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Wells, H. G. (Herbert George), 1866-1946

"Secret Places of the Heart"

I--"
"It is a new realization. Always hitherto men have lived by faith--as
children do, as the animals do. At the back of the healthy mind, human
or animal, has been this persuasion: 'This is all right. This will go
on. If I keep the rule, if I do so and so, all will be well. I need not
trouble further; things are cared for.'"
"If we could go on like that!" said Sir Richmond.
"We can't. That faith is dead. The war--and the peace--have killed it."
The doctor's round face became speculative. His resemblance to the full
moon increased. He seemed to gaze at remote things. "It may very well
be that man is no more capable of living out of that atmosphere of
assurance than a tadpole is of living out of water. His mental
existence may be conditional on that. Deprived of it he may become
incapable of sustained social life. He may become frantically
self-seeking--incoherent... a stampede.... Human sanity may--DISPERSE.
"That's our trouble," the doctor completed. "Our fundamental trouble.
All our confidences and our accustomed adaptations are destroyed. We fit
together no longer. We are--loose. We don't know where we are nor what
to do. The psychology of the former time fails to give safe responses,
and the psychology of the New Age has still to develop.


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