You are a poet, an artist; I only seek for truth." "Only ?" said Pentaur, "it is just on account of that effort that I esteem you so highly, and, as you already know, I also desire nothing but the truth." "I know, I know," said the physician nodding, "but our ways run side by side without ever touching, and our final goal is the reading of a riddle, of which there are many solutions.

You believe yourself to have found the right one, and perhaps none exists." "Then let us content ourselves with the nearest and the most beautiful," said Pentaur.
"The most beautiful ?" cried Nebsecht indignantly.

"Is that monster, whom you call God, beautiful--the giant who for ever regenerates himself that he may devour himself again?
God is the All, you say, who suffices to himself.

Eternal he is and shall be, because all that goes forth from him is absorbed by him again, and the great niggard bestows no grain of sand, no ray of light, no breath of wind, without reclaiming it for his household, which is ruled by no design, no reason, no goodness, but by a tyrannical necessity, whose slave he himself is.

The coward hides behind the cloud of incomprehensibility, and can be revealed only by himself--I would I could strip him of the veil! Thus I see the thing that you call God!" "A ghastly picture," said Pentaur, "because you forget that we recognize reason to be the essence of the All, the penetrating and moving power of the universe which is manifested in the harmonious working together of its parts, and in ourselves also, since we are formed out of its substance, and inspired with its soul." "Is the warfare of life in any way reasonable ?" asked Nebsecht.