"Dear me, yes," said the Princess. "He has a most childlike faith. If the priest told him there was an eligible building site in heaven going cheap, he'd buy it at once. Personally I don't believe all those things. They don't seem to me in the least probable."
"What do you believe?" asked Dodo.
"Oh, I've got plenty of beliefs," said the Princess. "I believe it's wiser being good than bad, and fitter being sane than mad. I don't do obviously low things, I am sorry for the poor devils of this world, I'm not mean, I'm not coarse, I don't care about taking an unfair advantage of other people. My taste revolts against immorality; I should as soon think of going about with dirty nails. If I believed what the priests tell me I should be a very good woman, according to their lights. As it is, though my conduct in all matters of right and wrong is identical with what it would be, I'm one of the lost."
"English people are just as irrational in their way," said Dodo, "only they don't do such things in cold blood. They appeal to little morbid emotions, excited by Sunday evening and slow tunes in four sharps. I went to a country church once, on a lovely summer evening, and we all sang, 'Hark, hark, my soul!' at the tops of our voices, and I walked home with my husband, feeling that I'd never do anything naughty any more, and Maud and her husband, and he and I, sang hymns after dinner. It was simply delicious. The world was going to be a different place ever afterwards, and I expected to die in the night. But I didn't, you know, and next morning all the difference was that I'd caught a cold sitting in a hayfield—and that was the end."
"No, it's no use," said the Princess. "But I envy those who have 'the religion,' as they say in our country. It makes things so much easier."
"What I couldn't help wondering," said Dodo, "was whether I should be any better if I had kept up the feeling of that Sunday night. I should have stopped at home singing hymns, I suppose, instead of going out to dinner; but what then? Should I have been less objectionable when things went wrong? Should I have been any kinder to—to anybody? I don't believe it."
"Of course you wouldn't," said the Princess. "You go about it the wrong way. We neither of us can help it, because we're not made like that. It would be as sensible to cultivate eccentricity in order to become a genius. People who have 'the religion' like singing hymns, but they didn't get the religion by singing hymns. They sing hymns because they've got it. What is so absurd is to suppose, as my husband does, that a hundred roubles at stated intervals produces salvation. That's his form of singing hymns, and the priests encourage him. I gave it up long ago. If I thought singing hymns or encouraging priests would do any good, I'd sell my diamonds and buy a harmonium, and give the rest away. But I don't think anything so absurd."
"David was so sensible," said Dodo. "I've got a great affection for David. He told his people to sing praises with understanding. You see you've got to understand it first. I wonder if he would have understood 'Hark, hark, my soul!' I didn't, but it made me feel good inside."
"Somebody said religion was morality touched with emotion," said the Princess. "My husband hasn't got any morality, and his emotions are those excited by killing bears. Yet the priests say he's wonderfully religious."
"There's something wrong somewhere," said Dodo.