It is the sudden realization of the law of compensation, held possibly to an untenable extreme, that accounts for the recent rapid proselyting of the Christian Science cult. CHAPTER VI RELIGION AND ETHICS Those who have noticed little children playing contentedly in the early evening, when one of their number suggested the change of amusement to the game of bugoo-bear, could not have failed to see the almost immediate alteration in the infantile mind from the most happy placidity to the most tense apprehension. Although the lights still burned at their utmost brilliancy and the game was entered into with perfect good faith by the children, nevertheless it was a matter of but a short while until all were thoroughly scared and expected the bugoo-bear to appear in any dark or shadowed place. This phenomenon has always seemed to be a very close analogy to just what happens with grown persons who are working up a religious fervor. Just as the darker the room is, the more apprehensive the children become, so the deeper the ignorance of natural science is which engulfs the mature human individuals, directly in that proportion will be their capacity for religious fanaticism. The consciousness of man that he is dependent upon some supernatural being, has been and always will be the only basis upon which religious belief can be postulated. If we insert the idea of natural causes in place of the supernatural being in the foregoing sentence, then instead of a religious belief, we have the foundation for a system of ethics.