"Three Irishmen meet," said Rodney; "one seeking a country with a future, one seeking a country with a past, and one thinking of going back to a country without past or future."
"Is Harding going back to Ireland?" said Carmady.
"Yes," said Rodney. "You tried to snuff out the Catholic candle, but Harding hopes to trim it."
"I'm tired of talking about Ireland. I've talked enough."
"This is the last time, Carmady, you'll be called to talk about Ireland. We'd like to hear you."
"There is no free thought, and where there is no free thought there is no intellectual life. The priests take their ideas from Rome cut and dried like tobacco and the people take their ideas from the priests cut and dried like tobacco. Ireland is a terrifying example of what becomes of a country when it accepts prejudices and conventions and ceases to inquire out the truth."
"You don't believe," said Harding, "in the possibility of a Celtic renaissance—that with the revival of the languages?"
"I do not believe in Catholics. The Catholic kneels like the camel that burdens may be laid upon him. You know as well as I do, Harding, that the art and literature of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were due to a sudden dispersal, a sudden shedding of the prejudices and conventions of the middle ages; the renaissance was a joyous returning to Hellenism, the source of all beauty. There is as little free love in Ireland as there is free thought; men have ceased to care for women and women to care for men. Nothing thrives in Ireland but the celibate, the priest, the nun, and the ox. There is no unfaith, and the violence of the priest is against any sensual transgression. A girl marries at once or becomes a nun—a free girl is a danger. There is no courtship, there is no walking out, and the passion which is the direct inspiration of all the world's music and art is reduced to the mere act of begetting children."
"Love books his passage in the emigrant ship," said Rodney. "You speak truly. There are no bastards in Ireland; and the bastard is the outward sign of inward grace."
"That which tends to weaken life is the only evil, that which strengthens life the only good, and the result of this puritanical Catholicism will be an empty Ireland."