the sea. The earth is so very large, and the cosmos is so very small.
The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.

It must be understood that I am not now discussing the relation of
these creeds to truth; but, for the present, solely their relation to
health. Later in the argument I hope to attack the question of objective
verity; here I speak only of a phenomenon of psychology. I do not for
the present attempt to prove to Haeckel that materialism is untrue, any
more than I attempted to prove to the man who thought he was Christ that
he was labouring under an error. I merely remark here on the fact that
both cases have the same kind of completeness and the same kind of
incompleteness. You can explain a man's detention at Hanwell by an
indifferent public by saying that it is the crucifixion of a god of whom
the world is not worthy. The explanation does explain. Similarly you may
explain the order in the universe by saying that all things, even the
souls of men, are leaves inevitably unfolding on an utterly unconscious
tree--the blind destiny of matter. The explanation does explain, though
not, of course, so completely as the madman's. But the point here is
that the normal human mind not only objects to both, but feels to both
the same objection. Its approximate statement is that if the man in
Hanwell is the real God, he is not much of a god. And, similarly, if the
cosmos of the materialist is the real cosmos, it is not much of a
cosmos. The thing has shrunk. The deity is less divine than many men;
and (according to Haeckel) the whole of life is something much more
grey, narrow, and trivial than many separate aspects of it. The parts
seem greater than the whole.

For we must remember that the materialist philosophy (whether true or
not) is certainly much more limiting than any religion. In one sense, of
course, all intelligent ideas are narrow. They cannot be broader than