"I see," the second answered, sadly. "But aren't you throwing up the sponge for faith rather prematurely? The power of believing has a tremendous vitality. I heard a Catholic once say to a Protestant friend, 'You know the Church has outlived schisms much older than yours.' And inside of Protestantism as well as Catholicism there is a tremendous power of revival. We have seen it often. After an age of unbelief an age of belief is rather certain to follow." "Well, well, I'm willing. I'm no more agnostic than you are. I should be glad of an age of faith for the rest to my soul, if for no other reason. I was harking back to the Stoics not only because they were good to animals, if they were good, but because they seemed to have the same barren devotion to duty which has survived my faith as well as my creed. But why, if I neither expect happiness nor dread misery, should I still care to do my duty? And I certainly always do." "What, always?" "Well, nearly always." The friends laughed together, and the first said, "What a pity the Gilbertian humor has gone out so; you can't adapt it to a daily need any longer without the risk of not being followed." The other sighed. "Nearly everything goes out, except duty. If that went out, I don't think I should have much pleasure in life." "No, you would be dead, without the hope of resurrection. If there is anything comes direct from the Creative Force, from 'La somma sapienza e il primo amore,' it is the sense of duty, 'the moral law within us,' which Kant divined as unmistakably delivered from God to man. I use the old terminology." "Don't apologize. It still serves our turn; I don't know that anything else serves it yet. And you make me think of what dear old M.D. C----told me shortly after his wife died. He had wished, when they both owned that the end was near, to suggest some comfort in the hope of another life, to clutch at that straw to save his drowning soul; but she stopped him. She said, 'There is nothing but duty, the duty we have wished to do and tried to do.'" The friends were silent in the pathos of the fact, and then the first said, "I suppose we all wish to do our duty, even when we don't try or don't try hard enough." The other conjectured, "Perhaps, after all, it's a question of strength; wickedness is weakness." "That formula won't always serve; still, it will serve in a good many cases; possibly most. It won't do to preach it, though." "No, we must cultivate strength of character. I wonder how?" "Well, your Stoics--" "_My_ Stoics?" "_Anybody's_ Stoics--did it by self-denial. When they saw a pleasure coming their way they sidestepped it; they went round the corner, and let it go by while they recruited their energies. Then when they saw a duty coming they stepped out and did it." "It seems very simple. But aren't you rather cynical?"