"Theory!" repeated the old ghost, "but it isn't theory, I would have you know. It is plain fact--did I not see the whole beginning of this folly with my own eyes, and did I not heft that old carcass of rotten wood with my own hands?" "Perhaps," admitted Gud, "still--" and he peered searchingly through the haze at the world below--"still, I do not see them worshiping idols down there now? The only idols I can see are in the museums along with the stuffed mermaids and two-headed serpents." "Of course," replied the old ghost, "they have long since grown too sophisticated to worship material idols of wood and stone, but they have idols just the same, which they call 'gods not made with hands'." Gud felt a little uncomfortable at this remark, but before he could think of anything to say the ghost of the first woman of that land which lay below them, continued. "I will tell you how that came about, too, for I was hovering near at the time. There was a lazy philosopher. He had no idol except a worm-eaten old wooden one which some one had given him, and which he kept in a hovel. One day the shanty caught fire from a defective flue and his idol was burned and there was no insurance. The philosopher was too lazy to make another and too poor to buy one, for the idol makers by that time were charging high prices. So the lazy fool sat out on a stump and dreamed how to get another idol without working to pay for it. "His thoughts, as I read them at that time, ran something like this: 'An idol is a material creature of wood or stone or metal, which is used by the worshiper as a material nucleus to concentrate the attention and stimulate the imagination. The imagination constructs an immaterial being or god to dwell within the material idol. As this imagined god is the creature that answers supplications and heaps curses on one's enemies, therefore the benefits to the worshiper must come from the use of his own imagination. Now it would be more difficult to imagine a god without having the idol to start from, hence if one could achieve it he would use his imagination more and thereby get a better god.' "So the philosopher set his imagination to work and imagined himself a god without going to the expense of buying an idol. He was so well pleased with his wholly imagined god that he went out and proclaimed to others, and soon he had a host of lazy chaps who agreed to pay him for the privilege of worshiping his imagined god and thus saving the cost of idols. "The scheme was so lucrative that other philosophers set up other psychic idols, and that is what they have down there now. If you doubt me, look over there in the left corner of the nearer hemisphere and you can see the smoke of a war. Those people are fighting, trying to make each other accept their particular psychic idols."