not wisely but too well,
for each finally converted the other, and the deist became an atheist
and the atheist became a deist. Then they started arguing all over
again. But before the atheist who had become a deist could convert the
deist who had become an atheist back to deism, or the deist who had
become an atheist could convert the atheist who had become a deist back
to atheism, the astral plane was rotated into a cosmic epizoid,
resulting in a cataclysm that buried these two poor souls in an
avalanche of metaphysical debris which was stratified under the radiant
pressure, just as we find it here."

"It is very wonderful," said Gud, "but why do you probe into secrets of
the dead past when there are so many living souls existing in poverty of
hopes or a sorrow of memories?"

The paleontologist removed the confounded monocle from his eye, and
wiped the lens with a bit of chamois skin.

"I am no base utilitarian," said he, "but a pure scientist seeking truth
for truth's sake."

"Well," said Gud, "a good deal of it isn't worth seeking for any other
reason. Do you know I have often wondered what any one would do with all
the truth if he did find it--for my part I have never been able to make
use of half I possessed."

"But you misunderstand the aims of pure science. We scientists have no
use for truth either, after we have found it; but the search for truth
raises us above the base utilitarian."

"Yes," said Gud, "pure science is all right in its place, but you wipe
the lens of your confounded monocle with a chamois skin, and how could
one get chamois skin unless there were farmers and butchers and skinners
and tanners to farm, butcher, skin and tan the chamois?"

"Mere hewers of wood and drawers of water," repeated the pure scientist
with disdain, "let them serve truth and searchers after truth; for
knowledge is power and the truth shall make us free."

"Free of what?" asked Gud.

But the paleontologist did not answer, for he had spied another bit of
fossilized ectoplasm and was readjusting his confounded monocle so that
he might examine it, to see if it were part of the fragment of the soul
of the infant prodigy who had mastered calculus before it cut its canine
teeth, or merely another piece of that soul of the man who had gone
spiritually to pieces when he met his fame.

Alas, it was neither but something worse, and so Gud asked what it was.

"It is the fragment," replied the paleontologist, "of the soul