“Oh, don’t use so many long words all at once,” Sylvia begged. “I like a long word now and then, because I’m collecting long words, but I can’t collect them and understand what you’re talking about at the same time. Do you think I ought to go to church?”
“No, no, a thousand times no,” Philip replied. “You’ve luckily escaped from religion as a social observance. Do you feel the need for it? Have you ineffable longings?”
“I know that word,” Sylvia said. “It means something that can’t be said in words, doesn’t it? Well, I’ve often had longings like that, especially in Hampstead, but no longings that had anything to do with going to church. How could they have, if they were ineffable?”
“Quite true,” Philip agreed. “And therefore be grateful that you’re a pagan. If ever a confounded priest gets hold of you and tries to bewitch you with his mumbo-jumbo, send for me and I’ll settle him. No, no, going to church of one’s own free will is either a drug (sometimes a stimulant, sometimes a narcotic) or it’s mere snobbery. In either case it is a futile waste of time, because there are so many problems in this world—you’re one of the most urgent—that it’s criminal to avoid their solution by speculating upon the problem of the next world, which is insoluble.”
“But is there another world?” she asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“And all those announcements in the cemetery meant nothing?”
“Nothing but human vanity—the vanity of the dead and the vanity of the living.”
“Thanks,” Sylvia said. “I thought that was probably the explanation.”
Mabel, who had long ago admitted that Philip was just as funny as Sylvia had described him, often used to ask her what they found to talk about.