To avoid the net of the comet collector Gud hid himself in an ethereal cavern. There he found a spiritual paleontologist at work reconstructing extinct souls from the merest fossil fragments. Gud picked up a tiny fragment and asked the paleontologist what manner of soul it had been. The paleontologist scrutinized it through his confounded monocle and replied: "It is a bit of ectoplasm from the soul of a woman killed by curiosity. She was forever asking her lovers, 'How much do you love me?'" The paleontologist now reached up to a geometrical plane and brought down another small fossil. "Observe," said he, "the marking on this other bit of petrified ectoplasm, and note how the two differ." "Yes, I see," said Gud, "what is that one?" "That," replied the paleontologist, "is a fragment of the aura of a woman who wished to be loved for herself alone." "It is very interesting," agreed Gud, "but tell me why those two completed models on the nebulous shelf behind you look so argumentative." "Ah," said the paleontologist, "they are the pride of my collection, being the reconstruction of two friendly enemies. One was the soul of a deist and the other the soul of an atheist, and they argued and argued through one eternity after another. They argued not wisely but too well, for each finally converted the other, and the deist became an atheist and the atheist became a deist. Then they started arguing all over again. But before the atheist who had become a deist could convert the deist who had become an atheist back to deism, or the deist who had become an atheist could convert the atheist who had become a deist back to atheism, the astral plane was rotated into a cosmic epizoid, resulting in a cataclysm that buried these two poor souls in an avalanche of metaphysical debris which was stratified under the radiant pressure, just as we find it here." "It is very wonderful," said Gud, "but why do you probe into secrets of the dead past when there are so many living souls existing in poverty of hopes or a sorrow of memories?" The paleontologist removed the confounded monocle from his eye, and wiped the lens with a bit of chamois skin. "I am no base utilitarian," said he, "but a pure scientist seeking truth for truth's sake." "Well," said Gud, "a good deal of it isn't worth seeking for any other reason. Do you know I have often wondered what any one would do with all the truth if he did find it--for my part I have never been able to make use of half I possessed." "But you misunderstand the aims of pure science. We scientists have no use for truth either, after we have found it; but the search for truth raises us above the base utilitarian." "Yes," said Gud, "pure science is all right in its place, but you wipe the lens of your confounded monocle with a chamois skin, and how could one get chamois skin unless there were farmers and butchers and skinners and tanners to farm, butcher, skin and tan the chamois?"