In his autobiography Report to Greco, Nikos Kazantzakis describes his forty day sojourn on Mount Athos in 1914 with the poet Angelos Sikelianos. There he met Father Makarios, an ascetic, with whom he engaged in discussions about faith and doubt. Kazantzakis, who was heavily influenced by Darwin, Nietzsche and Bergson, would rail against the established Church, especially what he called its life-denying morality. Though he rejected the asceticism of Father Makarios, he respected his rejection of spiritual mediocrity. One conversation in particular went as follows:
