“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.  “Is this eternal destruction in order to build up again especially well-designed and wise?  And with this introduction of reason into the All, you provide yourself with a self-devised ruler, who terribly resembles the gracious masters and mistresses that you exhibit to the people.”

“Only apparently,” answered Pentaur, “only because that which transcends sense is communicable through the medium of the senses alone.  When God manifests himself as the wisdom of the world, we call him ‘the Word,’ ‘He, who covers his limbs with names,’ as the sacred Text expresses itself, is the power which gives to things their distinctive forms; the scarabaeus, ‘which enters life as its own son’ reminds us of the ever self-renewing creative power which causes you to call our merciful and benevolent God a monster, but which you can deny as little as you can the happy choice of the type; for, as you know, there are only male scarabei, and this animal reproduces itself.”

Nebsecht smiled.  “If all the doctrines of the mysteries,” he said, “have no more truth than this happily chosen image, they are in a bad way.  These beetles have for years been my friends and companions.  I know their family life, and I can assure you that there are males and females amongst them as amongst cats, apes, and human beings.  Your ’good God’ I do not know, and what I least comprehend in thinking it over quietly is the circumstance that you distinguish a good and evil principle in the world.  If the All is indeed God, if God as the scriptures teach, is goodness, and if besides him is nothing at all, where is a place to be found for evil?”