"They would hardly think this. I can understand love seeking for expression in the most lovely and fragrant symbols the world has to offer. But the real truth is, the majority of lovers don't think at all. They imitate. They give what others give."
"Now that is the way I like to hear people talk," she exclaimed with a merry laugh; "I am quite sure that the only way to be truthful is to be cynical."
"I am afraid so."
"If I were a young and inexperienced girl, the person on whose judgment I should most depend would be the one who most sincerely disbelieved in the existence of virtue."
"No, no. Such an infidel would make a bad guide."
"An infallible guide, you mean. How could he err?"
"He would err by not being able to grasp the full character of the world's wickedness. He would underrate its depravity by allowing it no virtue whatever."
"I don't understand. This is a paradox," said she stopping, for we had reached the gate. "Would you increase the world's wickedness by making it virtuous?"
"Yes, up to a certain point. I speak in the sense of Dean Swift, who said we had all of us Christianity enough to make us hate one another. Virtue has a very fructifying power, and vice springs richly from its soil. A totally wicked world is an impossibility. That dreadful place to which we are told sinners will be consigned cannot be utterly wicked, or it could not exist."