Part 45 (1/2)
”Because when a man is in the grip of superst.i.tion there is no knowing what he will do or leave undone. So-called religion is made an excuse for so many things.”
”For not committing suicide, for instance?”
”Exactly. If a man gets the stupid notion into his head that he is accountable to somebody for his life, or that he will have to give an account at some hypothetical judgment day, that man becomes a slave at once. He is no longer his own master. No longer free to do what he likes.”
”My dear Muller,” Rufus questioned, with a smile. ”Are you free to do as you like? Is not the life of every one of us bounded by laws and conditions that we cannot escape?”
”Up to a point, no doubt. Freedom is not chaos. Liberty moves within legitimate bounds. Our philosophy is at any rate rational.”
”Then you believe in a moral order as well as a physical?”
”The moral order man has evolved for himself. It is a concomitant of civilisation.”
”Why not say he has evolved the physical order for himself? Would it not be just as reasonable? He may have evolved considerable portions of his creeds and any number of dogmas. But the moral order is no more a part of ecclesiasticism than earthquakes are. It is part of the universal cosmos before which we stand helpless and bewildered.”
”My dear Sterne, you talk like a parson. Who has been coaching you?”
”No, no, Muller; the subject is too big and complex to be dismissed with a sneer.”
”I expect I shall hear of you next playing the martyr for moral ideals,”
Muller said, with a slight curl of the lip.
”That seems to be the next item on the programme,” Rufus answered, quietly; ”for, after all, what is honesty--the just payment of debts--but a moral ideal.”
”It belongs to that code of honour certainly that civilised peoples have shaped for themselves.”
”Then you think I am bound to my pledge by nothing more weighty than that?”
”What could be more weighty? You could not escape from it without--without--but why discuss the impossible? You are a man of honour, that is enough.”
”And when is the latest you would like the money, Muller?”
”It will need a month or two to clear up things,” he said, evasively.
”And if I am too precipitate I might be suspected?”
”Exactly. You cannot be too wary. Companies have grown suspicious. There have been so many attempts of late to cheat them, and, of course, in the eye of the law robbing a company stands in precisely the same category as robbing an individual.”
Rufus gave a start, and all the blood left his cheeks, and for several moments he stared at the fire in silence.
Muller rose from his chair, and began to brush his bowler hat with his hand.
”I'm frightfully sorry it's happened,” he said, consolingly, ”but, after all, it will soon be over.”
”Ye--s.”
”I advised you against it. I did not like the risk from the first.”