"

"It's a great deal too much. Alcohol is a poison. If you have a bottle
of brandy at home, fling it out of the window."

Pradel was pondering. He considered that in suppressing will and
responsibility in all human things Dr. Socrates was doing him a personal
injury.

"You may say what you like. Will and responsibility are not illusions.
They are tangible and powerful realities. I know how the terms of my
contract bind me, and I impose my will on others."

And he added with some bitterness:

"I believe in the will, in moral responsibility, in the distinction
between good and evil. Doubtless these are, according to you, stupid
ideas."

"They are indeed stupid ideas," replied the physician, "but they are
very suitable to us, since we are mere animals. We are for ever
forgetting this. They are stupid, venerable, wholesome ideas. Men have
felt that, without these ideas, they would all go mad. They had only the
choice between stupidity and madness. Very reasonably they chose
stupidity. Such is the foundation of moral ideas."

"What a paradox!" exclaimed Romilly.

The physician calmly proceeded:

"The distinction between good and evil in human societies has never
emerged from the grossest empiricism. It was constituted in a wholly
practical spirit and as a simple convenience. We do not trouble
ourselves about it where cut-glass or a tree is concerned. We practise
moral indifference with regard to animals. We practise it in the case of
savage races. This enables us to exterminate them without remorse.
That's what is known as the colonial policy. Nor do we find that
believers exact a high degree of morality from their god. In the present
state of society, they would not willingly admit that he was lecherous
or compromised himself with women; but they do think it fitting that he
should be vindictive and cruel. Morality is a mutual agreement to keep
what we possess: land, houses, furniture, women, and our lives. It does
not imply, in the case of those who bow to it, any particular
intelligence or character. It is instinctive and ferocious. Written law
follows it closely, and is in more or less harmonious agreement with it.
Hence we see that great-hearted men, or men of brilliant genius, have
almost all been accused of impiety, and, like Socrates, the son of
Phenaretes, and Benoit Malon, have been smitten by the tribunals of
their country. And it may be stated that a man who has not, at the very
least, been sentenced