 1: morning service, Part four. And this service, again was a
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  Speaker 1: strange thing. We read about these churches and their services
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  Speaker 1: in our histories, and we simplify and idealize the picture.
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  Speaker 1: We take everything in the account, as we used to say,
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  Speaker 1: in that old world, at its face value. We think
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  Speaker 1: that the people understood and believed completely the curious creeds
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  Speaker 1: of those old world religions, that they worshiped with a
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  Speaker 1: simple ardor that they had in their hearts a secret
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  Speaker 1: system of conforts and illusions which some of us even
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  Speaker 1: now try to recover. But life is always more complicated
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  Speaker 1: than any account or representation of it can be. The
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  Speaker 1: human mind in those days was always complicating and overlaying
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  Speaker 1: its ideas forgetting primary insecondary considerations, substituting repetition and habit
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  Speaker 1: for purposive acts, and forgetting and losing its initial intentions.
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  Speaker 1: Life has grown simpler for men as the ages of past,
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  Speaker 1: because it has grown clearer. We were more complicated in
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  Speaker 1: our lives then, because we were more confused. And so
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  Speaker 1: we sat in our pews on Sunday in a state
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  Speaker 1: of conforming and attention, not really thinking out what we
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  Speaker 1: were doing, feeling rather than knowing significances, and with our
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  Speaker 1: thoughts wandering like water from a leaky vessel. We watched
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  Speaker 1: the people about us furtively and minutely, and we were
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  Speaker 1: acutely aware that they watched us. We stood up, we
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  Speaker 1: half knelt, We sat as the ritual of the service
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  Speaker 1: required us to do. I can still recall quite vividly
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  Speaker 1: the long, complex rustle of the congregation as it sat
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  Speaker 1: down or rose up in straggling unison. This morning's service
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  Speaker 1: was a mixture of prayers and recitations by the priests
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  Speaker 1: vicor and curate we call them, and responses by the congregation.
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  Speaker 1: Chance rhymed him the reading of passages from the Hebrew
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  Speaker 1: Christian Bible, and at last a discourse. Except for this discourse,
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  Speaker 1: all the service followed a prescribed course set out in
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  Speaker 1: a prayer book. We hopped from one page of the
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  Speaker 1: prayer book to another, and finding your place was a
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  Speaker 1: terrible mental exercise for a small boy with a sedulous
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  Speaker 1: mother on one side and prue on the other. The
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  Speaker 1: service began lugubriously, and generally it was lugubrious. We were
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  Speaker 1: all miserable sinners. There was no health in us. We
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  Speaker 1: expressed our mild surprise that our deity did not resort
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  Speaker 1: to violent measures against us. There was a long part
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  Speaker 1: called the Litany, in which the priest repeated with considerable gusto,
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  Speaker 1: every possible human misfortune, war, pestilence, famine, and so on,
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  Speaker 1: and the congregation interjected at intervals, good Lord deliver us.
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  Speaker 1: Although you might have thought that these were within the
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  Speaker 1: purview of our international and health and food administrators, rather
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  Speaker 1: than matters for the Supreme Being. Then the officiating priest
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  Speaker 1: went on to a series of prayers for the Queen,
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  Speaker 1: the rulers of the state, heretics, unfortunate people, travelers, and
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  Speaker 1: the harvest, all of which I concluded were being dangerously
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  Speaker 1: neglected by divine providence, and the congregation reinforced the priest's
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  Speaker 1: efforts by salvos of we beseech thee to hear us,
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  Speaker 1: good Lord. The hymns were of very variable quality, but
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  Speaker 1: the greater part were effusive praises of our maker, with
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  Speaker 1: frequent false rhymes and bad quantities. We thanked Heaven for
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  Speaker 1: our blessings, and that without a thought of irony. Yet
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  Speaker 1: you would imagine that a deity of infinite power might
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  Speaker 1: easily have excused our gratitude for the precarious little coal
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  Speaker 1: and green grocery business in cherry gardens, and all my
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  Speaker 1: mother's toil and anxieties, and my father's worries. The general
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  Speaker 1: effect of this service, beneath its surface adulation of the
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  Speaker 1: worship God, was to blame him thoroughly and completely for
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  Speaker 1: every human misfortune, and to deny the responsibility of mankind
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  Speaker 1: for its current muddle and wretchedness. Throughout the land and
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  Speaker 1: throughout most of the world. Sunday after Sunday, by chant
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  Speaker 1: and him and prayer and gesture, it was being dimmed
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  Speaker 1: into the minds of young people. Whenever for a moment
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  Speaker 1: the service broke through the surface of their protective instinctive
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  Speaker 1: inattention that mankind was worthless and hopeless, the helpless plaything
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  Speaker 1: of a moody, impulsive, vain and irresistible being. This reign
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  Speaker 1: of suggestion came between their minds and the Son of life.
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  Speaker 1: It hid the wonderful from them. It robbed them of
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  Speaker 1: access to the spirit of courage. But so alien was
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  Speaker 1: this doctrine of abasement from the heart of man, that
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  Speaker 1: for the most part the congregations sat or stood or
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  Speaker 1: knelt in rows in its pews, repeating responses and singing mechanically,
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  Speaker 1: with its minds distracted to a thousand distant, more congenial things,
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  Speaker 1: watching the deportment of its neighbors, scheming about business or pleasure,
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  Speaker 1: wandering and reverie. There would come at times into the service,
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  Speaker 1: sometimes but not always, parts of another service, the Communion service.
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  Speaker 1: This was the reduced remainder of that Catholic mass of
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  Speaker 1: which we have all learned in our histories. As you know,
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  Speaker 1: the world of Christianity was still struggling nineteen hundred years
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  Speaker 1: after Christianity had begun to get rid of the obsession
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  Speaker 1: of a mystical blood sacrifice to forget a traditional killing
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  Speaker 1: of a god man that was as old as agriculture
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  Speaker 1: and the first beginnings of human settlement. The English State
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  Speaker 1: Church was so much a thing of compromise and tradition
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  Speaker 1: that in the two churches it had in Cherry Gardens,
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  Speaker 1: the teaching upon this issue was diametrically opposed. One the
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  Speaker 1: new and showy one, Saint Jude's, was devoted to an
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  Speaker 1: exaggeration of the importance of the communion, called it the mass,
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  Speaker 1: called the table on which it was celebrated, the altar,
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  Speaker 1: called the reverend mister Snapes the priest, and generally emphasized
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  Speaker 1: the ancient pagan interpretation, while the other, the little Old
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  Speaker 1: Church of Saint Osith, called its priest a minister, its altar,
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  Speaker 1: the Lord's Table, and the communion the Lord's Supper, denied
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  Speaker 1: all its mystical importance and made it merely a memorial
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  Speaker 1: of the life and death of the Master. These age
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  Speaker 1: long controversies between the immemorial temple worship of our race
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  Speaker 1: and the new life of intellectual and spiritual freedom that
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  Speaker 1: had then been dawning in the world for three or
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  Speaker 1: four centuries, were far above my poor little head. As
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  Speaker 1: I fretted and behaved myself in our sitting. To my
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  Speaker 1: youthful mind, the communion service meant nothing more than a
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: long addition to the normal tediums of worship. In those days,
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  Speaker 1: I had a pathetic belief in the magic of prayer,
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  Speaker 1: and oblivious of the unflattering implications of my request, I
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  Speaker 1: would whisper throughout the opening prayers and recitations of the morning,
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  Speaker 1: Pray God, there won't be a communion service. Pray God,
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  Speaker 1: there won't be a Communion service. Then would come the sermon,
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  Speaker 1: the original composition of the Reverend mister Snapes, and the
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  Speaker 1: only thing in the whole service that was not set
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  Speaker 1: and prescribed, and that had not been repeated a thousand
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  Speaker 1: times before. Mister Snapes was a youngish, Pinkish man with
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  Speaker 1: pinkish golden hair and a clean shaven face. He had small,
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  Speaker 1: chubby features like a cluster of champignons, an expression of
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  Speaker 1: beatific self satisfaction, and a plump voice. He had a
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  Speaker 1: way of throwing back the ample white sleeve of surplus
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  Speaker 1: when he turned the pages of his manuscript, a sort
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  Speaker 1: of upthrow of the posed white hand that aroused in me.
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  Speaker 1: One of the inexplicable detestations of childhood. I used to
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  Speaker 1: hate this gesture, watch for its coming, and squirm when
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  Speaker 1: it came. The sermons were so much above my head
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  Speaker 1: that I cannot now tell what any of them were about.
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  Speaker 1: He would talk of things like the comfort of the
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: blessed Eucharist and the tradition of the fathers of the church.
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  Speaker 1: He would discourse too, of what he called the feasts
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: of the Church, though a collection plate was the nearest
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: approach to feasting. We saw. He made much of Advent
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: and Epiphany and whitsuntide, and he had a common form
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: of transition to modern considerations. And we too, dear brethren,
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  Speaker 1: in these latter days, have our advents in our epiphanies.
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  Speaker 1: Then he would pass to King Edward's proposed visit to Locliff,
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: or to the recent dispute about the Bishop of Natal
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: or the Bishop of Zanzibar. You couldnot imagine how remote
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  Speaker 1: it was from anything of moment in our normal lives.
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  Speaker 1: And then suddenly, when a small boy was losing all
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  Speaker 1: hope of the smooth voice ever ceasing, came a little pause,
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  Speaker 1: and then the blessed words of release, and now to God,
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  Speaker 1: the Father God the Son. It was over. There was
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  Speaker 1: a star throughout the church. We roused ourselves. We stood up,
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  Speaker 1: then we knelt for a brief moment of apparent prayer,
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  Speaker 1: and then we scrabbled for hats, coats and umbrellas, and
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  Speaker 1: sew out into the open air. A great pattering of
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: feet upon the pavement, dispersing this way and that stiff
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  Speaker 1: greetings of acquaintances. Prud to the baker's for the Sunday dinner,
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  Speaker 1: and the rest of us straight home. Usually there were
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  Speaker 1: delightful brown potatoes under the Sunday joint, and perhaps there
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: would be a fruit pie also. But in the spring
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: came rhubarb, which I hated. It was held to be
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: peculiarly good for me, and I was always compelled to
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  Speaker 1: eat exceptionally large helpings of rhubarb tart. In the afternoon,
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  Speaker 1: there was Sunday school or else children's service, and relieved
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  Speaker 1: of the presence of our parents, we three children went
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  Speaker 1: to the schoolhouse or to the church again to receive
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: instruction in the peculiarities of our faith. In the Sunday school,
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  Speaker 1: untrained and unqualified people whom we knew in the weekdays
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: as shop assistants, and an auctioneer's clerk and an old, hairy,
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: deaf gentleman named Spendelo collected us in classes and discoursed
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  Speaker 1: to us on the ambiguous lives and doings of King
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: David of Israel, and of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: the misbehavior of Queen Jezebel and the like topics. And
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: we sang easy hymns in unison. At times our teachers
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: spoke of the Master of mankind, but they spoke without understanding.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: They spoke of him as a sort of trickster who
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: worked miracles and its achieved jail delivery from the tomb,
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  Speaker 1: and so had saved us, in spite of the manifest
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: fact that we were anything but saved. The teaching of
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: the Master was, you know, buried under these tales of
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: resurrection and miracles for two thousand years. He was a
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: light shining in the darkness, and the darkness knew it not,
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: And of the great past of life, of the races
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: of men and their slow growth in knowledge of fears
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: and dark superstitions, and the dawning victories of truth, of
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: the conquest and sublimation of human passions through the ages
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: of the divinity of research and discovery, of the latent
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: splendor of our bodies and senses, and the present dangers
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: and possibilities amidst which the continually more crowded masses of
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: our race were then blundering so tragically, And yet with
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: such bright gleams of hope and promise, we heard no
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: talk at all. We were given no intimation there was
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: so much as a human community with a common soul
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  Speaker 1: and an ultimate common destiny. It would have been scandalous
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: and terrifying to those Sunday school teachers to have heard
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: any such thing spoken about in Sunday school. And mind you,
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: said Sarnak, there was no better preparation for life in
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: all the world then than this sort of thing I
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: was getting. The older Church of Saint Osyth was in
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: the hands of the Reverend Thomas Benderton, who dispersed a
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: dwindling congregation by bellowing sermons full of the threat of hell.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: He had scared my mother to the Church of Saint
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: Jude by his frequent mention of the devil, and the
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: chief topic of his discourse was the sin of idolatry.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: He treated it always with a special reference to the
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: robes adopted by mister Snaps when he celebrated Holy Communion,
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: and to something obscure that he did with small quantities
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: of bread and wine upon his communion table. Of what
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: the Congregationalists and the Primitive Methodists did and taught in
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: their places resort, their chapels and Sunday schools, I do
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: not know very exactly, because my mother would have been
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: filled with a passion of religious terror if ever I
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: had gone near those assemblies. But I know that their
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: procedure was only a plainer version of our church experiences,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: with still less of the mass and still more of
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: the devil. The primitive Methodists, I know, laid their chief
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: stress upon the belief that the greater portion of mankind,
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: when once they had done with the privations and miseries
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: of this life, would be tortured exquisitely forever and ever
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: in hell. I got this very clearly because a Primitive
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: Methodist boy a little older than myself conveyed his anxieties
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: to me one day when we had gone for a
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: walk into Cliffstone. He was a bent sort of boy
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: with a sniff, and he wore a long white woolen comforter.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: There hasn't been such a figure in the world now
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: for hundreds of years. We walked along the promenade that
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: followed the cliff edge, by the bandstand and by the
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: people lounging in deck chairs. There were swarms of people
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: in their queer holiday clothes, and behind rows of the
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: pallid gray houses in which they lodged, and my companion
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: bore his testimony. Mister Molesley. He says that the day
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: of judgment might come any minute, come in fire and glory,
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: before ever we get to the end of these leahs,
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: and all them people be tried just as they are,
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: just as they are. That woman there with the dog,
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: and that fat man asleep in his chair, and the policeman.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: He paused a little astonished at the Hebraic daring of
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: his thoughts. The policeman, he repeated, They'd be weighed and
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: found wanting, and devils would come and torture them, torture
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: that policeman, burn him and cut him about, and everybody, horrible,
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: horrible torture. I had never heard the doctrines of Christianity
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: applied with such particularity. Before I was dismayed, I should die,
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: I said, aid, see you aid, see you and tell
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: the devils, said my little friend E sees the wicked
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: thoughts in us now. But did people really believe such
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: stuff as that? Cried Sunray, as far as they believed anything,
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: said Sarnac. I admit it was frightful, but so it was.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: Do you realize what cramped, distorted minds grew up under
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: such teaching and our undernourished, infected bodies. Few people could
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: have really believed, sir, grotesque fairytale as hell, said Radiant.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: More people believe than you would think, said Sarnac. Few people,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: of course, held it actively for long, or they would
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: have gone mad. But it was in the background of
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: a lot of minds and the others. The effect of
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: this false story about the world upon the majority of
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: minds was a sort of passive rejection. They did not deny,
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: but they refused to incorporate the idea with the rest
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: of their thoughts. A kind of dead place, a scar
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: was made just where there ought to have been a
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: sense of human destiny, a vision of life beyond the
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: immediate individual life. I find it hard to express the
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: state of mind into which one grew. The minds of
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: the young had been outraged by these teachings, they were
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: no longer capable of complete mental growth. A possibility had
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: been destroyed. Perhaps we never did really take into ourselves
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: and believe that grotesque fairy tale, as you call it,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: about Hell, but because of what it had done to
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: our minds, we grew up without a living faith and
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: without a purpose. The nucleus of our religious being was
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: this suppressed fear of hell. Few of us ever had
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: it out fairly into the light of day. It was
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: considered to be bad taste to speak of any such things,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: or indeed of any of the primaries of life. Either
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: by way of belief or denial. You might ellude circuitously
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: or a joke. Most of the raver advances in life
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: were made under a mask of facetiousness. Mentally, that world
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: in the days of Mortimer Smith was a world astray.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: It was astray, like a lost dog, and with no
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: idea of direction. It is true that the men of
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: that time were very like the men of this time
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: in their possibilities, but they were unhealthy in mind as
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: well as body. They were adrift and incoherent, walking as
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: we do in the light, and by comparison, simply and
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: directly their confusion, the tortuous perplexity of their thoughts and conduct,
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: is almost inconceivable to us. There is no sort of
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: mental existence left in our world now to which it
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: can be compared. End of Section three. Read by Marissa
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: D Si Largo, Florida, July twenty second, twenty twenty three.