He wasn’t going to get off that easy.
Let me ask an easier question then, Richard Rigel said. You are in contact with this "universal source of things," aren’t you?
Yes, said the author. You are too, if only you’d understand it.
Well, I’m trying, said Richard Rigel, but you’re just going to have to help me a little. This "universal source of things" moreover tells you what’s good and what’s not good, doesn’t it? Isn’t that right?
Yes, said the author.
Well, we’ve been talking in a rather general way so far, now let me ask a rather specific question: did the universal source of things, that is responsible for the creation of Heaven and Earth, broadcast on your radio receiver as you stumbled across my boat at two a.m. this morning that the woman you were stumbling with was an Angel of Quality?
What? the author asked.
I’ll repeat, he said. Did God tell you that Miss Lila M. Blewitt of Rochester, New York, with whom you stumbled across my deck at two this morning, has Quality?
What god?
Forget God. Do you personally think Miss Lila M. Blewitt is a Woman of Quality?
Yes.
Richard Rigel stopped. He hadn’t expected this answer.
Could the Great Author really be so stupid?… Maybe he had some trick up his sleeve… Richard Rigel waited but nothing came.
Well, he said after a long pause, the Great Source of All Things is really coming up with some surprises these days.
He leaned forward and addressed the Great Author with deep gravity. Please will you, in future days, consider the possibility that the "Great Source of All Things," that speaks only to you and not to me, is, like so many of your ideas, just a figment of your own fertile imagination, a figment that allows you to justify any act of your own immorality as somehow God-given. I consider that undefined "Quality" to be a very dangerous commodity. It’s the stuff fools and fanatics are made of.
He waited for the author to drop his gaze or wince or blanch or get angry or walk out or give some sign of defeat, but he seemed to just settle back into his usual detachment.
He’s really out of it, Richard Rigel thought. But no matter. The spine of his whole case for Quality was broken.
When the old woman came to take their dishes the author finally asked, Do you get along entirely without Quality?
He can’t defend himself, Richard Rigel thought, and now he wants to cross-examine me. He looked at his watch. There was enough time. No, I don’t get along without Quality entirely, he said.
Then how do you define it?
Richard Rigel settled back in his chair. To begin with, he said, quality that is independent of experience doesn’t exist. I’ve done very well without it all these years and I’m sure I will continue without any difficulty whatsoever.
The author interrupted, I didn’t say Quality was independent of experience.
Well, now you asked me to define quality, Richard Rigel snapped, and I’ve started to do that. Why don’t you just let me continue?
All right.
I find quality to be always involved with experience of specific things, but if you ask me which things have quality and which don’t I’d have a hard time answering without enumerating. But I’d say that in general, and with many qualifications, quality is found in values I’ve learned in childhood and grown up with and used all my life and have found nothing wrong with. Those are values that are shared by personal friends and family, my law associates and other companions. Because we believe in these common values we’re able to act morally toward one another.
In the practice of law, he said, we come into contact with a fair-sized number of people who do not share traditional moral values, but feel rather that what is good and what is bad is a matter of their own independent judgment. Does that sound familiar?
The author nodded. He’d better. He could hardly do anything else.
Well, we give them a name, Rigel continued. We call them criminals.
The author looked as if he wanted to interrupt again but Rigel waved him down. Now you may argue, and many do, that the values of the community and the laws they produce are all wrong. That’s permissible. The law of the land guarantees you the right to hold that opinion. And moreover, the laws provide you with political and judicial recourses by which to change the "bad" laws of the community. But as long as those recourses are there and until those laws are changed neither you nor Lila nor anyone else can just go acting as you please in disregard of everyone else, deciding what does and what does not have "Quality." You do have a moral and legal obligation to obey the same rules others do.
Rigel continued, One of the things that angered me most about your book was its appearance at a time when so many young people all over the country put themselves above the law with criminal acts -draft dodgers, arsonists, political traitors, revolutionists, even assassins, all of them justifying themselves with the belief that they alone can see the God-given truth that no one else can see.
You talked for chapter after chapter about how to preserve the underlying form of a motorcycle, but you didn’t say a single word about how to preserve the underlying form of society. And so your book may have been a big seller among some of these radicals and cult groups who are looking for that sort of thing. They’re looking for anything that will justify their doing as they please. And you gave them support. You gave them encouragement. He felt his voice becoming angry. I’ve no doubt that your intentions were good, but whatever your intentions may have been it was the devil’s work you were doing.
He sat back. The author looked stunned. Good. Capella looked sober too. Good. Bill was a good boy. These radical intellectuals can sometimes get hold of people his age and fill them with their damned fads and get them believing them because they aren’t old enough yet to see what the world is really like. But Bill Capella he had hopes for.
It’s not the devil’s work I’m doing, said the author.
You’re trying to do what has "quality," isn’t that right?
Yes, the author said.
Well, do you see what happens when you get all involved in fine-sounding words that nobody can define? That’s why we have laws, to define what quality is. These definitions may not be as perfect as you’d like them but I can promise you they’re a whole lot better than having everybody run around doing as he pleases. We’ve seen the results of that.
The author looked confused. Capella looked amazed. Richard Rigel felt pleased at that. He had made his point at last, and he always enjoyed that, even when he wasn’t getting paid for it. That was his skill. Maybe he should write a book about quality and what it really was.