Behind The Hieroglyphic Streets There

Losing Faith Is A Complicated Business And Takes Time. There Are No Epiphanies, No "moments Of Truth." It Takes Much Thought And Concentration In The Later Phases, Which Thenselves Come About Through An Accumulation Of Small Accidents: Examples Of General Injustice, Misfortune Falling Upon The Godly, Prayers Of One's Own Unanswered.

In The Eighteenth Century It Was Often Convenient To Regard Man As A Clockwork Automaton. In The Nineteenth Century, With Newtonian Physics Pretty Well Assimilated And A Lot Of Work In Thermodynamics Going On, Man Was Looked On As A Heat Engine, About 40 Per Cent Efficient. Now In The Twentieth Century, With Nuclear And Subatomic Physics A Going Thing, Man Had Become Something Which Absorbs X-rays, Gamma Rays And Neutrons.

Get Too Conceptual, Too Cute And Remote, And Your Characters Die On The Page.

If There Is Something Comforting - Religious, If You Want - About Paranoia, There Is Still Also Anti-paranoia, Where Nothing Is Connected To Anything, A Condition Not Many Of Us Can Bear For Long.

Idle Dreaming Is Often Of The Essence Of What We Do.