"It seems to me, Mr. Sartliff, that in your effort to get back individually, you have encountered more difficulties, collisions, and ills, than the most of us do, who keep on the old orthodox civilized way to the devil." "That may be; I am one, looking alone; nobody helps me." "And like the younger Mr. Weller, you find it a pursuit of knowledge under difficulties." "Precisely; I inherited an artificial constitution, and tastes, and needs. I began perverted and corrupted, and when I go back to Nature, she teaches me less than she does the beasts and birds. Before I can understand, or even hear her voice, I must recover the original purity and strength of organs and faculties which I might have had. I may perish in the attempt to reach a point at which I can learn. The earth chills and hurts my feet, the sun burns my skin, the winds shrivel me, and the snows and frosts would kill me, while many of the fruits good for food are indigestible to me. See to what the perversions of civilization have reduced me." "Do you propose in thus getting back to nature, to go back to what we call savagery?" asked Bart. "Not a bit of it. It was the wants and needs of the race that whipped it into what we call civilization. When once men got a start they went, and went in one direction alone, and completely away from Nature, instead of keeping with her and with an unvarying result; an endless series of common catastrophes has overtaken all civilized nations alike, while the savage tribes have alone been perpetual. I don't say that savage life is at all preferable, only that it alone has been capable of perpetuating races. In going back to Nature, I propose to take what of good we have derived from civilization." "As historic verity," said Bart, "I am not quite prepared to admit that savage races are perpetual. We know little of them, and what little we do know is that tribes appear and disappear. General savagery may reign, like perpetual night, over a given region, but who can say how many races of savages have destroyed and devoured each other in its darkness?" They had reached the forest, and Sartliff placed himself in an easy position at the foot of an old beech, extending his limbs and bare feet over the dry leaves, in such a way as not to injure any springing herb. "Mr. Ridgeley," said he, "I would like to know more of you. You young men are fresher, see, and what is better, feel quicker and clearer than the older and more hackneyed. Are you already shelled over with accepted dogmas, and without the power of receiving new ideas?" "I hardly know; I fear I am not very reverent. I was born of a question-asking time, like that Galilean boy, whose, mother, after long search, found him in the Temple, disputing with the doctors, and asking them questions." "Good! good! that is it; my great mother will find me in her Temple, asking questions of her doctors and ministers!" exclaimed Sartliff. "And what do you ask, and what response do you get?" asked Bart.