# The Absolute at Large/Chapter 12

Chapter XII
Doctor Blahous
That youthful savant Doctor Blahous, Ph.D., only fifty-five years of age, and now Lecturer in Comparative Religion at the University of Prague, rubbed his hands as he sat down before his quarto sheets of paper. With a few swift strokes he set down his title—"Religious Phenomena of Recent Times"—and began his article with the words: "The controversy over the definition of the idea of 'religion' has lasted ever since the days of Cicero"; then he gave himself up to his thoughts.
"I'll send this article to the Prague Times," he said to himself, "and just you wait, my revered colleagues, and see what a stir it will make! It's lucky for me that this religious epidemic has broken out just now! It will make it a very topical little article. The papers will say, 'That youthful savant, Dr. Blahous, has just published a penetrating study,' etc. Then I'll be given the Assistant Professorship, and old Regner will burst with fury."
Whereupon the youthful savant rubbed his wrinkled hands until the bones cracked blithely, and again began to write. When towards evening his landlady ​came to inquire what he would like for supper, he was already on the sixtieth page, among the Fathers of the Church. At eleven o'clock (and page 115) he had arrived at his own definition of the idea of religion, which differed from his predecessor's by precisely one word. After this he dealt succinctly with the methods of the exact science of religion (with a few shrewd hits at his opponents), and so brought to an end the brief introduction to his little article.
Shortly after midnight our lecturer wrote the following passage: "It happens that quite recently various phenomena of a religious and occult character have occurred which deserve the attention of the exact science of religion. Although its main purpose is undoubtedly to study the religious customs of nations long since extinct, nevertheless even the living present can afford the modern [Dr. Blahous underlined the word] student numerous data which mutatis mutandis throw a certain light on cults long vanished, which can only be the subject of conjecture."
Then, with the aid of newspaper reports and evidence given verbally, he gave a description of Kuzendism, in which he found traces of fetish-worship and even totemism (the dredge being made a sort of Totem God of Stechovice). In the case of the Binderians, he worked out their relationship to the ​Dancing Dervishes and ancient orgiastic cults. He touched upon the phenomena witnessed at the opening of the Power Station, and deftly showed their connection with the fire-worship of the Parsees. In Machat's religious community he discovered the characteristics of the fakirs and ascetics. He cited various examples of clairvoyance and miraculous healing, which he compared very aptly to the magic practised by the old negro tribes of Central Africa. He went on to deal with mental contagion and mass-suggestion, introducing historical references to the Flagellants, the Crusades, Millenarianism and "running amok" among the Malays. He threw light upon the recent religious movement from two psychological points of view, ascribing it to pathological cases in degenerate hysterical subjects, and to a collective psychical epidemic among the superstitious and mentally inferior masses. In both cases he demonstrated the atavistic occurrence of primitive forms of worship, the tendency to animistic pantheism and shamanism, a religious communism reminiscent of the Anabaptists, and a general surrender of reasoning power in favour of the grossest impulses of superstition, witchcraft, occultism, mysticism, and necromancy.
"It is not for us to decide," Dr. Blahous went on writing, "to what extent this is due to quackery and imposture on the part of individuals bent on ​exploiting human credulity; a scientific inquiry would doubtless show that the alleged 'miracles' of the thaumaturgists of to-day are only old and well-known devices of trickery and suggestion. In this connection we would recommend the new 'religious communities,' sects, and circles now daily springing into existence to the attention of our police authorities and psychoanalysts. The exact science of religion confines itself to establishing the fact that all these religious phenomena are at bottom nothing but examples of barbaric atavism, and a hotch-potch of the most rudimentary forms of worship still subconsciously active in the human imagination. It has only needed a few fanatics, charlatans, and notorious swindlers to revive among the peoples of Europe, under the veneer of civilization, these prehistoric elements of religious belief."
Dr. Blahous got up from his desk. He had just finished the three hundredth and forty-sixth page of his little article, but still he did not feel weary. "I must think out an effective finish," he said to himself; "some reflections on progress and science, on the suspicious benevolence of the Government towards religious heterodoxy, and on the necessity of presenting a fighting front to reaction, and so forth."
The youthful savant, borne on the wings of his enthusiasm, went to the window and leaned out into ​the quiet night. It was half-past four in the morning. Dr. Blahous looked out on the dark street, shivering a little with the cold of the night. Everywhere was the stillness of death, not a glimmer of light showed in any human habitation. The Lecturer raised his eyes to the sky. It was already paling a little, but it still shone in its infinite sublimity, sown with stars. "How long it is since I looked at the sky!" came suddenly into the scholar's mind. "Good heavens, it is more than thirty years!"
And then he felt a delicious coolness about his brow, as though someone had taken his head in cool and spotless hands. "I'm so lonely," the old man sighed, "so terribly lonely all the time! Yes, stroke my hair a little. Alas, it is thirty long years since anyone's hand was laid upon my brow!"
Dr. Blahous stood there in the window, stiff and shaking. "There is something here all about me," he suddenly perceived with a sweet and overwhelming emotion. "Dear God, I am not alone after all! Someone's arm is around me, someone is beside me; oh, if he would only stay!"
If his landlady had entered the room a little later, she would have seen him standing in the window with both arms raised on high, his head flung back, and an expression of the utmost rapture on his face. But then he shuddered, opened his eyes, and as if in a dream went back to his desk.
​"On the other hand, however, it is impossible to doubt," he wrote rapidly, heedless of all that he had already written, "that God cannot now reveal Himself otherwise than in primitive forms of worship. With the decay of faith in modern times our connection with the old religious life has been broken. To bring us back to Him, God must begin again from the beginning and do as He did with the savages in olden times: at first He is an idol, a fetish; the idol of a group, a clan or a tribe; He animates all nature and works through a witch-doctor. This evolution of religion is being repeated before our eyes, beginning with its prehistoric forms and working upwards to the loftier types. It is possible that the present religious wave will divide into several streams, each striving for supremacy to the disadvantage of the others. We must expect an era of religious struggles which will surpass the Crusades in their fury and obstinacy and the last World Wars in their scope. In our godless world the Kingdom of Heaven cannot be established without great sacrifices and confusion of doctrine. Nevertheless I say unto you: Give yourself up with your whole beings to the Absolute; believe in God, in whatsoever form He may declare Himself to you. Behold even now He cometh to set up on our earth, and perchance on other planets of our system also, the everlasting Empire of God, the Czardom of the Absolute. Ere it is too late, I ​say yet again unto you: Humble yourselves before Him!"
This article by Dr. Blahous did actually appear. Not in its entirety, to be sure. The editor published part of his discussion of the new sects and the whole of his conclusion, with a cautious note to the effect that this paper by the youthful savant was certainly characteristic of our times.
Blahous's article did not cause any stir, for it was overshadowed by other events. Only that youthful savant, Dr. Regner, Lecturer in Philosophy, read it with immense interest and afterwards proclaimed in various places: "Blahous is impossible. Utterly impossible. How on earth can a man have the nerve to pose as an expert on religion when he actually believes in God?"