On "upstairs gods"

From "South Wind":

You seem to have a quarrel with Moses and his command- 
ments, which we are taught to regard as the keystone of 
ethics. I don't want to discuss things. I want to listen 
to the opinions of a man so different from myself as you 
are. It may do me good. And I think I could stand 
almost anything," he added, with a laugh, " in this 
landscape — in this clear pagan light, as you call it." 

" I used to be interested in such things as a boy. I 
suppose all respectable boys are ; and I was respectable 
even at that tender age. Nowadays, though I still pick 
up an Oriental rug now and then, I have no further use 
for Oriental gods." 

" What is your objection to them ? " 

Mr. Keith paused before replying. Then he said : 

" The drawback of Oriental gods is that they have 
been manufactured by the proletariat for the use of the 
aristocracy. They act accordingly ; that is, they distil 
the morality of their creators which I consider a noxious 
emanation. The classic gods were different. They were 
invented by intellectualists who felt themselves capable 
of maintaining a kind of comradeship with their deities. 
Men and gods were practically on a level. They walked 
hand in hand over the earth. These gods belonged to 
what one might call the horizontal or downstairs 
variety." 

" And those others ? " 

" Oh, they are the upstairs or vertical type. They 
live overhead. Why overhead ? Because they have 
been created by the proletariat. The proletariat loves 
to humiliate itself. Therefore they .manufacture a god
who approves of grovelling, a god who can look down 
upon them. They exalt this deity to an infinite degree 
in point of goodness and distance, and in so doing they 
inevitably abase themselves. Now I disapprove of 
grovelling. 7'hat means I disapprove of upstairs 
gods." 

" Upstairs gods " 

" If you walk into my front door as a distinguished 
visitor I am happy to show you the place. You can 
prowl about the garden, poke your nose into the pantry 
and learn, if it amuses you, all about my private life. 
But if you rent a high attic overlooking my premises and 
stare out of your window all day long, watching my 
movements and noting down everything I do, why, 
damn it, I call that vulgar. Staring is bad form. Vertical 
gods are inquisitive. I don't like to be supervised. I 
don't care about this dossier business. My garden is for 
you and me to walk about in, not for outsiders to stare 
into. Which reminds me that you have not been to see 
me lately. You ought to come and look at my cannas ; 
you really ought ! They are in magnificent bloom just 
now. When shall it be ? " 

Mr. Keith seemed to be already tired of the subject. 
In fact he was as near being bored as ever he allowed 
himself to be. But the other refused to let the conversa- 
tion be side-tracked. He wanted to know. 

" Vertical and horizontal gods. . . . Dear me. Sounds 
rather profane." 

" I have not heard that word for quite a long time." 

" You don't feel the need of any kind of superior 
being to control human affairs ? " 

" Not up to the present. I can find no room in my 
Cosmos for a deity, save as a waste product of human 
weakness, an excrement of the imagination. If you 
gave me the sauciest god that ever sat on a cloud or 
breakfasted with the Village Idiot — 'pon my word, I
shouldn't know what to do with him. I don't collect 
bric-a-brac myself, and the British Museum is dreadfully- 
overstocked. Perhaps the Duchess could make some use 
of him, if he specialized in lace vestments and choral 
mass. By the way, I hear that she is going to be admitted 
into the Roman Church next week ; there is to be a 
luncheon after the ceremony. Are you going ? " 

" Vertical and horizontal gods, ... I never heard 
that distinction made before." 

" It is a difference, my dear Heard. Mankind remains 
in direct contact with the downstairs variety. That 
simplifies matters. But the peculiar position of those 
others — perpendicularly overhead at a vast distance — 
necessitates a cumbersome code of verbal signals, un- 
intelligible to common folk, for the expression of mutual 
desires. You cannot have any god of this kind without 
some such cumbersome contrivance to bridge over the 
gulf and make communication possible. It is called 
theology. It complicates life very considerably. Yes," 
he pursued, " the vertical-god system is not only vulgar ; 
it is perplexing and expensive. Think of the wastage, of 
the myriads of people who have been sacrificed because 
they misinterpreted some enigmatical word in the code. 
Why are you intent on these conundrums ? "