"You know very well what I mean by 'desire': I do not mean moderate eating and drinking; and you know very well what 'waste' means. You must also not believe that desire decreases with age. It is not so; but the intelligence and will-power increase, and therefore the victory is proportionably easier. I make you a present of this explanation: keep it, and show that you are intelligent enough to be able to receive a real one." =Ecclesia Triumphans.=--The teacher said: "The world is full of lies, but there are also errors and misunderstandings. No two men give words the same meaning. But there are persistent lies which circulate like coins. There are lies of the lower classes, and lies of the upper classes; lies of the Catholics and of the Protestants. But those of the pagans are the worst of all. They believe they have the right to lie, because it profits them or their friends. One of the greatest lies of the pagans which misled me for a long time is the false assertion that Japan has accepted the material culture of Europe, but rejected Christianity. Two Japanese professors, who lately visited our land, declared on the contrary that there was a Christian church in each of the larger towns of Japan. There are Christians in the army, parliament, and universities. Their number is great--five-and-forty thousand Protestants, eight-and-fifty thousand Catholics, and five-and-twenty thousand adherents of the Greek Church. In the Second Chamber of the Japanese parliament two of the presidents have become Christians. And all that has taken place in thirty-five years. A thousand years pass by like nothing, and the future seems to belong to Christianity, since we have already seen that the chief powers of the world, Europe and America, are Christian. "There is certainly no obligation to be a Christian, but some day it may be a disgrace not to be one, when one is born in a Christian country. It may come to be thought retrograde and conservative, and a failure to keep pace with development. The pagans celebrated the end of the eighteenth century as marking the overthrow of Christianity, but in 1802 appeared the finest book which has been written on Christianity, _Le Génie du Christianisme_, by Chateaubriand, and by its means the Church triumphed again." =Logic in Neurasthenia.=--As the Teacher wandered in Qualheim, he came into a mountainous region, and saw a castle which was of dreamlike beauty. "Who is the enviable man who lives in such a palace?" he asked. His guide answered: "He is an unhappy, helpless hermit, without peace, and without a home. He was born with great artistic gifts, but employed them on rubbish. He drew nonsensical and trifling caricatures, distorted all that was beautiful into ugliness, and all that was great into pettiness." "How does he occupy himself now?" "Shall I say it? He sits from morning till evening, making balls out of dung." "You mean to say, he continues as he began. Is that his punishment?"