It becomes clear from this passage that the principal cause, in the atheist Lovecraft’s mind, of the Puritans’ ills was their religion. In discussing “The Picture in the House” with Robert E. Howard in 1930, he remarks: “Bunch together a group of people deliberately chosen for strong religious feelings, and you have a practical guarantee of dark morbidities expressed in crime, perversion, and insanity.”[26]
