no one pays any attention.  But if a man has gone into a subject with decent care, or if he has reflected upon problems of which the data are fairly well known, I think there is every reason why he should give an opinion.  It is very easy to be too conscientious.  There are plenty of fine hints of opinions in Fitzherbert’s letters.  You could make a very good book of Pensees out of them—­he had a clear, forcible, and original mind; but he did not dare to say what he thought; and you may remember that if he was ever sharply criticised, he felt it deeply, as a sort of imputation of dishonesty.  A man must not go down before criticism like that.”

“But everyone must do their work in their own way?” said I.

“Yes,” said Father Payne, “but Fitzherbert ended by doing nothing—­he only snubbed and silenced his own fine mind, by giving way to this unholy passion for examining things.  No, I want you fellows to have common-sense about these matters.  There is a great deal too much sanctity attached to print.  The written word—­there’s a dark superstition about it!  A man has as much right to write as he has to talk.  He may say to the world, to his unseen and unknown friends in it, whatever he may say to his intimates.  You should write just as you could talk to any gentleman, with the same courtesy and frankness.  Of course you must run the risk of your book falling into the hands of ill-bred people—­that can’t be helped—­and of course you must not pretend that your book is the result of deep and copious labour, if it is nothing of the kind.  But heart-breaking toil is not the only qualification for speaking.  There are plenty of complicated little topics—­all the problems which arise from the combination of individuals into societies—­which people ought to think about, and which are really everyone’s concern.  The interplay, I mean, of human relations—­the moral, religious, social, intellectual ideas—­which have all got to be co-ordinated.  A man does not need immense knowledge for that; in fact if he studies the history of such things too deeply, he is often apt to forget that old interpreters of such things had not got all the present data.  There is an immense future before writers who will interest people in and familiarise them with ideas.  Some people get absorbed in life in the wrong way, just bent on acquisition and comfort—­some people, again, live as if they were staying in somebody else’s house—­but what you want to induce men and women to do is to realise the sort of thing that life really is, and to attempt to put it in some kind of proportion.  The mischief done by men like Fitzherbert, who was fond of snapping at people who produced ideas for inspection, is that ordinary people get to confuse wisdom with knowledge; and that won’t do!  And so the man who sets to work like Fitzherbert loses his alertness and his observation, with the result that instead of bringing a very fresh and incisive mind to bear on life, he loses his way in books, and falls a victim to the awful passion for feeling able to despise other people’s opinions.”