"We like to think of religion as something safely specialized, codified, and put away. Then we can learn the rules and kick about a bit. But when some one comes along saying that science is religion, literature is religion, business--they'll come to that presently!--business is religion!... "It spoils the afternoon.... "But that alone does not explain why Hallery, delivering his insistent presidential address, is detestable to his audience--for it is quite clear that he is detestable. I'm certain of it. No, what is the matter there is that the aggression of the universal is pointed and embittered by an all too justifiable suspicion that the individual who maintains it is still more aggressive, has but armed himself with the universal in order to achieve our discomfiture.... It's no good his being modest; that only embitters it. It is no good his making disavowals; that only shows that he is aware of it.... "Of course I invented Hallery only to get this burthen off myself.... "All spiritual truths ought to be conveyed by a voice speaking out of a dark void. As Hardy wants his spirits to speak in the 'Dynasts.' Failing that, why should we not deal with these questions through the anonymity of a gramophone?... "A modern religion founded on a mysterious gramophone which was discovered carefully packed in a box of peculiar construction on a seat upon Primrose Hill.... "How well the great organized religions have understood this! How sound is the effort to meet it by shaving a priest's head or obliging him to grow a beard, putting him into canonicals, drilling him and regimenting him, so as to make him into a mere type.... "If I were to found a religion, I think I should insist upon masked priests...." § 2 This idea that the defensive instinct of the individuality, Jealousy, is constantly at war not only with other individualities but with all the great de-individualizing things, with Faith, with Science, with Truth, with Beauty; that out of its resentments and intricate devices one may draw the explanation of most of the perplexities and humours of the intellectual life, indeed the explanation of most life and of most motives, is the quintessence of Boon. The Mind of the Race toils through this jungle of jealous individuality to emerge. And the individual, knowing that single-handed he hasn't a chance against the immortal, allies himself with this and that, with sham immortalities, and partially effaced and partially confuted general things. And so it sets up its Greatnesses, to save it from greatness, its solemnities to preserve it from the overwhelming gravity of truth. "See," it can say, "I have my gods already, thank you. I do not think we will discuss this matter further." I admit the difficulty of following Boon in this. I admit, too, that I am puzzled about his Mind of the Race. Does he mean by that expression a Great Wisdom and Will that must be, or a Great Wisdom and Will that might be?