ad better go into the Theban wilderness and deliver his
wisdom to the stones; but if he supposes that he will be tolerated in a
society founded upon mutual cloaking and palliation of faults, feigned
respect for rotten rubbish, and the superficial varnish coated over old
cracks, where people do not even have the courage to lay aside the
humbug of false names in the catalogues of museums, let alone calling
other idols by their right names--you see, my friend, gall enters into
the construction of my sentences, and I no longer know how I began. But
this I do know, that if you acknowledge the authorship of such books,
you will never have any prospect of making a career in our dear native
land, and I sincerely regret it."

"I thank you for this regret," replied Edwin with a quiet smile. "Nay I
even share it in a certain sense, though not on my own account! I am
happy where I am, and offices and titles have as little charm for me,
as a heap of money, which at any rate if I were a little more careful,
I might procure by lecturing or writing. But in the interest of public
welfare, the health and morality of our political life, I can only
think with regret how far we still are, from possessing the much
praised and much scouted freedom of thought. So long as the patriarchal
delusion still exists, that the state has the right or even the duty,
of watching over the theoretical opinions of its members, while only
their acts belong to its tribunal, we shall not emerge from a dreamy
and trifling minority. And this rests upon a deeper error, against
which my whole book is directed, although it apparently turns upon an
objectless pyschological problem--the error that metaphysics and
morality are closely connected, nay are in a constant interchange of
influence."

"Freedom of thought!" cried the eager old gentleman, standing still and
baring his shinging bald head, as if his hat heated it, "as if it would
be of any special consequence to you to obtain, this miserable
acquisition, which you possess as much as the Spaniards themselves did
in the darkest ages. What you want and will not obtain for a long time,
is _freedom to teach_, freedom to transplant your thoughts into other
heads, not merely by books, which will only be read by a small number,
but by lectures in public halls, just as your colleague instils into
his hearers the condensed milk of piety carefully tested and proved
harmless. But you are wrong, my dear friend, in asking thi