“I am not a materialist,” I began hotly.

“In my view⁠—in my view. For it is just this question of pain that parts us. So long as visible or audible pain turns you sick; so long as your own pains drive you; so long as pain underlies your propositions about sin⁠—so long, I tell you, you are an animal, thinking a little less obscurely what an animal feels. This pain⁠—”

I gave an impatient shrug at such sophistry.

“Oh, but it is such a little thing! A mind truly opened to what science has to teach must see that it is a little thing. It may be that save in this little planet, this speck of cosmic dust, invisible long before the nearest star could be attained⁠—it may be, I say, that nowhere else does this thing called pain occur. But the laws we feel our way towards⁠—Why, even on this earth, even among living things, what pain is there?”