TREBELL. Quite so, you naturally prejudiced blighter. That priestcraft don't
need re-inforcing.
WEDGECROFT. It needs recognition.
TREBELL. What! It's the only thing most people believe in. Talk about
superstition! However, there's more life in you. Therefore it's to be
schoolmasters.
WEDGECROFT. How?
TREBELL. Listen again, young man. In the youth of the world, when priests
were the teachers of men....
WEDGECROFT. [_Not to be preached at._] And physicians of men.
TREBELL. Shut up.
WEDGECROFT. If there's any real reform going, I want my profession made into
a state department. I won't shut up for less.
TREBELL. [_Putting this aside with one finger._] I'll deal with you later.
There's still Youth in the world in another sense; but the priests haven't
found out the difference yet, so they're wasting most of their time.
WEDGECROFT. Religious education won't do now-a-days.
TREBELL. What's Now-a-days? You're very dull, Gilbert.
WEDGECROFT. I'm not duller than the people who will have to understand your
scheme.
TREBELL. They won't understand it. I shan't explain to them that education
_is_ religion, and that those who deal in it are priests without any laying
on of hands.
WEDGECROFT. No matter what they teach?
TREBELL. No ... the matter is how they teach it. I see schools in the
future, Gilbert, not built next to the church, but on the site of the
church.
WEDGECROFT. Do you think the world is grown up enough to do without dogma?
TREBELL. Yes, I do.
WEDGECROFT. What!... and am I to write my prescriptions in English?
TREBELL. Yes, you are.
WEDGECROFT. Lord save us! I never thought to find you a visionary.
TREBELL. Isn't it absurd to think that in a hundred years we shall be giving
our best brains and the price of them not to training grown men into the
discipline of destruction ... not even to curing the ills which we might be
preventing ... but to teaching our children. There's nothing else to be done
... nothing else matters. But it's work for a priesthood.
WEDGECROFT. [_Affected; not quite convinced._] Do you think you can buy a
tradition and transmute it?
TREBELL. Don't mock at money.
WEDGECROFT. I never have.
TREBELL. But you speak of it as an end not as a means. That's unfair.
WEDGECROFT. I speaks as I finds.
TREBELL. I'll buy the Church, not with money, but with the promise of new
life. [_A certain rather gleeful cunning comes over him._] It'll only look
like a dose of reaction at first ... Sectarian Training Colleges endowed to
the hilt.
WEDGECROFT. What'll the Nonconformists say?
TREBELL. Bribe them with the means of equal efficiency. The crux of the
whole matter will be in the statutes. I'll force on those colleges.
WEDGECROFT. They'll want dogma.
TREBELL. Dogma's not a bad thing if you've power to adapt it occasionally.
WEDGECROFT. Instead of spending your brains in explaining it. Yes, I agree.
TREBELL. [_With full voice._] But in the creed I'll lay down as unalterable
there shall be neither Jew nor Greek.... What do you think of St. Paul,
Gilbert?
WEDGECROFT. I'd make him the head of a college.
TREBELL. I'll make the Devil himself head of a college, if he'll undertake
to teach honestly all he knows.
WEDGECROFT. And he'll conjure up Comte and Robespierre for you to assist in
this little _rechauffée_ of their schemes.
TREBELL. Hullo! Comte I knew about. Have I stolen from Robespierre too?
WEDGECROFT. [_Giving out the epigram with an air._] Property to him who can
make the best use of it.
TREBELL. And then what we must do is to give the children power over their
teachers?
_Now he is comically enigmatic._ WEDGECROFT _echoes him._
WEDGECROFT. And what exactly do you mean by that?
TREBELL. [_Serious again._] How positive a pedagogue would you be if you had
to prove your cases and justify your creed every century or so to the pupils
who had learnt just a little more than you could teach them? Give power to
the future, my friend ... not to the past. Give responsibility ... even if
you give it for your own discredit. What's beneath trust deeds and last
wills and testaments, and even acts of Parliament and official creeds? Fear
of the verdict of the next generation ... fear of looking foolish in their
eyes. Ah, we ... doing our best now ... must be ready for every sort of
death. And to provide the means of change and disregard of the past is a
secret of statesmanship. Presume that the world will come to an end every
thirty years if it's not reconstructed. Therefore give responsibility ...
give responsibility ... give the children power.
WEDGECROFT. [_Disposed to whistle._] Those statutes will want some framing.
TREBELL. [_Relapsing to a chuckle._] There's an incidental change to
foresee. Disappearance of the parson into the schoolmaster ... and the
Archdeacon into the Inspector ... and the Bishop into--I rather hope he'll
stick to his mitre, Gilbert.
WEDGECROFT. Some Ruskin will arise and make him.
TREBELL. [_As he paces the room and the walls of it fade away to him._] What
a church could be made of the best brains in England, sworn only to learn
all they could teach what they knew without fear of the future or favour to
the past ... sworn upon their honour as seekers after truth, knowingly to
tell no child a lie. It will come.
WEDGECROFT. A priesthood of women too? There's the tradition of service with
them.
TREBELL. [_With the sourest look yet on his face._] Slavery ... not quite
the same thing. And the paradox of such slavery is that they're your only
tyrants.
[_At this moment the bell of the telephone upon the table rings. He
goes to it talking the while._]
One has to be very optimistic not to advocate the harem. That's simple and
wholesome.... Yes?