nothing. It almost doesn't exist. Individual morality can come to be
collective only by contagion, by enthusiasm. And such things do not
happen nowadays; every one has his own morality; but we have not arrived
at a scientific moral code. Years ago notable men accepted the moral
code of the categoric imperative, in lieu of the moral code based on
sin; but the categorical imperative is a stoical morality, a wise man's
morality which has not the sentimental value necessary to make it
popular."

"I do not understand these things," she replied, displeased.

"The doctor understands me, don't you?" he said.

"Yes, I believe I do."

"For me," Caesar went on, "individual morality consists in adapting
one's life to a thought, to a preconceived plan. The man who proposes to
be a scientist and puts all his powers into achieving that, is a moral
man, even though he steals and is a blackguard in other things."

"Then, for you," I argued, "morality is might, tenacity; immorality is
weakness, cowardice."

"Yes, it comes to that. The man capable of feeling himself the
instrument of an idea always seems to me moral. Bismarck, for instance,
was a moral man."

"It is a forceful point of view," said I.

"Which, as I see, you do not share," he exclaimed.