Fortunately for human society nature has not left the operation of the fundamental virtues dependent upon the acceptance of this or that theory of the world. The social and family instincts, which are inseparable from our nature as men and women, and which operate in ways of which we are largely unconscious, are the grounds of all the higher and finer virtues, and while a change in opinion may affect their operation here and there, it can never alter their fundamental character. Conduct, in short, comes from life, it is not the creation of a theory to be dismissed by resolution or refashioned by a vote.
What Atheism would mean in practice would be an enormous concentration of energy upon purely human affairs, and a judgment of conduct in terms of human happiness and prosperity. And that certainly furnishes no cause for alarm. It is, indeed, our greatest need. We need an awakening to the untapped power and possibilities of human nature. If the gods die, man their creator still lives; and the creative energy which once covered the face of nature with innumerable gods, which spent itself in the attempt to win their favour, and which called forth a heaven in the endeavour to redress the wrongs of earth, may, if properly applied, yet cover the earth with homes in which men and women, rendered purer by love and stronger by knowledge, will rise superior to the fabled gods before whom they once bowed in blind adoration.