“Emile, look out for your coat; your neighbor is growing pale,” said Bixiou.
“Kant? Yet another ball flung out for fools to sport with, sir! Materialism and spiritualism are a fine pair of battledores with which charlatans in long gowns keep a shuttlecock a-going. Suppose that God is everywhere, as Spinoza says, or that all things proceed from God, as says St. Paul... the nincompoops, the door shuts or opens, but isn’t the movement the same? Does the fowl come from the egg, or the egg from the fowl?... Just hand me some duck... and there, you have all science.”
“Simpleton!” cried the man of science, “your problem is settled by fact!”
“What fact?”
“Professors’ chairs were not made for philosophy, but philosophy for the professors’ chairs. Put on a pair of spectacles and read the budget.”
“Thieves!”
“Nincompoops!”
“Knaves!”
“Gulls!”
“Where but in Paris will you find such a ready and rapid exchange of thought?” cried Bixiou in a deep, bass voice.