“I don’t believe in anything,” said Marek in a hard voice. “I don’t want to believe. I have always been an atheist. I believed in matter and in progress and in nothing else. I’m a scientific man, Bondy; and science cannot admit the existence of God.”

“From the business point of view,” Mr. Bondy remarked, “it’s a matter of indifference. If He wants to exist, in Heaven’s name, let Him. We aren’t mutually exclusive.”

“But from the scientific point of view, Bondy,” cried the engineer sternly, “it is absolutely intolerable. It’s a case of Him or science. I don’t assert that God does not exist; I only assert that He ought not to exist, or at least ought not to let Himself be seen. And I believe that science is crowding Him out step by step, or at any rate is preventing Him from letting Himself be seen; and I believe that that is the greatest mission of science.”

“Possibly,” said Bondy calmly. “But go on.”

“And now just imagine, Bondy, that—But wait, I’ll put it to you this way. Do you know what Pantheism is? It’s the belief that God, or the Absolute, if you prefer it, is manifest in everything that exists. In men, as in stones, in the grass, the water—everywhere. And do you know what Spinoza teaches? That matter is only the outward manifestation, only one phase of the divine substance, the other phase of which is spirit. And do you know what Fechner teaches?”

“No, I don’t,” the other admitted.

“Fechner teaches that everything, everything that is, is penetrated with the divine, that God fills with His being the whole of the matter in the world. And do you know Leibniz? Leibniz teaches that physical matter is composed of psychical atoms, monads, whose nature is divine. What do you say to that?”

“I don’t know,” said G. H. Bondy. “I don’t understand it.”

“Nor do I. It’s fearfully abstruse. But let us assume, for the sake of argument, that God is contained in all forms of physical matter, that He is, as it were, imprisoned in it. And when you smash this matter up completely, He flies out of it as though from a box. He is suddenly set free. He is released from matter as illuminating gas is from coal. You have only to burn one single atom up completely, and immediately the whole cellar is filled with the Absolute. It’s simply appalling how quickly it spreads.”

“Hold on,” Mr. Bondy interrupted. “Say that all over again, but say it slowly.”