In Mayo, almost in my own parish, was fought the most famous battle in Irish legend; from Mayo came Davitt, the Land League, and now a discovery which will re-create Ireland. The shepherds will fight hard, but the sword I found in my garden will prevail against the crozier, and by degrees the parish priest will pass away, like his ancestor the Druid.

I remembered the absurd review The Times published about the Descent of Man, and Matthew Arnold's fine phrase about the difficulty of persuading men to rise out of the unclean straw of their intellectual habits—his very words, no doubt—and his wisest, for the human mind declines if not turned out occasionally; mental, like bodily, cleanliness is a habit; and when Papists have been persuaded to bring up their children Protestants the next generation may cross over to the Agnostic end of the quadrille. My co-religionists will not like to hear me say it, but I will say it all the same: Protestantism is but a stage in the human journey; and man will continue to follow his natural evolution despite the endless solemnity of Wolfgang Goethe, who captured the admiration of all the pundits when he said that it would have been better if Luther had never been born, meaning thereby that Luther saved perishing Christianity. Arnold, who is nearly as pompous as Goethe and more vindictive, saw that man likes to bide like a pig in a sty. But enough of Arnold; I must not lead my readers into thinking that a single striking phrase is sufficient condonation for his very Rugby prose, epitomised in that absurd line about seeing life steadily and seeing it whole, a line that led one generation gaping into the wilderness, John Eglinton heading it.... To John I shall have to go presently, but I shall have to tell AE the great news first. Today is Wednesday, Thursday, Friday—on Saturday night!

And on Saturday night I was out on my doorstep, looking down the street to see if AE were coming, trying to discover his appearance in that of every distant passer-by. He did not come, and dinner dragged itself slowly through its three courses, and vowing that I didn't care a brass farthing whether he came or stayed, I rose up from the table and pitched myself into an armchair. All the same I was glad to hear his knock about nine. He came in sweeping a great mass of hair from his forehead and telling me that he had had to go to Foxrock to meet some man from Germany who had written a book about economics, and, having discussed rural banks all the afternoon, he was ready to talk to me about impressionist painting till midnight, and to read me an article which would have interested me if I had not been already absorbed by my idea.

AE, I've made a discovery that will revolutionise Ireland.

It seemed to me that he should start up from his chair and wave his hands; but he continued smoking his old pipe, looking at me from time to time, till at last there was nothing else for me to do but to throw myself upon his mercy, asking him if it weren't very wonderful that nobody had noticed the fact that dogma and literature are incompatible. He seemed to think that everybody knew that this was so; and is there anything more discouraging than to find one's daring definitions accepted as commonplace truths?

Then, my dear AE, you've been extraordinarily remiss. You should have gone down and preached in Bray, taking for your text, Dogma corrodes the intelligence. You weren't stoned when you preached that—

The Catholics will not admit their intellectual inferiority.

But if the history of the world proves it?

All the same—

When I say no Catholic literature, of course I mean that ninety and five per cent of the world's literature was written by Protestants and Agnostics.



Well, what's to be done?

AE was dry, very dry. The German economist seemed to have taken all the sting out of him, and I began to see that in this new adventure he would be of little use to me. Rolleston has read every literature, but he had retired to Wicklow, his family having outgrown the house on Pembroke Road, and it was reported that he now was more interested in sheep than in books. Besides, he is a Protestant, and it would be more enlightening to hear a Catholic on the subject of my great discovery. A Catholic would have to put up some sort of defence, unless, indeed, he entrenched himself in theology, saying that it was no part of the business of Catholicism to consider whether dogma tended to encourage or repress literary activities. To this defence, the true one, I should have no answer.

Gill is my man, I said, as I got out of bed on Monday morning. He was educated at Trinity, and has lived in France. It will no doubt be disagreeable to him to listen to my proofs one after the other, but my business today is not to take Gill out for a pleasant walk, but to find out what defence an educated Catholic can put up.

Hullo, my dear Moore! Gill said, raising his eyes from his writing-table.

I've come to take you for a walk, Gill.

I'll be ready in a few minutes.

And I watched my friend, who closed one eye curiously as he signed his letters, his secretary standing over him, handing them to him, one after the other, and answering questions until one of his lecturers came in, a man called Fletcher. The lecturer and Gill talked away, each answering the other as echoes do down a mountain-side, until at last I had to beg Fletcher to desist, and giving Gill his hat, I persuaded him out of the office down the stairs. Even when we were in the street he was undecided whether we should go along the square, wandering down Grafton street, or whether we should treat ourselves to the Pembroke Road. The hawthorns are in flower and thrushes are singing there. Gill agreed and we tripped along together, Gill yawning in the midst of his enjoyment, as is his wont—delightful little yawns. We yawn like dogs, a sudden gape and all is over; but Gill yawns like a cat, and a cat yawns as he eats, with gourmandise. We can read a cat's yawn in his eyes long before it appears in his jaws. Tom settles himself and waits for the yawn, enjoying it in anticipation. His sensuality is expressed in his yawn; his moustaches go up just like a cat's. His yawn is one of the sights of our town, and is on exhibition constantly at the Abbey Theatre. We do not go to the Abbey Theatre to watch it, but we watch it when we are at the Abbey, and we enjoy it oftener during a bad play than we do during a good one—The Play Boy distracts our attention from it, but when Deirdre is performed his yawns while our tedium away. His yawn is what is most real, most essential in him; it is himself; it inspires him; and out of his yawn wisdom comes. (Does this theory regarding the source of his wisdom conflict with an earlier theory?) He yawns in the middle of his own speeches, oftener, so I am assured, than any one of his auditors. He has been seen yawning in chapel, and it is said that he yawns even in those intimate moments of existence when—but I will not labour the point; we can have no exact knowledge on this subject whether or no Gill yawns when he—we will dismiss all the stories that have collected about these yawns as apocryphal, restricting our account to those yawns that happen—well, in our faces.

Gill and I leaned over Baggot Street Bridge, watching the canal-boat rising up in the lock, the opening of the gates to allow the boat to go through, and the hitching on of the rope to the cross-bar. The browsing-horse, roused by a cry, stuck his toes into the towing-path, and the strain began again all the way to the next lock, the boy flourishing a leafy bough, just pulled from the hedge. We continued our interrupted walk, glad that we had not been born canal-horses, Gill's step as airy as his thoughts, and, as we walked under flowering boughs, he began to talk to me about my volume of peasant stories. I was glad he did, for I had just found another translator, an Irish speaker, a Kerry man, and reckoned on this piece of news to interest him. But as soon as I mentioned that my friend was a Protestant and was going to take Orders, Gill spoke of Soupers, and on my asking him his reason for doing so, he said a man with so Irish a name, and coming from so Catholic a part of the country, could not have come from any but Catholic stock.

It has always seemed to me that if a man may modify his political attitude as Gill had done, the right to modify his spiritual can hardly be denied. But among Catholics the vert is regarded with detestation. With them religion is looked upon as a family inheritance, even more than politics. A damned irreligious lot, I thought, but did not speak my thought, for I wished the subject, dogma or literature, to arise naturally out of the conversation; I did not attempt to guide it, but just dropped a remark that even if the man in question came of Catholic stock and had separated himself from Roman formulas for worldly reasons, it did not seem to me that we should blame him, life being what it is, a tangle of motives. But it is difficult to stint oneself, and I was soon asking Gill for what reason would he have a man change his religion if pecuniary and sexual motives were excluded? No man 'verts for theological, except Newman, I said. Do you know another? And during our walk all the reasons used for 'verting were discussed. A new reason has just occurred to me, Gill—literature.

Rome was always the patron of the arts.

Pagan Rome, yes. Alexander VI saved the world from a revival of the Middle Ages by burning that disagreeable monk, Savonarola; and Julius II saved the Renaissance; but since the Council of Trent Catholics have almost ceased to write.

Gill laughed a little recklessly and contented himself with saying, Yes, it is very extraordinary ... if it be a fact.

But, Gill, why not consider this question in our walk?

I would sooner that the defence of Catholicism were taken by one more capable than myself.

Whom would you care to see undertake the task if not yourself? He spoke of Father Tom Finlay. But it was Father Tom that set me thinking on this very subject, for when I said that Irish Catholics had written very little, he concurred, saying that Maynooth, with all its education, had not produced even a theological work—his very words.

Did he say that? Gill asked, with the interest that all Catholics take in every word that comes from their priests.

But I would sooner hear what you, a layman, have to say.

Flattered by the invitation, Gill's somewhat meagre mind began to put forth long weedy sentences, and from these I gathered that I was possibly right in saying that the Church had defined her doctrines at the Council of Trent, and therefore it might be said that the Catholic mind was less free in the twentieth century than in the Middle Ages.

All the same, the great period of French literature came after the Reformation.

You know French literature as well as I do, Gill, and we'll just run through it. French literature in the sixteenth century is represented by Descartes, Rabelais, and Montaigne, all three Agnostics. In the seventeenth century French literature in the Court of Louis Quatorze, which you look upon as the Golden Age, began with Corneille and Racine, but the tragedies of Corneille and Racine do not attempt any criticism of life and the conduct of life, for their heroes and heroines were not Christians and their ideas could not come under the ban of the Church.

Fénelon?

A gentle light suited to weak eyes, but remember always that my contention is not that no Catholic ever wrote a book, but that ninety-five per cent of the world's literature is written by Agnostics and Protestants.

Bossuet?

A very elaborate and erudite rhetorician, whom Louis XIV employed to unite all the Protestant sects in one Gallican Church. He set himself to this task, but before it was finished Louis XIV had settled his differences with the Pope.

The beauty of Pascal's writing you will not deny, and his Catholicism—

Is more than doubtful, Gill. The Port Royal School has always been suspected of Protestantism, and you will not deny that Pascal's repudiation of the Sacraments justified the suspicion. Naturellement même cela vous fera croire et vous abêtira. A difficult phrase to translate, Gill; the best that I can do at this moment is, Sacraments help you to believe, but they stupefy you. But you know French as well as I do. Gill protested against my interpretation.

Then why was the phrase suppressed in the Port Royal edition by the Jesuits? Cousin restored it after referring to the original manuscript. Now, in the eighteenth century we have Voltaire, the deist, the arch-mocker, the real briseur de fers; Rousseau, a Protestant, whose writings it is said brought about the French Revolution; Diderot and Montesquieu. The nineteenth century in France was all Agnostic.

Chateaubriand!

You can have him and welcome, for through him we shall escape the danger of proving too much, but—

But what?

I was thinking of his name, which is very like him. Upon my word, Gill, our names are our souls. A most suitable name for the author of Le Génie du Christianisme, a name to be incised on the sepulchre at St Malo among the rocks out at sea, but he ordered that none should be put upon the slab; a name for an ambassador, a diplomatist, a religious reformer, but not one for a poet, an artist; a pompous ridiculous name, a soft, unreal name, a grandiose name, a windly name, a spongy name, spongy as a brioche—Chateaubrioche. And looking into Gill's face I read a gentle distress. His books were a means to an end instead of being an end in themselves. To criticise him in a phrase that he would have appreciated, I might say, Je ne trouve dans ses oeuvres que vapeur et tumulte.

Whatever you may think of his writings, you cannot deny his Catholicism, and one of these days when I'm feeling less tired—

He wrote Le Génie du Christianisme in his mistress's house, reading her a chapter every night before they went to bed. It is true that Catholics must have mistresses, as well as Protestants, but you are an Irish Catholic, and would be loath to admit as much. Chateaubriand was content to regret Atala, but Edward burnt his early poems. Verlaine was a Catholic and he was a great poet, there is no question about that, Gill. You see I am dealing fairly with you, but like Chateaubriand, Verlaine's Catholicism ne l'a nullement gêné dans sa vie. He wrote lovely poems in the French language, some were pious, some were indecent, and he spaced them out in Parallèlement. He did not look upon Catholicism as a means of government, he just liked the Liturgy. Mary and the saints were pleasing to him in stained glass, and when he came out of prison he was repentant and wrote Sagesse. Paul Verlaine! Since the Elizabethan days, was a poet ever dowered with a more beautiful name? And his verses correspond to his name. Où donc est l'âme de Verlaine? A refrain for a ballad! What shall we say? Out of hatred of the Voltairean grocer my old friend Huysmanns plunged into magic. The more ridiculous the miracle the more he believed in it; and the French ecclesiastics would be sorry to have about them many Catholics like him. Upon my word, Gill, my theory that Catholicism hasn't produced a readable book since the Reformation stands on more legs than four.

Some carts were passing at the time, and when the rattle of their wheels died down, I asked Gill what he thought of my discovery, but, detecting or seeming to detect a certain petulance in his voice, I interrupted:

But, Gill, I don't see why the discussion should annoy you. It isn't as if I were asking you to reconsider your position regarding the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, of Transubstantiation and the Pope's Infallibility. So far as I know there is no dogma declaring that Catholics are not intellectually inferior to Protestants and Agnostics. Your religion leaves you quite free to accept my theory; indeed, I think it encourages you to do so, for does not Catholicism always prefer the obedient and the poor in spirit to the courageous, the learned, and the wise? And I spoke of the Imitation of Christ till Gill became so petulant that I thought it would be well to desist, and began to speak instead on one of his favourite subjects—compromise. At once he held forth, disclaiming the ideologues of the French Revolution, who would remake the world according to their idea, without regard to the facts of human nature, and then, as if preoccupied by his intellectual relationship with Machiavelli, Gill entered upon a discussion regarding the duties of a statesman, saying that all great reforms had been effected by compromise, and it was by her genius for compromise that England had built up the Empire; and he continued in this strain until at last it was impossible for me to resist the temptation to ask him to explain to me the difference between trimming and compromise, which he did very well, inflicting defeat upon me. The trimmer, he said, compromises for his own advantage, irrespective of the welfare of the State, but the statesman who compromises is influenced by his sympathy for the needs of humanity, which should not be changed too quickly.

And this, the lag end of our argument, carried us pleasantly back over Baggot Street Bridge, but at the corner of Herbert Street, the street in which Gill lives, I could not resist a Parthian shot.

But, Gill, if compromise be so essential in human affairs, is it not a pity that the Irish haven't followed the example of the English? Especially in religion, I said.

As Gill did not answer me at once I followed him to the door of his house.

It can't be denied that Protestantism is a compromise? This Gill had to admit. But it is not one, I said, that you are likely to accept. He laughed and I returned to Ely Place, pleased by the rickety lodging-house appearance of Baggot Street against the evening sky, and, for the moment forgetful of the incompatibility of dogma and literature, my thoughts melted into a meditation, the subject of which was that the sun sets nowhere so beautifully as it does at the end of Baggot Street.

As the clocks had not yet struck seven, I turned into Stephen's Green and followed the sleek borders of the brimming lake, admiring the willow-trees in their first greenness and their reflections in the tranquil water. The old eighteenth-century brick, the slender balconies and the wide flights of steps seemed conscious that they had fallen into evil days; and horrified at the sight of a shop that had been run up at the corner of the Green, I cried, Other shops will follow it, and this beautiful city of Dublin will become in very few years as garish as London. To keep Dublin it might be well to allow it to slumber in its Catholicism.

And at these words my talk with Gill, which had already become a memory, rose up before me. He isn't a stupid man, I said, but why does his intelligence differ from mine and from the intelligence of every Protestant and Agnostic? We are different. Catholics lack initiative, I suppose that that is it. The Catholic mind loses its edge quickly. Sex sharpens it for a little while, but when the Catholic marries and settles down he very soon becomes like an old carving-knife that carves nothing. The two whetstones are sex and religious discussion, and we must keep passing our intelligences up one and down the other.

The ducks climbed out of the water. And the gulls? There was not one in the air nor on the water; and, after wondering a while if they had returned to the sea, I decided for good and all that I owed the preservation of my own intelligence to my theological interests. Some readers may prefer, or think they prefer, my earlier books, but none will deny that my intelligence has sharpened, whereas Gill's—My cook will grumble if I keep dinner waiting, and I returned to Ely Place to eat, and to meditate on the effect of dogma on literature.