"No. A skeptic." And he explained the difference.
"How do you know what's good and what's bad?"
"I don't know," he replied. "I only know that some things are comfortable and some aren't. It is uncomfortable to have people think you are a liar, especially so when you happen to be telling the truth. It is uncomfortable to be caught stealing. But I know some thieves who are uncaught and who seem quite comfortable. Above all it's uncomfortable to know you are a failure."
His voice trailed off wearily. It was several minutes before he began again.
"I couldn't tell you what's right and what's wrong—even if I knew. You don't believe in God, why should you believe in me? If you don't believe the Bible you mustn't believe any book. No—that's not what I mean. A lot of the Bible is true. Some of it we don't believe, you and I. So with the other books—part true, part false. Don't trust all of any book or any man."
"How can I know which part to believe?"
"You'd be the wisest man in all the world, my boy, if you knew that," he laughed.
Then after a long silence, he spoke in a cold hard voice.
"Listen to me. I'm not a good man to trust. I'm a failure."
He told me the pitiful story of his life, told it in an even, impersonal tone as though it were the history of someone else. He had studied in Germany, had come back to New York, a brilliant surgeon, the head of a large hospital.