in these days, deny the supernatural, we are denying it in a way in
which it was never denied before. Our denial is beyond all comparison
more complete. The supernatural, for the ancient world, was like a
perfume scenting life, out of a hundred different vessels, of which only
two or three were visible to the same men or nations. They therefore
might get rid of these, and yet the larger part of the scent would still
remain to them. But for us, it is as though all the perfume had been
collected into a single vessel; and if we get rid of this, we shall get
rid of the scent altogether. Our air will be altogether odourless.

The materialism of Lucretius is a good instance of this. In many ways
his denials bear a strong resemblance to ours. But the resemblance
ceases a little below the surface. He denied the theology of his time as
strongly as our positive thinkers deny the theology of ours. But the
theology he denied was incomplete and puerile. He was not denying any
'All-embracer and All-sustainer,' for he knew of none such. And his
denial of the gods he did deny left him room for the affirmation of
others, whose existence, if considered accurately, was equally
inconsistent with his own scientific premisses. Again, in his denial of
any immortality for man, what he denied is not the future that we are
denying. The only future he knew of was one a belief in which had no
influence on us, except for sadness. It was a protraction only of what
is worst in life; it was in no way a completion of what is best in it.
But with us the case is altogether different. Formerly the supernatural
could not be denied completely, because it was not known completely. Not
to affirm is a very different thing from to deny. And many beliefs which
the positivists of the modern world are denying, the positivists of the
ancient world more or less consciously lived by.

Next, there is this point to remember. Whilst during the Christian