Page:Mosquitos (Faulkner).pdf/47

 that your new ideal of willynilly Service without request or recourse is better than your old ideal of humility? No, no”—as the other would have spoken—“I don’t mean as far as results go. The only ones who ever gain by the spiritual machinations of mankind are the small minority who gain emotional or mental or physical exercise from the activity itself, never the passive majority for whom the crusade is set afoot.”

“Katharsis by peristalsis,” murmured the blond young man, who was nurturing a reputation for cleverness. Fairchild said:

“Are you opposed to religion, then—in its general sense, I mean?”

“Certainly not,” the Semitic man answered. “The only sense in which religion is general is when it benefits the greatest number in the same way. And the universal benefit of religion is that it gets the children out of the house on Sunday morning.”

“But education gets them out of the house five days a week,” Fairchild pointed out.

“That’s true, too. But I am not at home myself on those days: education has already got me out of the house six days a week.” The waiter brought Mr. Talliaferro’s coffee. Fairchild lit another cigarette.

“So you believe the sole accomplishment of education is that it keeps us away from home?”

“What other general result can you name? It doesn’t make us all brave or healthy or happy or wise, it doesn’t even keep us married. In fact, to take an education by the modern process is like marrying in haste and spending the rest of your life making the best of it. But, understand me: I have no quarrel with education. I don’t think it hurts you much, except to make you unhappy and unfit for work, for which man was cursed by the gods before they had learned