"But you forget the human virtues!" interrupted the ecclesiastic. "There are many men, you will admit, who rule their whole lives by the law of Heaven."
"Of all things that, surely, is the most opposed to Nature. Those laws of which you speak have been made merely to torment the human race. The virtues are simply so many revolts against Nature. That alone is good which satisfies the body."
"And the soul, my dear sir! What of the immortal soul!" said the minister solemnly.
"The soul!" echoed the Master contemptuously; "the most execrable imposture with which the world has ever been befooled! For the body's torment a tyrant was invented to chastise it by means of fasting and renunciation, thus to reduce it to desperation. The soul, sir, is simply a tyrant that forces its monstrous feelings on the body. And we are to suffer thus merely because that tyrannous fiction comes from above—from Heaven, and the body from beneath—from Hell! But how if it were to occur to the body that it is really the master and the other the slave, and the soul were to be trodden under foot?"
"Sir, your dogma seems to me perfectly frightful!" said Herr Waimœner aghast.
"I prosper well enough under it, however. My whole confession of faith, indeed, is contained in these words: 'That which is agreeable to me is right; that which is hurtful to another is not wrong.'"
"Sir, do your companions all practise this religion also?"
"I preach them no other, and they appear quite content with it."
"Have you a family also?" asked the clergyman anxiously; "I sincerely trust not."
"Oh yes," answered the Master lightly. "There dwell with me both a female anthropopithecus and an undeveloped specimen of the simia anthropos, masculini generis."