This latter condition had been the result of allowing
the church to interfere unwarrantedly in what was not its affair.
Religion had calmly usurped this, the most potent of the motives of
humanity; or, rather, it had fastened to it the ludicrous train of
ritual. That laughable idea that God had a separate scrutinizing eye,
like the eye of a parrot, on every human atom!
Lee changed his position, physically and mentally--he was lying in bed
--and regarded religion in itself. It was, in the hunger for a perpetual
identity, almost as strong a force as the other passion. But were they
conspicuously other? They had many resemblances. He didn't, by
religion, refer to Christianity which, he thought, was but a segregated
and weakened form of worship. It was, for example, against the
Christian influence that he was struggling. He meant the sense of
profound mystery, the revolt against utter causelessness, which had
tormented to no clearness so many generations of minds. He accepted the
fact that a formless longing was all that he could ever experience; for
him, uncritically, that seemed enough; he had willingly relinquished
any hope of an eternity like a white frosted cake set with twinkling
candles. But viewed as a tangible force operating here and now,
identical--to return to his main preoccupation--with love, it demanded
some settled intelligence of comprehension.
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