At such times all existence begins to look like an unending nightmare. We see the bright unnumbered throng of stars as so many specks of dust on the dark mantle of old Chaos, most ancient of devils. And even they appear remote and unfriendly. The fixed stars know nothing of us: the old homely constellations have an alien look. In the scarred white face of the moon we can read the destiny of our own beautiful planet, soon to be a cold cinder. Good and evil alike are as nothing in the face of the illimitable darkness that awaits us. Our most heroic endeavour cannot lighten the gloom. The greatest of our prophets and poets cannot break the silence for long; it has swallowed the shouts and songs of countless generations. Man, with all his pleasant green places, is only the tiniest accident, a slight tremor of a wheel, something that the next stroke of the machine will put to rights, obliterating him and all his works. But these shuddering negations, to which we have been led by a few scientific data, do not disturb us long. A few hours’ sleep or a brisk walk destroys the whole mournful fabric, and we step out lively as before. A few misguided men, having much to do with these things, make some sort of a creed of such folly, and angrily deny that man has an immortal soul. In this they are wise according to their lights, for believing themselves to be caged in such a universe their only hope lies in a speedy extinction. The soul has no better place in their dreary cosmos than a skylark would have in a Birmingham factory.