Purchaser: What can you teach me?
Pessimist: That Life is not worth Living.
Purchaser: Wonderful! Most edifying! How much for this lot?
Hermes: Two hundred pounds.
Purchaser: I will write you a cheque for the money. Come home, Pessimist, and begin your lessons without more ado.
Hermes: Attention! Here is a magnificent article—the Positive Life, the Scientific Life, the Enthusiastic Life. Who bids for a possible place in the Calendar of the Future?
Purchaser: What does he call himself? he has a very French air.
Hermes: Put your own questions.
Purchaser: What’s your pedigree, my Philosopher, and previous performances?
Positivist: I am by Rousseau out of Catholicism, with a strain of the Evolution blood.