We are frequently told (more especially by those whose profession it is to preach belief in a revealed religion), that if man be not endowed with an immortal soul, then the game of life is not worth the candle. Incidentally we are warned that if the bottom were knocked out of that belief, morals would go to pieces and humanity would become reprobate. Now I can imagine a similar sort of claim put forward in other departments of life for other pursuits which seem to their advocate to make life more appetising. I can imagine sportsmen saying that without sport men would cease to be manly, morals and physique would deteriorate and life be no longer worth living. I can imagine the butcher saying that without meat, and the licensed victualler that without beer, men were of all things the most miserable. I have recently seen advertisements which say that only by supporting the cinema (made beautiful by the feet of Charlie Chaplin), can we hope to be victorious in the present war. The assertion that man cannot do without certain things which, as a matter of fact, vast numbers of his fellows are constantly doing without--(and with no very marked set-back as regards health, efficiency, or general morals)--is a questionable way of forcing home conviction that these things or beliefs are indispensable. It is quite possible that beer, meat, the pursuit of game, the personality of Charlie Chaplin, and a belief in immortality are all alike capable of giving stimulus to the human soul (especially to those souls which have come by habit to depend upon them). But it is quite certain that other human souls have found without them sufficient stimulus to make life worth living. And though, against that fact, it may be argued that these unconsciously receive their driving force, their social and ethical standards, from those whose motive power they reject as superfluous, and that we, who do not go to see Charlie Chaplin on the films, are winning this war somewhat circuitously through the powers of those who do--the argument is hardly a convincing one, since it remains for ever in the nature of an unproved hypothesis.