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 attitude . . the child's attitude. 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 crushingly 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 assimilated 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 godliness, 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.