GUSTAV. Because I pitied you.
ADOLPH. Yes, I am to be pitied! For now I am bankrupt! Finished!—And worst of all: not even she is left to me!
GUSTAV. Well, what could you do with her?
ADOLPH. Oh, she would be to me what God was before I became an atheist: an object that might help me to exercise my sense of veneration.
GUSTAV. Bury your sense of veneration and let something else grow on top of it. A little wholesome scorn, for instance.
ADOLPH. I cannot live without having something to respect—-
GUSTAV. Slave!
ADOLPH.—without a woman to respect and worship!
GUSTAV. Oh, HELL! Then you had better take back your God—if you needs must have something to kow-tow to! You're a fine atheist, with all that superstition about woman still in you! You're a fine free-thinker, who dare not think freely about the dear ladies! Do you know what that incomprehensible, sphinx-like, profound something in your wife really is? It is sheer stupidity!—Look here: she cannot even distinguish between th and t. And that, you know, means there is something wrong with the mechanism. When you look at the case, it looks like a chronometer, but the works inside are those of an ordinary cheap watch.—Nothing but the skirts-that's all! Put trousers on her, give her a pair of moustaches of soot under her nose, then take a good, sober look at her, and listen to her in the same manner: you'll find the instrument has another sound to it. A phonograph, and nothing else—giving you back your own words, or those of other people—and always in diluted form. Have you ever looked at a naked woman—oh yes, yes, of course! A youth with over-developed breasts; an under-developed man; a child that has shot up to full height and then stopped growing in other respects; one who is chronically anaemic: what can you expect of such a creature?
ADOLPH. Supposing all that to be true—how can it be possible that I still think her my equal?