ELINOR: My religion is very simple. It started by being a rebellion against the narrow orthodoxy which I had been taught in my youth. I refused to credit the idea that we were all born miserable sinners. I felt that we were glorious creatures who should stand upright and rise into space. I resented the attitude of all saints and martyrs as depicted in statuary and painting--a _mea culpa_ attitude--a pleading for the charity of some omnipotent being to overlook a personal fault--as it were to say, “If I grovel enough your vanity will be appeased and you won’t punish me.” I looked round at the glorious world of nature and at the wonder of my own body, full of health and vitality, and I wanted to cry aloud to God, “Dear God, I am so glad you have made me, and I mean to do the very best I can for your creation in return.” JOHN: That is not altogether a bad idea. ELINOR: I felt that human beings, because of their gift of articulate speech, were different to animals, and had been given a higher spark of the divine essence in their possession of the loan of a more responsible soul. I seemed to realize that we had no smallest right to soil it or degrade it, since God need not have lent it to us at all if He had not wished. We were, so to speak, on our honor with the thing. I suddenly understood that it was unspeakable disgrace to commit paltry actions just because people would not know about them--that even if one had to admit the necessity of bluff in the affairs of men sometimes it was perfectly childish to use it in dealing with God--and not only childish, but useless. JOHN: You would be honest with God! Tut, tut!--a pretty state of things! A theory like that could upset the world. ELINOR: _Tant pis!_--I am not talking of expediency. I am stating my beliefs. JOHN: Go ahead. ELINOR: I felt that because we had received this divine triple loan from God of understanding, apprehension, and emotion, with its branches of deduction, critical faculty, and appreciation--all things beyond the material--we at least owed Him something in return. You will admit, I suppose, that decent people do not accept the loan of a friend’s house and then utterly neglect and defile it? JOHN: It would be in shocking taste. ELINOR: Then doing the thousand-and-one actions which defile the soul are in shocking taste also. Don Quixote was infinitely nearer a true knowledge of the obligation entailed by the possession of this loan than any of us modern people! JOHN: Oh, heavens! are you going to drag in fictional characters to illustrate your tirade? I feel the yawn coming.