And the argument between the shrewd verse-maker and the foolish philosopher finally hinges on this: namely, that these atheists are not honest investigators, that in their sweeping generalisations, as in their speciosity and hypocrisy, they are commercially perverse. And Khalid is not long in deciding about the matter. He meets with an accident—and accidents have always been his touchstones of success—which saves his soul and seals the fate of atheism.
One evening, returning from a ramble in the Park, he passes by the Hall where his favourite Mountebank was to lecture on the Gospel of Soap. But not having the price of admittance that evening, and being anxious to hear the orator whom he had idolised, Khalid bravely appeals to his generosity in this quaint and touching note: “My pocket,” he wrote, “is empty and my mind is hungry. Might I come to your Table tonight as a beggar?” And the man at the stage door, who carries the note to the orator, returns in a trice, and tells Khalid to lift himself off. Khalid hesitates, misunderstands; and a heavy hand is of a sudden upon him, to say nothing of the heavy boot.
Ay, and that boot decided him. Atheism, bald, bold, niggardly, brutal, pretending withal, Khalid turns from its door never to look again in that direction, Shakib is right. “These people,” he growled, “are not free thinkers, but free stinkards. They do need soap to wash their hearts and souls.”
An idea did not come to Khalid, as it were, by instalments. In his puerperal pains of mind he was subject to such crises, shaken by such downrushes of light, as only the few among mortals experience. (We are quoting our Scribe, remember.) And in certain moments he had more faith in his instincts than in his reason. “Our instincts,” says he, “never lie. They are honest, and though they be sometimes blind.” And here, he seems to have struck the truth. He can be practical too. Honesty in thought, in word, in deed—this he would have as the cornerstone of his