"And, for you, the worst thing about them is that they have a semblance of truth," replied Hampstead.
"Sometimes—yes," admitted Jack. "But I would not excuse you because they happened to be true. The only way I excuse you is because, after your scientific mud-groveling, you sometimes point higher than others. Are we to understand, then, that you object to novel reading on moral grounds?"
"Don't be absurd. A novel may be all that it should be. I am stating what I take to be facts, and I think it interesting to consider why we enjoy what ladies call 'a good love-story.' You will notice that people who adopt an over-ascetic and unnatural life and do not seek nature, give up reading 'good love-stories.' Perhaps they vaguely realize that the difference in the interest created by Black's insipid Yolande and Byron's Don Juan is merely one of degree."
"Now, will you be so good as to say candidly what gain you or any one else ever received from thinking in such channels as these?" inquired Jack, with impatience.
"Certainly. It keeps me from transcendentalism—from being led off into vanity—thoughts about my immortality—"
"Surely," interrupted Jack, "the aspirations of one's soul are sufficient to convince us that we will live again."
"Jack, a man's soul is simply his power of imagining and desiring what he hasn't got. Once a day, more or less, his soul imagines immortality. The rest of the time it imagines his sweetheart. If a poet, his soul combines the two. Or else it is the mighty dollar, or hunting, or something else. Shall all his aspirations toward nature go for nothing? His soul will conjure up his sweetheart nine thousand times for one thought of his future state. Because he has acquired neither. If he had acquired either, he would soon be quite as certain that there was something still better in store for him. With our minds as active and refined as they are, it would be quite impossible for men to do otherwise than have their imaginings about souls and immortality. These make no proof; the savage has none of them; and if they were proof, whither do man's aspirations chiefly point? To earth or to heaven?"
"Well, I suppose your answer," said Jack, "is sufficient for yourself. You study science, then, to persuade yourself that when you die you will remain teetotally dead?"
"Rather to make myself content with a truth which is different from and not so pleasant as that which we are taught in early life."
"For goodness' sake," cried Mr. Lemons, yawning, "pass the claret."