TREBELL. [_With reasoning in his tone._] Well . . why not? Listen here. In drafting an act of Parliament one must alternately imagine oneself God Almighty and the most ignorant prejudiced little blighter who will be affected by what's passed. God says: Let's have done with Heaven and Hell . . it's the Earth that shan't pass away. Why not turn all those theology mongers into doctors or schoolmasters? WEDGECROFT. As to doctors-- 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?