which teaches us not to sit in draughts or not to encourage
friendliness in impecunious people. It is folly to talk of this
or that demonstrating the rationalist philosophy. Everything
demonstrates it. Rubbing shoulders with men of all kinds----"

"You will forgive me," said the monk, meekly from under loads of
white beard, "but I fear I do not understand; was it in order
that I might rub my shoulder against men of all kinds that you
put me inside this thing?"

"An entertaining retort, in the narrow and deductive manner of
the Middle Ages," replied the Professor, calmly, "but even upon
your own basis I will illustrate my point. We are up in the sky.
In your religion and all the religions, as far as I know (and I
know everything), the sky is made the symbol of everything that
is sacred and merciful. Well, now you are in the sky, you know
better. Phrase it how you like, twist it how you like, you know
that you know better. You know what are a man's real feelings
about the heavens, when he finds himself alone in the heavens,
surrounded by the heavens. You know the truth, and the truth is
this. The heavens are evil, the sky is evil, the stars are evil.
This mere space, this mere quantity, terrifies a man more than
tigers or the terrible plague. You know that since our science
has spoken, the bottom has fallen out of the Universe. Now,
heaven is the hopeless thing, more hopeless than any hell. Now,
if there be any comfort for all your miserable progeny of morbid
apes, it must be in the earth, underneath you, under the roots of
the grass, in the place where hell was of old. The fiery crypts,
the lurid cellars of the underworld, to which you once condemned
the wicked, are hideous enough, but at least they are more homely