Naphta sat motionless, flashing like a drawn blade. He said: “I am at your service. I believe I do not err in assuming our agreement in the conception of an original ideal state of man, a condition without government and without force, an unmediated condition as the child of God, in which there was neither lordship nor service, neither law nor penalty, nor sin nor relation after the flesh; no distinction of classes, no work, no property: nothing but equality, brotherhood, and moral perfectitude.”

“Very good. I agree,” declared Settembrini. “I agree with everything except the relations after the flesh, which obviously must at all times have subsisted, since man is a highly developed vertebrate, and, like other creatures of his kind⁠—”