"Like the rest of the world, I do what I am told. If I examined and scrutinised everything that I was told to do I should do very little of it. . . . On the whole we do good. We save a certain number of men from sinking into brutality, and to a certain number of others we give an outlet for their emotions, which amounts to the same thing." "How much do you believe of what you tell them?" "I have never examined my belief. Like your father, I do what I am told to do. Suppose I renounced my faith and the priesthood. My place would be taken by another. There are too many men, my friend, too many women, and life moves both too slowly and too swiftly . . . What can you do? You say that the good life consists wholly of work and love. Then work, my friend, and love. There is nothing to prevent you. I also work, and I also love. Very lovingly I despise men, because I know them, as you, I think, do not." "Quite candidly, it seems to me cowardly and rather despicable to teach men to believe in another life beyond the grave." "Life, as it is, must be made supportable." "From within, not from without." "You seem to be levelling an accusation at my Church, but you must be just and observe that we do display, for the benefit of the men whose souls are our care, a certain faith in the next life by renouncing the pleasures of this." "You stifle an instinct. That seems to me as great a sin as abusing it by excess of the pleasure derived from its satisfaction." "I find your point of view interesting, but too naïve and simple. The idea of original sin may be fanciful, it may have its origin in Oriental myth, but there is contamination from some source or other." "Simply from a wrong interpretation of life. I say it is possible for men to understand life." "It is quite impossible. They can only live it." "Then there is absolutely no meaning in all their activity, all their inventions, all their discoveries . . ." "I can see none. They are still the slaves of hunger. When you appease the hunger of the body there remains the hunger of the spirit." "Exactly, and I contend that in the hands of intelligent men the machinery in their power could satisfy the bodily hunger of all men, and set them free to find satisfaction for the hunger of the spirit. . . . As I see it, it is towards that that the world is tending. There will be a great deal of cruelty and oppression by the way, but there will come a time when man's mastery of the world will be so great that anything save the most elastic organisation will make life intolerable for rich and poor alike. As you say, if you are stupid enough you can endure anything. Men are more intelligent now than they were fifty years ago. They will be ten times as intelligent fifty years hence. . . ." "Look at home, my friend. Look at home."