When Socrates had finished, a deep silence fell over the Assembly. In the divine face of Zeus there was no movement to be noticed, and not an encouraging word fell from his lips. Suddenly one heard a loud laughter. Everybody turned towards the place where the laughter came from, and felt relieved to see that Diogenes was preparing to address the Assembly. Zeus nodded consent, and the whilom Cynic spake as follows:
"Few things have afforded me greater pleasure than your tale, O Socrates. Verily I believe that your renewed presence among the little ones is much less needed than is mine. I am the only man that could set right the wrenched religious fibres of these mannikins and womenfolk. But for my respect for you and the Assembly, I should have burst into an unseemly laughter while you were talking of their New Religion, which is but a resurrection-pie less the resurrection.
"To talk to them seriously about the incapacity of any physical Science or its methods to cope with the problems of Religion is to waste precious time. Let them have their Evolution, Convolution, or Devolution, by all means. The more they welter in it, the more my pupils on earth have a welcome chance of success. The official clergy think wonders of their cleverness in trying to make Religion into a Centaur, half man, half horse, or half Science and half Belief. While they are at it, my pupils, infinitely cleverer than all the clergy, make glorious headway in all directions.
"Is it not side-splitting to note how these clergymen are unable to see that the more people learn of Science proper; the more they accustom their minds to the dry biscuits of scientific methods; the more they will inwardly long for the drinks of Mysticism?
"The Roman clergy, trained by two thousand years, knows all that but too well.
"Your plain soul, your hard-working, scientifically untutored peasant or small bourgeois is quite satisfied with a little, hearty Belief, and is indifferent to Mysticism and religious Extravagancies. It is your high-strung, modern, scientifically trained mind that impatiently craves more than sober Science can give it.
"Just look at the Europoids in the western continent. In the United States everything is reasoned out, systematised, methodised to a nicety. Their whole life looks like their towns: regular squares; straight streets, named after the consecutive numbers; labelled, docketed, built and shaped according to definite rules. In an American town nothing surprises one, except that the people themselves do not have each his respective number painted on his back.
"As the streets, so are the Constitution, the Schools, the Territory,—everything is ruled like a sheet of music. In the 250,000 schools, in the 500,000 Universities, and the 600,000 libraries, all founded (or confounded?) by a few multis, you hear nothing but Reason, Reason, Reason. You get Reason boiled, roasted, fried or stewed. You get it from injectors, from which it will jet out in smaller or larger jets, so that if it be too much for you, one can, by pulling the piston backwards, again store it up in the injector.
"Instead of traditions, unarticulated tendencies, latent sous-entendus, and delicate imponderables, there are only machines, ledgers, and registers, articulated with a vengeance, cryingly explicit and loud and indelicate. Everything is bound in the leather of reasonableness, in the hide of method, and in the wooden boards of Logic. Instead of on the rich soup of sentiments, men and women in the States are fed on scientific tabloids containing sentiments reduced to their ultimate chemical essences. A woman laughs at romance; her relations to men are 'reasonable.' A child laughs at piety; his or her relations to parents are tanned by 'sense'! A servant sneers at loyalty; her relations to the masters are macerated in the vinegar of 'inalienable right of reason.'