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losophy.'
'I do not find that very amusing,' said Greif, with a laugh.
'Nothing is amusing when you are obliged to do it,' answered the other. 'Duty is the hair shirt of the nineteenth century. A man who does his duty is just as uncomfortable while he is doing it as any Trappist who ever buckled on a spiked belt under his gown.'
'But afterwards?'
'Afterwards? What is afterwards? It is nothing to you or me. Afterwards means the time when you and I are buried, and the next generation are writhing in hair shirts of their own making, and prickly girdles which they put on themselves.' Rex laughed oddly.
'I differ from you,' answered Greif.
'You are a Korps student, sir. Does that mean that you wish to quarrel with me?' 'Not unless you choose. I am not in search of a row this morning. I differed from you as to your view of duty. It seems to me contrary to German ideas.'
'Facts are generally contrary to all ideas,' answered Rex.
'Not in Germany--at least so far as duty is concerned. Besides, if science is true, facts must agree with it. Political ethics are a science, and duty is necessary to the system that science has created. What would become of our military supremacy if the belief in duty were suddenly destroyed?'
'I do not know. But I know that it will not make the smallest difference to us, what becomes of it, when we are dead and buried.'
'It would change the condition of our children for the worse.'
'You need not marry. No one obliges you or me to become the fathers of new specimens of our species.'
'And what becomes of love in your system?' inquired Greif, more and more surprised at his acquaintance's extraordinary conversation.
'What becomes of any thing when it has ceased to exist?' asked Rex.
'I do not know.'
'There is nothing to know in the case. The motion--you would call it force--the motion continues, but the particular thing in which it was manifested is no longer, and that particular thing never wi