"Peculiarities of your nature--very right; your noble nature, your pure feelings rebel against these moral acquisitions of progress. I begin with your noble nature. If I did not find this good, true self in you, I would waste no more words. But because you are what you are, I must convince you of the error of your views. Schiller, you say, and, with him, the modern spirit, raised the banner of unrestrained enjoyment, and this enjoyment rests on sensual pleasures, does it not?"
"Well--yes."
"I knew and know many who followed this banner--and you also know many. Of those whom I knew professionally, some ended their days in the hospital, of the most loathsome diseases. Some, unsatiated with the whole round of pleasures, drag on a miserable life, dead to all energy, and spiritless. They drank the full cup of pleasure, and with it unspeakable bitterness and disgust. Some ended in ignominy and shame--bankruptcy, despair, suicide. Such are the consequences of this modern dogma of unrestrained enjoyments."
"All these overstepped the proper bounds of pleasure," said Richard.
"The proper bounds? Stop!" cried the doctor, "No leaps, Richard! Think clearly and logically. Christianity also allows enjoyment, but--and here is the point--in certain limits. Your progress, on the contrary, proclaims freedom in moral principles, a disregard of all moral obligations, unrestricted enjoyment--and herein consists the danger and delusion. I ask, Are you in favor of restricted or unrestricted enjoyment?"
Frank hesitated. He felt already the thumbscrew of the irrepressible doctor, and feared the inferences he would draw from his admissions.
"Come!" urged Klingenberg, "decide."
"Sound reason declares for restricted enjoyment," said Frank decidedly.
"Good; there you leave the unlimited sphere which godless progress has given to the thoughts and inclinations of men. You admit the obligation of self-control, and the restraint of the grosser emotions. But let us proceed; you speak of industry. The modern spirit of industry has invoked a demon--or, rather, the demoniac spirit of the times has taken possession of industry. The great capitalists have built thrones on their money-bags and tyrannize over those who have no money. They crush out the work-shop of the industrious and well-to-do tradesman, and compel him to be their slave. Go into the factories of Elfeld, or England; you can there see the slaves of this demon industry--miserable creatures, mentally and morally stunted, socially perishing; not only slaves, but mere wheels of the machines. This is what modern industry has made of those poor wretches, for whom, according to modern enlightenment, there is no higher destiny than to drag through life in slavery, to increase the money-bags of their tyrants. But the capitalists have perfect right, according to modern ideas; they only use the means at their command. The table of the ten commandments has been broken; the yoke of Christianity broken. Man is morally and religiously free; and from this false liberalism the tyranny of plutocracy and the slavery of the poor has been developed. Are you satisfied with the development, and the principles that made it possible?"
"No," said Frank decidedly. "I despise that miserable industrialism that values the product more than the man. My admissions are, however, far from justifying the exaggerated notions of the saints."