“Good. We fell into talk, as we have often done, I rejoice to say, and upon somewhat elevated subjects. We spoke, I believe, of life and death: of the dignity of death in so far as it is the condition and appurtenance of life, and the grotesqueness into which it declines so soon as the mind erects it into an independent principle. Young men,” went on Herr Settembrini, standing close to the two, with the thumb and middle finger of his left hand splayed out like a fork, as if to collect their attention, while he raised the forefinger of his right in warning, “imprint it upon your minds: the mind is sovereign. Its will is free, it conditions the moral world. Let it once dualistically isolate death, and death will become, in actual fact, actu