Part 17 (1/2)

CANTELUPE. Under public control?

TREBELL. Church colleges under Church control.

CANTELUPE. There'd be others?

TREBELL. To preserve the necessary balance in the schools.

CANTELUPE. Not founded with church money?

TREBELL. Think of the grants in aid that will be released. I must ask the Treasury for a further lump sum and with that there may be sufficient for secular colleges ... if you can agree with me upon the statutes of those over which you'd otherwise have free control.

TREBELL _is weighing his words._

CANTELUPE. ”You” meaning, for instance ... what authorities in the Church?

TREBELL. Bishops, I suppose ... and others, [CANTELUPE _permits himself to smile._] On that point I shall be weakness itself and ... may I suggest ...

your seat in the cabinet will give you some control.

CANTELUPE. Statutes?

TREBELL. To be framed in the best interests of educational efficiency.

CANTELUPE. [_Finding an opening._] I doubt if we agree upon the meaning to be attached to that term.

TREBELL. [_Forcing the issue._] What meaning do you attach to it?

CANTELUPE. [_Smiling again._] I have hardly a sympathetic listener.

TREBELL. You have an unprejudiced one ... the best you can hope for. I was not educated myself. I learnt certain things that I desired to know ... from reading my first book--Don Quixote it was--to mastering Company Law. You see, as a man without formulas either for education or religion, I am perhaps peculiarly fitted to settle the double question. I have no grudges ... no revenge to take.

CANTELUPE. [_Suddenly congenial._] Shelton's translation of Don Quixote I hope ... the modern ones have no flavour. And you took all the adventures as seriously as the Don did?

TREBELL. [_Not expecting this._] I forget.

CANTELUPE. It's the finer att.i.tude ... the child's att.i.tude. And it would enable you immediately to comprehend mine towards an education consisting merely of practical knowledge. The life of Faith is still the happy one.

What is more crus.h.i.+ngly finite than knowledge? Moral discipline is a nation's only safety. How much of your science tends in support of the great spiritual doctrine of sacrifice!

TREBELL _returns to his subject as forceful as ever._

TREBELL. The Church has a.s.similated much in her time. Do you think it wise to leave agnostic science at the side of the plate? I think, you know, that this craving for common knowledge is a new birth in the mind of man; and if your church won't recognise that soon, by so much will she be losing her grip for ever over men's minds. What's the test of G.o.dliness, but your power to receive the new idea in whatever form it comes and give it life? It is blasphemy to pick and choose your good. [_For a moment his thoughts seem to be elsewhere._] That's an unhappy man or woman or nation ... I know it if it has only come to me this minute ... and I don't care what their brains or their riches or their beauty or any of their triumph may be ... they're unhappy and useless if they can't tell life from death.

CANTELUPE. [_Interested in the digression_] Remember that the Church's claim has ever been to know that difference.

TREBELL. [_Fastening to his subject again._] My point is this: A man's demand to know the exact structure of a fly's wing, and his a.s.sertion that it degrades any child in the street not to know such a thing, is a religious revival ... a token of spiritual hunger. What else can it be? And we commercialise our teaching!

CANTELUPE. I wouldn't have it so.

TREBELL. Then I'm offering you the foundation of a new Order of men and women who'll serve G.o.d by teaching his children. Now shall we finish the conversation in prose?