He seemed not to hear me; but dropped his face in his hands. When he raised it was clear again. "Now I can make things clearer perhaps," he said. "We had in our minds thirty years ago a strange hodge-podge of old and new ideas. What was called God was still largely patterned after the old tribal deity of the Hebrews. Our ideas of 'Sin' were still mostly of the nature of disobedience--wrong only because we were told not to do it. Sin as a personal offense against Somebody, and Somebody very much offended; that was it. We were beginning to see something of Social values, too, but not clearly. Our progress was in what we called 'The natural sciences'; and we did not think with the part of our minds wherein we stored religion. Yet there was very great activity and progress in religious thought; the whole field was in motion; the new churches widening and growing in every direction; the older ones holding on like grim death, trying not to change, and changing in spite of themselves; and Ethics being taught indeed, but with no satisfying basis. That's the kind of atmosphere you and I grew up in, John. Now here was I, an ill-assorted team of impulses and characteristics, prejudiced against religion, ignorant of real ethics, and generally going to the devil--as we used to call it! You know how far down I went--or something of it." "Don't speak of it, Frank!" I said. "That was long ago; forget it, old man!" But he turned toward me a smile of triumph. "Forget it! I wouldn't forget one step of it if I could! Why, John, it's because of my intimate knowledge of these down-going steps that I can help other people up them!" "You looked decidedly miserable just now, all the same, when you were thinking them over." "Oh, bless you, John, I wasn't thinking of myself at all! I was thinking of the awful state of mind the world was in, and how it suffered! Of all the horror and misery and shame; all that misplaced, unnecessary cruelty we called punishment; the Dark Ages we were still in, in spite of all we had to boast of. However, this new perception came." I interrupted him. "What came? Who came? Did you have a new revelation? Who did it? What do you call it? Nobody seems to be able to give me definite information." He smiled broadly. "You're a beautiful proof of the kind of mental jumble I spoke of. Knowledge of evolution did not come by a revelation, did it? Or did any one man, or two, give it to us? Darwin and Wallace were not the only minds that helped to see and express that great idea; and many more had to spread it. These great truths break into the world-mind through various individuals, and coalesce so that we cannot disconnect them. We have had many writers, preachers, lecturers, who discoursed and explained; this new precept as to the relation between man and God came with such a general sweep that no one even tries to give personal credit for it. These things are not personal--they are world-percepts."