“But,” he continued, “to revert to the questions which we were previously discussing. It seems to me that in certain respects your faith is not even so satisfactory as ours; for its tendency is to degrade the present in view of the future, and to debase humanity in its own view. With us life was not considered disgraceful, nor man a mean and contemptible creature. We did not systematically humiliate ourselves and cringe before the divine powers, but strove to stand erect, and not to forget that we were made by God after his own image. We did not affect that false humility which in the view of the ancient philosophers was contemptible—nay, even we thought that the pride of humility was of all the most despicable. We sought to keep ourselves just, obedient to our best instincts, temperate and simple, looking upon life as a noble gift of the gods, to be used for noble purposes. We believed, beside this, that virtue should be practiced for itself, and not through any hope of reward or any fear of punishment here or hereafter. To act up to our highest idea of what was right was our principle, not out of terror or in the hope of conciliating God, but because it was right; and to look calmly on death, not as an evil, but as a step onward to another existence. To desire nothing too much; to hold one’s self equal to any fate; to keep one’s self in harmony with nature and with one’s own nature; calmly to endure what is inevitable, steadily to abstain from all that is wrong; to remember that there is no such thing as misfortune to the brave and wise, but only phantasms that falsely assume these shapes to shake the mind; that when what we wish does not happen, we should wish what does happen; that God hath given us courage, magnanimity, and fortitude, so that we may stand up against invasions of evil and bear misfortune,—such were our principles, and they enabled us to live heroic lives, vindicating the nobility of human nature, and not despising it as base and lost; believing in the justice of God and not in his caprice and enmity to any of us, and having no ignoble fear of the future.” “But are not these principles for the most part ours?” I answered. “Do we not believe that virtue is the grand duty of man? Do none of us seek to live heroic lives, and sacrifice ourselves to do good to the world and to our brothers?”