"What are we—Ned, and you, and I—here for?"
"To acquire knowledge."
"Ay, knowledge,—but what for?"
"To fit us for heaven."
"Phew! then you calculate to graduate from 'these classic shades' direct into celestial regions, do you, without sojourning awhile in this terrene purgatory? I do not, and, moreover, je n'en ai pas l'envie; I think the world has some claims upon me, and I mean to pay that debt, D. V."
"So do I, Mac," rejoined Clarian, a little proudly.
"And do you suppose your present studies adapted to fit you for such work? Now, if you want to be a monk, if you are willing, like Origen, to purchase with your entire manhood some supposed facility of spiritual contemplation and depth of insight into the Infinite, or if you intend to become a Brahmin, and seek in your navel the dyspeptic divinity who there wields his sceptre, while your despised body is given up to the predatory ravages of genus pediculus, well and good. Follow your hest, go on and conquer the [Greek: gnosis] and when you have got it, just inform me what it looks like, and whether you will be more able to make use of it than the fellow was of the elephant he bought at auction. But if you desire to take a man's part in this grand world around you, you must leap off your shadow, and never think about thinking, as the new Olympian has it. Let quiddities alone, they are dry-bone vampires, that drain you of your blood without growing fatter themselves."
"But how can truth harm? and that is what I seek,—truth, and beauty; if I commune with the world-soul, then also I know the world."
"Faugh! let shadows alone; believe in the man; do not be persuaded that the body is depraved and corrupt, and only the soul is worthy to be cultivated. Hold fast to the tangible. We know that we have a body, spite the Bishop of Cloyne, far more certainly than we know we have a soul. See, the soul is this smoke, that evanishes so quickly; the body this meerschaum that I have in my fingers, and will smoke again, please God."
"But it is the smoke, not the pipe, that gives you pleasure, and is the important consideration, Mac."