“I find your point of view interesting, but too naïve and simple. The idea of original sin may be fanciful, it may have its origin in Oriental myth, but there is contamination from some source or other.”
“Simply from a wrong interpretation of life. I say it is possible for men to understand life.”
“It is quite impossible. They can only live it.”
“Then there is absolutely no meaning in all their activity, all their inventions, all their discoveries . . .”
“I can see none. They are still the slaves of hunger. When you appease the hunger of the body there remains the hunger of the spirit.”
“Exactly, and I contend that in the hands of intelligent men the machinery in their power could satisfy the bodily hunger of all men, and set them free to find satisfaction for the hunger of the spirit. . . . As I see it, it is towards that that the world is tending. There will be a great deal of cruelty and oppression by the way, but there will come a time when man’s mastery of the world will be so great that anything save the most elastic organisation will make life intolerable for rich and poor alike. As you say, if you are stupid enough you can endure anything. Men are more intelligent now than they were fifty years ago. They will be ten times as intelligent fifty years hence. . . .”
“Look at home, my friend. Look at home.”
“I do. And it is just that absurdly pathetic tragi-comedy that makes me scan the world to see what hope there is for future generations. . . . You make the mistake of taking men as you find them. I take myself and discover what I might be, to what I might grow if I could get my fill of friendship, and affection, and love.”
“Love is of God.”
“God is in Man. I take myself, as I say. There is much in myself that I despise, even as you despise men, but there is in myself an essence which I know to be unconquerable and free. That you translate into another world and call God and eternal life. You postpone freedom, because to you the crust of slavery seems impenetrable. I want freedom for that essence in myself here and now. It is the fiercest instinct in me, stronger than hunger, stronger than reproduction, which are only by the way. What I find in myself I believe to exist in all other men.”