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.
TREBELL. [_Fastening to his subject again._] My point is this: A man's
demand to know the exact structure of a fly's wing, and his assertion that
it degrades any child in the street not to know such a thing, is a religious
revival ... a token of spiritual hunger. What else can it be? And we
commercialise our teaching!
CANTELUPE. I wouldn't have it so.
TREBELL. Then I'm offering you the foundation of a new Order of men and
women who'll serve God by teaching his children. Now shall we finish the
conversation in prose?
CANTELUPE. [_Not to be put down._] What is the prose for God?
TREBELL. [_Not to be put down either._] That's what we irreligious people
are giving our lives to discover. [_He plunges into detail._] I'm proposing
to found about seventy-two new colleges, and of course, to bring the ones
there are up to the new standard. Then we must gradually revise all teaching
salaries in government schools ... to a scale I have in mind. Then the
course must be compulsory and the training time doubled--
CANTELUPE. Doubled! Four years?
TREBELL. Well, a minimum of three ... a university course. Remember we're
turning a trade into a calling.
CANTELUPE. There's more to that than taking a degree.
TREBELL. I think so. You've fought for years for your tests and your
atmosphere with plain business men not able to understand such lunacy. Quite
right ... atmosphere's all that matters. If one and one don't make two by
God's grace....
CANTELUPE. Poetry again!
TREBELL. I beg your pardon. Well ... you've no further proof. If you can't
plant your thumb on the earth and your little finger on the pole star you
know nothing of distances. We must do away with text-book teachers.