CUSINS. Barbara: I am going to accept this offer.
BARBARA. I thought you would.
CUSINS. You understand, don't you, that I had to decide without consulting you. If I had thrown the burden of the choice on you, you would sooner or later have despised me for it.
BARBARA. Yes: I did not want you to sell your soul for me any more than for this inheritance.
CUSINS. It is not the sale of my soul that troubles me: I have sold it too often to care about that. I have sold it for a professorship. I have sold it for an income. I have sold it to escape being imprisoned for refusing to pay taxes for hangmen's ropes and unjust wars and things that I abhor. What is all human conduct but the daily and hourly sale of our souls for trifles? What I am now selling it for is neither money nor position nor comfort, but for reality and for power.
BARBARA. You know that you will have no power, and that he has none.
CUSINS. I know. It is not for myself alone. I want to make power for the world.
BARBARA. I want to make power for the world too; but it must be spiritual power.
CUSINS. I think all power is spiritual: these cannons will not go off by themselves. I have tried to make spiritual power by teaching Greek. But the world can never be really touched by a dead language and a dead civilization. The people must have power; and the people cannot have Greek. Now the power that is made here can be wielded by all men.
BARBARA. Power to burn women's houses down and kill their sons and tear their husbands to pieces.