No More Learning

He used to be queer as a child, going asleep in the fields, and coming
back with talk of white horses he saw, and bright people like angels or
whatever they were. But I mended that. I taught him to recognise stones
beyond angels with a few strokes of a rod. I would never give in to
visions or to trances.

FATHER JOHN.

We who hold the faith have no right to speak against trance or vision.
Saint Elizabeth had them, Saint Benedict, Saint Anthony, Saint
Columcille. Saint Catherine of Siena often lay a long time as if dead.

THOMAS.

That might be so in the olden time, but those things are gone out
of the world now. Those that do their work fair and honest have no
occasion to let the mind go rambling. What would send my nephew, Martin
Hearne, into a trance, supposing trances to be in it, and he rubbing
the gold on the lion and unicorn that he had taken in hand to make a
good job of for the top of the coach?

FATHER JOHN [_taking up ornament_].

It is likely it was that sent him off. The flashing of light upon
it would be enough to throw one that had a disposition to it into a
trance.
There was a very saintly man, though he was not of our church;
he wrote a great book called _Mysterium Magnum_ was seven days in
a trance. Truth, or whatever truth he found, fell upon him like a
bursting shower, and he a poor tradesman at his work. It was a ray of
sunlight on a pewter vessel that was the beginning of all. [_Goes to
the door and looks in. _] There is no stir in him yet. It is either the
best thing or the worst thing can happen to anyone, that is happening
to him now.

THOMAS.

And what in the living world can happen to a man that is asleep on his
bed?

FATHER JOHN.

There are some would answer you that it is to those who are awake that
nothing happens, and it is they that know nothing. He is gone where all
have gone for supreme truth.

THOMAS.

[_Sitting down again and taking up tools. _]

Well, maybe so. But work must go on and coachbuilding must go on,
and they will not go on the time there is too much attention given
to dreams. A dream is a sort of a shadow, no profit in it to anyone
at all.