Even
though we have inscribed the whole pantheon with His name, the other
gods have been in it.
XII
I have said that our whole collective life is based on the principle of
one God for the soul and another for the body; and so it is. In what we
call our temporal life God gets only a formal recognition, while Mammon
is the referee. Beyond the controlling power of money we have no vision,
and we see no laws. The sphere of material productivity being one in
which, according to our foregone conclusion, God does not operate, we
have to make the controlling power of money our only practical standard.
It has its laws--chiefly the laws of supply and demand--within whose
working we human beings are caught like flies in spider-webs. Though we
struggle, and know we are struggling, we take it for granted that there
is nothing to do but struggle, and struggle vainly. We take it for
granted that we are born into a vast industrial spider-web, whence there
is no possibility of getting out, and in which we can only churn our
spirits rebelliously. In proportion as God is a God of love, Mammon is a
god of torture; but such is our supineness of spiritual energy that we
go on serving Mammon.
XIII
But I am writing only for the individual. I am trying to suggest to him
that however much his race, his nation, his society, may serve Mammon,
he is free to renounce the idol and escape the idol's laws.
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