cannot exert power or give direction. Nothing can be responsible for the
world except the world itself. It has created, or is creating, itself
perpetually by its own arbitrary act, by a groundless self-assertion which
may be called (somewhat metaphorically) will, or even original sin: the
original sin of existence, particularity, selfishness, or separation from
God. Existence, being absolutely contingent and ungrounded, is perfectly
free: and if it ties itself up in its own habits or laws, and becomes a
terrible nightmare to itself by its automatic monotony, that still is only
its own work and, figuratively speaking, its own fault. Nothing save its
own arbitrary and needless pressure keeps it going in that round. This
fatality is impressive, and popular religion has symbolised it in the
person of a deity far more often recognised and worshipped than infinite
Being. This popular deity, a symbol for the forces of nature and history,
the patron of human welfare and morality, M. Benda calls the imperial God.

"It is clear that these two Gods ... have nothing to do with one
another. The God whom Marshal de Villars, rising in his stirrups
and pointing his drawn sword heavenwards, thanks on the evening of
Denain, is one God: quite another is the God within whose bosom the
author of the _Imitation_, in a corner of his cell, feels the
nothingness of all human victories."

It follows from this, if we are coherent, that any "return to God" which
ascetic philosophy may bring about cannot be a social reform, a transition
to some better form of natural existence in a promised land, a renovated
earth, or a material or temporal heaven. Nor can the error of creation be
corrected violently by a second arbitrary act, such as suicide, or the
annihilation of the universe by some ultimate general collapse. If such
events happen, they still leave the door open to new creations and fresh
errors. But the marvel is (I will return to this point presently) that the