"Is old Religion but a spectre now,
Haunting the solitude of darkened minds,
Mocked out of memory by the sceptic day?
Is there no corner safe from peeping Doubt?"
"But, Miss Neville, I must be allowed to say that you do not in the least grasp the vastness of this wonderful law of 'Natural Selection,' of the 'Survival of the Fittest,' which is omnipotent in its influence."
"Ah, but my reverence for Civilization cries out against your savage enactments! Look at the bulwarks of defence which Asylums and Hospitals lift against the operation of your merciless decree. The maimed, the feeble, the demented, become the wards of religion and charity; the Unfittest of humanity are carefully preserved, and the race is retarded it its development. Civilized legislation and philanthropy are directly opposed to your 'Survival of the Fittest;' and since I am not a tattooed princess of the South Pacific, allowed to regale myself with croquettes of human brains, or a ragoût of baby's ears and hands, well flavoured with wine and lemon, I accepted civilization. I believe China is the best place for the successful testing of your theory, for there the unfittest have for centuries been destroyed; yet I have not heard that the superior, the 'Coming Race,' has appeared among the tea farms."
Elevating his voice, the small gentleman appealed to his host.
"I thought Mr. Palma too zealous a disciple of Modern Science to permit Miss Neville to indulge such flagrant heresies. She has absolutely denied that the mental development of a horse, or a dog, or ape is strictly analogous to that of man——"
"Quote me correctly, I pray you, Doctor; to that of women, if you please," interrupted Olga.
"She believes that it is not a difference of degree (which we know to be the case), but of kind; not comparative, but structural—you understand. How can you tolerate such schism in your household? Moreover, she scouts the great Spencerian organon."
"Olga is too astute not to discover the discrepancy between the theory of Scientists and the usages of civilized society, whose sanitary provisions thwart and neutralize your law in its operations upon the human race. 'Those whom it saves from dying prematurely, it preserves to propagate dismal and imperfect lives. In our complicated modern communities, a race is being run between moral and mental enlightenment, and the deterioration of the physical and moral constitution through the defeasance of the law of Natural Selection.'"
Lifting her champagne glass, Olga sipped the amber bubbles from its brim, and slightly bent her head in acknowledgment.
"Thanks. I disclaim any doubt of the accuracy of his pedigree from the monad, through the ape, up to the present erudite philosopher; but I humbly crave permission to assert a far different lineage for myself. Pray, Doctor, train your battery now upon Mr. Palma, and since he assails you with Greg, minus quotation marks, require him to avow his real sentiments concerning that sentence in 'De Profundis': 'That purely political conception of religion which regards the Ten Commandments as a sort of 'cheap defence' of property and life, God Almighty as an ubiquitous and unpaid Policeman, and Hell as a self-supporting jail, a penal settlement at the Antipodes!'"