‘Facts are generally contrary to all ideas,’ answered Rex.
‘Not in Germany—at least so far as duty is concerned. Besides, if science is true, facts must agree with it. Political ethics are a science, and duty is necessary to the system that science has created. What would become of our military supremacy if the belief in duty were suddenly destroyed?’
‘I do not know. But I know that it will not make the smallest difference to us, what becomes of it, when we are dead and buried.’
‘It would change the condition of our children for the worse.’
‘You need not marry. No one obliges you or me to become the fathers of new specimens of our species.’
‘And what becomes of love in your system?’ inquired Greif, more and more surprised at his acquaintance’s extraordinary conversation.
‘What becomes of any thing when it has ceased to exist?’ asked Rex.
‘I do not know.’
‘There is nothing to know in the case. The motion—you would call it force—the motion continues, but the particular thing in which it was manifested is no longer, and that particular thing never will exist again. Motion is imperishable, because it is immaterial. The innumerable milliards of vortices in which the material of your body moves at such an amazing rate will not stand still when you are dead, nor even when every visible atom of your body has vanished from sight in the course of ages. Every vortex is imperishable, eternal, of infinite duration. The vortex was the cause before the beginning and it will remain itself after the end of all things.’
‘The prime cause,’ mused Greif. ‘And who made the vortex?’