In my view - which could be wrong, but it is my field - there is no better formula for social instability than to divide a society between two ascribed characteristics that are seen as opposite.

God is not needed to create guilt or to punish. Our fellow men suffice, aided by ourselves. You were speaking of the Last Judgement. Allow me to laugh respectfully. I shall wait for it resolutely, for I have known what is worse, the judgement of men. For them, no extenuating circumstances; even the good intention is ascribed to crime. Have you at least heard of the spitting cell, which a nation recently thought up to prove itself the greatest on earth? A walled-up box in which the prisoner can stand without moving. The solid door that locks him in the cement shell stops at chin level. Hence only his face is visible, and every passing jailer spits copiously on it. The prisoner, wedged into his cell, cannot wipe his face, though he is allowed, it is true. to close his eyes. Well, that, mon cher, is a human invention. They didn't need God for that little masterpiece.

They loved each other, not driven by necessity, by the "blaze of passion" often falsely ascribed to love. They loved each other because everything around them willed it, the trees and the clouds and the sky over their heads and the earth under their feet.

It was a shock to people of the nineteenth century when they discovered from observations science had made that many features of the biological world could be ascribed to the elegant principle of natural selection.

It is a shock to us in the twentieth century to discover from observations science has made that the fundamental mechanisms of life cannot be ascribed to natural selection and therefore were designed. But we must deal with our shock as best we can and go on.

In the last fifty years science has advanced more than in the 2 000 previous years and given mankind greater powers over the forces of nature than the ancients ascribed to their gods.