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They would meet in the evening with the various contributions to the subject which they had gathered during the day.  The Urban District Council, said Johnny, wanted to pull down the village street and build an esplanade to attract visitors; all the villagers seemed pleased.  That was Potterism, the welcoming of ugliness and prosperity; the antithesis of the artist’s spirit, which loved beauty for what it was, and did not want to exploit it.

Their landlady, said Juke, on Sunday, had looked coldly on him when he went out with his fishing rod in the morning.  This would not have been Potterism, but merely a respectable bigotry, had the lady had genuine conscientious scruples as to this use of Sunday morning by the clergy, but Juke had ascertained tactfully that she had no conscientious scruples about anything at all.  So it was merely propriety and cant, in brief, Potterism.  Later, he had landed at a village down the coast and been to church.

‘That church,’ he said, ’is the most unpleasant piece of Potterism I have seen for some time.  Perpendicular, but restored fifty years ago, according to the taste of the period.  Vile windows; painted deal pews; incredible braying of bad chants out of tune; a sermon from a pie-faced fellow about going to church.  Why should they go to church?  He didn’t tell them; he just said if they didn’t, some being he called God would be angry with them.  What did he mean by God?  I’m hanged if he’d ever thought it out.  Some being, apparently, like a sublimated Potterite, who rejoices in bad singing, bad art, bad praying, and bad preaching, and sits aloft to deal out rewards to those who practise these and punishments to those who don’t.  The Potter God will save you if you please him; that means he’ll save your body from danger and not let you starve.  Potterism has no notion of a God who doesn’t care a twopenny damn whether you starve or not, but does care whether you’re following the truth as you see it.  In fact, Potterism has no room for Christianity; it prefers the God of the Old Testament.  Of course, with their abominable cheek, the Potterites have taken Christianity and watered it down to suit themselves, till they’ve produced a form of Potterism which they call by its name; but they wouldn’t know the real thing if they saw it....  The Pharisees were Potterites....’

The others listened to Juke on religious Potterism tolerantly.  None of them (with the doubtful exception of Johnny, who had not entirely made up his mind) believed in religion; they were quite prepared to agree that most of its current forms were soaked in Potterism, but they could not be expected to care, as Juke did.

Gideon said he had heard a dreadful band on the beach, and heard a dreadful fellow proclaiming the Precious Blood.  That was Potterism, because it was an appeal to sentiment over the head, or under the head, of reason.  Neither the speaker nor any one else probably had the least idea what he was talking about or what he meant.