be a labourer or a pastor, even though I have lived fifty years, I may
have great experience about my work and about life, but it will never be
so great as the united experience of all those who have preceded me. Can
I scorn the accumulation of wisdom that past generations hand down to
us?"

"If you wish me to tell you the truth, for me your argument has no
weight," answered Caesar coldly.

"No?"

"No. It is undeniable that there is a sum of knowledge that comes from
father to son, from one labourer to another, and from one pastor to
another. But what value have these rudimentary, vague experiences,
compared to the united experience of all the men of science there have
been in the world? It is as if you told me that the stock of knowledge
of a quack was greater and better than that of a wise physician."

"I am not talking," answered the Father, "of pure science. I am talking
of applied science. Is one of your universal savants going to occupy
himself with the way of sowing or of threshing in Castro?"

"Yes. He has already occupied himself with it, because he has occupied
himself with the way of sowing or threshing in general, and, what is
more, with the variations in the processes that may be occasioned by the
kind of soil, the climate, etc."

"And do you believe that such scientific pragmatism can be substituted
for the natural pragmatism born of the people's loins, created by them
through centuries and centuries of life?"

"Yes. That is to say, I believe it can purify it; that it can cast out
of this pragmatism, as you call it, all that is wrong, absurd, and false
and keep what good there may be." "And for you the absurd and false is
Catholic morality."

"It is."

"You are not willing to discuss whether Catholicism is true or is a lie;
you consider it a ruinous doctrine which produces decadence. I have been
told that you have stated that on various occasions."

"It is true. I have said so."

"Then we do not agree. Catholicism is useful; Catholicism is efficient."

"For what? For this life?"

"Yes."

"No. Pshaw! It may be useful when it comes to dying? Where there is
Catholicism there is ruin and misery."

"Nevertheless, there is no misery in Belgium."

"Certainly there is none, but in that country Catholicism is not what it
is in Spain."

"Of course it isn't," exclaimed the friar, shouting, "because what
characterizes Spanish Catholicism is Spain, poverty-stricken, fanatic
Spain, and not the Ca