“But all this is horrible,” said the grave man, with a gesture of avoidance; “it sounds to me like a description of the orgies of savages, or of the pastimes of madmen; it is unworthy of intelligent and sane men.”  “On the contrary,” returned his informant, “it is just because we are intelligent and sane that we take delight in it.  For it is by means of these sacrifices that our deity vouchsafes her oracles.  In the mangled corpses and entrails of these victims our augurs find the knowledges we seek,” “And what knowledges are they?” asked the traveler.  “The knowledge of Nature’s secrets,” cried the votary of Science with kindling eye, “the knowledge of life and death; the magic of the art of healing disease; the solution of the riddle of the universe!  All this we learn, all this we perceive, in the dying throes of our victims.  Does not this suffice?—­is not the end great enough to justify the means?”

Then, when the second of the travelers heard these words—­he whose face had been lifted as he walked—­he drew nearer and answered:—­

“No; it is greater to be just than to be learned.  No man should wish to be healed at the cost of another’s torment.”  At which the stranger frowned, and retorted impatiently, “You forget, methinks, that they whom we seek to heal are men, and they who are tormented merely beasts.  By these means we enrich and endow humanity.”  “Nay, I forget not,” he answered gently, “but he who would be so healed is man no longer.  By that wish and act he becomes lower than any beast.  Nor can humanity be enriched by that which beggars it of all its wealth.”  “Fine speeches, forsooth!” cried the worshipper of Science; “you are a moralist, I find, and doubtless a very ignorant person!  All this old-fashioned talk of yours belongs to a past age.  We have cast aside superstition, we have swept away the old faiths.  Our only guide is Reason, our only goal is Knowledge!” “Alas!” returned the other, “it is not the higher but the lower Reason which leads you, and the Knowledge you covet is not that of realities, but of mere seemings.  You do not know the real world.  You are the dupes of a Phantasm which you take for Substance.”  With that he passed on, and the man of Science was left in the company of the traveler who had first accosted him.  “What person is that?” asked the former, looking after the retreating figure of him who had just spoken.  “He is a poet,” returned the grave-faced traveler; “we have both of us been beyond the sunset to see the lovely Princess who rules that wonderful country, and we left it together on a journey to this world of yours.”  “Beyond the sunset!” repeated the other, incredulously.  “That is the land of shadows; when the world was younger they used to say the old Gods lived there.”  “Maybe they live there still,’ said the traveler, “for the Princess is of their kith and lineage.”  “A pretty fable, indeed,” responded the scientific votary.  “But we know now that all that kind of thing is sheer nonsense, and worse, for it is the basis of the effete old-world sentiment which forms the most formidable obstacle to Progress, and which Science even yet finds it hard to overthrow.  But what is that strange singing I hear beneath your cloak?”