"Not on the surface, perhaps," he said, "but present-day education is a snare. We are a vulgar nation, you know. That is what is really the matter with us--our ambitions are vulgar, our pride is vulgar. We want to fit into the world and get the most we can out of it; we don't, most of us, just want to give it our best. That's what I mean by vulgarity, wanting to take and not wanting to give." He was silent for a minute, and then he said: "Do you believe in God?" "I hardly know," I said. "Not very much, I am afraid, in the kind of God that I have heard preached about." "What do you mean?" he said. "Well," I said, "it's rather a large question--but I used to think, both at school and at Oxford, that many of the men who were rather disapproved of, that did quite bad things, and tried experiments, and knocked up against nastiness of various kinds, but who were brave in their way and kind, and not mean or spiteful or fault-finding, were more the sort of people that the force--or whatever it is, behind the world--was trying to produce than many of the virtuous people. What was called virtue and piety had something stifling and choking about it, I used to think. I had a tutor at school who was a parson, and he was a good sort of man, too, in a way. But I used to feel suddenly dreary with him, as if there were a whole lot of real things and interesting things which he was afraid of. I couldn't say what I thought to him--only what I felt he wanted me to think. That's a bad answer," I went on, "but I haven't really considered it." "No, it isn't a bad answer," he said, "It's all right! The moment you feel stifled with anyone, whatever the subject is--art, books, religion, life--there is something wrong. Do you say any prayers?" "No," I said, "to be honest, I don't." "You must take to it again," he said. "You can't get on without prayer. And if you come here," he said, "you may expect to hear about God. I talk a good deal about God. I don't believe in things being too sacred to talk about--it's the bad things that ought not to be mentioned. I am interested in God, more than I am interested in anything else. I can't make Him out--and yet I believe that He needs me, in a way, as much as I need Him. Does that sound profane to you?" "No," I said, "it's new to me. No one ever spoke about God to me like that before."