Those good people whose God is their belly, or whose highest aspiration in life is to see their name on the title-page of a book, doubt either the sanity or the sincerity of one who says that he loves to think about God a great deal better than he does about what he is going to have for dinner, and chooses rather to make a meditation than to read the morning newspaper. Such an one is perhaps just as hungry as another for both animal and mental food, but he puts away that anxious thought about dinner, he declines the invitation to hear Parepa, and smashes his violin, or consigns his mathematics to oblivion, because it happens that some or all of these things are found to have a tendency to take away his thoughts from God; and as to voluntary suffering, my philosopher, I am sure that it cost one of these "degraded ascetics" more pain to smash his violin than all the disciplines he ever took in his life. What need was there to smash it? Because it stood in his way, and because sacrifice is the sweetest and most nourishing food the soul can feed upon. And the same for his vanity, too, you say. Possibly. But do you acknowledge that there is such a thing as vainglory, which may arise in the heart and degrade it, thus placing a hindrance to its perfection? I know you do, for you are constantly accusing the Catholic saints of it. Well, then you must allow that mortification of such a tendency is necessary for man's perfection; and having once granted the necessity of mortification for one thing, you have given up the question. Let us hear no more of "degrading asceticism," or of the "unmanliness and superstition of bodily austerities."