I
saw a huge dragon-like beast begin to crawl slowly down from the
hills and stretch his big claws over the housetops of the city below.
I was not asleep or in a trance, but wide awake, only a little
feverish. With increasing horror I watched this monster stretch his
enormous body, covered with scales, and short hair growing between
the scales, on and on, until he covered the city and gathered its
thousands of houses within his huge paws. His eyes were enormous
and blood-red, his breath hot.
"I moved back, gasping with surprise and horror, to find it was
only a spider crawling down his slender thread on the window close
to my eye. It was a fevered delusion, but it haunted me for days,
and haunts me still.
"I am growing in the conviction that the very foundations of morals
are shifting, and that Religion, Society and Civilisation must
readjust themselves or humanity sink into unspeakable degradation.
"Belief in the old religious authority is gone. Our church is thronged
because of a peculiar personal power with which I am endowed. I
could wield that power without a church, society, creed or Bible.
Esthetic forces now draw people to non-ritualistic churches that
once came for prayer and preaching.
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