Sale of Creeds (24-25)

And the same applies to the fees you take from your youthful pupils? None but the true believer sells virtue for a fee?

Quite right. I take the fee in my pupil’s interest, not because I want it. The world is made up of diffusion and accumulation. I accordingly practise my pupil in the former, and myself in the latter.

But it ought to be the other way. The pupil ought to accumulate, and you, ‘sole millionaire,’ ought to diffuse.

Ha! you jest with me? Beware of the shaft of insoluble syllogism.

What harm can that do?

It cripples; it ties the tongue, and turns the brain.

It cripples; it ties the tongue, and turns the brain. Nay, I have but to will it, and you are stone this instant.

Stone! You are no Perseus, friend?

See here. A stone is a body?

Yes.

Well, and an animal is a body?

Yes.

And you are an animal?

I suppose I am.

‘Therefore you are a body. Therefore a stone.

Mercy, in Heaven’s name! Unstone me, and let me be flesh as heretofore.

That is soon done. Back with you into flesh! Thus: Is every body animate?

No.

Is a stone animate?

No.

Now, you are a body?

Yes.

And an animate body?

Yes.

Then being animate, you cannot be a stone.

Ah! thank you, thank you. I was beginning to feel my limbs growing numb and solidifying like Niobe’s. Oh, I must have you. What’s to pay?

Fifty pounds.

Here it is.

Are you sole purchaser?

Not I. All these gentlemen here are going shares.

A fine strapping lot of fellows, and will do the ‘Reaper’ credit.