The haughty soul of Mr. Wells may prefer a deity who offers us no tangible bribes--who not only does not work miracles, but will not even utilize to material ends that great system of wireless telegraphy between his mind and ours which he has, by hypothesis, at his disposal. Mine, I confess, is a humbler spirit. I should be perfectly willing to accept even thaumaturgic benefits if only they came in my way; and I cannot regard it as a merit in a God that he should carefully abstain from using even his powers of suggestion to do some practical good in the world, and, incidentally, to demonstrate his own existence. * * * * * It is difficult, in the course of a long discussion, to keep the attention fixed on the precise point at issue. I therefore sum up in a few words the argument of this chapter. In the first place, I have shown that, if words mean anything, Mr. Wells does actually wish us to believe that his God is not a figure of speech, but a person, an individual, as real and independent an entity as the Kaiser or President Wilson. In the second place, I have enquired whether anything he says enables us to conceive _a priori_ the possibility of such an entity disengaging itself from the mind of the race, and have regretfully been led to the conclusion that the genesis of this God remains at least as insoluble a mystery as that of any other God ever placed before a confiding public. Thirdly, I have approached the question _a posteriori_ and enquired whether history or present experience offers any evidence from which we can reasonably infer the existence and activity of such a God--arriving once more at a negative conclusion. With the best will in the world, I can discover nothing in this Invisible King but a sort of new liqueur--or old liqueur with a new label--suited, no doubt, to the constitutions of certain very exceptional people. Mr. Wells avers that he himself finds it supremely grateful and comforting, and further appeals to the testimony of a number of other (unnamed) believers--"English, Americans, Bengalis, Russians, French ... Positivists, Baptists, Sikhs, Mohammedans" (p. 4)--a quaint Pentecostal gathering. It is true, of course, that the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and of the liqueur in the drinking. But some of us are inveterately sceptical of the virtues of alcohol, even in non-intoxicant doses, and are apt to think that the man who discovers a remedy for sea-sickness or a prophylactic against typhoid is a greater benefactor of the race than a God whose special characteristic it is to be not only invisible himself but equally imperceptible in his workings. VI FOR AND AGAINST PERSONIFICATION