He knocked the ashes off his cigar and continued:
“Seriously, my friend, it is this theological tinkering that has caused most of the trouble in this world. Long ago when the world was young, men wanted to do certain things; so they invented gods and told their people that it was the gods, not themselves, who wanted these things done. Then began the tinkering with what was beyond man’s sphere. Then man began to tinker with elements over which he had no control, with elements which he was never meant to comprehend. He segregated men and women apart, and made the distance between them contrary to natural laws. Instead of allowing Nature to run her beautiful course, he set up laws out of his own little brain. In order to protect himself as a selfish egoist, in order to gain power over his fellow men, in order to be able to own any woman whom he might desire under the guise of divine right, he had the assurance to say that these laws were God-given, and that therefore his wilful possession of a woman was a sacrament! That is what I mean by his tinkering, mental juggling with elemental truths which he did not understand and had no right to touch. It was his conceit. His sophistry for physical perversion. Do you know what ‘God-given’ means? I don’t. And I have been trying to find out for twenty years. And woman, like the silly she has always been, said it was grand, and acquiesced; while all other animals have, without man’s arrogance, remained true to their elemental nature, and so are spared our trials and shortcomings. I am right, I am right, I know I am right! That is why civilization is a failure, caused by man’s tinkering with the fundamental, basic operations of the ordinary course of the perpetuation of the species.”
When the strange professor finished speaking, I confess that I was at a loss for words, and asked:
“Do you really believe that civilization is a failure?”
“My dear sir, look about you. Side by side with material progress, with perfected inventions and conquest of disease, how much have our morals improved? How much have our vanities diminished? Do men and women grow more and more faithful to that sacrament? Do our cities grow more and more pure, and free from the taint of perversion? With our much-vaunted inheritance of art and culture, what has become of the freedom of the will, which was said to be the supreme good in that inheritance?”
“Well,” I said, “you are not saying anything new; we all know that! What are you going to do about it? You Ibsens are wonderful diagnosticians, but what we want is a cure!”
“That is only a quibble, if indeed it is not nonsense,” answered the strange professor, “for then you admit that we have not freedom of the will, that there is no such thing; well, my friend, I heartily agree with you. It is not a question of free will with us, it is a question of strength of will and weakness of will, which is purely a matter of fate.”
“Surely you are not a fatalist!” I exclaimed.
“Yes, sir, every inch a fatalist. You doubt my faith in my convictions, I see? Would you like me to prove them to you by supernatural means?”