But he laughs rarely; he is too often sad.
And it is a sadness as deep-reaching as the roots of the race.

It is the race heritage, the sadness which has made the race sober-minded, clean-lived and fanatically moral, and which, in this latter connection, has culminated among the English in the Reformed Church and Mrs.Grundy.
In point of fact, the chief vent to this primal melancholy has been religion in its more agonizing forms.

But the compensations of such religion are denied Wolf Larsen.

His brutal materialism will not permit it.

So, when his blue moods come on, nothing remains for him, but to be devilish.