"I am glad," answered the ecclesiastic, "that you have touched the real point. Our Church has commands which are not universally binding, but are only so for him who wishes to be perfect, as, for instance, the law of chastity and of poverty. Only he who wishes to be perfect comes under it."
"I ask," interposed Eric, "is the teaching of revelation, which is amply sufficient for the purely spiritual, sufficient also for the worldly? In the course of the development of humanity do not new social conditions establish themselves in the world, as out of nature new forces, steam, electricity—"
"Man," replied the priest, "is always the same from eternity to eternity, the citizen only changes. But I see now, you are letting yourself be guided into the right path. I do not desire—the rich man himself did not desire it—that the boy shall be perfect, and therefore the command to sell his possessions is not applicable to him. I only say to you, you will not be able to educate this boy unless you give him positive religion. The brute does all he has power to do; with it there is no word 'ought;' but man does not do all that he has power to do. Simply to do that for which one has the strength, or, yet more properly, the inclination, and to do everything purely from inclination, that is not the human; the human begins there where one tramples his inclination under foot, and does what God's law commands. Were every one to act according to his inclination, then should we be sure, at no time, what would become of humanity. The law of God holds it together, and holds it erect. Here is the significance of the law of God, here begins the fall, which the gentlemen of natural science have never got over. The animal has urgent impulses; man can voluntarily awaken impulse, excite it, goad it, multiply it; where is there a limit here, except in God's law? I am not speaking of any Church. You have, so much I know, busied yourself chiefly with history?"
"Not so particularly."
"Well, you know this much: no people, no State, can be free, at least we have no historical instance to the contrary, no people, no State, can be free without a positive Church; there must be something immovably fixed, and at this very day the Americans are free, only because they subject themselves to religion."
"Or, rather, enfranchise it," Eric interposed, without being heard.
The priest continued:—
"I think that you desire to make a free man of this youth. We also love free men, we want free men, but there can be no free men without a positive religion, and, in truth, without one requiring a strict, legal obedience. The highest result of education is equanimity—note it well—equanimity. Can your world-wisdom produce a harmony of all the tendencies and dispositions of the soul, a quietude of the spirit, a state of self-renunciation, because our whole life is one continual act of self-sacrifice? If you can produce the same result as religion, then, justified by the result, you agree with us. For my own part, I doubt whether you can; and we wait for the proof, which you have yet to give, while we have furnished it now for a thousand years, and still daily furnish it."
"Religion," replied Eric, "is a concomitant of civilization; but it is not the whole of civilization, and this is the distinction between us and the ecclesiastics. But we are not to blame for the opposition between science and religion."
"Science," interposed the priest, "has nothing to do with the eternal life. Although one has electric telegraphs and sewing machines, that has no relation to the eternal life. This eternal life is given only by religion, and its essence remains the same, no matter how many thousand, and thousand upon thousand, inventions he may devise in his finite existence."