At this, Govinda stopped on the path, rose his hands, and spoke: “If you, Siddhartha, only would not bother your friend with this kind of talk! Truly, your words stir up fear in my heart. And just consider: what would become of the sanctity of prayer, what of the venerability of the Brahmins’ caste, what of the holiness of the Samanas, if it was as you say, if there was no learning? What, O Siddhartha, what would then become of all of this what is holy, what is precious, what is venerable on earth?”

And Govinda mumbled a verse to himself, a verse from an Upanishad:

He who ponderingly, of a purified spirit, loses himself in the meditation of Atman⁠—

Unexpressable by words is his blissfulness of his heart.