“And I mocked him.

“‘What lie is this?’ I said.  ’How do you dare to confuse labour and prayer?  Learn from me, my friend, that work is work, and prayer is prayer.  It is written in the old wisdom—­“Six parts of thy time shalt thou work for thy bread, and on the seventh thou shalt pray.” Orare est orare; laborare est laborare.’

“On the outskirts of the town there were men paving the streets.  ‘Behold how these men pray!’ exclaimed my companion.  ’They pave the streets; that is their prayer.  They do not gaze at the stars; their eyes are ever on the earth, their home.  They have forgotten that there are any stars.  They are happy!’

“‘Their souls sleep,’ I answered him.

“‘Quite so,’ he replied, ’their souls sleep and thus they are happy.  They had no use for their souls, therefore we purveyed them sleep, “balm of hurt minds.”  We gave them narcotics.’

“‘Tell me your narcotics.’

“’The Gospel of Progress—­that is our opium; it gives deep sleep and sweet dreams.  It is the most powerful of drugs.  When a man takes it once he takes it again, for it tempts him with the prospect of its dreams.’

“‘I shall not taste of it,’ said I, ’for I prize Truth above all dreams.  What other narcotics have you, sleep-inducing?’

“My companion paused a moment, then replied: 

“’ There are two sovereign remedies for the relief of your sorrow, a life of work, or a life of pleasure.  But work needs to be done under the influence of the Gospel of Progress.  Without a belief in progress, man cannot believe that work is prayer, and that God is a taskmaster.  His soul wakes up.  He commits suicide or crime.  Or he deserts the city, and goes, as you have done, up into the mountains.’

“‘One narcotic helps out the other,’ I hazarded.

“’Quite so.  Pleasure is the alternative remedy, a perfectly delightful substitute for your life:  wine, the theatre, art, women.  But as in taking laudanum, one must graduate the doses—­take too much and you are poisoned—­’

“‘Wine,’ I said.  ’I have heard of it.  It has been praised by the poets, and its service is that it makes one forget!  The theatre, its comedies and farces and cunning amusements all designed to help me to forget!  Art with its seductions is to obsess the soul with foreign thoughts!  Women who languish upon one’s eyes and tempt with their beauties, they also would steal away our memories.  I will have none of them.’

“‘I spoke of women in general,’ said my tempter.  ’But think of one woman marvellously wrought for thee, the achiever and finisher of thy being, the answer to all thy questionings, the object of all thy yearnings.  In the town thou wilt find the woman for thee, and she will bear thee children.’