III
Gods
This is the essence of our difference: that we are serious, you are not. The French shading of the word comes nearer my meaning: vous n'êtes pas sérieux. Not as a matter of intent, but as a matter of constitution.
This lack of seriousness, thus uttering itself in your ethics, and governing the character of your relations to each other, must also govern your religion, your symbolized relations with the universe. And I have always felt, in contemplating your religious experiences and declarations, the same alienation from them as from your morality. Your feeling for Godhead partakes of the imaginative and lyrical playfulness which is your essential nature, and whatever may be the formal creed in which your feelings are wrapped their true nature cannot be hidden.
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