‘if honestly gone into, must result in the triumph you refer to, Mrs Guineabush.
‘You have the reputation of being a champion of our sex, Mr Bristley,’ she replied.
‘And an honest one, I hope, Mrs Guineabush. I fear that species is not so plentiful as it should be. There’s lots of strutting ‘gallantry’ in the world, but it is better to be a straightforward woman-hater, than to be a champion of that sort. We want the men who are ready to give back to women all the privileges they themselves have usurped. The others may keep their blarney to themselves.’
‘But, Mr Bristley,’ pursued the hostess, who was not a frivolous person, ‘since you set so much store by the powers of instinct, do you believe that the lower animals have immortal souls?’
‘Before directly replying to your question, Mrs Guineabush, I must take exception to the word have. It is not a question of ‘having’ a soul as you may ‘have’ blue eyes or a striped shirt or the headache; it is not that I have a soul, but that I am a soul. It is a body that you have, a soul that you are.’
‘But at any rate,’ objected Mrs Guineabush, ‘the soul is dependent upon the body.’
‘As the body is upon its food and clothing,’ rejoined the vicar. ‘But ‘is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment’? Are you and I who talk together nothing more than the flesh and vegetables we have eaten and the animal and vegetable tissues we have worn as clothes? Would it not be ridiculous to say that such and such a book is the work of the food and drink and suits of clothes which made up its author? But it is equally foolish to say that it emanated from the author’s brain. It did not emanate from his brain, except in the sense in which it emanated from his pen. The pen and the brain alike are mere instruments
