"Very well, then," said Serge, "drop the idealism and call it practical good sense. Concentrate on the instinct of hunger and the instinct of reproduction and organise for the satisfaction of both."
"It is impossible. You are asking men to be intelligent. The English will never be that."
Father Soledano said good-night to Francis and held out his hand to Serge.
They drove back in a cab to the priest's house in the asphalted courtyard under the cathedral.
"Will you tell me," asked Serge, "how you reconcile what you have said this evening with what you say in your Church?"
"Like the rest of the world, I do what I am told. If I examined and scrutinised everything that I was told to do I should do very little of it. . . . On the whole we do good. We save a certain number of men from sinking into brutality, and to a certain number of others we give an outlet for their emotions, which amounts to the same thing."
"How much do you believe of what you tell them?"
"I have never examined my belief. Like your father, I do what I am told to do. Suppose I renounced my faith and the priesthood. My place would be taken by another. There are too many men, my friend, too many women, and life moves both too slowly and too swiftly . . . What can you do? You say that the good life consists wholly of work and love. Then work, my friend, and love. There is nothing to prevent you. I also work, and I also love. Very lovingly I despise men, because I know them, as you, I think, do not."
"Quite candidly, it seems to me cowardly and rather despicable to teach men to believe in another life beyond the grave."
"Life, as it is, must be made supportable."
"You seem to be levelling an accusation at my Church, but you must be just and observe that we do display, for the benefit of the men whose souls are our care, a certain faith in the next life by renouncing the pleasures of this."
"You stifle an instinct. That seems to me as great a sin as abusing it by excess of the pleasure derived from its satisfaction."
"I find your point of view interesting, but too naïve and simple. The idea of original sin may be fanciful, it may have its origin in Oriental myth, but there is contamination from some source or other."