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prayers, told them to walk from the remaining little temple and throw stones after them. From those stones were born the Titans, and men. We, their descendants, if you believe the interesting tale, feel no guilt that we were born of stone, and that we are not of the race that perished except for that one perfect couple, whose descendants we are not.”
    Saul waved his hand in rough dismissal of the story. “That is only a myth. I am referring to the fact that humanity is a fallen race, without merit, through our sins, and our disobedience from the beginning. That is our guilt, and only God, blessed be His Name, can erase it and lift us from the pit of it.”
    “A gloomy story,” said Aristo. “Why should a man feel guilt because of the sin of his ancestors, if the story be true, which I doubt? If he is fallen, who awoke him to life, and is not the Awakener guilty if the man is guilty? Does a man ask to be born into this world? Your God seems to me perverse, the Creator of evil—if man is evil—which I deny with some reservations. Your God would seem to me to curse all mankind for a sin committed by others, which would make Him less endowed with mercy than the meanest of His creatures. A vengeful Deity, and I do not approve of Him.”
    Saul said, “‘What is man that Thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that Thou visiteth him?’ We are nothing. God has created us that we may be worthy of His love and His salvation, which He has promised us through the ages by the merits of His Messias, and no merit of our own. We do not understand each other’s semantics, Aristo, because we do not speak from the same frame of reference.”
    “True,” said the Greek. “No man speaks with another man’s semantics, and meanings, for each man’s history is uniquely his alone and he endows words from his own life’s experience, which can be no other man’s. Yet, Socrates asked us to ‘define our terms,’ and much as I revere Socrates I feel he was either jesting or guilty of a stupidity. My terms are not yours, and never can they be.”
    “You deny absolutes.”
    “So does any sensible man. Yes, I know Aristotle spoke of absolutes, but he meant the only absolute, which is God. I have told you of our altars to the Unknown God, above all other Gods. But let us return to the subject of charity, of alms.
    “I have heard an old story. A gentle-hearted sage of some substance was riding on his ass to the marketplace, where he would continue his study of mankind. On the road he was accosted by a beggar, who asked for a single coin to buy bread. The sage was much moved by the man’s misery, and so he emptied his whole purse into the beggar’s hand. Whereupon the beggar, recovering from his astonishment, remarked on the warmth of the sage’s cloak. The sage removed it and placed it about the beggar’s shoulders. The beggar then quickened to the subject, perceiving he had come upon either an unworldy man or a fool. He admired the girdle of the sage and its gorgeous Alexandrine dagger, and so he acquired both. Then came the sage’s boots, lined with wool, and he was soon sitting in the dust avidly putting them on his bare legs and feet.
    “Rising, he complained to the sage that he was far from the city and he was desirous of visiting a tavern there where he could spend the alms on food and reviving wine. The sage hesitated then, but recalling that he had a good house in an olive grove and that he was not hungry, and that he had friends in the city who would give him food, dismounted from the ass and with a noble gesture invited the beggar to mount it. The beggar avidly obeyed and sat high on the cushion and took up the whip arrogantly. Then seeing the sage standing in the road and the dust on his bare feet, without a cloak or a drachma in his purse, the beggar gazed at him with contempt. ‘Begone, beggar!’ he cried, and he cut his whip across the sage’s face, and merrily rode away.
    “Now, my Saul, could you guess at the