“You are a philosopher,” she said. “No. I am a man who is sick of philosophy, at least transcendental philosophy. I want matter under my feet all the time. Philosophers make me giddy, swinging like spiders on threads over abysms of nothing, and weaving words into webs to catch—words which they mistake for thoughts. “I am sick of religious theories, doctrines and dogmas, and gods. I want Truth that a plain man can understand. I never could understand the Christian creed as distinct from the teachings of Christ, and, what is more, I believe no one else can. Mahommedanism revolts me. Buddhism attracts me, yet I feel it to be as unfeeding to the truth-craving part of my nature as a soap-bubble to a starving man. Materialism that denies a god revolts me.” “But you say you are sick of gods.” “Yes, but I am more sick of materialists—all the rest of the religions are pretty much the same; they don’t satisfy me. Nothing has ever satisfied me but the faith I have struck out for myself and the philosophy that a little child can understand.” “And that faith?” [Sidenote: The Essential Goodness of the World] “Is simply in the essential goodness of the world. That is what I have been driving at all the time since we began our conversation.” “But doesn’t Christianity believe in that?” “No; Christianity believes in the essential badness of the world.” “Of course!—I forgot. All men are sinners.” “Yes, that’s it. Christianity believes that the world is bad to the core, and yet it believes that a God Who is all goodness made man right at once and thoroughly bad; left him in this condition for an indefinite time, and then sent His son down to redeem him. “Now, I have a great reverence for other people’s religious beliefs, but I have a greater reverence for honest thought, and I cannot—though I worship Christ—believe that the world followed that line of development.” “You worship Christ, yet you deny him!” “No—I worship Christ because He was entirely lovable. He shines entirely alone in the world of the Western peoples, just as Buddha shines in the world of the Eastern. He was goodness itself made visible and audible. I worship all I can understand of Him. I cannot worship Him as a mystical figure sent suddenly to earth to be put to a cruel death in order that I might be saved, simply because my brain cannot understand that process and proceeding, and I cannot worship what I cannot understand. It is my defect, perhaps, but that defect is shared by numerous people.