The revolt against scientific materialism was made much easier by the disintegration of the mechanical theory itself.  Biology found itself cramped by the categories of inorganic science, and claimed its autonomy.  The result was a fatal breach in the defences of materialism, for biology is being driven to accept final causes, and would be glad to adopt some theory of vitalism, if it could do so without falling back into the old error of a mysterious ‘vital force.’  Biological truth, it is plain, cannot be reduced to the purely quantitative categories of mathematics and physics.  Then psychology aspired to be a philosophy of real existence, and attacked both absolutism and materialism.  The pretensions of psychology rehabilitated subjectivism and founded pragmatism, till reactionary theology took heart of grace and defended crude supernaturalism, with the whole apparatus of sacerdotal magic, as the ‘Gospel for human needs.’  All protection against the grossest superstitions was thus swept away.  With no fixed standard of reference to distinguish fact from fiction, it was possible to argue that ‘whatever suits souls is true.’

In this atmosphere many old habits of thought reasserted themselves.  While we enjoyed peace and prosperity, the credulity of the public found its chief outlet in various systems of faith-healing and in the time-honoured pretensions of priest-craft.  But the devastation which the war has brought into countless loving families has turned the current of superstition strongly towards necromancy.  The ‘will to believe,’ no longer inhibited and suspected as a reason for doubt, has been allowed to create its own logic.  A few highly educated men, who have long been playing with occultism and gratifying their intellectual curiosity by exploring the dark places of perverted mysticism, have been swept off their feet by it, and their authority, as ‘men of science,’ has dispelled the hesitation of many more to accept what they dearly wished to believe.  The longing of the bereaved has created for itself a spurious and dreary satisfaction.

One cause of this strange movement cannot be emphasised too strongly.  It proves that the Christian hope of immortality burns very dimly among us.  Those who study the utterances of our religious guides must admit that it is so.  References to the future life had, before the war, become rare even in the pulpit.  The topic was mainly reserved for letters of condolence, and was then handled gingerly, as if it would not bear much pressure.  Working-class audiences and congregations listened eagerly to the wildest promises of an earthly utopia the day after tomorrow, but cooled down at once when they were reminded that ’if in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.’  Accordingly, the clerical demagogue showed more interest in the unemployed than in the unconverted.  Christianity, which began as a revolutionary idealism, had sunk into heralding materialistic revolution.  Such