ABSTRACT
One sees here the penalty which is attached to all surrogates for religion and philosophy: they rationalize hell away and provide no other mechanism for relieving the individual of his burden of guilt, and by rejecting the conception of a personal immortality they leave men a prey to the crowding fears which account for most ill behaviour. They afford neither the defence offered by a philosophy nor the anaesthetic offered by a superstitious religion. After Many a Summer is the record of another spiritual failure; it is Mr. Huxley's petition in moral bankruptcy, and in presenting it he speaks for all those who are too sophisticated to accept the crudities of the established religions and are at the same time too credulous to accept a sceptical philosophy.
