He said, "You see! Once abandon the attitude of rigorous scientific analysis, nothing prevents you from sliding right down into the slush of religion. From spirit to the Holy Ghost, the Trinity, the Virgin Birth and so on is a fatally easy descent. And what do you mean by spirit, anyhow? The word should be abolished."

Challenged, I replied uncertainly, "I mean, not God, not a divine personality, but, well, the ideal way of life that the awakened mind cannot but will, when once this ideal has intruded imperiously into consciousness. I mean the way of intelligence and love and creativity, which, when we are fully awake, we feel to be in some sense what we are for." He snorted with indignant triumph, but I continued boldly. "To betray this most lucid intuition is surely to betray something which presents itself to us as sacred. At present we cannot rationalize the experience; but it is far too illuminating and compelling to be denied for the sake of any of our ephemeral theories."

He put down his spoon with emphasis. "Apparently," he said, "you are a confused sort of theist. I prefer the more explicit sort. With them, one knows where one is."

"My point," I said, "is that I know nothing about any kind of Creator or universal personality or God, or about the universe at large, or the status of spirit in the universe. But one thing I do know. What I have called spirit cannot but matter supremely to all conscious beings capable of glimpsing it, wherever in all the wide universe they live. We are animals, yes; but also, in an important sense, we are vessels of the spirit. As for the universe, surely the most appropriate attitude is neither obsequiousness toward a supposed creator nor blind faith that at the heart of it must be love, nor yet the defiant self-pride in humanity, but rather a blend of rapt interest and strict agnosticism. Yet that is not really all. The fully awake human mind must surely feel a kind of dumb piety, an inarticulate worship."

My companion pounced again. He protested, "Piety toward disease germs, worship of blindly destructive natural forces! No! I see no sense in it. Of course, perhaps irrationally, I feel a sort of piety or respect toward the human species, as the most developed thing within our horizon; merely because I have been conditioned by evolutionary forces to respect development. But beyond man, what is there? Just electromagnetic radiation, and the fatal law of entropy. I see nothing admirable in these. Piety toward the universe is just a cock-eyed relic of piety toward its supposed creator; and that, of course, is a relic of the child's respect and fear of the father. No! The adult attitude is to face the universe dispassionately, wary against its brainless power, and quick to snatch advantage from it for one's own and mankind's advancement."

In my turn I protested. "But think! We and the farthest stars are all of the same stuff. If in our tiny bodies it can reach such organization and development, should one not feel a certain awe at the immeasurable potentiality of the cosmos?" He answered, "I, more realistically, regard it merely as a huge field of natural resources awaiting exploitation. Of course, there may be other intelligent species here and there, up and down the galaxies, some perhaps more intelligent than man. But what of it? They are beyond our reach, and I hope we are beyond theirs. If ever we do meet, we shall probably destroy each other. Anyhow, there's our own solar system. Think of the resources awaiting us in the other planets! They will keep us busy for thousands of years, perhaps millions."

Again I protested. "Surely this cult of mere power is trivial. Have Christ and Buddha and the philosophers lived in vain? Can you really have such faith in contemporary scientific ideas? You yourself insist that our science is only provisional and may have to be revolutionised." "Sure!" he answered.