In the pause that followed, Brother Copas felt himself nudged from behind. He cleared his throat and inclined himself with a grave bow.
"My lord," he said, "my fellow-petitioners here have asked me to speak first to any points that may be raised. I have stipulated, however, that they hold themselves free to disavow me here in your lordship's presence, if on any point I misrepresent them."
The Bishop nodded encouragingly.
"Well then, my lord, it is peculiarly hard to speak for them when at the outset of the inquiry you meet us with a wholly unexpected appeal … an appeal (shall I say?) to sentiment rather than to strict reason."
"I admit that."
"As I admit the appeal to be a strong one.… But before I try to answer it, may I deal with a sentence or two which (pardon me) seemed less relevant than the rest?… If a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand. True enough, my lord: but neither can it aspire."
The Bishop lifted his eyebrows. But before he could interpose a word Brother Copas had mounted a hobby and was riding it, whip and spur.
"My lord, when a Hellene built a temple he took two pillars, set them upright in the ground, and laid a third block of stone a-top of them. He might repeat this operation a few times or a many, according to the size at which he wished to build. He might carve his pillars, and flourish them off with acanthus capitals, and run friezes along his architraves: but always in these three stones, the two uprights and the beam, the trick of it resided. And his building lasted. The pillars stood firm in solid ground, into which the weight of the cross-beam pressed them yet more firmly. The whole structure was there to endure, if not for ever, at least until some ass of a fellow came along and kicked it down to spite an old religion, because he had found a new one.… But this Gothic—this Cathedral, for example, which it seems we must help to preserve—is fashioned only to kick itself down."
"It aspires."
"Precisely, my lord; that is the mischief. When the Greek temple was content to repose upon natural law—when the Greek builder said, 'I will build for my gods greatly yet lowlily, measuring my effort to those powers of man which at their fullest I know to be moderate, making my work harmonious with what little it is permitted to me to know'—in jumps the rash Christian, saying with the men of Babel, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven; or, in other words, 'Let us soar above the law of earth and take the Kingdom of Heaven by storm.'… With what result?"