Of Pontius Pilate and Caiaphas, of Joseph and Mary, of the resurrection and ascension, let each one believe what he will, but the highest commandment applies to all, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself.’ “You see, therefore, that I, too, am a God-romancer. And what objection can you raise against it? You are of opinion that to love God and your neighbour is equivalent to being good, and are evidently very proud of your discovery that there is no distinction between good and evil. Well, if loving God and your neighbour is equivalent to being good, then it follows that not loving God and not loving your neighbour is equivalent to not being good, or to being evil. There is, then, a very plain distinction between good and bad. And yet you say that you turned a somersault when you discovered that there was no such distinction. It is true that the nature of this distinction is often dependent on the degree of latitude and longitude where men are congregated, and still more on the intention of the agent. This is very ancient knowledge. The old Hindu philosophers went still farther, and said of an assassin and his victim, ‘The one does not commit murder, and the other is not murdered.’ That goes still farther than your somersault. At all events, we entirely agree with each other, that everything which is done out of love to God and our neighbour is good, and everything which is done through selfishness is bad. The old philosopher in India must have turned more somersaults than you; but what he had in his mind in doing it does not concern us here. But it was not so bad as it sounds, and I believe that what you say, that there is no real distinction between good and evil, is not so bad as it sounds.