initial commit of ebook 13084HEADmain

9 files changed, 62576 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/old/13084-0.txt b/old/13084-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eb875c5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/13084-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,13874 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Back to Methuselah, by George Bernard Shaw
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Back to Methuselah
+
+Author: George Bernard Shaw
+
+Release Date: August 2, 2004 [eBook #13084]
+[Most recently updated: August 4, 2022]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Suzanne Shell and Project Gutenberg Distributed
+Proofreaders
+
+Editorial note: The reader is likely to notice the absence of
+                apostrophes from contractions in the essay section of
+                this work. The author disliked apostrophes and
+                often omitted them. Some of his publishers inserted
+                them, others honored his wishes. The policy of Project
+                Gutenberg is to treat apostrophes as they were in the
+                source text. In this case, apostrophes were omitted in
+                the essay section but used in the play.
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BACK TO METHUSELAH ***
+
+
+
+
+BACK TO METHUSELAH
+
+A Metabiological Pentateuch
+
+by
+
+BERNARD SHAW
+
+1921
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+The Infidel Half Century
+  The Dawn of Darwinism
+  The Advent of the Neo-Darwinians
+  Political Inadequacy of the Human Animal
+  Cowardice of the Irreligious
+  Is there any Hope in Education?
+  Homeopathic Education
+  The Diabolical Efficiency of Technical Education
+  Flimsiness of Civilization
+  Creative Evolution
+  Voluntary Longevity
+  The Early Evolutionists
+  The Advent of the Neo-Lamarckians
+  How Acquirements are Inherited
+  The Miracle of Condensed Recapitulation
+  Heredity an Old Story
+  Discovery Anticipated by Divination
+  Corrected Dates for the Discovery of Evolution
+  Defying the Lightning: a Frustrated Experiment
+  In Quest of the First Cause
+  Paley's Watch
+  The Irresistible Cry of Order, Order!
+  The Moment and the Man
+  The Brink of the Bottomless Pit
+  Why Darwin Converted the Crowd
+  How we Rushed Down a Steep Place
+  Darwinism not Finally Refutable
+  Three Blind Mice
+  The Greatest of These is Self-Control
+  A Sample of Lamarcko-Shavian Invective
+  The Humanitarians and the Problem of Evil
+  How One Touch of Darwin makes the Whole World Kin
+  Why Darwin Pleased the Socialists
+  Darwin and Karl Marx
+  Why Darwin pleased the Profiteers also
+  The Poetry and Purity of Materialism
+  The Viceroys of the King of Kings
+  Political Opportunism in Excelsis
+  The Betrayal of Western Civilization
+  Circumstantial Selection in Finance
+  The Homeopathic Reaction against Darwinism
+  Religion and Romance
+  The Danger of Reaction
+  A Touchstone for Dogma
+  What to do with the Legends
+  A Lesson from Science to the Churches
+  The Religious Art of the Twentieth Century
+  The Artist-Prophets
+  Evolution in the Theatre
+  My Own Part in the Matter
+In the Beginning: B.C. 4004 (In the Garden of Eden)
+The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas: Present Day
+The Thing Happens: A.D. 2170
+Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman: A.D. 3000
+As Far as Thought Can Reach: A.D. 31,920
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+The Infidel Half Century
+
+
+THE DAWN OF DARWINISM
+
+One day early in the eighteen hundred and sixties, I, being then a
+small boy, was with my nurse, buying something in the shop of a petty
+newsagent, bookseller, and stationer in Camden Street, Dublin, when
+there entered an elderly man, weighty and solemn, who advanced to the
+counter, and said pompously, 'Have you the works of the celebrated
+Buffoon?'
+
+My own works were at that time unwritten, or it is possible that the
+shop assistant might have misunderstood me so far as to produce a copy
+of Man and Superman. As it was, she knew quite well what he wanted; for
+this was before the Education Act of 1870 had produced shop assistants
+who know how to read and know nothing else. The celebrated Buffoon was
+not a humorist, but the famous naturalist Buffon. Every literate child
+at that time knew Buffon's Natural History as well as Esop's Fables. And
+no living child had heard the name that has since obliterated Buffon's
+in the popular consciousness: the name of Darwin.
+
+Ten years elapsed. The celebrated Buffoon was forgotten; I had doubled
+my years and my length; and I had discarded the religion of my
+forefathers. One day the richest and consequently most dogmatic of my
+uncles came into a restaurant where I was dining, and found himself,
+much against his will, in conversation with the most questionable of his
+nephews. By way of making myself agreeable, I spoke of modern thought
+and Darwin. He said, 'Oh, thats the fellow who wants to make out that we
+all have tails like monkeys.' I tried to explain that what Darwin had
+insisted on in this connection was that some monkeys have no tails.
+But my uncle was as impervious to what Darwin really said as any
+Neo-Darwinian nowadays. He died impenitent, and did not mention me in
+his will.
+
+Twenty years elapsed. If my uncle had been alive, he would have known
+all about Darwin, and known it all wrong. In spite of the efforts of
+Grant Allen to set him right, he would have accepted Darwin as the
+discoverer of Evolution, of Heredity, and of modification of species by
+Selection. For the pre-Darwinian age had come to be regarded as a Dark
+Age in which men still believed that the book of Genesis was a standard
+scientific treatise, and that the only additions to it were Galileo's
+demonstration of Leonardo da Vinci's simple remark that the earth is
+a moon of the sun, Newton's theory of gravitation, Sir Humphry Davy's
+invention of the safety-lamp, the discovery of electricity, the
+application of steam to industrial purposes, and the penny post. It was
+just the same in other subjects. Thus Nietzsche, by the two or three who
+had come across his writings, was supposed to have been the first man
+to whom it occurred that mere morality and legality and urbanity lead
+nowhere, as if Bunyan had never written Badman. Schopenhauer was
+credited with inventing the distinction between the Covenant of Grace
+and the Covenant of Works which troubled Cromwell on his deathbed.
+People talked as if there had been no dramatic or descriptive music
+before Wagner; no impressionist painting before Whistler; whilst as to
+myself, I was finding that the surest way to produce an effect of daring
+innovation and originality was to revive the ancient attraction of long
+rhetorical speeches; to stick closely to the methods of Molière; and to
+lift characters bodily out of the pages of Charles Dickens.
+
+
+THE ADVENT OF THE NEO-DARWINIANS
+
+This particular sort of ignorance does not always or often matter. But
+in Darwin's case it did matter. If Darwin had really led the world at
+one bound from the book of Genesis to Heredity, to Modification of
+Species by Selection, and to Evolution, he would have been a philosopher
+and a prophet as well as an eminent professional naturalist, with
+geology as a hobby. The delusion that he had actually achieved this
+feat did no harm at first, because if people's views are sound, about
+evolution or anything else, it does not make two straws difference
+whether they call the revealer of their views Tom or Dick. But later on
+such apparently negligible errors have awkward consequences. Darwin was
+given an imposing reputation as not only an Evolutionist, but as _the_
+Evolutionist, with the immense majority who never read his books.
+The few who never read any others were led by them to concentrate
+exclusively on Circumstantial Selection as the explanation of all the
+transformations and adaptations which were the evidence for Evolution.
+And they presently found themselves so cut off by this specialization
+from the majority who knew Darwin only by his spurious reputation, that
+they were obliged to distinguish themselves, not as Darwinians, but as
+Neo-Darwinians.
+
+Before ten more years had elapsed, the Neo-Darwinians were practically
+running current Science. It was 1906; I was fifty; I published my own
+view of evolution in a play called Man and Superman; and I found that
+most people were unable to understand how I could be an Evolutionist
+and not a Neo-Darwinian, or why I habitually derided Neo-Darwinism as
+a ghastly idiocy, and would fall on its professors slaughterously in
+public discussions. It was in the hope of making me clear the matter up
+that the Fabian Society, which was then organizing a series of lectures
+on Prophets of the Nineteenth Century, asked me to deliver a lecture
+on the prophet Darwin. I did so; and scraps of that lecture, which was
+never published, variegate these pages.
+
+
+POLITICAL INADEQUACY OF THE HUMAN ANIMAL
+
+Ten more years elapsed. Neo-Darwinism in politics had produced a
+European catastrophe of a magnitude so appalling, and a scope so
+unpredictable, that as I write these lines in 1920, it is still far from
+certain whether our civilization will survive it. The circumstances
+of this catastrophe, the boyish cinema-fed romanticism which made it
+possible to impose it on the people as a crusade, and especially the
+ignorance and errors of the victors of Western Europe when its violent
+phase had passed and the time for reconstruction arrived, confirmed a
+doubt which had grown steadily in my mind during my forty years public
+work as a Socialist: namely, whether the human animal, as he exists at
+present, is capable of solving the social problems raised by his own
+aggregation, or, as he calls it, his civilization.
+
+
+COWARDICE OF THE IRRELIGIOUS
+
+Another observation I had made was that goodnatured unambitious men are
+cowards when they have no religion. They are dominated and exploited not
+only by greedy and often half-witted and half-alive weaklings who will
+do anything for cigars, champagne, motor cars, and the more childish and
+selfish uses of money, but by able and sound administrators who can do
+nothing else with them than dominate and exploit them. Government and
+exploitation become synonymous under such circumstances; and the world
+is finally ruled by the childish, the brigands, and the blackguards.
+Those who refuse to stand in with them are persecuted and occasionally
+executed when they give any trouble to the exploiters. They fall into
+poverty when they lack lucrative specific talents. At the present moment
+one half of Europe, having knocked the other half down, is trying to
+kick it to death, and may succeed: a procedure which is, logically,
+sound Neo-Darwinism. And the goodnatured majority are looking on
+in helpless horror, or allowing themselves to be persuaded by the
+newspapers of their exploiters that the kicking is not only a sound
+commercial investment, but an act of divine justice of which they are
+the ardent instruments.
+
+But if Man is really incapable of organizing a big civilization, and
+cannot organize even a village or a tribe any too well, what is the use
+of giving him a religion? A religion may make him hunger and thirst for
+righteousness; but will it endow him with the practical capacity to
+satisfy that appetite? Good intentions do not carry with them a grain of
+political science, which is a very complicated one. The most devoted and
+indefatigable, the most able and disinterested students of this science
+in England, as far as I know, are my friends Sidney and Beatrice Webb.
+It has taken them forty years of preliminary work, in the course of
+which they have published several treatises comparable to Adam Smith's
+Wealth of Nations, to formulate a political constitution adequate to
+existing needs. If this is the measure of what can be done in a
+lifetime by extraordinary ability, keen natural aptitude, exceptional
+opportunities, and freedom from the preoccupations of bread-winning,
+what are we to expect from the parliament man to whom political science
+is as remote and distasteful as the differential calculus, and to whom
+such an elementary but vital point as the law of economic rent is a
+_pons asinorum_ never to be approached, much less crossed? Or from the
+common voter who is mostly so hard at work all day earning a living that
+he cannot keep awake for five minutes over a book?
+
+
+IS THERE ANY HOPE IN EDUCATION?
+
+The usual answer is that we must educate our masters: that is,
+ourselves. We must teach citizenship and political science at school.
+But must we? There is no must about it, the hard fact being that we must
+_not_ teach political science or citizenship at school. The schoolmaster
+who attempted it would soon find himself penniless in the streets
+without pupils, if not in the dock pleading to a pompously worded
+indictment for sedition against the exploiters. Our schools teach the
+morality of feudalism corrupted by commercialism, and hold up the
+military conqueror, the robber baron, and the profiteer, as models of
+the illustrious and the successful. In vain do the prophets who see
+through this imposture preach and teach a better gospel: the individuals
+whom they convert are doomed to pass away in a few years; and the new
+generations are dragged back in the schools to the morality of the
+fifteenth century, and think themselves Liberal when they are defending
+the ideas of Henry VII, and gentlemanly when they are opposing to them
+the ideas of Richard III. Thus the educated man is a greater nuisance
+than the uneducated one: indeed it is the inefficiency and sham of the
+educational side of our schools (to which, except under compulsion,
+children would not be sent by their parents at all if they did not act
+as prisons in which the immature are kept from worrying the mature) that
+save us from being dashed on the rocks of false doctrine instead of
+drifting down the midstream of mere ignorance. There is no way out
+through the schoolmaster.
+
+
+HOMEOPATHIC EDUCATION
+
+In truth, mankind cannot be saved from without, by schoolmasters or any
+other sort of masters: it can only be lamed and enslaved by them. It is
+said that if you wash a cat it will never again wash itself. This may or
+may not be true: what is certain is that if you teach a man anything he
+will never learn it; and if you cure him of a disease he will be unable
+to cure himself the next time it attacks him. Therefore, if you want
+to see a cat clean, you throw a bucket of mud over it, when it will
+immediately take extraordinary pains to lick the mud off, and finally be
+cleaner than it was before. In the same way doctors who are up-to-date
+(BURGE-LUBIN per cent of all the registered practitioners, and 20 per
+cent of the unregistered ones), when they want to rid you of a disease
+or a symptom, inoculate you with that disease or give you a drug that
+produces that symptom, in order to provoke you to resist it as the mud
+provokes the cat to wash itself.
+
+Now an acute person will ask me why, if this be so, our false education
+does not provoke our scholars to find out the truth. My answer is that
+it sometimes does. Voltaire was a pupil of the Jesuits; Samuel Butler
+was the pupil of a hopelessly conventional and erroneous country parson.
+But then Voltaire was Voltaire, and Butler was Butler: that is, their
+minds were so abnormally strong that they could throw off the doses of
+poison that paralyse ordinary minds. When the doctors inoculate you and
+the homeopathists dose you, they give you an infinitesimally attenuated
+dose. If they gave you the virus at full strength it would overcome your
+resistance and produce its direct effect. The doses of false doctrine
+given at public schools and universities are so big that they overwhelm
+the resistance that a tiny dose would provoke. The normal student is
+corrupted beyond redemption, and will drive the genius who resists out
+of the country if he can. Byron and Shelley had to fly to Italy, whilst
+Castlereagh and Eldon ruled the roost at home. Rousseau was hunted from
+frontier to frontier; Karl Marx starved in exile in a Soho lodging;
+Ruskin's articles were refused by the magazines (he was too rich to be
+otherwise persecuted); whilst mindless forgotten nonentities governed
+the land; sent men to the prison or the gallows for blasphemy and
+sedition (meaning the truth about Church and State); and sedulously
+stored up the social disease and corruption which explode from time to
+time in gigantic boils that have to be lanced by a million bayonets.
+This is the result of allopathic education. Homeopathic education has
+not yet been officially tried, and would obviously be a delicate
+matter if it were. A body of schoolmasters inciting their pupils to
+infinitesimal peccadilloes with the object of provoking them to exclaim,
+'Get thee behind me, Satan,' or telling them white lies about history
+for the sake of being contradicted, insulted, and refuted, would
+certainly do less harm than our present educational allopaths do; but
+then nobody will advocate homeopathic education. Allopathy has produced
+the poisonous illusion that it enlightens instead of darkening. The
+suggestion may, however, explain why, whilst most people's minds succumb
+to inculcation and environment, a few react vigorously: honest and
+decent people coming from thievish slums, and sceptics and realists from
+country parsonages.
+
+
+THE DIABOLICAL EFFICIENCY OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION
+
+But meanwhile--and here comes the horror of it--our technical
+instruction is honest and efficient. The public schoolboy who is
+carefully blinded, duped, and corrupted as to the nature of a society
+based on profiteering, and is taught to honor parasitic idleness and
+luxury, learns to shoot and ride and keep fit with all the assistance
+and guidance that can be procured for him by the most anxiously sincere
+desire that he may do these things well, and if possible superlatively
+well. In the army he learns to fly; to drop bombs; to use machine-guns
+to the utmost of his capacity. The discovery of high explosives is
+rewarded and dignified: instruction in the manufacture of the weapons,
+battleships, submarines, and land batteries by which they are applied
+destructively, is quite genuine: the instructors know their business,
+and really mean the learners to succeed. The result is that powers
+of destruction that could hardly without uneasiness be entrusted to
+infinite wisdom and infinite benevolence are placed in the hands of
+romantic schoolboy patriots who, however generous by nature, are by
+education ignoramuses, dupes, snobs, and sportsmen to whom fighting is a
+religion and killing an accomplishment; whilst political power, useless
+under such circumstances except to militarist imperialists in chronic
+terror of invasion and subjugation, pompous tufthunting fools,
+commercial adventurers to whom the organization by the nation of its own
+industrial services would mean checkmate, financial parasites on the
+money market, and stupid people who cling to the status quo merely
+because they are used to it, is obtained by heredity, by simple
+purchase, by keeping newspapers and pretending that they are organs of
+public opinion, by the wiles of seductive women, and by prostituting
+ambitious talent to the service of the profiteers, who call the tune
+because, having secured all the spare plunder, they alone can afford
+to pay the piper. Neither the rulers nor the ruled understand high
+politics. They do not even know that there is such a branch of knowledge
+as political science; but between them they can coerce and enslave
+with the deadliest efficiency, even to the wiping out of civilization,
+because their education as slayers has been honestly and thoroughly
+carried out. Essentially the rulers are all defectives; and there is
+nothing worse than government by defectives who wield irresistible
+powers of physical coercion. The commonplace sound people submit, and
+compel the rest to submit, because they have been taught to do so as
+an article of religion and a point of honor. Those in whom natural
+enlightenment has reacted against artificial education submit because
+they are compelled; but they would resist, and finally resist
+effectively, if they were not cowards. And they are cowards because they
+have neither an officially accredited and established religion nor a
+generally recognized point of honor, and are all at sixes and sevens
+with their various private speculations, sending their children perforce
+to the schools where they will be corrupted for want of any other
+schools. The rulers are equally intimidated by the immense extension
+and cheapening of the means of slaughter and destruction. The British
+Government is more afraid of Ireland now that submarines, bombs, and
+poison gas are cheap and easily made than it was of the German Empire
+before the war; consequently the old British custom which maintained a
+balance of power through command of the sea is intensified into a terror
+that sees security in nothing short of absolute military mastery of the
+entire globe: that is, in an impossibility that will yet seem possible
+in detail to soldiers and to parochial and insular patriotic civilians.
+
+
+FLIMSINESS OF CIVILIZATION
+
+This situation has occurred so often before, always with the same result
+of a collapse of civilization (Professor Flinders Petrie has let out the
+secret of previous collapses), that the rich are instinctively crying
+'Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die,' and the poor, 'How long, O
+Lord, how long?' But the pitiless reply still is that God helps those
+who help themselves. This does not mean that if Man cannot find the
+remedy no remedy will be found. The power that produced Man when the
+monkey was not up to the mark, can produce a higher creature than Man if
+Man does not come up to the mark. What it means is that if Man is to be
+saved, Man must save himself. There seems no compelling reason why he
+should be saved. He is by no means an ideal creature. At his present
+best many of his ways are so unpleasant that they are unmentionable in
+polite society, and so painful that he is compelled to pretend that pain
+is often a good. Nature holds no brief for the human experiment: it must
+stand or fall by its results. If Man will not serve, Nature will try
+another experiment.
+
+What hope is there then of human improvement? According to the
+Neo-Darwinists, to the Mechanists, no hope whatever, because improvement
+can come only through some senseless accident which must, on the
+statistical average of accidents, be presently wiped out by some other
+equally senseless accident.
+
+
+CREATIVE EVOLUTION
+
+But this dismal creed does not discourage those who believe that the
+impulse that produces evolution is creative. They have observed the
+simple fact that the will to do anything can and does, at a certain
+pitch of intensity set up by conviction of its necessity, create and
+organize new tissue to do it with. To them therefore mankind is by no
+means played out yet. If the weight lifter, under the trivial stimulus
+of an athletic competition, can 'put up a muscle,' it seems reasonable
+to believe that an equally earnest and convinced philosopher could 'put
+up a brain.' Both are directions of vitality to a certain end. Evolution
+shews us this direction of vitality doing all sorts of things: providing
+the centipede with a hundred legs, and ridding the fish of any legs at
+all; building lungs and arms for the land and gills and fins for the
+sea; enabling the mammal to gestate its young inside its body, and the
+fowl to incubate hers outside it; offering us, we may say, our choice of
+any sort of bodily contrivance to maintain our activity and increase our
+resources.
+
+
+VOLUNTARY LONGEVITY
+
+Among other matters apparently changeable at will is the duration of
+individual life. Weismann, a very clever and suggestive biologist who
+was unhappily reduced to idiocy by Neo-Darwinism, pointed out that death
+is not an eternal condition of life, but an expedient introduced to
+provide for continual renewal without overcrowding. Now Circumstantial
+Selection does not account for natural death: it accounts only for the
+survival of species in which the individuals have sense enough to decay
+and die on purpose. But the individuals do not seem to have calculated
+very reasonably: nobody can explain why a parrot should live ten times
+as long as a dog, and a turtle be almost immortal. In the case of man,
+the operation has overshot its mark: men do not live long enough: they
+are, for all the purposes of high civilization, mere children when they
+die; and our Prime Ministers, though rated as mature, divide their
+time between the golf course and the Treasury Bench in parliament.
+Presumably, however, the same power that made this mistake can remedy
+it. If on opportunist grounds Man now fixes the term of his life at
+three score and ten years, he can equally fix it at three hundred, or
+three thousand, or even at the genuine Circumstantial Selection limit,
+which would be until a sooner-or-later-inevitable fatal accident makes
+an end of the individual. All that is necessary to make him extend his
+present span is that tremendous catastrophes such as the late war shall
+convince him of the necessity of at least outliving his taste for
+golf and cigars if the race is to be saved. This is not fantastic
+speculation: it is deductive biology, if there is such a science as
+biology. Here, then, is a stone that we have left unturned, and that may
+be worth turning. To make the suggestion more entertaining than it would
+be to most people in the form of a biological treatise, I have written
+Back to Methuselah as a contribution to the modern Bible.
+
+Many people, however, can read treatises and cannot read Bibles. Darwin
+could not read Shakespear. Some who can read both, like to learn the
+history of their ideas. Some are so entangled in the current confusion
+of Creative Evolution with Circumstantial Selection by their historical
+ignorance that they are puzzled by any distinction between the two.
+For all their sakes I must give here a little history of the conflict
+between the view of Evolution taken by the Darwinians (though not
+altogether by Darwin himself) and called Natural Selection, and that
+which is emerging, under the title of Creative Evolution, as the
+genuinely scientific religion for which all wise men are now anxiously
+looking.
+
+
+THE EARLY EVOLUTIONISTS
+
+The idea of Evolution, or Transformation as it is now sometimes called,
+was not first conceived by Charles Darwin, nor by Alfred Russel Wallace,
+who observed the operation of Circumstantial Selection simultaneously
+with Charles. The celebrated Buffoon was a better Evolutionist than
+either of them; and two thousand years before Buffon was born, the Greek
+philosopher Empedocles opined that all forms of life are transformations
+of four elements, Fire, Air, Earth, and Water, effected by the two
+innate forces of attraction and repulsion, or love and hate. As lately
+as 1860 I myself was taught as a child that everything was made out of
+these four elements. Both the Empedocleans and the Evolutionists were
+opposed to those who believed in the separate creation of all forms
+of life as described in the book of Genesis. This 'conflict between
+religion and science', as the phrase went then, did not perplex my
+infant mind in the least: I knew perfectly well, without knowing that I
+knew it, that the validity of a story is not the same as the occurrence
+of a fact. But as I grew up I found that I had to choose between
+Evolution and Genesis. If you believed that dogs and cats and snakes
+and birds and beetles and oysters and whales and men and women were all
+separately designed and made and named in Eden garden at the beginning
+of things, and have since survived simply by reproducing their kind,
+then you were not an Evolutionist. If you believed, on the contrary,
+that all the different species are modifications, variations, and
+elaborations of one primal stock, or even of a few primal stocks, then
+you were an Evolutionist. But you were not necessarily a Darwinian; for
+you might have been a modern Evolutionist twenty years before Charles
+Darwin was born, and a whole lifetime before he published his Origin of
+Species. For that matter, when Aristotle grouped animals with backbones
+as blood relations, he began the sort of classification which, when
+extended by Darwin to monkeys and men, so shocked my uncle.
+
+Genesis had held the field until the time (1707-1778) of Linnaeus the
+famous botanist. In the meantime the microscope had been invented. It
+revealed a new world of hitherto invisible creatures called Infusorians,
+as common water was found to be an infusion of them. In the eighteenth
+century naturalists were very keen on the Infusorian Amoebas, and were
+much struck by the way in which the members of this old family behaved
+and developed. But it was still possible for Linnaeus to begin a
+treatise by saying 'There are just so many species as there were forms
+created in the beginning,' though there were hundreds of commonplace
+Scotch gardeners, pigeon fanciers, and stock breeders then living who
+knew better. Linnaeus himself knew better before he died. In the
+last edition of his System of Nature, he began to wonder whether the
+transmutation of species by variation might not be possible. Then came
+the great poet who jumped over the facts to the conclusion. Goethe said
+that all the shapes of creation were cousins; that there must be some
+common stock from which all the species had sprung; that it was the
+environment of air that had produced the eagle, of water the seal, and
+of earth the mole. He could not say how this happened; but he divined
+that it did happen. Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles, carried
+the environment theory much further, pointing out instance after
+instance of modifications made in species apparently to adapt it to
+circumstances and environment: for instance, that the brilliant colors
+of the leopard, which make it so conspicuous in Regent's Park, conceal
+it in a tropical jungle. Finally he wrote, as his declaration of faith,
+'The world has been evolved, not created: it has arisen little by little
+from a small beginning, and has increased through the activity of the
+elemental forces embodied in itself, and so has rather grown than come
+into being at an almighty word. What a sublime idea of the infinite
+might of the great Architect, the Cause of all causes, the Father of all
+fathers, the Ens Entium! For if we would compare the Infinite, it would
+surely require a greater Infinite to cause the causes of effects than to
+produce the effects themselves.' In this, published in the year 1794,
+you have nineteenth-century Evolution precisely defined. And Erasmus
+Darwin was by no means its only apostle. It was in the air then. A
+German biologist named Treviranus, whose book was published in 1802,
+wrote, 'In every living being there exists a capacity for endless
+diversity of form. Each possesses the power of adapting its organization
+to the variations of the external world; and it is this power, called
+into activity by cosmic changes, which has enabled the simple zoophytes
+of the primitive world to climb to higher and higher stages of
+organization, and has brought endless variety into nature.' There you
+have your evolution of Man from the amoeba all complete whilst Nelson
+was still alive on the seas. And in 1809, before the battle of Waterloo,
+a French soldier named Lamarck, who had beaten his musket into a
+microscope and turned zoologist, declared that species were an illusion
+produced by the shortness of our individual lives, and that they were
+constantly changing and melting into one another and into new forms as
+surely as the hand of a clock is continually moving, though it moves so
+slowly that it looks stationary to us. We have since come to think that
+its industry is less continuous: that the clock stops for a long time,
+and then is suddenly 'put on' by a mysterious finger. But never mind
+that just at present.
+
+
+THE ADVENT OF THE NEO-LAMARCKIANS
+
+I call your special attention to Lamarck, because later on there were
+Neo-Lamarckians as well as Neo-Darwinians. I was a Neo-Lamarckian.
+Lamarck passed on from the conception of Evolution as a general law to
+Charles Darwin's department of it, which was the method of Evolution.
+Lamarck, whilst making many ingenious suggestions as to the reaction
+of external causes on life and habit, such as changes of climate,
+food supply, geological upheavals and so forth, really held as his
+fundamental proposition that living organisms changed because they
+wanted to. As he stated it, the great factor in Evolution is use and
+disuse. If you have no eyes, and want to see, and keep trying to see,
+you will finally get eyes. If, like a mole or a subterranean fish, you
+have eyes and dont want to see, you will lose your eyes. If you like
+eating the tender tops of trees enough to make you concentrate all your
+energies on the stretching of your neck, you will finally get a long
+neck, like the giraffe. This seems absurd to inconsiderate people at the
+first blush; but it is within the personal experience of all of us that
+it is just by this process that a child tumbling about the floor becomes
+a boy walking erect; and that a man sprawling on the road with a bruised
+chin, or supine on the ice with a bashed occiput, becomes a bicyclist
+and a skater. The process is not continuous, as it would be if mere
+practice had anything to do with it; for though you may improve at each
+bicycling lesson _during_ the lesson, when you begin your next lesson
+you do not begin at the point at which you left off: you relapse
+apparently to the beginning. Finally, you succeed quite suddenly, and do
+not relapse again. More miraculous still, you at once exercise the new
+power unconsciously. Although you are adapting your front wheel to your
+balance so elaborately and actively that the accidental locking of your
+handle bars for a second will throw you off; though five minutes before
+you could not do it at all, yet now you do it as unconsciously as you
+grow your finger nails. You have a new faculty, and must have created
+some new bodily tissue as its organ. And you have done it solely by
+willing. For here there can be no question of Circumstantial Selection,
+or the survival of the fittest. The man who is learning how to ride
+a bicycle has no advantage over the non-cyclist in the struggle for
+existence: quite the contrary. He has acquired a new habit, an automatic
+unconscious habit, solely because he wanted to, and kept trying until it
+was added unto him.
+
+
+HOW ACQUIREMENTS ARE INHERITED
+
+But when your son tries to skate or bicycle in his turn, he does not
+pick up the accomplishment where you left it, any more than he is born
+six feet high with a beard and a tall hat. The set-back that occurred
+between your lessons occurs again. The race learns exactly as the
+individual learns. Your son relapses, not to the very beginning, but to
+a point which no mortal method of measurement can distinguish from the
+beginning. Now this is odd; for certain other habits of yours, equally
+acquired (to the Evolutionist, of course, all habits are acquired),
+equally unconscious, equally automatic, are transmitted without any
+perceptible relapse. For instance, the very first act of your son
+when he enters the world as a separate individual is to yell with
+indignation: that yell which Shakespear thought the most tragic and
+piteous of all sounds. In the act of yelling he begins to breathe:
+another habit, and not even a necessary one, as the object of breathing
+can be achieved in other ways, as by deep sea fishes. He circulates his
+blood by pumping it with his heart. He demands a meal, and proceeds at
+once to perform the most elaborate chemical operations on the food he
+swallows. He manufactures teeth; discards them; and replaces them with
+fresh ones. Compared to these habitual feats, walking, standing upright,
+and bicycling are the merest trifles; yet it is only by going through
+the wanting, trying process that he can stand, walk, or cycle, whereas
+in the other and far more difficult and complex habits he not only does
+not consciously want nor consciously try, but actually consciously
+objects very strongly. Take that early habit of cutting the teeth: would
+he do that if he could help it? Take that later habit of decaying and
+eliminating himself by death--equally an acquired habit, remember--how
+he abhors it! Yet the habit has become so rooted, so automatic, that he
+must do it in spite of himself, even to his own destruction.
+
+We have here a routine which, given time enough for it to operate, will
+finally produce the most elaborate forms of organized life on Lamarckian
+lines without the intervention of Circumstantial Selection at all. If
+you can turn a pedestrian into a cyclist, and a cyclist into a pianist
+or violinist, without the intervention of Circumstantial Selection, you
+can turn an amoeba into a man, or a man into a superman, without it. All
+of which is rank heresy to the Neo-Darwinian, who imagines that if
+you stop Circumstantial Selection, you not only stop development but
+inaugurate a rapid and disastrous degeneration.
+
+Let us fix the Lamarckian evolutionary process well in our minds. You
+are alive; and you want to be more alive. You want an extension of
+consciousness and of power. You want, consequently, additional organs,
+or additional uses of your existing organs: that is, additional habits.
+You get them because you want them badly enough to keep trying for them
+until they come. Nobody knows how: nobody knows why: all we know is that
+the thing actually takes place. We relapse miserably from effort to
+effort until the old organ is modified or the new one created, when
+suddenly the impossible becomes possible and the habit is formed. The
+moment we form it we want to get rid of the consciousness of it so as
+to economize our consciousness for fresh conquests of life; as all
+consciousness means preoccupation and obstruction. If we had to think
+about breathing or digesting or circulating our blood we should have
+no attention to spare for anything else, as we find to our cost when
+anything goes wrong with these operations. We want to be unconscious of
+them just as we wanted to acquire them; and we finally win what we want.
+But we win unconsciousness of our habits at the cost of losing our
+control of them; and we also build one habit and its corresponding
+functional modification of our organs on another, and so become
+dependent on our old habits. Consequently we have to persist in them
+even when they hurt us. We cannot stop breathing to avoid an attack of
+asthma, or to escape drowning. We can lose a habit and discard an organ
+when we no longer need them, just as we acquired them; but this process
+is slow and broken by relapses; and relics of the organ and the habit
+long survive its utility. And if other and still indispensable habits
+and modifications have been built on the ones we wish to discard, we
+must provide a new foundation for them before we demolish the old one.
+This is also a slow process and a very curious one.
+
+
+THE MIRACLE OF CONDENSED RECAPITULATION
+
+The relapses between the efforts to acquire a habit are important
+because, as we have seen, they recur not only from effort to effort in
+the case of the individual, but from generation to generation in the
+case of the race. This relapsing from generation to generation is an
+invariable characteristic of the evolutionary process. For instance,
+Raphael, though descended from eight uninterrupted generations of
+painters, had to learn to paint apparently as if no Sanzio had ever
+handled a brush before. But he had also to learn to breathe, and digest,
+and circulate his blood. Although his father and mother were fully grown
+adults when he was conceived, he was not conceived or even born fully
+grown: he had to go back and begin as a speck of protoplasm, and to
+struggle through an embryonic lifetime, during part of which he was
+indistinguishable from an embryonic dog, and had neither a skull nor a
+backbone. When he at last acquired these articles, he was for some time
+doubtful whether he was a bird or a fish. He had to compress untold
+centuries of development into nine months before he was human enough
+to break loose as an independent being. And even then he was still so
+incomplete that his parents might well have exclaimed 'Good Heavens!
+have you learnt nothing from our experience that you come into the world
+in this ridiculously elementary state? Why cant you talk and walk and
+paint and behave decently?' To that question Baby Raphael had no answer.
+All he could have said was that this is how evolution or transformation
+happens. The time may come when the same force that compressed the
+development of millions of years into nine months may pack many more
+millions into even a shorter space; so that Raphaels may be born
+painters as they are now born breathers and blood circulators. But they
+will still begin as specks of protoplasm, and acquire the faculty of
+painting in their mother's womb at quite a late stage of their embryonic
+life. They must recapitulate the history of mankind in their own
+persons, however briefly they may condense it.
+
+Nothing was so astonishing and significant in the discoveries of the
+embryologists, nor anything so absurdly little appreciated, as this
+recapitulation, as it is now called: this power of hurrying up into
+months a process which was once so long and tedious that the mere
+contemplation of it is unendurable by men whose span of life is
+three-score-and-ten. It widened human possibilities to the extent of
+enabling us to hope that the most prolonged and difficult operation of
+our minds may yet become instantaneous, or, as we call it, instinctive.
+It also directed our attention to examples of this packing up of
+centuries into seconds which were staring us in the face in all
+directions. As I write these lines the newspapers are occupied by the
+exploits of a child of eight, who has just defeated twenty adult chess
+players in twenty games played simultaneously, and has been able
+afterwards to reconstruct all the twenty games without any apparent
+effort of memory. Most people, including myself, play chess (when they
+play it at all) from hand to mouth, and can hardly recall the last move
+but one, or foresee the next but two. Also, when I have to make an
+arithmetical calculation, I have to do it step by step with pencil and
+paper, slowly, reluctantly, and with so little confidence in the result
+that I dare not act on it without 'proving' the sum by a further
+calculation involving more ciphering. But there are men who can neither
+read, write, nor cipher, to whom the answer to such sums as I can do
+is instantly obvious without any conscious calculation at all; and the
+result is infallible. Yet some of these natural arithmeticians have but
+a small vocabulary; are at a loss when they have to find words for any
+but the simplest everyday occasions; and cannot for the life of them
+describe mechanical operations which they perform daily in the course of
+their trade; whereas to me the whole vocabulary of English literature,
+from Shakespear to the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica,
+is so completely and instantaneously at my call that I have never had
+to consult even a thesaurus except once or twice when for some reason I
+wanted a third or fourth synonym. Again, though I have tried and failed
+to draw recognizable portraits of persons I have seen every day for
+years, Mr Bernard Partridge, having seen a man once, will, without more
+strain than is involved in eating a sandwich, draw him to the life. The
+keyboard of a piano is a device I have never been able to master; yet Mr
+Cyril Scott uses it exactly as I use my own fingers; and to Sir Edward
+Elgar an orchestral score is as instantaneously intelligible at sight as
+a page of Shakespear is to me. One man cannot, after trying for years,
+finger the flute fluently. Another will take up a flute with a newly
+invented arrangement of keys on it, and play it at once with hardly a
+mistake. We find people to whom writing is so difficult that they prefer
+to sign their name with a mark, and beside them men who master systems
+of shorthand and improvise new systems of their own as easily as they
+learnt the alphabet. These contrasts are to be seen on all hands, and
+have nothing to do with variations in general intelligence, nor even
+in the specialized intelligence proper to the faculty in question: for
+example, no composer or dramatic poet has ever pretended to be able to
+perform all the parts he writes for the singers, actors, and players who
+are his executants. One might as well expect Napoleon to be a fencer, or
+the Astronomer Royal to know how many beans make five any better than
+his bookkeeper. Even exceptional command of language does not imply the
+possession of ideas to express; Mezzofanti, the master of fifty-eight
+languages, had less to say in them than Shakespear with his little Latin
+and less Greek; and public life is the paradise of voluble windbags.
+
+All these examples, which might be multiplied by millions, are cases in
+which a long, laborious, conscious, detailed process of acquirement has
+been condensed into an instinctive and unconscious inborn one. Factors
+which formerly had to be considered one by one in succession are
+integrated into what seems a single simple factor. Chains of hardly
+soluble problems have coalesced in one problem which solves itself
+the moment it is raised. What is more, they have been pushed back (or
+forward, if you like) from post-natal to pre-natal ones. The child
+in the womb may take some time over them; but it is a miraculously
+shortened time.
+
+The time phenomena involved are curious, and suggest that we are either
+wrong about our history or else that we enormously exaggerate the
+periods required for the pre-natal acquirement of habits. In the
+nineteenth century we talked very glibly about geological periods, and
+flung millions of eons about in the most lordly manner in our reaction
+against Archbishop Ussher's chronology. We had a craze for big figures,
+and positively liked to believe that the progress made by the child in
+the womb in a month was represented in prehistoric time by ages and
+ages. We insisted that Evolution advanced more slowly than any snail
+ever crawled, and that Nature does not proceed by leaps and bounds. This
+was all very well as long as we were dealing with such acquired habits
+as breathing or digestion. It was possible to believe that dozens of
+epochs had gone to the slow building up of these habits. But when we
+have to consider the case of a man born not only as an accomplished
+metabolist, but with such an aptitude for shorthand and keyboard
+manipulation that he is a stenographer or pianist at least five sixths
+ready-made as soon as he can control his hands intelligently, we
+are forced to suspect either that keyboards and shorthand are older
+inventions than we suppose, or else that acquirements can be assimilated
+and stored as congenital qualifications in a shorter time than we think;
+so that, as between Lyell and Archbishop Ussher, the laugh may not be
+with Lyell quite so uproariously as it seemed fifty years ago.
+
+
+HEREDITY AN OLD STORY
+
+It is evident that the evolutionary process is a hereditary one, or,
+to put it less drily, that human life is continuous and immortal. The
+Evolutionists took heredity for granted. So did everybody. The human
+mind has been soaked in heredity as long back as we can trace its
+thought. Hereditary peers, hereditary monarchs, hereditary castes and
+trades and classes were the best known of social institutions, and in
+some cases of public nuisances. Pedigree men counted pedigree dogs and
+pedigree horses among their most cherished possessions. Far from being
+unconscious of heredity, or sceptical, men were insanely credulous about
+it: they not only believed in the transmission of qualities and habits
+from generation to generation, but expected the son to begin mentally
+where the father left off.
+
+This belief in heredity led naturally to the practice of Intentional
+Selection. Good blood and breeding were eagerly sought after in human
+marriage. In dealing with plants and animals, selection with a view to
+the production of new varieties and the improvement and modification of
+species had been practised ever since men began to cultivate them. My
+pre-Darwinian uncle knew as well as Darwin that the race-horse and the
+dray-horse are not separate creations from the Garden of Eden, but
+adaptations by deliberate human selection of the medieval war-horse to
+modern racing and industrial haulage. He knew that there are nearly
+two hundred different sorts of dogs, all capable of breeding with one
+another and of producing cross varieties unknown to Adam. He knew that
+the same thing is true of pigeons. He knew that gardeners had spent
+their lives trying to breed black tulips and green carnations and
+unheard-of orchids, and had actually produced flowers just as strange
+to Eve. His quarrel with the Evolutionists was not a quarrel with the
+evidence for Evolution: he had accepted enough of it to prove Evolution
+ten times over before he ever heard of it. What he repudiated was
+cousinship with the ape, and the implied suspicion of a rudimentary
+tail, because it was offensive to his sense of his own dignity, and
+because he thought that apes were ridiculous, and tails diabolical when
+associated with the erect posture. Also he believed that Evolution was
+a heresy which involved the destruction of Christianity, of which, as
+a member of the Irish Church (the pseudo-Protestant one), he conceived
+himself a pillar. But this was only his ignorance; for man may deny his
+descent from an ape and be eligible as a churchwarden without being any
+the less a convinced Evolutionist.
+
+
+DISCOVERY ANTICIPATED BY DIVINATION
+
+What is more, the religious folk can claim to be among the pioneers of
+Evolutionism. Weismann, Neo-Darwinist though he was, devoted a long
+passage in his History of Evolution to the Nature Philosophy of Lorenz
+Oken, published in 1809. Oken defined natural science as 'the science
+of the everlasting transmutations of the Holy Ghost in the world.' His
+religion had started him on the right track, and not only led him to
+think out a whole scheme of Evolution in abstract terms, but guided his
+aim in a significantly good scientific shot which brought him within the
+scope of Weismann. He not only defined the original substance from which
+all forms of life have developed as protoplasm, or, as he called it,
+primitive slime (_Urschleim_), but actually declared that this slime
+took the form of vesicles out of which the universe was built. Here was
+the modern cell morphology guessed by a religious thinker long before
+the microscope and the scalpel forced it on the vision of mere
+laboratory workers who could not think and had no religion. They worked
+hard to discover the vital secrets of the glands by opening up dogs
+and cutting out the glands, or tying up their ducts, or severing their
+nerves, thereby learning, negatively, that the governors of our vital
+forces do not hold their incessant conversations through the nerves,
+and, positively, how miserably a horribly injured dog can die, leaving
+us to infer that we shall probably perish likewise if we grudge our
+guineas to Harley Street. Lorenz Oken _thought_ very hard to find out
+what was happening to the Holy Ghost, and thereby made a contribution of
+extraordinary importance to our understanding of uninjured creatures.
+The man who was scientific enough to see that the Holy Ghost is a
+scientific fact got easily in front of the blockheads who could only
+sin against it. Hence my uncle was turning his back on very respectable
+company when he derided Evolution, and would probably have recanted and
+apologized at once had anybody pointed out to him what a solecism he was
+committing.
+
+The metaphysical side of Evolution was thus no novelty when Darwin
+arrived. Had Oken never lived, there would still have been millions of
+persons trained from their childhood to believe that we are continually
+urged upwards by a force called the Will of God. In 1819 Schopenhauer
+published his treatise on The World as Will, which is the metaphysical
+complement to Lamarck's natural history, as it demonstrates that the
+driving force behind Evolution is a will-to-live, and to live, as Christ
+said long before, more abundantly. And the earlier philosophers, from
+Plato to Leibniz, had kept the human mind open for the thought of
+the universe as one idea behind all its physically apprehensible
+transformations.
+
+
+CORRECTED DATES FOR THE DISCOVERY OF EVOLUTION
+
+All this, remember, is the state of things in the pre-Darwin period,
+which so many of us still think of as a pre-evolutionary period.
+Evolutionism was the rage before Queen Victoria came to the throne. To
+fix this chronology, let me repeat the story told by Weismann of the
+July revolution in Paris in 1830, when the French got rid of Charles the
+Tenth. Goethe was then still living; and a French friend of his called
+on him and found him wildly excited. 'What do you think of the great
+event?' said Goethe. 'The volcano is in eruption; and all is in flames.
+There can no longer be discussion with closed doors.' The Frenchman
+replied that no doubt it was a terrible business; but what could they
+expect with such a ministry and such a king? 'Stuff!' said Goethe: 'I
+am not thinking of these people at all, but of the open rupture in
+the French Academy between Cuvier and St Hilaire. It is of the utmost
+importance to science,' The rupture Goethe meant was about Evolution,
+Cuvier contending that there were four species, and St Hilaire that
+there was only one.
+
+From 1830, when Darwin was an apparently unpromising lad of twenty-one,
+until 1859, when he turned the world upside down by his Origin of
+Species, there was a slump in Evolutionism. The first generation of its
+enthusiasts was ageing and dying out; and their successors were being
+taught from the Book of Genesis, just as Edward VI was (and Edward VII
+too, for that matter). Nobody who knew the theory was adding anything to
+it. This slump not only heightened the impression of entire novelty when
+Darwin brought the subject to the front again: it probably prevented
+him from realizing how much had been done before, even by his own
+grandfather, to whom he was accused of being unjust. Besides, he was
+not really carrying on the family business. He was an entirely original
+worker; and he was on a new tack, as we shall see presently. And he
+would not in any case have thought much, as a practical naturalist, of
+the more or less mystical intellectual speculations of the Deists of
+1790-1830. Scientific workers were very tired of Deism just then. They
+had given up the riddle of the Great First Cause as insoluble, and were
+calling themselves, accordingly, Agnostics. They had turned from the
+inscrutable question of Why things existed, to the spade work of
+discovering What was really occurring in the world and How it really
+occurred.
+
+With all his attention bent in this new direction, Darwin soon noticed
+that a good deal was occurring in an entirely unmystical and even
+unmeaning way of which the older speculative Deist-Evolutionists had
+taken little or no account. Nowadays, when we are turning in weary
+disgust and disillusion from Neo-Darwinism and Mechanism to Vitalism and
+Creative Evolution, it is difficult to imagine how this new departure of
+Darwin's could possibly have appealed to his contemporaries as exciting,
+agreeable, above all as hopeful. Let me therefore try to bring back
+something of the atmosphere of that time by describing a scene, very
+characteristic of its superstitions, in which I took what was then
+considered an unspeakably shocking part.
+
+
+DEFYING THE LIGHTNING: A FRUSTRATED EXPERIMENT
+
+One evening in 1878 or thereabouts, I, being then in my earliest
+twenties, was at a bachelor party of young men of the professional class
+in the house of a doctor in the Kensingtonian quarter of London. They
+fell to talking about religious revivals; and an anecdote was related of
+a man who, having incautiously scoffed at the mission of Messrs Moody
+and Sankey, a then famous firm of American evangelists, was subsequently
+carried home on a shutter, slain by divine vengeance as a blasphemer.
+A timid minority, without quite venturing to question the truth of the
+incident--for they naturally did not care to run the risk of going home
+on shutters themselves--nevertheless shewed a certain disposition to
+cavil at those who exulted in it; and something approaching to an
+argument began. At last it was alleged by the most evangelical of the
+disputants that Charles Bradlaugh, the most formidable atheist on the
+Secularist platform, had taken out his watch publicly and challenged the
+Almighty to strike him dead in five minutes if he really existed and
+disapproved of atheism. The leader of the cavillers, with great heat,
+repudiated this as a gross calumny, declaring that Bradlaugh had
+repeatedly and indignantly contradicted it, and implying that the
+atheist champion was far too pious a man to commit such a blasphemy.
+This exquisite confusion of ideas roused my sense of comedy. It was
+clear to me that the challenge attributed to Charles Bradlaugh was a
+scientific experiment of a quite simple, straightforward, and proper
+kind to ascertain whether the expression of atheistic opinions really
+did involve any personal risk. It was certainly the method taught in the
+Bible, Elijah having confuted the prophets of Baal in precisely that
+way, with every circumstance of bitter mockery of their god when he
+failed to send down fire from heaven. Accordingly I said that if the
+question at issue were whether the penalty of questioning the theology
+of Messrs Moody and Sankey was to be struck dead on the spot by an
+incensed deity, nothing could effect a more convincing settlement of it
+than the very obvious experiment attributed to Mr Bradlaugh, and that
+consequently if he had not tried it, he ought to have tried it. The
+omission, I added, was one which could easily be remedied there and
+then, as I happened to share Mr Bradlaugh's views as to the absurdity of
+the belief in these violent interferences with the order of nature by a
+short-tempered and thin-skinned supernatural deity. Therefore--and at
+that point I took out my watch.
+
+The effect was electrical. Neither sceptics nor devotees were prepared
+to abide the result of the experiment. In vain did I urge the pious to
+trust in the accuracy of their deity's aim with a thunderbolt, and the
+justice of his discrimination between the innocent and the guilty. In
+vain did I appeal to the sceptics to accept the logical outcome of their
+scepticism: it soon appeared that when thunderbolts were in question
+there were no sceptics. Our host, seeing that his guests would vanish
+precipitately if the impious challenge were uttered, leaving him alone
+with a solitary infidel under sentence of extermination in five minutes,
+interposed and forbade the experiment, pleading at the same time for
+a change of subject. I of course complied, but could not refrain from
+remarking that though the dreadful words had not been uttered, yet, as
+the thought had been formulated in my mind, it was very doubtful whether
+the consequences could be averted by sealing my lips. However, the rest
+appeared to feel that the game would be played according to the rules,
+and that it mattered very little what I thought so long as I said
+nothing. Only the leader of the evangelical party, I thought, was a
+little preoccupied until five minutes had elapsed and the weather was
+still calm.
+
+
+IN QUEST OF THE FIRST CAUSE
+
+Another reminiscence. In those days we thought in terms of time and
+space, of cause and effect, as we still do; but we do not now demand
+from a religion that it shall explain the universe completely in terms
+of cause and effect, and present the world to us as a manufactured
+article and as the private property of its Manufacturer. We did then. We
+were invited to pity the delusion of certain heathens who held that
+the world is supported by an elephant who is supported by a tortoise.
+Mahomet decided that the mountains are great weights to keep the world
+from being blown away into space. But we refuted these orientals by
+asking triumphantly what the tortoise stands on? Freethinkers asked
+which came first: the owl or the egg. Nobody thought of saying that
+the ultimate problem of existence, being clearly insoluble and even
+unthinkable on causation lines, could not be a causation problem. To
+pious people this would have been flat atheism, because they assumed
+that God must be a Cause, and sometimes called him The Great First
+Cause, or, in still choicer language, The Primal Cause. To the
+Rationalists it would have been a renunciation of reason. Here and there
+a man would confess that he stood as with a dim lantern in a dense fog,
+and could see but a little way in any direction into infinity. But he
+did not really believe that infinity was infinite or that the eternal
+was also sempiternal: he assumed that all things, known and unknown,
+were caused.
+
+Hence it was that I found myself one day towards the end of the
+eighteen-seventies in a cell in the old Brompton Oratory arguing with
+Father Addis, who had been called by one of his flock to attempt my
+conversion to Roman Catholicism. The universe exists, said the father:
+somebody must have made it. If that somebody exists, said I, somebody
+must have made him. I grant that for the sake of argument, said the
+Oratorian. I grant you a maker of God. I grant you a maker of the maker
+of God. I grant you as long a line of makers as you please; but an
+infinity of makers is unthinkable and extravagant: it is no harder to
+believe in number one than in number fifty thousand or fifty million; so
+why not accept number one and stop there, since no attempt to get behind
+him will remove your logical difficulty? By your leave, said I, it is as
+easy for me to believe that the universe made itself as that a maker of
+the universe made himself: in fact much easier; for the universe visibly
+exists and makes itself as it goes along, whereas a maker for it is a
+hypothesis. Of course we could get no further on these lines. He rose
+and said that we were like two men working a saw, he pushing it forward
+and I pushing it back, and cutting nothing; but when we had dropped the
+subject and were walking through the refectory, he returned to it for a
+moment to say that he should go mad if he lost his belief. I, glorying
+in the robust callousness of youth and the comedic spirit, felt quite
+comfortable and said so; though I was touched, too, by his evident
+sincerity.
+
+These two anecdotes are superficially trivial and even comic; but there
+is an abyss of horror beneath them. They reveal a condition so utterly
+irreligious that religion means nothing but belief in a nursery bogey,
+and its inadequacy is demonstrated by a toy logical dilemma, neither
+the bogey nor the dilemma having anything to do with religion, or being
+serious enough to impose on or confuse any properly educated child
+over the age of six. One hardly knows which is the more appalling: the
+abjectness of the credulity or the flippancy of the scepticism. The
+result was inevitable. All who were strong-minded enough not to be
+terrified by the bogey were left stranded in empty contemptuous
+negation, and argued, when they argued at all, as I argued with Father
+Addis. But their position was not intellectually comfortable. A member
+of parliament expressed their discomfort when, objecting to the
+admission of Charles Bradlaugh into parliament, he said 'Hang it all, a
+man should believe in something or somebody.' It was easy to throw the
+bogey into the dustbin; but none the less the world, our corner of the
+universe, did not look like a pure accident: it presented evidences of
+design in every direction. There was mind and purpose behind it. As the
+anti-Bradlaugh member would have put it, there must be somebody behind
+the something: no atheist could get over that.
+
+
+PALEY'S WATCH
+
+Paley had put the argument in an apparently unanswerable form. If you
+found a watch, full of mechanism exquisitely adapted to produce a series
+of operations all leading to the fulfilment of one central purpose of
+measuring for mankind the march of the day and night, could you believe
+that it was not the work of a cunning artificer who had designed and
+contrived it all to that end? And here was a far more wonderful thing
+than a watch, a man with all his organs ingeniously contrived, cords and
+levers, girders and kingposts, circulating systems of pipes and valves,
+dialysing membranes, chemical retorts, carburettors, ventilators, inlets
+and outlets, telephone transmitters in his ears, light recorders and
+lenses in his eye: was it conceivable that this was the work of chance?
+that no artificer had wrought here? that there was no purpose in this,
+no design, no guiding intelligence? The thing was incredible. In vain
+did Helmholtz declare that 'the eye has every possible defect that can
+be found in an optical instrument, and even some peculiar to itself,'
+and that 'if an optician tried to sell me an instrument which had all
+these defects I should think myself quite justified in blaming
+his carelessness in the strongest terms, and sending him back his
+instrument.' To discredit the optician's skill was not to get rid of the
+optician. The eye might not be so cleverly made as Paley thought, but it
+was made somehow, by somebody.
+
+And then my argument with Father Addis began all over again. It was
+easy enough to say that every man makes his own eyes: indeed the
+embryologists had actually caught him doing it. But what about the very
+evident purpose that prompted him to do it? Why did he want to see, if
+not to extend his consciousness and his knowledge and his power? That
+purpose was at work everywhere, and must be something bigger than the
+individual eye-making man. Only the stupidest muckrakers could fail to
+see this, and even to know it as part of their own consciousness. Yet to
+admit it seemed to involve letting the bogey come back, so inextricably
+had we managed to mix up belief in the bogey's existence with belief in
+the existence of design in the universe.
+
+
+THE IRRESISTIBLE CRY OF ORDER, ORDER!
+
+Our scornful young scientific and philosophic lions of today must not
+blame the Church of England for this confusion of thought. In 1562 the
+Church, in convocation in London 'for the avoiding of diversities of
+opinions and for the establishment of consent touching true religion,'
+proclaimed in their first utterance, and as an Article of Religion,
+that God is 'without body, parts, or passions,' or, as we say, an _Elan
+Vital_ or Life Force. Unfortunately neither parents, parsons, nor
+pedagogues could be induced to adopt that article. St John might say
+that 'God is spirit' as pointedly as he pleased; our Sovereign Lady
+Elizabeth might ratify the Article again and again; serious divines
+might feel as deeply as they could that a God with body, parts, and
+passions could be nothing but an anthropomorphic idol: no matter: people
+at large could not conceive a God who was not anthropomorphic: they
+stood by the Old Testament legends of a God whose parts had been seen by
+one of the patriarchs, and finally set up as against the Church a God
+who, far from being without body, parts, or passions, was composed of
+nothing else, and of very evil passions too. They imposed this idol
+in practice on the Church itself, in spite of the First Article, and
+thereby homeopathically produced the atheist, whose denial of God was
+simply a denial of the idol and a demonstration against an unbearable
+and most unchristian idolatry. The idol was, as Shelley had been
+expelled from Oxford for pointing out, an almighty fiend, with a petty
+character and unlimited power, spiteful, cruel, jealous, vindictive,
+and physically violent. The most villainous schoolmasters, the most
+tyrannical parents, fell far short in their attempts to imitate it.
+But it was not its social vices that brought it low. What made it
+scientifically intolerable was that it was ready at a moment's notice to
+upset the whole order of the universe on the most trumpery provocation,
+whether by stopping the sun in the valley of Ajalon or sending an
+atheist home dead on a shutter (the shutter was indispensable because
+it marked the utter unpreparedness of the atheist, who, unable to save
+himself by a deathbed repentance, was subsequently roasted through all
+eternity in blazing brimstone). It was this disorderliness, this refusal
+to obey its own laws of nature, that created a scientific need for its
+destruction. Science could stand a cruel and unjust god; for nature was
+full of suffering and injustice. But a disorderly god was impossible. In
+the Middle Ages a compromise had been made by which two different orders
+of truth, religious and scientific, had been recognized, in order that a
+schoolman might say that two and two make four without being burnt for
+heresy. But the nineteenth century, steeped in a meddling, presumptuous,
+reading-and-writing, socially and politically powerful ignorance
+inconceivable by Thomas Aquinas or even Roger Bacon, was incapable of
+so convenient an arrangement; and science was strangled by bigoted
+ignoramuses claiming infallibility for their interpretation of the
+Bible, which was regarded, not as a literature nor even as a book, but
+partly as an oracle which answered and settled all questions, and partly
+as a talisman to be carried by soldiers in their breast pockets or
+placed under the pillows of persons who were afraid of ghosts. The tract
+shops exhibited in their windows bullet-dinted testaments, mothers'
+gifts to their soldier sons whose lives had been saved by it; for the
+muzzle-loaders of those days could not drive a projectile through so
+many pages.
+
+
+THE MOMENT AND THE MAN
+
+This superstition of a continual capricious disorder in nature, of a
+lawgiver who was also a lawbreaker, made atheists in all directions
+among clever and lightminded people. But atheism did not account for
+Paley's watch. Atheism accounted for nothing; and it was the business of
+science to account for everything that was plainly accountable. Science
+had no use for mere negation: what was desired by it above all things
+just then was a demonstration that the evidences of design could be
+explained without resort to the hypothesis of a personal designer. If
+only some genius, whilst admitting Paley's facts, could knock the brains
+out of Paley by the discovery of a method whereby watches could happen
+without watchmakers, that genius was assured of such a welcome from the
+thought of his day as no natural philosopher had ever enjoyed before.
+
+The time being thus ripe, the genius appeared; and his name was Charles
+Darwin. And now, what did Darwin really discover?
+
+Here, I am afraid, I shall require once more the assistance of the
+giraffe, or, as he was called in the days of the celebrated Buffoon,
+the camelopard (by children, cammyleopard). I do not remember how this
+animal imposed himself illustratively on the Evolution controversy; but
+there was no getting away from him then; and I am old-fashioned enough
+to be unable to get away from him now. How did he come by his long neck?
+Lamarck would have said, by wanting to get at the tender leaves high
+up on the tree, and trying until he succeeded in wishing the necessary
+length of neck into existence. Another answer was also possible: namely,
+that some prehistoric stockbreeder, wishing to produce a natural
+curiosity, selected the longest-necked animals he could find, and bred
+from them until at last an animal with an abnormally long neck was
+evolved by intentional selection, just as the race-horse or the fantail
+pigeon has been evolved. Both these explanations, you will observe,
+involve consciousness, will, design, purpose, either on the part of the
+animal itself or on the part of a superior intelligence controlling its
+destiny. Darwin pointed out--and this and no more was Darwin's famous
+discovery--that a third explanation, involving neither will nor purpose
+nor design either in the animal or anyone else, was on the cards. If
+your neck is too short to reach your food, you die. That may be the
+simple explanation of the fact that all the surviving animals that feed
+on foliage have necks or trunks long enough to reach it. So bang goes
+your belief that the necks must have been designed to reach the food.
+But Lamarck did not believe that the necks were so designed in the
+beginning: he believed that the long necks were evolved by wanting
+and trying. Not necessarily, said Darwin. Consider the effect on the
+giraffes of the natural multiplication of their numbers, as insisted on
+by Malthus. Suppose the average height of the foliage-eating animals is
+four feet, and that they increase in numbers until a time comes when all
+the trees are eaten away to within four feet of the ground. Then the
+animals who happen to be an inch or two short of the average will die
+of starvation. All the animals who happen to be an inch or so above
+the average will be better fed and stronger than the others. They will
+secure the strongest and tallest mates; and their progeny will survive
+whilst the average ones and the sub-average ones will die out. This
+process, by which the species gains, say, an inch in reach, will repeat
+itself until the giraffe's neck is so long that he can always find
+food enough within his reach, at which point, of course, the selective
+process stops and the length of the giraffe's neck stops with it.
+Otherwise, he would grow until he could browse off the trees in the
+moon. And this, mark you, without the intervention of any stockbreeder,
+human or divine, and without will, purpose, design, or even
+consciousness beyond the blind will to satisfy hunger. It is true that
+this blind will, being in effect a will to live, gives away the whole
+case; but still, as compared to the open-eyed intelligent wanting and
+trying of Lamarck, the Darwinian process may be described as a chapter
+of accidents. As such, it seems simple, because you do not at first
+realize all that it involves. But when its whole significance dawns on
+you, your heart sinks into a heap of sand within you. There is a hideous
+fatalism about it, a ghastly and damnable reduction of beauty and
+intelligence, of strength and purpose, of honor and aspiration, to such
+casually picturesque changes as an avalanche may make in a mountain
+landscape, or a railway accident in a human figure. To call this Natural
+Selection is a blasphemy, possible to many for whom Nature is nothing
+but a casual aggregation of inert and dead matter, but eternally
+impossible to the spirits and souls of the righteous. If it be no
+blasphemy, but a truth of science, then the stars of heaven, the showers
+and dew, the winter and summer, the fire and heat, the mountains and
+hills, may no longer be called to exalt the Lord with us by praise;
+their work is to modify all things by blindly starving and murdering
+everything that is not lucky enough to survive in the universal struggle
+for hogwash.
+
+
+THE BRINK OF THE BOTTOMLESS PIT
+
+Thus did the neck of the giraffe reach out across the whole heavens and
+make men believe that what they saw there was a gloaming of the gods.
+For if this sort of selection could turn an antelope into a giraffe, it
+could conceivably turn a pond full of amoebas into the French
+Academy. Though Lamarck's way, the way of life, will, aspiration, and
+achievement, remained still possible, this newly shewn way of hunger,
+death, stupidity, delusion, chance, and bare survival was also possible:
+was indeed most certainly the way in which many apparently intelligently
+designed transformations had actually come to pass. Had I not preluded
+with the apparently idle story of my revival of the controversial
+methods of Elijah, I should be asked how it was that the explorer who
+opened up this gulf of despair, far from being stoned or crucified as
+the destroyer of the honor of the race and the purpose of the world, was
+hailed as Deliverer, Savior, Prophet, Redeemer, Enlightener, Rescuer,
+Hope Giver, and Epoch Maker; whilst poor Lamarck was swept aside as a
+crude and exploded guesser hardly worthy to be named as his erroneous
+forerunner. In the light of my anecdote, the explanation is obvious. The
+first thing the gulf did was to swallow up Paley, and the Disorderly
+Designer, and Shelley's Almighty Fiend, and all the rest of the
+pseudo-religious rubbish that had blocked every upward and onward path
+since the hopes of men had turned to Science as their true Savior. It
+seemed such a convenient grave that nobody at first noticed that it was
+nothing less than the bottomless pit, now become a very real terror. For
+though Darwin left a path round it for his soul, his followers presently
+dug it right across the whole width of the way. Yet for the moment,
+there was nothing but wild rejoicing: a sort of scientific mafficking.
+We had been so oppressed by the notion that everything that happened in
+the world was the arbitrary personal act of an arbitrary personal god
+of dangerously jealous and cruel personal character, so that even the
+relief of the pains of childbirth and the operating table by chloroform
+was objected to as an interference with his arrangements which he would
+probably resent, that we just jumped at Darwin. When Napoleon was asked
+what would happen when he died, he said that Europe would express its
+intense relief with a great 'Ouf!': Well, when Darwin killed the god who
+objected to chloroform, everybody who had ever thought about it said
+'Ouf!' Paley was buried fathoms deep with his watch, now fully accounted
+for without any divine artificer at all. We were so glad to be rid of
+both that we never gave a thought to the consequences. When a prisoner
+sees the door of his dungeon open, he dashes for it without stopping to
+think where he shall get his dinner outside. The moment we found that we
+could do without Shelley's almighty fiend intellectually, he went into
+the gulf that seemed only a dustbin with a suddenness that made our own
+lives one of the most astonishing periods in history. If I had told that
+uncle of mine that within thirty years from the date of our conversation
+I should be exposing myself to suspicions of the grossest superstition
+by questioning the sufficiency of Darwin; maintaining the reality of the
+Holy Ghost; declaring that the phenomenon of the Word becoming Flesh
+was occurring daily, he would have regarded me as the most extravagant
+madman our family had ever produced. Yet it was so. In 1906 I might
+have vituperated Jehovah more heartily than ever Shelley did without
+eliciting a protest in any circle of thinkers, or shocking any public
+audience accustomed to modern discussion; but when I described Darwin
+as 'an intelligent and industrious pigeon fancier,' that blasphemous
+levity, as it seemed, was received with horror and indignation. The tide
+has now turned; and every puny whipster may say what he likes about
+Darwin; but anyone who wants to know what it was to be a Lamarckian
+during the last quarter of the nineteenth century has only to read Mr
+Festing Jones's memoir of Samuel Butler to learn how completely even a
+man of genius could isolate himself by antagonizing Darwin on the one
+hand and the Church on the other.
+
+
+WHY DARWIN CONVERTED THE CROWD
+
+I am well aware that in describing the effect of Darwin's discovery on
+naturalists and on persons capable of serious reflection on the nature
+and attributes of God, I am leaving the vast mass of the British public
+out of account. I have pointed out elsewhere that the British nation
+does not consist of atheists and Plymouth Brothers; and I am not now
+going to pretend that it ever consisted of Darwinians and Lamarckians.
+The average citizen is irreligious and unscientific: you talk to him
+about cricket and golf, market prices and party politics, not about
+evolution and relativity, transubstantiation and predestination. Nothing
+will knock into his head the fateful distinction between Evolution as
+promulgated by Erasmus Darwin, and Circumstantial (so-called Natural)
+Selection as revealed by his grandson. Yet the doctrine of Charles
+reached him, though the doctrine of Erasmus had passed over his head.
+Why did not Erasmus Darwin popularize the word Evolution as effectively
+as Charles?
+
+The reason was, I think, that Circumstantial Selection is easier to
+understand, more visible and concrete, than Lamarckian evolution.
+Evolution as a philosophy and physiology of the will is a mystical
+process, which can be apprehended only by a trained, apt, and
+comprehensive thinker. Though the phenomena of use and disuse, of
+wanting and trying, of the manufacture of weight lifters and wrestlers
+from men of ordinary strength, are familiar enough as facts, they are
+extremely puzzling as subjects of thought, and lead you into metaphysics
+the moment you try to account for them. But pigeon fanciers, dog
+fanciers, gardeners, stock breeders, or stud grooms, can understand
+Circumstantial Selection, because it is their business to produce
+transformation by imposing on flowers and animals a Selection From
+Without. All that Darwin had to say to them was that the mere chapter of
+accidents is always doing on a huge scale what they themselves are doing
+on a very small scale. There is hardly a laborer attached to an English
+country house who has not taken a litter of kittens or puppies to the
+bucket, and drowned all of them except the one he thinks the most
+promising. Such a man has nothing to learn about the survival of the
+fittest except that it acts in more ways than he has yet noticed; for he
+knows quite well, as you will find if you are not too proud to talk to
+him, that this sort of selection occurs naturally (in Darwin's sense)
+too: that, for instance, a hard winter will kill off a weakly child as
+the bucket kills off a weakly puppy. Then there is the farm laborer.
+Shakespear's Touchstone, a court-bred fool, was shocked to find in the
+shepherd a natural philosopher, and opined that he would be damned for
+the part he took in the sexual selection of sheep. As to the production
+of new species by the selection of variations, that is no news to your
+gardener. Now if you are familiar with these three processes: the
+survival of the fittest, sexual selection, and variation leading to new
+kinds, there is nothing to puzzle you in Darwinism.
+
+That was the secret of Darwin's popularity. He never puzzled anybody. If
+very few of us have read The Origin of Species from end to end, it is
+not because it overtaxes our mind, but because we take in the whole case
+and are prepared to accept it long before we have come to the end of
+the innumerable instances and illustrations of which the book mainly
+consists. Darwin becomes tedious in the manner of a man who insists
+on continuing to prove his innocence after he has been acquitted. You
+assure him that there is not a stain on his character, and beg him to
+leave the court; but he will not be content with enough evidence: he
+will have you listen to all the evidence that exists in the world.
+Darwin's industry was enormous. His patience, his perseverance, his
+conscientiousness reached the human limit. But he never got deeper
+beneath or higher above his facts than an ordinary man could follow
+him. He was not conscious of having raised a stupendous issue, because,
+though it arose instantly, it was not his business. He was conscious of
+having discovered a process of transformation and modification which
+accounted for a great deal of natural history. But he did not put it
+forward as accounting for the whole of natural history. He included it
+under the heading of Evolution, though it was only pseudo-evolution at
+best; but he revealed it as _a_ method of evolution, not as _the_ method
+of evolution. He did not pretend that it excluded other methods, or
+that it was the chief method. Though he demonstrated that many
+transformations which had been taken as functional adaptations (the
+current phrase for Lamarckian evolution) either certainly were or
+conceivably might be due to Circumstantial Selection, he was careful
+not to claim that he had superseded Lamarck or disproved Functional
+Adaptation. In short, he was not a Darwinian, but an honest naturalist
+working away at his job with so little preoccupation with theological
+speculation that he never quarrelled with the theistic Unitarianism into
+which he was born, and remained to the end the engagingly simple and
+socially easy-going soul he had been in his boyhood, when his elders
+doubted whether he would ever be of much use in the world.
+
+
+HOW WE RUSHED DOWN A STEEP PLACE
+
+Not so the rest of us intellectuals. We all began going to the devil
+with the utmost cheerfulness. Everyone who had a mind to change, changed
+it. Only Samuel Butler, on whom Darwin had acted homeopathically,
+reacted against him furiously; ran up the Lamarckian flag to the
+top-gallant peak; declared with penetrating accuracy that Darwin had
+'banished mind from the universe'; and even attacked Darwin's personal
+character, unable to bear the fact that the author of so abhorrent a
+doctrine was an amiable and upright man. Nobody would listen to him. He
+was so completely submerged by the flowing tide of Darwinism that when
+Darwin wanted to clear up the misunderstanding on which Butler was
+basing his personal attacks, Darwin's friends, very foolishly and
+snobbishly, persuaded him that Butler was too ill-conditioned and
+negligible to be answered. That they could not recognize in Butler a
+man of genius mattered little: what did matter was that they could not
+understand the provocation under which he was raging. They actually
+regarded the banishment of mind from the universe as a glorious
+enlightenment and emancipation for which he was ignorantly ungrateful.
+Even now, when Butler's eminence is unchallenged, and his biographer, Mr
+Festing Jones, is enjoying a vogue like that of Boswell or Lockhart, his
+memoirs shew him rather as a shocking example of the bad controversial
+manners of our country parsonages than as a prophet who tried to head
+us back when we were gaily dancing to our damnation across the rainbow
+bridge which Darwinism had thrown over the gulf which separates life and
+hope from death and despair. We were intellectually intoxicated with the
+idea that the world could make itself without design, purpose, skill,
+or intelligence: in short, without life. We completely overlooked the
+difference between the modification of species by adaptation to their
+environment and the appearance of new species: we just threw in the word
+'variations' or the word 'sports' (fancy a man of science talking of
+an unknown factor as a sport instead of as _x_!) and left them to
+'accumulate' and account for the difference between a cockatoo and a
+hippopotamus. Such phrases set us free to revel in demonstrating to the
+Vitalists and Bible worshippers that if we once admit the existence of
+any kind of force, however unintelligent, and stretch out the past to
+unlimited time for such force to operate accidentally in, that force may
+conceivably, by the action of Circumstantial Selection, produce a world
+in which every function has an organ perfectly adapted to perform it,
+and therefore presents every appearance of having been designed, like
+Paley's watch, by a conscious and intelligent artificer for the purpose.
+We took a perverse pleasure in arguing, without the least suspicion
+that we were reducing ourselves to absurdity, that all the books in the
+British Museum library might have been written word for word as they
+stand on the shelves if no human being had ever been conscious, just
+as the trees stand in the forest doing wonderful things without
+consciousness.
+
+And the Darwinians went far beyond denying consciousness to trees.
+Weismann insisted that the chick breaks out of its eggshell
+automatically; that the butterfly, springing into the air to avoid the
+pounce of the lizard, 'does not wish to avoid death; knows nothing about
+death,' what has happened being simply that a flight instinct evolved by
+Circumstantial Selection reacts promptly to a visual impression produced
+by the lizard's movement. His proof is that the butterfly immediately
+settles again on the flower, and repeats the performance every time the
+lizard springs, thus shewing that it learns nothing from experience,
+and--Weismann concludes--is not conscious of what it does.
+
+It should hardly have escaped so curious an observer that when the cat
+jumps up on the dinner table, and you put it down, it instantly jumps
+up again, and finally establishes its right to a place on the cloth by
+convincing you that if you put it down a hundred times it will jump up a
+hundred and one times; so that if you desire its company at dinner you
+can have it only on its own terms. If Weismann really thought that
+cats act thus without any consciousness or any purpose, immediate or
+ulterior, he must have known very little about cats. But a thoroughgoing
+Weismannite, if any such still survive from those mad days, would
+contend that I am not at present necessarily conscious of what I am
+doing; that my writing of these lines, and your reading of them, are
+effects of Circumstantial Selection; that I heed know no more about
+Darwinism than a butterfly knows of a lizard's appetite; and that the
+proof that I actually am doing it unconsciously is that as I have spent
+forty years in writing in this fashion without, as far as I can see,
+producing any visible effect on public opinion, I must be incapable of
+learning from experience, and am therefore a mere automaton. And
+the Weismannite demonstration of this would of course be an equally
+unconscious effect of Circumstantial Selection.
+
+
+DARWINISM NOT FINALLY REFUTABLE
+
+Do not too hastily say that this is inconceivable. To Circumstantial
+Selection all mechanical and chemical reactions are possible, provided
+you accept the geologists' estimates of the great age of the earth, and
+therefore allow time enough for the circumstances to operate. It is true
+that mere survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence plus
+sexual selection fail as hopelessly to account for Darwin's own life
+work as for my conquest of the bicycle; but who can prove that there
+are not other soulless factors, unnoticed or undiscovered, which only
+require imagination enough to fit them to the evolution of an automatic
+Jesus or Shakespear? When a man tells you that you are a product of
+Circumstantial Selection solely, you cannot finally disprove it. You can
+only tell him out of the depths of your inner conviction that he is a
+fool and a liar. But as this, though British, is uncivil, it is wiser to
+offer him the counter-assurance that you are the product of Lamarckian
+evolution, formerly called Functional Adaptation and now Creative
+Evolution, and challenge him to disprove _that_, which he can no more
+do than you can disprove Circumstantial Selection, both forces being
+conceivably able to produce anything if you only give them rope enough.
+You may also defy him to act for a single hour on the assumption that he
+may safely cross Oxford Street in a state of unconsciousness, trusting
+to his dodging reflexes to react automatically and promptly enough
+to the visual impression produced by a motor bus, and the audible
+impression produced by its hooter. But if you allow yourself to defy him
+to explain any particular action of yours by Circumstantial Selection,
+he should always be able to find some explanation that will fit the case
+if only he is ingenious enough and goes far enough to find it. Darwin
+found several such explanations in his controversies. Anybody who really
+wants to believe that the universe has been produced by Circumstantial
+Selection co-operating with a force as inhuman as we conceive magnetism
+to be can find a logical excuse for his belief if he tries hard enough.
+
+
+
+THREE BLIND MICE
+
+The stultification and damnation which ensued are illustrated by a
+comparison of the ease and certainty with which Butler's mind moved to
+humane and inspiring conclusions with the grotesque stupidities and
+cruelties of the idle and silly controversy which arose among the
+Darwinians as to whether acquired habits can be transmitted from parents
+to offspring. Consider, for example, how Weismann set to work on that
+subject. An Evolutionist with a live mind would first have dropped the
+popular expression 'acquired habits,' because to an Evolutionist there
+are no other habits and can be no others, a man being only an amoeba
+with acquirements. He would then have considered carefully the process
+by which he himself had acquired his habits. He would have assumed that
+the habits with which he was born must have been acquired by a similar
+process. He would have known what a habit is: that is, an Action
+voluntarily attempted until it has become more or less automatic and
+involuntary; and it would never have occurred to him that injuries or
+accidents coming from external sources against the will of the victim
+could possibly establish a habit; that, for instance, a family could
+acquire a habit of being killed in railway accidents.
+
+And yet Weismann began to investigate the point by behaving like the
+butcher's wife in the old catch. He got a colony of mice, and cut off
+their tails. Then he waited to see whether their children would be born
+without tails. They were not, as Butler could have told him beforehand.
+He then cut off the children's tails, and waited to see whether the
+grandchildren would be born with at least rather short tails. They were
+not, as I could have told him beforehand. So with the patience and
+industry on which men of science pride themselves, he cut off the
+grandchildren's tails too, and waited, full of hope, for the birth of
+curtailed great-grandchildren. But their tails were quite up to the
+mark, as any fool could have told him beforehand. Weismann then gravely
+drew the inference that acquired habits cannot be transmitted. And yet
+Weismann was not a born imbecile. He was an exceptionally clever and
+studious man, not without roots of imagination and philosophy in him
+which Darwinism killed as weeds.
+
+How was it that he did not see that he was not experimenting with habits
+or characteristics at all? How had he overlooked the glaring fact that
+his experiment had been tried for many generations in China on the feet
+of Chinese women without producing the smallest tendency on their part
+to be born with abnormally small feet? He must have known about the
+bound feet even if he knew nothing of the mutilations, the clipped ears
+and docked tails, practised by dog fanciers and horse breeders on many
+generations of the unfortunate animals they deal in. Such amazing
+blindness and stupidity on the part of a man who was naturally
+neither blind nor stupid is a telling illustration of what Darwin
+unintentionally did to the minds of his disciples by turning their
+attention so exclusively towards the part played in Evolution by
+accident and violence operating with entire callousness to suffering and
+sentiment.
+
+A vital conception of Evolution would have taught Weismann that
+biological problems are not to be solved by assaults on mice. The
+scientific form of his experiment would have been something like this.
+First, he should have procured a colony of mice highly susceptible to
+hypnotic suggestion. He should then have hypnotized them into an
+urgent conviction that the fate of the musque world depended on
+the disappearance of its tail, just as some ancient and forgotten
+experimenter seems to have convinced the cats of the Isle of Man. Having
+thus made the mice desire to lose their tails with a life-or-death
+intensity, he would very soon have seen a few mice born with little or
+no tail. These would be recognized by the other mice as superior
+beings, and privileged in the division of food and in sexual selection.
+Ultimately the tailed mice would be put to death as monsters by their
+fellows, and the miracle of the tailless mouse completely achieved.
+
+The objection to this experiment is not that it seems too funny to be
+taken seriously, and is not cruel enough to overawe the mob, but simply
+that it is impossible because the human experimenter cannot get at the
+mouse's mind. And that is what is wrong with all the barren cruelties of
+the laboratories. Darwin's followers did not think of this. Their only
+idea of investigation was to imitate 'Nature' by perpetrating violent
+and senseless cruelties, and watch the effect of them with a paralyzing
+fatalism which forbade the smallest effort to use their minds instead of
+their knives and eyes, and established an abominable tradition that the
+man who hesitates to be as cruel as Circumstantial Selection itself is a
+traitor to science. For Weismann's experiment upon the mice was a mere
+joke compared to the atrocities committed by other Darwinians in their
+attempts to prove that mutilations could not be transmitted. No doubt
+the worst of these experiments were not really experiments at all, but
+cruelties committed by cruel men who were attracted to the laboratory by
+the fact that it was a secret refuge left by law and public superstition
+for the amateur of passionate torture. But there is no reason to suspect
+Weismann of Sadism. Cutting off the tails of several generations of mice
+is not voluptuous enough to tempt a scientific Nero. It was a mere piece
+of one-eyedness; and it was Darwin who put out Weismann's humane and
+sensible eye. He blinded many another eye and paralyzed many another
+will also. Ever since he set up Circumstantial Selection as the creator
+and ruler of the universe, the scientific world has been the very
+citadel of stupidity and cruelty. Fearful as the tribal god of the
+Hebrews was, nobody ever shuddered as they passed even his meanest and
+narrowest Little Bethel or his proudest war-consecrating cathedral as we
+shudder now when we pass a physiological laboratory. If we dreaded and
+mistrusted the priest, we could at least keep him out of the house; but
+what of the modern Darwinist surgeon whom we dread and mistrust ten
+times more, but into whose hands we must all give ourselves from time
+to time? Miserably as religion had been debased, it did at least still
+proclaim that our relation to one another was that of a fellowship
+in which we were all equal and members one of another before the
+judgment-seat of our common father. Darwinism proclaimed that our true
+relation is that of competitors and combatants in a struggle for mere
+survival, and that every act of pity or loyalty to the old fellowship is
+a vain and mischievous attempt to lessen the severity of the struggle
+and preserve inferior varieties from the efforts of Nature to weed them
+out. Even in Socialist Societies which existed solely to substitute
+the law of fellowship for the law of competition, and the method of
+providence and wisdom for the method of rushing violently down a steep
+place into the sea, I found myself regarded as a blasphemer and an
+ignorant sentimentalist because whenever the Neo-Darwinian doctrine was
+preached there I made no attempt to conceal my intellectual contempt for
+its blind coarseness and shallow logic, or my natural abhorrence of its
+sickening inhumanity.
+
+
+THE GREATEST OF THESE IS SELF-CONTROL
+
+As there is no place in Darwinism for free will, or any other sort
+of will, the Neo-Darwinists held that there is no such thing as
+self-control. Yet self-control is just the one quality of survival value
+which Circumstantial Selection must invariably and inevitably develop in
+the long run. Uncontrolled qualities may be selected for survival and
+development for certain periods and under certain circumstances. For
+instance, since it is the ungovernable gluttons who strive the hardest
+to get food and drink, their efforts would develop their strength and
+cunning in a period of such scarcity that the utmost they could do would
+not enable them to over-eat themselves. But a change of circumstances
+involving a plentiful supply of food would destroy them. We see this
+very thing happening often enough in the case of the healthy and
+vigorous poor man who becomes a millionaire by one of the accidents of
+our competitive commerce, and immediately proceeds to dig his grave with
+his teeth. But the self-controlled man survives all such changes of
+circumstance, because he adapts himself to them, and eats neither as
+much as he can hold nor as little as he can scrape along on, but as much
+as is good for him. What is self-control? It is nothing but a highly
+developed vital sense, dominating and regulating the mere appetites. To
+overlook the very existence of this supreme sense; to miss the obvious
+inference that it is the quality that distinguishes the fittest to
+survive; to omit, in short, the highest moral claim of Evolutionary
+Selection: all this, which the Neo-Darwinians did in the name of Natural
+Selection, shewed the most pitiable want of mastery of their own
+subject, the dullest lack of observation of the forces upon which
+Natural Selection works.
+
+
+A SAMPLE OF LAMARCKO-SHAVIAN INVECTIVE
+
+The Vitalist philosophers made no such mistakes. Nietzsche, for example,
+thinking out the great central truth of the Will to Power instead of
+cutting off mouse-tails, had no difficulty in concluding that the final
+objective of this Will was power over self, and that the seekers after
+power over others and material possessions were on a false scent.
+
+The stultification naturally became much worse as the first Darwinians
+died out. The prestige of these pioneers, who had the older evolutionary
+culture to build on, and were in fact no more Darwinian in the modern
+sense than Darwin himself, ceased to dazzle us when Huxley and Tyndall
+and Spencer and Darwin passed away, and we were left with the smaller
+people who began with Darwin and took in nothing else. Accordingly, I
+find that in the year 1906 I indulged my temper by hurling invectives at
+the Neo-Darwinians in the following terms.
+
+'I really do not wish to be abusive; but when I think of these poor
+little dullards, with their precarious hold of just that corner of
+evolution that a blackbeetle can understand--with their retinue of
+twopenny-halfpenny Torquemadas wallowing in the infamies of the
+vivisector's laboratory, and solemnly offering us as epoch-making
+discoveries their demonstrations that dogs get weaker and die if you
+give them no food; that intense pain makes mice sweat; and that if you
+cut off a dog's leg the three-legged dog will have a four-legged puppy,
+I ask myself what spell has fallen on intelligent and humane men
+that they allow themselves to be imposed on by this rabble of dolts,
+blackguards, impostors, quacks, liars, and, worst of all, credulous
+conscientious fools. Better a thousand times Moses and Spurgeon [a then
+famous preacher] back again. After all, you cannot understand Moses
+without imagination nor Spurgeon without metaphysics; but you can be a
+thorough-going Neo-Darwinian without imagination, metaphysics,
+poetry, conscience, or decency. For "Natural Selection" has no moral
+significance: it deals with that part of evolution which has no purpose,
+no intelligence, and might more appropriately be called accidental
+selection, or better still, Unnatural Selection, since nothing is
+more unnatural than an accident. If it could be proved that the whole
+universe had been produced by such Selection, only fools and rascals
+could bear to live.'
+
+
+THE HUMANITARIANS AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
+
+Yet the humanitarians were as delighted as anybody with Darwinism at
+first. They had been perplexed by the Problem of Evil and the Cruelty of
+Nature. They were Shelleyists, but not atheists. Those who believed in
+God were at a terrible disadvantage with the atheist. They could not
+deny the existence of natural facts so cruel that to attribute them to
+the will of God is to make God a demon. Belief in God was impossible to
+any thoughtful person without belief in the Devil as well. The painted
+Devil, with his horns, his barbed tail, and his abode of burning
+brimstone, was an incredible bogey; but the evil attributed to him was
+real enough; and the atheists argued that the author of evil, if he
+exists, must be strong enough to overcome God, else God is morally
+responsible for everything he permits the Devil to do. Neither
+conclusion delivered us from the horror of attributing the cruelty of
+nature to the workings of an evil will, or could reconcile it with our
+impulses towards justice, mercy, and a higher life.
+
+A complete deliverance was offered by the discovery of Circumstantial
+Selection: that is to say, of a method by which horrors having every
+appearance of being elaborately planned by some intelligent contriver
+are only accidents without any moral significance at all. Suppose a
+watcher from the stars saw a frightful accident produced by two crowded
+trains at full speed crashing into one another! How could he conceive
+that a catastrophe brought about by such elaborate machinery, such
+ingenious preparation, such skilled direction, such vigilant industry,
+was quite unintentional? Would he not conclude that the signal-men were
+devils?
+
+Well, Circumstantial Selection is largely a theory of collisions: that
+is, a theory of the innocence of much apparently designed devilry. In
+this way Darwin brought intense relief as well as an enlarged knowledge
+of facts to the humanitarians. He destroyed the omnipotence of God for
+them; but he also exonerated God from a hideous charge of cruelty.
+Granted that the comfort was shallow, and that deeper reflection was
+bound to shew that worse than all conceivable devil-deities is a blind,
+deaf, dumb, heartless, senseless mob of forces that strike as a tree
+does when it is blown down by the wind, or as the tree itself is struck
+by lightning. That did not occur to the humanitarians at the moment:
+people do not reflect deeply when they are in the first happiness of
+escape from an intolerably oppressive situation. Like Bunyan's pilgrim
+they could not see the wicket gate, nor the Slough of Despond, nor the
+castle of Giant Despair; but they saw the shining light at the end of
+the path, and so started gaily towards it as Evolutionists.
+
+And they were right; for the problem of evil yields very easily to
+Creative Evolution. If the driving power behind Evolution is omnipotent
+only in the sense that there seems no limit to its final achievement;
+and if it must meanwhile struggle with matter and circumstance by
+the method of trial and error, then the world must be full of its
+unsuccessful experiments. Christ may meet a tiger, or a High Priest
+arm-in-arm with a Roman Governor, and be the unfittest to survive under
+the circumstances. Mozart may have a genius that prevails against
+Emperors and Archbishops, and a lung that succumbs to some obscure and
+noxious property of foul air. If all our calamities are either accidents
+or sincerely repented mistakes, there is no malice in the Cruelty
+of Nature and no Problem of Evil in the Victorian sense at all. The
+theology of the women who told us that they became atheists when they
+sat by the cradles of their children and saw them strangled by the hand
+of God is succeeded by the theology of Blanco Posnet, with his 'It was
+early days when He made the croup, I guess. It was the best He could
+think of then; but when it turned out wrong on His hands He made you and
+me to fight the croup for Him.'
+
+
+HOW ONE TOUCH OF DARWIN MAKES THE WHOLE WORLD KIN
+
+Another humanitarian interest in Darwinism was that Darwin popularized
+Evolution generally, as well as making his own special contribution to
+it. Now the general conception of Evolution provides the humanitarian
+with a scientific basis, because it establishes the fundamental equality
+of all living things. It makes the killing of an animal murder in
+exactly the same sense as the killing of a man is murder. It is
+sometimes necessary to kill men as it is always necessary to kill
+tigers; but the old theoretic distinction between the two acts has been
+obliterated by Evolution. When I was a child and was told that our dog
+and our parrot, with whom I was on intimate terms, were not creatures
+like myself, but were brutal whilst I was reasonable, I not only did not
+believe it, but quite consciously and intellectually formed the opinion
+that the distinction was false; so that afterwards, when Darwin's views
+were first unfolded to me, I promptly said that I had found out all that
+for myself before I was ten years old; and I am far from sure that my
+youthful arrogance was not justified; for this sense of the kinship of
+all forms of life is all that is needed to make Evolution not only a
+conceivable theory, but an inspiring one. St Anthony was ripe for the
+Evolution theory when he preached to the fishes, and St Francis when
+he called the birds his little brothers. Our vanity, and our snobbish
+conception of Godhead as being, like earthly kingship, a supreme class
+distinction instead of the rock on which Equality is built, had led us
+to insist on God offering us special terms by placing us apart from and
+above all the rest of his creatures. Evolution took that conceit out of
+us; and now, though we may kill a flea without the smallest remorse, we
+at all events know that we are killing our cousin. No doubt it shocks
+the flea when the creature that an almighty Celestial Flea created
+expressly for the food of fleas, destroys the jumping lord of creation
+with his sharp and enormous thumbnail; but no flea will ever be so
+foolish as to preach that in slaying fleas Man is applying a method of
+Natural Selection which will finally evolve a flea so swift that no man
+can catch him, and so hardy of constitution that Insect Powder will have
+no more effect on him than strychnine on an elephant.
+
+
+WHY DARWIN PLEASED THE SOCIALISTS
+
+The Humanitarians were not alone among the agitators in their welcome to
+Darwin. He had the luck to please everybody who had an axe to grind. The
+Militarists were as enthusiastic as the Humanitarians, the Socialists as
+the Capitalists. The Socialists were specially encouraged by Darwin's
+insistence on the influence of environment. Perhaps the strongest moral
+bulwark of Capitalism is the belief in the efficacy of individual
+righteousness. Robert Owen made desperate efforts to convince England
+that her criminals, her drunkards, her ignorant and stupid masses, were
+the victims of circumstance: that if we would only establish his new
+moral world we should find that the masses born into an educated and
+moralized community would be themselves educated and moralized. The
+stock reply to this is to be found in Lewes's Life of Goethe. Lewes
+scorned the notion that circumstances govern character. He pointed
+to the variety of character in the governing rich class to prove the
+contrary. Similarity of circumstance can hardly be carried to a more
+desolating dead level than in the case of the individuals who are born
+and bred in English country houses, and sent first to Eton or Harrow,
+and then to Oxford or Cambridge, to have their minds and habits formed.
+Such a routine would destroy individuality if anything could. Yet
+individuals come out from it as different as Pitt from Fox, as Lord
+Russell from Lord Gurzon, as Mr Winston Churchill from Lord Robert
+Cecil. This acceptance of the congenital character of the individual
+as the determining factor in his destiny had been reinforced by the
+Lamarckian view of Evolution. If the giraffe can develop his neck by
+wanting and trying, a man can develop his character in the same way. The
+old saying, 'Where there is a will, there is a way,' condenses Lamarck's
+theory of functional adaptation into a proverb. This felt bracingly
+moral to strong minds, and reassuringly pious to feeble ones. There was
+no more effective retort to the Socialist than to tell him to reform
+himself before he pretends to reform society. If you were rich, how
+pleasant it was to feel that you owed your riches to the superiority
+of your own character! The industrial revolution had turned numbers
+of greedy dullards into monstrously rich men. Nothing could be more
+humiliating and threatening to them than the view that the falling of a
+shower of gold into their pockets was as pure an accident as the falling
+of a shower of hail on their umbrellas, and happened alike to the just
+and unjust. Nothing could be more flattering and fortifying to them than
+the assumption that they were rich because they were virtuous.
+
+Now Darwinism made a clean sweep of all such self-righteousness. It
+more than justified Robert Owen by discovering in the environment of an
+organism an influence on it more potent than Owen had ever claimed. It
+implied that street arabs are produced by slums and not by original sin:
+that prostitutes are produced by starvation wages and not by feminine
+concupiscence. It threw the authority of science on the side of the
+Socialist who said that he who would reform himself must first reform
+society. It suggested that if we want healthy and wealthy citizens we
+must have healthy and wealthy towns; and that these can exist only in
+healthy and wealthy countries. It could be led to the conclusion that
+the type of character which remains indifferent to the welfare of its
+neighbors as long as its own personal appetite is satisfied is the
+disastrous type, and the type which is deeply concerned about its
+environment the only possible type for a permanently prosperous
+community. It shewed that the surprising changes which Robert Owen had
+produced in factory children by a change in their circumstances which
+does not seem any too generous to us nowadays were as nothing to the
+changes--changes not only of habits but of species, not only of species
+but of orders--which might conceivably be the work of environment acting
+on individuals without any character or intellectual consciousness
+whatever. No wonder the Socialists received Darwin with open arms.
+
+
+DARWIN AND KARL MARX
+
+Besides, the Socialists had an evolutionary prophet of their own, who
+had discredited Manchester as Darwin discredited the Garden of Eden.
+Karl Marx had proclaimed in his Communist Manifesto of 1848 (now
+enjoying Scriptural authority in Russia) that civilization is an
+organism evolving irresistibly by circumstantial selection; and he
+published the first volume of his Das Kapital in 1867. The revolt
+against anthropomorphic idolatry, which was, as we have seen, the secret
+of Darwin's success, had been accompanied by a revolt against the
+conventional respectability which covered not only the brigandage and
+piracy of the feudal barons, but the hypocrisy, inhumanity, snobbery,
+and greed of the bourgeoisie, who were utterly corrupted by an
+essentially diabolical identification of success in life with big
+profits. The moment Marx shewed that the relation of the bourgeoisie to
+society was grossly immoral and disastrous, and that the whited wall of
+starched shirt fronts concealed and defended the most infamous of all
+tyrannies and the basest of all robberies, he became an inspired prophet
+in the mind of every generous soul whom his book reached. He had said
+and proved what they wanted to have proved; and they would hear nothing
+against him. Now Marx was by no means infallible: his economics, half
+borrowed, and half home-made by a literary amateur, were not, when
+strictly followed up, even favorable to Socialism. His theory of
+civilisation had been promulgated already in Buckle's History of
+Civilization, a book as epoch-making in the minds of its readers as Das
+Kapital. There was nothing about Socialism in the widely read first
+volume of Das Kapital: every reference it made to workers and
+capitalists shewed that Marx had never breathed industrial air, and had
+dug his case out of bluebooks in the British Museum. Compared to Darwin,
+he seemed to have no power of observation: there was not a fact in Das
+Kapital that had not been taken out of a book, nor a discussion that had
+not been opened by somebody else's pamphlet. No matter: he exposed the
+bourgeoisie and made an end of its moral prestige. That was enough: like
+Darwin he had for the moment the World Will by the ear. Marx had, too,
+what Darwin had not: implacability and a fine Jewish literary gift,
+with terrible powers of hatred, invective, irony, and all the bitter
+qualities bred, first in the oppression of a rather pampered young
+genius (Marx was the spoilt child of a well-to-do family) by a social
+system utterly uncongenial to him, and later on by exile and poverty.
+Thus Marx and Darwin between them toppled over two closely related
+idols, and became the prophets of two new creeds.
+
+
+WHY DARWIN PLEASED THE PROFITEERS ALSO
+
+But how, at this rate, did Darwin succeed with the capitalists too? It
+is not easy to make the best of both worlds when one of the worlds is
+preaching a Class War, and the other vigorously practising it. The
+explanation is that Darwinism was so closely related to Capitalism that
+Marx regarded it as an economic product rather than as a biological
+theory. Darwin got his main postulate, the pressure of population on
+the available means of subsistence, from the treatise of Malthus
+on Population, just as he got his other postulate of a practically
+unlimited time for that pressure to operate from the geologist Lyell,
+who made an end of Archbishop Ussher's Biblical estimate of the age
+of the earth as 4004 B.C. plus A.D. The treatises of the Ricardian
+economists on the Law of Diminishing Return, which was only the
+Manchester School's version of the giraffe and the trees, were all very
+fiercely discussed when Darwin was a young man. In fact the discovery in
+the eighteenth century by the French Physiocrats of the economic
+effects of Commercial Selection in soils and sites, and by Malthus of
+a competition for subsistence which he attributed to pressure of
+population on available subsistence, had already brought political
+science into that unbreathable atmosphere of fatalism which is the
+characteristic blight of Darwinism. Long before Darwin published a line,
+the Ricardo-Malthusian economists were preaching the fatalistic Wages
+Fund doctrine, and assuring the workers that Trade Unionism is a vain
+defiance of the inexorable laws of political economy, just as the
+Neo-Darwinians were presently assuring us that Temperance Legislation is
+a vain defiance of Natural Selection, and that the true way to deal with
+drunkenness is to flood the country with cheap gin and let the fittest
+survive. Cobdenism is, after all, nothing but the abandonment of trade
+to Circumstantial Selection.
+
+It is hardly possible to exaggerate the importance of this preparation
+for Darwinism by a vast political and clerical propaganda of its moral
+atmosphere. Never in history, as far as we know, had there been such a
+determined, richly subsidized, politically organized attempt to persuade
+the human race that all progress, all prosperity, all salvation,
+individual and social, depend on an unrestrained conflict for food and
+money, on the suppression and elimination of the weak by the strong,
+on Free Trade, Free Contract, Free Competition, Natural Liberty,
+Laisser-faire: in short, on 'doing the other fellow down' with impunity,
+all interference by a guiding government, all organization except police
+organization to protect legalized fraud against fisticuffs, all
+attempt to introduce human purpose and design and forethought into the
+industrial welter, being 'contrary to the laws of political economy.'
+Even the proletariat sympathized, though to them Capitalist liberty
+meant only wage slavery without the legal safeguards of chattel slavery.
+People were tired of governments and kings and priests and providences,
+and wanted to find out how Nature would arrange matters if she were let
+alone. And they found it out to their cost in the days when Lancashire
+used up nine generations of wage slaves in one generation of their
+masters. But their masters, becoming richer and richer, were very well
+satisfied, and Bastiat proved convincingly that Nature had arranged
+Economic Harmonies which would settle social questions far better than
+theocracies or aristocracies or mobocracies, the real _deus ex machina_
+being unrestrained plutocracy.
+
+
+THE POETRY AND PURITY OF MATERIALISM
+
+Thus the stars in their courses fought for Darwin. Every faction drew a
+moral from him; every catholic hater of faction founded a hope on him;
+every blackguard felt justified by him; and every saint felt encouraged
+by him. The notion that any harm could come of so splendid an
+enlightenment seemed as silly as the notion that the atheists would
+steal all our spoons. The physicists went further than the Darwinians.
+Tyndall declared that he saw in Matter the promise and potency of all
+forms of life, and with his Irish graphic lucidity made a picture of a
+world of magnetic atoms, each atom with a positive and a negative pole,
+arranging itself by attraction and repulsion in orderly crystalline
+structure. Such a picture is dangerously fascinating to thinkers
+oppressed by the bloody disorders of the living world. Craving for purer
+subjects of thought, they find in the contemplation of crystals and
+magnets a happiness more dramatic and less childish than the happiness
+found by the mathematicians in abstract numbers, because they see in the
+crystals beauty and movement without the corrupting appetites of fleshly
+vitality. In such Materialism as that of Lucretius and Tyndall there
+is a nobility which produces poetry: John Davidson found his highest
+inspiration in it. Even its pessimism as it faces the cooling of the
+sun and the return of the ice-caps does not degrade the pessimist: for
+example, the Quincy Adamses, with their insistence on modern democratic
+degradation as an inevitable result of solar shrinkage, are not
+dehumanized as the vivisectionists are. Perhaps nobody is at heart fool
+enough to believe that life is at the mercy of temperature: Dante was
+not troubled by the objection that Brunetto could not have lived in the
+fire nor Ugolino in the ice.
+
+But the physicists found their intellectual vision of the world
+incommunicable to those who were not born with it. It came to the public
+simply as Materialism; and Materialism lost its peculiar purity and
+dignity when it entered into the Darwinian reaction against Bible
+fetichism. Between the two of them religion was knocked to pieces; and
+where there had been a god, a cause, a faith that the universe was
+ordered however inexplicable by us its order might be, and therefore a
+sense of moral responsibility as part of that order, there was now an
+utter void. Chaos had come again. The first effect was exhilarating:
+we had the runaway child's sense of freedom before it gets hungry and
+lonely and frightened. In this phase we did not desire our God back
+again. We printed the verses in which William Blake, the most religious
+of our great poets, called the anthropomorphic idol Old Nobodaddy, and
+gibed at him in terms which the printer had to leave us to guess from
+his blank spaces. We had heard the parson droning that God is not
+mocked; and it was great fun to mock Him to our hearts' content and not
+be a penny the worse. It did not occur to us that Old Nobodaddy, instead
+of being a ridiculous fiction, might be only an impostor, and that the
+exposure of this Koepenik Captain of the heavens, far from proving that
+there was no real captain, rather proved the contrary: that, in short,
+Nobodaddy could not have impersonated anybody if there had not been
+Somebodaddy to impersonate. We did not see the significance of the
+fact that on the last occasion on which God had been 'expelled with a
+pitchfork,' men so different as Voltaire and Robespierre had said, the
+one that if God did not exist it would be necessary to invent him, and
+the other that after an honest attempt to dispense with a Supreme
+Being in practical politics, some such hypothesis had been found quite
+indispensable, and could not be replaced by a mere Goddess of Reason. If
+these two opinions were quoted at all, they were quoted as jokes at the
+expense of Nobodaddy. We were quite sure for the moment that whatever
+lingering superstition might have daunted these men of the eighteenth
+century, we Darwinians could do without God, and had made a good
+riddance of Him.
+
+
+THE VICEROYS OF THE KING OF KINGS
+
+Now in politics it is much easier to do without God than to do without
+his viceroys and vicars and lieutenants; and we begin to miss the
+lieutenants long before we begin to miss their principal. Roman
+Catholics do what their confessors advise without troubling God; and
+Royalists are content to worship the King and ask the policeman. But
+God's trustiest lieutenants often lack official credentials. They may be
+professed atheists who are also men of honor and high public spirit.
+The old belief that it matters dreadfully to God whether a man thinks
+himself an atheist or not, and that the extent to which it matters can
+be stated with exactness as one single damn, was an error: for the
+divinity is in the honor and public spirit, not in the mouthed _credo_
+or _non credo_. The consequences of this error became grave when the
+fitness of a man for public trust was tested, not by his honor and
+public spirit, but by asking him whether he believed in Nobodaddy or
+not. If he said yes, he was held fit to be a Prime Minister, though,
+as our ablest Churchman has said, the real implication was that he was
+either a fool, a bigot, or a liar. Darwin destroyed this test; but when
+it was only thoughtlessly dropped, there was no test at all; and the
+door to public trust was open to the man who had no sense of God because
+he had no sense of anything beyond his own business interests and
+personal appetites and ambitions. As a result, the people who did
+not feel in the least inconvenienced by being no longer governed by
+Nobodaddy soon found themselves very acutely inconvenienced by being
+governed by fools and commercial adventurers. They had forgotten not
+only God but Goldsmith, who had warned them that 'honor sinks where
+commerce long prevails.'
+
+The lieutenants of God are not always persons: some of them are
+legal and parliamentary fictions. One of them is Public Opinion. The
+pre-Darwinian statesmen and publicists were not restrained directly by
+God; but they restrained themselves by setting up an image of a Public
+Opinion which would not tolerate any attempt to tamper with British
+liberties. Their favorite way of putting it was that any Government
+which proposed such and such an infringement of such and such a British
+liberty would be hurled from office in a week. This was not true: there
+was no such public opinion, no limit to what the British people would
+put up with in the abstract, and no hardship short of immediate and
+sudden starvation that it would not and did not put up with in the
+concrete. But this very helplessness of the people had forced their
+rulers to pretend that they were not helpless, and that the certainty of
+a sturdy and unconquerable popular resistance forbade any trifling with
+Magna Carta or the Petition of Rights or the authority of parliament.
+Now the reality behind this fiction was the divine sense that liberty
+is a need vital to human growth. Accordingly, though it was difficult
+enough to effect a political reform, yet, once parliament had passed it,
+its wildest opponent had no hope that the Government would cancel it,
+or shelve it, or be bought off from executing it. From Walpole to
+Campbell-Bannerman there was no Prime Minister to whom such renagueing
+or trafficking would ever have occurred, though there were plenty who
+employed corruption unsparingly to procure the votes of members of
+parliament for their policy.
+
+
+POLITICAL OPPORTUNISM IN EXCELSIS
+
+The moment Nobodaddy was slain by Darwin, Public Opinion, as divine
+deputy, lost its sanctity. Politicians no longer told themselves that
+the British public would never suffer this or that: they allowed
+themselves to know that for their own personal purposes, which are
+limited to their ten or twenty years on the front benches in parliament,
+the British public can be humbugged and coerced into believing and
+suffering everything that it pays to impose on them, and that any false
+excuse for an unpopular step will serve if it can be kept in countenance
+for a fortnight: that is, until the terms of the excuse are forgotten.
+The people, untaught or mistaught, are so ignorant and incapable
+politically that this in itself would not greatly matter; for a
+statesman who told them the truth would not be understood, and would in
+effect mislead them more completely than if he dealt with them according
+to their blindness instead of to his own wisdom. But though there is no
+difference in this respect between the best demagogue and the worst,
+both of them having to present their cases equally in terms of
+melodrama, there is all the difference in the world between the
+statesman who is humbugging the people into allowing him to do the
+will of God, in whatever disguise it may come to him, and one who is
+humbugging them into furthering his personal ambition and the commercial
+interests of the plutocrats who own the newspapers and support him on
+reciprocal terms. And there is almost as great a difference between
+the statesman who does this naively and automatically, or even does it
+telling himself that he is ambitious and selfish and unscrupulous, and
+the one who does it on principle, believing that if everyone takes the
+line of least material resistance the result will be the survival of the
+fittest in a perfectly harmonious universe. Once produce an atmosphere
+of fatalism on principle, and it matters little what the opinions or
+superstitions of the individual statesmen concerned may be. A Kaiser
+who is a devout reader of sermons, a Prime Minister who is an emotional
+singer of hymns, and a General who is a bigoted Roman Catholic may be
+the executants of the policy; but the policy itself will be one of
+unprincipled opportunism; and all the Governments will be like the tramp
+who walks always with the wind and ends as a pauper, or the stone that
+rolls down the hill and ends as an avalanche: their way is the way to
+destruction.
+
+
+THE BETRAYAL OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION
+
+Within sixty years from the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species
+political opportunism had brought parliaments into contempt; created
+a popular demand for direct action by the organized industries
+('Syndicalism'); and wrecked the centre of Europe in a paroxysm of that
+chronic terror of one another, that cowardice of the irreligious, which,
+masked in the bravado of militarist patriotism, had ridden the Powers
+like a nightmare since the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71. The sturdy
+old cosmopolitan Liberalism vanished almost unnoticed. At the present
+moment all the new ordinances for the government of our Grown Colonies
+contain, as a matter of course, prohibitions of all criticism, spoken or
+written, of their ruling officials, which would have scandalized George
+III and elicited Liberal pamphlets from Catherine II. Statesmen are
+afraid of the suburbs, of the newspapers, of the profiteers, of the
+diplomatists, of the militarists, of the country houses, of the trade
+unions, of everything ephemeral on earth except the revolutions they
+are provoking; and they would be afraid of these if they were not too
+ignorant of society and history to appreciate the risk, and to know that
+a revolution always seems hopeless and impossible the day before it
+breaks out, and indeed never does break out until it seems hopeless and
+impossible; for rulers who think it possible take care to insure the
+risk by ruling reasonably. This brings about a condition fatal to all
+political stability: namely, that you never know where to have the
+politicians. If the fear of God was in them it might be possible to come
+to some general understanding as to what God disapproves of; and Europe
+might pull together on that basis. But the present panic, in which Prime
+Ministers drift from election to election, either fighting or running
+away from everybody who shakes a fist at them, makes a European
+civilization impossible. Such peace and prosperity as we enjoyed before
+the war depended on the loyalty of the Western States to their own
+civilization. That loyalty could find practical expression only in an
+alliance of the highly civilized Western Powers against the primitive
+tyrannies of the East. Britain, Germany, France, and the United States
+of America could have imposed peace on the world, and nursed modern
+civilization in Russia, Turkey, and the Balkans. Every meaner
+consideration should have given way to this need for the solidarity of
+the higher civilization. What actually happened was that France and
+England, through their clerks the diplomatists, made an alliance with
+Russia to defend themselves against Germany; Germany made an alliance
+with Turkey to defend herself against the three; and the two unnatural
+and suicidal combinations fell on one another in a war that came nearer
+to being a war of extermination than any wars since those of Timur the
+Tartar; whilst the United States held aloof as long as they could, and
+the other States either did the same or joined in the fray through
+compulsion, bribery, or their judgment as to which side their bread was
+buttered. And at the present moment, though the main fighting has ceased
+through the surrender of Germany on terms which the victors have never
+dreamt of observing, the extermination by blockade and famine, which
+was what forced Germany to surrender, still continues, although it is
+certain that if the vanquished starve the victors will starve too, and
+Europe will liquidate its affairs by going, not into bankruptcy, but
+into chaos.
+
+Now all this, it will be noticed, was fundamentally nothing but an
+idiotic attempt on the part of each belligerent State to secure
+for itself the advantage of the survival of the fittest through
+Circumstantial Selection. If the Western Powers had selected their
+allies in the Lamarckian manner intelligently, purposely, and vitally,
+_ad majorem Dei gloriam_, as what Nietzsche called good Europeans,
+there would have been a League of Nations and no war. But because the
+selection relied on was purely circumstantial opportunist selection, so
+that the alliances were mere marriages of convenience, they have turned
+out, not merely as badly as might have been expected, but far worse than
+the blackest pessimist had ever imagined possible.
+
+
+
+CIRCUMSTANTIAL SELECTION IN FINANCE
+
+How it will all end we do not yet know. When wolves combine to kill a
+horse, the death of the horse only sets them fighting one another for
+the choicest morsels. Men are no better than wolves if they have no
+better principles: accordingly, we find that the Armistice and the
+Treaty have not extricated us from the war. A handful of Serbian
+regicides flung us into it as a sporting navvy throws a bull pup at a
+cat; but the Supreme Council, with all its victorious legions and all
+its prestige, cannot get us out of it, though we are heartily sick and
+tired of the whole business, and know now very well that it should never
+have been allowed to happen. But we are helpless before a slate scrawled
+with figures of National Debts. As there is no money to pay them because
+it was all spent on the war (wars have to be paid for on the nail) the
+sensible thing to do is to wipe the slate and let the wrangling States
+distribute what they can spare, on the sound communist principle of from
+each according to his ability, to each according to his need. But no:
+we have no principles left, not even commercial ones; for what sane
+commercialist would decree that France must not pay for her failure to
+defend her own soil; that Germany must pay for her success in carrying
+the war into the enemy's country; and that as Germany has not the money
+to pay, and under our commercial system can make it only by becoming
+once more a commercial competitor of England and France, which neither
+of them will allow, she must borrow the money from England, or America,
+or even from France: an arrangement by which the victorious creditors
+will pay one another, and wait to get their money back until Germany is
+either strong enough to refuse to pay or ruined beyond the possibility
+of paying? Meanwhile Russia, reduced to a scrap of fish and a pint of
+cabbage soup a day, has fallen into the hands of rulers who perceive
+that Materialist Communism is at all events more effective than
+Materialist Nihilism, and are attempting to move in an intelligent and
+ordered manner, practising a very strenuous Intentional Selection of
+workers as fitter to survive than idlers; whilst the Western Powers are
+drifting and colliding and running on the rocks, in the hope that if
+they continue to do their worst they will get Naturally Selected for
+survival without the trouble of thinking about it.
+
+
+THE HOMEOPATHIC REACTION AGAINST DARWINISM
+
+When, like the Russians, our Nihilists have it urgently borne in on
+them, by the brute force of rising wages that never overtake rising
+prices, that they are being Naturally Selected for destruction, they
+will perhaps remember that 'Dont Care came to a bad end,' and begin to
+look round for a religion. And the whole purpose of this book is to
+shew them where to look. For, throughout all the godless welter of the
+infidel half-century, Darwinism has been acting not only directly but
+homeopathically, its poison rallying our vital forces not only to resist
+it and cast it out, but to achieve a new Reformation and put a credible
+and healthy religion in its place. Samuel Butler was the pioneer of the
+reaction as far as the casting out was concerned; but the issue was
+confused by the physiologists, who were divided on the question into
+Mechanists and Vitalists. The Mechanists said that life is nothing but
+physical and chemical action; that they have demonstrated this in many
+cases of so-called vital phenomena; and that there is no reason to doubt
+that with improved methods they will presently be able to demonstrate it
+in all of them. The Vitalists said that a dead body and a live one are
+physically and chemically identical, and that the difference can be
+accounted for only by the existence of a Vital Force. This seems simple;
+but the Anti-Mechanists objected to be called Vitalists (obviously the
+right name for them) on two contradictory grounds. First, that vitality
+is scientifically inadmissible, because it cannot be isolated and
+experimented with in the laboratory. Second, that force, being by
+definition anything that can alter the speed or direction of matter
+in motion (briefly, that can overcome inertia), is essentially a
+mechanistic conception. Here we had the New Vitalist only half
+extricated from the Old Mechanist, objecting to be called either, and
+unable to give a clear lead in the new direction. And there was a deeper
+antagonism. The Old Vitalists, in postulating a Vital Force, were
+setting up a comparatively mechanical conception as against the divine
+idea of the life breathed into the clay nostrils of Adam, whereby he
+became a living soul. The New Vitalists, filled by their laboratory
+researches with a sense of the miraculousness of life that went far
+beyond the comparatively uninformed imaginations of the authors of the
+Book of Genesis, regarded the Old Vitalists as Mechanists who had tried
+to fill up the gulf between life and death with an empty phrase denoting
+an imaginary physical force.
+
+These professional faction fights are ephemeral, and need not trouble us
+here. The Old Vitalist, who was essentially a Materialist, has evolved
+into the New Vitalist, who is, as every genuine scientist must be,
+finally a metaphysician. And as the New Vitalist turns from the disputes
+of his youth to the future of his science, he will cease to boggle at
+the name Vitalist, or at the inevitable, ancient, popular, and quite
+correct use of the term Force to denote metaphysical as well as physical
+overcomers of inertia.
+
+Since the discovery of Evolution as the method of the Life Force the
+religion of metaphysical Vitalism has been gaining the definiteness and
+concreteness needed to make it assimilable by the educated critical man.
+But it has always been with us. The popular religions, disgraced by
+their Opportunist cardinals and bishops, have been kept in credit by
+canonized saints whose secret was their conception of themselves as the
+instruments and vehicles of divine power and aspiration: a conception
+which at moments becomes an actual experience of ecstatic possession by
+that power. And above and below all have been millions of humble and
+obscure persons, sometimes totally illiterate, sometimes unconscious of
+having any religion at all, sometimes believing in their simplicity
+that the gods and temples and priests of their district stood for their
+instinctive righteousness, who have kept sweet the tradition that good
+people follow a light that shines within and above and ahead of them,
+that bad people care only for themselves, and that the good are saved
+and blessed and the bad damned and miserable. Protestantism was a
+movement towards the pursuit of a light called an inner light because
+every man must see it with his own eyes and not take any priest's word
+for it or any Church's account of it. In short, there is no question
+of a new religion, but rather of redistilling the eternal spirit
+of religion and thus extricating it from the sludgy residue of
+temporalities and legends that are making belief impossible, though they
+are the stock-in-trade of all the Churches and all the Schools.
+
+
+RELIGION AND ROMANCE
+
+It is the adulteration of religion by the romance of miracles and
+paradises and torture chambers that makes it reel at the impact of every
+advance in science, instead of being clarified by it. If you take an
+English village lad, and teach him that religion means believing that
+the stories of Noah's Ark and the Garden of Eden are literally true on
+the authority of God himself, and if that boy becomes an artisan and
+goes into the town among the sceptical city proletariat, then, when the
+jibes of his mates set him thinking, and he sees that these stories
+cannot be literally true, and learns that no candid prelate now pretends
+to believe them, he does not make any fine distinctions: he declares at
+once that religion is a fraud, and parsons and teachers hypocrites and
+liars. He becomes indifferent to religion if he has little conscience,
+and indignantly hostile to it if he has a good deal.
+
+The same revolt against wantonly false teaching is happening daily
+in the professional classes whose recreation is reading and whose
+intellectual sport is controversy. They banish the Bible from their
+houses, and sometimes put into the hands of their unfortunate children
+Ethical and Rationalist tracts of the deadliest dullness, compelling
+these wretched infants to sit out the discourses of Secularist lecturers
+(I have delivered some of them myself), who bore them at a length now
+forbidden by custom in the established pulpit. Our minds have reacted so
+violently towards provable logical theorems and demonstrable mechanical
+or chemical facts that we have become incapable of metaphysical truth,
+and try to cast out incredible and silly lies by credible and clever
+ones, calling in Satan to cast out Satan, and getting more into his
+clutches than ever in the process. Thus the world is kept sane less by
+the saints than by the vast mass of the indifferent, who neither act nor
+react in the matter. Butler's preaching of the gospel of Laodicea was a
+piece of common sense founded on his observation of this.
+
+But indifference will not guide nations through civilization to the
+establishment of the perfect city of God. An indifferent statesman is a
+contradiction in terms; and a statesman who is indifferent on principle,
+a Laisser-faire or Muddle-Through doctrinaire, plays the deuce with us
+in the long run. Our statesmen must get a religion by hook or crook; and
+as we are committed to Adult Suffrage it must be a religion capable of
+vulgarization. The thought first put into words by the Mills when they
+said 'There is no God; but this is a family secret,' and long held
+unspoken by aristocratic statesmen and diplomatists, will not serve now;
+for the revival of civilization after the war cannot be effected by
+artificial breathing: the driving force of an undeluded popular consent
+is indispensable, and will be impossible until the statesman can appeal
+to the vital instincts of the people in terms of a common religion. The
+success of the Hang the Kaiser cry at the last General Election shews
+us very terrifyingly how a common irreligion can be used by myopic
+demagogy; and common irreligion will destroy civilization unless it is
+countered by common religion.
+
+
+THE DANGER OF REACTION
+
+And here arises the danger that when we realize this we shall do just
+what we did half a century ago, and what Pliable did in The Pilgrim's
+Progress when Christian landed him in the Slough of Despond: that is,
+run back in terror to our old superstitions. We jumped out of the
+frying-pan into the fire; and we are just as likely to jump back again,
+now that we feel hotter than ever. History records very little in the
+way of mental activity on the part of the mass of mankind except a
+series of stampedes from affirmative errors into negative ones and back
+again. It must therefore be said very precisely and clearly that the
+bankruptcy of Darwinism does not mean that Nobodaddy was Somebodaddy
+_with_ 'body, parts, and passions' after all; that the world was made
+in the year 4004 B.C.; that damnation means a eternity of blazing
+brimstone; that the Immaculate Conception means that sex is sinful and
+that Christ was parthenogenetically brought forth by a virgin descended
+in like manner from a line of virgins right back to Eve; that the
+Trinity is an anthropomorphic monster with three heads which are yet
+only one head; that in Rome the bread and wine on the altar become flesh
+and blood, and in England, in a still more mystical manner, they do
+and they do not; that the Bible is an infallible scientific manual, an
+accurate historical chronicle, and a complete guide to conduct; that we
+may lie and cheat and murder and then wash ourselves innocent in the
+blood of the lamb on Sunday at the cost of a _credo_ and a penny in the
+plate, and so on and so forth. Civilization cannot be saved by people
+not only crude enough to believe these things, but irreligious enough
+to believe that such belief constitutes a religion. The education of
+children cannot safely be left in their hands. If dwindling sects like
+the Church of England, the Church of Rome, the Greek Church, and the
+rest, persist in trying to cramp the human mind within the limits of
+these grotesque perversions of natural truths and poetic metaphors, then
+they must be ruthlessly banished from the schools until they either
+perish in general contempt or discover the soul that is hidden in every
+dogma. The real Class War will be a war of intellectual classes; and its
+conquest will be the souls of the children.
+
+
+A TOUCHSTONE FOR DOGMA
+
+The test of a dogma is its universality. As long as the Church of
+England preaches a single doctrine that the Brahman, the Buddhist, the
+Mussulman, the Parsee, and all the other sectarians who are British
+subjects cannot accept, it has no legitimate place in the counsels of
+the British Commonwealth, and will remain what it is at present, a
+corrupter of youth, a danger to the State, and an obstruction to the
+Fellowship of the Holy Ghost. This has never been more strongly felt
+than at present, after a war in which the Church failed grossly in the
+courage of its profession, and sold its lilies for the laurels of the
+soldiers of the Victoria Cross. All the cocks in Christendom have been
+crowing shame on it ever since; and it will not be spared for the sake
+of the two or three faithful who were found even among the bishops. Let
+the Church take it on authority, even my authority (as a professional
+legend maker) if it cannot see the truth by its own light: no dogma can
+be a legend. A legend can pass an ethnical frontier as a legend, but not
+as a truth; whilst the only frontier to the currency of a sound dogma as
+such is the frontier of capacity for understanding it.
+
+This does not mean that we should throw away legend and parable and
+drama: they are the natural vehicles of dogma; but woe to the Churches
+and rulers who substitute the legend for the dogma, the parable for the
+history, the drama for the religion! Better by far declare the throne
+of God empty than set a liar and a fool on it. What are called wars of
+religion are always wars to destroy religion by affirming the historical
+truth or material substantiality of some legend, and killing those who
+refuse to accept it as historical or substantial. But who has ever
+refused to accept a good legend with delight as a legend? The legends,
+the parables, the dramas, are among the choicest treasures of mankind.
+No one is ever tired of stories of miracles. In vain did Mahomet
+repudiate the miracles ascribed to him: in vain did Christ furiously
+scold those who asked him to give them an exhibition as a conjurer: in
+vain did the saints declare that God chose them not for their powers but
+for their weaknesses; that the humble might be exalted, and the proud
+rebuked. People will have their miracles, their stories, their heroes
+and heroines and saints and martyrs and divinities to exercise their
+gifts of affection, admiration, wonder, and worship, and their Judases
+and devils to enable them to be angry and yet feel that they do well to
+be angry. Every one of these legends is the common heritage of the human
+race; and there is only one inexorable condition attached to their
+healthy enjoyment, which is that no one shall believe them literally.
+The reading of stories and delighting in them made Don Quixote a
+gentleman: the believing them literally made him a madman who slew
+lambs instead of feeding them. In England today good books of Eastern
+religious legends are read eagerly; and Protestants and Atheists read
+Roman Catholic legends of the Saints with pleasure. But such fare is
+shirked by Indians and Roman Catholics. Freethinkers read the Bible:
+indeed they seem to be its only readers now except the reluctant
+parsons at the church lecterns, who communicate their discomfort to the
+congregation by gargling the words in their throats in an unnatural
+manner that is as repulsive as it is unintelligible. And this is because
+the imposition of the legends as literal truths at once changes them
+from parables into falsehoods. The feeling against the Bible has become
+so strong at last that educated people not only refuse to outrage their
+intellectual consciences by reading the legend of Noah's Ark, with its
+funny beginning about the animals and its exquisite end about the birds:
+they will not read even the chronicles of King David, which may
+very well be true, and are certainly more candid than the official
+biographies of our contemporary monarchs.
+
+
+WHAT TO DO WITH THE LEGENDS
+
+What we should do, then, is to pool our legends and make a delightful
+stock of religious folk-lore on an honest basis for all mankind. With
+our minds freed from pretence and falsehood we could enter into the
+heritage of all the faiths. China would share her sages with Spain, and
+Spain her saints with China. The Ulster man who now gives his son an
+unmerciful thrashing if the boy is so tactless as to ask how the evening
+and the morning could be the first day before the sun was created, or
+to betray an innocent calf-love for the Virgin Mary, would buy him a
+bookful of legends of the creation and of mothers of God from all parts
+of the world, and be very glad to find his laddie as interested in such
+things as in marbles or Police and Robbers. That would be better
+than beating all good feeling towards religion out of the child, and
+blackening his mind by teaching him that the worshippers of the holy
+virgins, whether of the Parthenon or St Peter's, are fire-doomed
+heathens and idolaters. All the sweetness of religion is conveyed to
+the world by the hands of storytellers and image-makers. Without their
+fictions the truths of religion would for the multitude be neither
+intelligible nor even apprehensible; and the prophets would prophesy and
+the teachers teach in vain. And nothing stands between the people and
+the fictions except the silly falsehood that the fictions are literal
+truths, and that there is nothing in religion but fiction.
+
+
+A LESSON FROM SCIENCE TO THE CHURCHES
+
+Let the Churches ask themselves why there is no revolt against the
+dogmas of mathematics though there is one against the dogmas
+of religion. It is not that the mathematical dogmas are more
+comprehensible. The law of inverse squares is as incomprehensible to the
+common man as the Athanasian creed. It is not that science is free from
+legends, witchcraft, miracles, biographic boostings of quacks as heroes
+and saints, and of barren scoundrels as explorers and discoverers. On
+the contrary, the iconography and hagiology of Scientism are as copious
+as they are mostly squalid. But no student of science has yet been
+taught that specific gravity consists in the belief that Archimedes
+jumped out of his bath and ran naked through the streets of Syracuse
+shouting Eureka, Eureka, or that the law of inverse squares must be
+discarded if anyone can prove that Newton was never in an orchard in his
+life. When some unusually conscientious or enterprising bacteriologist
+reads the pamphlets of Jenner, and discovers that they might have been
+written by an ignorant but curious and observant nurserymaid, and could
+not possibly have been written by any person with a scientifically
+trained mind, he does not feel that the whole edifice of science has
+collapsed and crumbled, and that there is no such thing as smallpox.
+It may come to that yet; for hygiene, as it forces its way into our
+schools, is being taught as falsely as religion is taught there; but in
+mathematics and physics the faith is still kept pure, and you may take
+the law and leave the legends without suspicion of heresy. Accordingly,
+the tower of the mathematician stands unshaken whilst the temple of the
+priest rocks to its foundation.
+
+
+THE RELIGIOUS ART OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
+
+Creative Evolution is already a religion, and is indeed now
+unmistakeably the religion of the twentieth century, newly arisen
+from the ashes of pseudo-Christianity, of mere scepticism, and of
+the soulless affirmations and blind negations of the Mechanists and
+Neo-Darwinians. But it cannot become a popular religion until it has its
+legends, its parables, its miracles. And when I say popular I do not
+mean apprehensible by villagers only. I mean apprehensible by Cabinet
+Ministers as well. It is unreasonable to look to the professional
+politician and administrator for light and leading in religion. He
+is neither a philosopher nor a prophet: if he were, he would be
+philosophizing and prophesying, and not neglecting both for the drudgery
+of practical government. Socrates and Coleridge did not remain soldiers,
+nor could John Stuart Mill remain the representative of Westminster in
+the House of Commons even when he was willing. The Westminster electors
+admired Mill for telling them that much of the difficulty of dealing
+with them arose from their being inveterate liars. But they would not
+vote a second time for the man who was not afraid to break the crust of
+mendacity on which they were all dancing; for it seemed to them
+that there was a volcanic abyss beneath, not having his philosophic
+conviction that the truth is the solidest standing ground in the end.
+Your front bench man will always be an exploiter of the popular religion
+or irreligion. Not being an expert, he must take it as he finds it; and
+before he can take it, he must have been told stories about it in his
+childhood and had before him all his life an elaborate iconography of it
+produced by writers, painters, sculptors, temple architects, and artists
+of all the higher sorts. Even if, as sometimes happens, he is a bit of
+an amateur in metaphysics as well as a professional politician, he must
+still govern according to the popular iconography, and not according to
+his own personal interpretations if these happen to be heterodox.
+
+It will be seen then that the revival of religion on a scientific basis
+does not mean the death of art, but a glorious rebirth of it. Indeed art
+has never been great when it was not providing an iconography for a live
+religion. And it has never been quite contemptible except when imitating
+the iconography after the religion had become a superstition. Italian
+painting from Giotto to Carpaccio is all religious painting; and it
+moves us deeply and has real greatness. Compare with it the attempts of
+our painters a century ago to achieve the effects of the old masters by
+imitation when they should have been illustrating a faith of their own.
+Contemplate, if you can bear it, the dull daubs of Hilton and Haydon,
+who knew so much more about drawing and scumbling and glazing and
+perspective and anatomy and 'marvellous foreshortening' than Giotto,
+the latchet of whose shoe they were nevertheless not worthy to unloose.
+Compare Mozart's Magic Flute, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Wagner's Ring,
+all of them reachings-forward to the new Vitalist art, with the dreary
+pseudo-sacred oratorios and cantatas which were produced for no better
+reason than that Handel had formerly made splendid thunder in that way,
+and with the stale confectionery, mostly too would-be pious to be even
+cheerfully toothsome, of Spohr and Mendelssohn, Stainer and Parry, which
+spread indigestion at our musical festivals until I publicly told Parry
+the bludgeoning truth about his Job and woke him to conviction of sin.
+Compare Flaxman and Thorwaldsen and Gibson with Phidias and Praxiteles,
+Stevens with Michael Angelo, Bouguereau's Virgin with Cimabue's, or the
+best operatic Christs of Scheffer and Müller with the worst Christs that
+the worst painters could paint before the end of the fifteenth century,
+and you must feel that until we have a great religious movement we
+cannot hope for a great artistic one. The disillusioned Raphael could
+paint a mother and child, but not a queen of Heaven as much less skilful
+men had done in the days of his great-grandfather; yet he could reach
+forward to the twentieth century and paint a Transfiguration of the Son
+of Man as they could not. Also, please note, he could decorate a house
+of pleasure for a cardinal very beautifully with voluptuous pictures of
+Cupid and Psyche; for this simple sort of Vitalism is always with
+us, and, like portrait painting, keeps the artist supplied with
+subject-matter in the intervals between the ages of faith; so that your
+sceptical Rembrandts and Velasquezs are at least not compelled to paint
+shop fronts for want of anything else to paint in which they can really
+believe.
+
+
+THE ARTIST-PROPHETS
+
+And there are always certain rare but intensely interesting
+anticipations. Michael Angelo could not very well believe in Julius
+II or Leo X, or in much that they believed in; but he could paint
+the Superman three hundred years before Nietzsche wrote Also Sprach
+Zarathustra and Strauss set it to music. Michael Angelo won the primacy
+among all modern painters and sculptors solely by his power of shewing
+us superhuman persons. On the strength of his decoration and color alone
+he would hardly have survived his own death twenty years; and even his
+design would have had only an academic interest; but as a painter of
+prophets and sibyls he is greatest among the very greatest in his craft,
+because we aspire to a world of prophets and sibyls. Beethoven never
+heard of radioactivity nor of electrons dancing in vortices of
+inconceivable energy; but pray can anyone explain the last movement of
+his Hammerklavier Sonata, Opus 106, otherwise than as a musical picture
+of these whirling electrons? His contemporaries said he was mad, partly
+perhaps because the movement was so hard to play; but we, who can make a
+pianola play it to us over and over until it is as familiar as Pop
+Goes the Weasel, know that it is sane and methodical. As such, it
+must represent something; and as all Beethoven's serious compositions
+represent some process within himself, some nerve storm or soul storm,
+and the storm here is clearly one of physical movement, I should much
+like to know what other storm than the atomic storm could have driven
+him to this oddest of all those many expressions of cyclonic energy
+which have given him the same distinction among musicians that Michael
+Angelo has among draughtsmen.
+
+In Beethoven's day the business of art was held to be 'the sublime and
+beautiful.' In our day it has fallen to be the imitative and voluptuous.
+In both periods the word passionate has been freely employed; but in the
+eighteenth century passion meant irresistible impulse of the loftiest
+kind: for example, a passion for astronomy or for truth. For us it has
+come to mean concupiscence and nothing else. One might say to the art of
+Europe what Antony said to the corpse of Caesar: 'Are all thy conquests,
+glories, triumphs, spoils, shrunk to this little measure?' But in fact
+it is the mind of Europe that has shrunk, being, as we have seen, wholly
+preoccupied with a busy spring-cleaning to get rid of its superstitions
+before readjusting itself to the new conception of Evolution.
+
+
+EVOLUTION IN THE THEATRE
+
+On the stage (and here I come at last to my own particular function in
+the matter), Comedy, as a destructive, derisory, critical, negative art,
+kept the theatre open when sublime tragedy perished. From Molière to
+Oscar Wilde we had a line of comedic playwrights who, if they had
+nothing fundamentally positive to say, were at least in revolt against
+falsehood and imposture, and were not only, as they claimed, 'chastening
+morals by ridicule,' but, in Johnson's phrase, clearing our minds of
+cant, and thereby shewing an uneasiness in the presence of error which
+is the surest symptom of intellectual vitality. Meanwhile the name of
+Tragedy was assumed by plays in which everyone was killed in the last
+act, just as, in spite of Molière, plays in which everyone was married
+in the last act called themselves comedies. Now neither tragedies nor
+comedies can be produced according to a prescription which gives only
+the last moments of the last act. Shakespear did not make Hamlet out of
+its final butchery, nor Twelfth Night out of its final matrimony. And he
+could not become the conscious iconographer of a religion because he had
+no conscious religion. He had therefore to exercise his extraordinary
+natural gifts in the very entertaining art of mimicry, giving us the
+famous 'delineation of character' which makes his plays, like the novels
+of Scott, Dumas, and Dickens, so delightful. Also, he developed that
+curious and questionable art of building us a refuge from despair by
+disguising the cruelties of Nature as jokes. But with all his gifts, the
+fact remains that he never found the inspiration to write an original
+play. He furbished up old plays, and adapted popular stories, and
+chapters of history from Holinshed's Chronicle and Plutarch's
+biographies, to the stage. All this he did (or did not; for there are
+minus quantities in the algebra of art) with a recklessness which shewed
+that his trade lay far from his conscience. It is true that he never
+takes his characters from the borrowed story, because it was less
+trouble and more fun to him to create them afresh; but none the less
+he heaps the murders and villainies of the borrowed story on his own
+essentially gentle creations without scruple, no matter how incongruous
+they may be. And all the time his vital need for a philosophy drives
+him to seek one by the quaint professional method of introducing
+philosophers as characters into his plays, and even of making his heroes
+philosophers; but when they come on the stage they have no philosophy
+to expound: they are only pessimists and railers; and their occasional
+would-be philosophic speeches, such as The Seven Ages of Man and The
+Soliloquy on Suicide, shew how deeply in the dark Shakespear was as
+to what philosophy means. He forced himself in among the greatest of
+playwrights without having once entered that region in which Michael
+Angelo, Beethoven, Goethe, and the antique Athenian stage poets are
+great. He would really not be great at all if it were not that he had
+religion enough to be aware that his religionless condition was one of
+despair. His towering King Lear would be only a melodrama were it not
+for its express admission that if there is nothing more to be said of
+the universe than Hamlet has to say, then 'as flies to wanton boys are
+we to the gods: they kill us for their sport.'
+
+Ever since Shakespear, playwrights have been struggling with the same
+lack of religion; and many of them were forced to become mere panders
+and sensation-mongers because, though they had higher ambitions, they
+could find no better subject-matter. From Congreve to Sheridan they were
+so sterile in spite of their wit that they did not achieve between them
+the output of Molière's single lifetime; and they were all (not without
+reason) ashamed of their profession, and preferred to be regarded as
+mere men of fashion with a rakish hobby. Goldsmith's was the only saved
+soul in that pandemonium.
+
+The leaders among my own contemporaries (now veterans) snatched at minor
+social problems rather than write entirely without any wider purpose
+than to win money and fame. One of them expressed to me his envy of the
+ancient Greek playwrights because the Athenians asked them, not for some
+'new and original' disguise of the half-dozen threadbare plots of the
+modern theatre, but for the deepest lesson they could draw from the
+familiar and sacred legends of their country. 'Let us all,' he said,
+'write an Electra, an Antigone, an Agamemnon, and shew what we can do
+with it.' But he did not write any of them, because these legends are
+no longer religious: Aphrodite and Artemis and Poseidon are deader than
+their statues. Another, with a commanding position and every trick of
+British farce and Parisian drama at his fingers' ends, finally could
+not write without a sermon to preach, and yet could not find texts more
+fundamental than the hypocrisies of sham Puritanism, or the matrimonial
+speculation which makes our young actresses as careful of their
+reputations as of their complexions. A third, too tenderhearted to break
+our spirits with the realities of a bitter experience, coaxed a wistful
+pathos and a dainty fun out of the fairy cloudland that lay between him
+and the empty heavens. The giants of the theatre of our time, Ibsen and
+Strindberg, had no greater comfort for the world than we: indeed much
+less; for they refused us even the Shakespearian-Dickensian consolation
+of laughter at mischief, accurately called comic relief. Our emancipated
+young successors scorn us, very properly. But they will be able to do no
+better whilst the drama remains pre-Evolutionist. Let them consider the
+great exception of Goethe. He, no richer than Shakespear, Ibsen, or
+Strindberg in specific talent as a playwright, is in the empyrean whilst
+they are gnashing their teeth in impotent fury in the mud, or at best
+finding an acid enjoyment in the irony of their predicament. Goethe is
+Olympian: the other giants are infernal in everything but their veracity
+and their repudiation of the irreligion of their time: that is, they are
+bitter and hopeless. It is not a question of mere dates. Goethe was
+an Evolutionist in 1830: many playwrights, even young ones, are still
+untouched by Creative Evolution in 1920. Ibsen was Darwinized to the
+extent of exploiting heredity on the stage much as the ancient Athenian
+playwrights exploited the Eumenides; but there is no trace in his
+plays of any faith in or knowledge of Creative Evolution as a modern
+scientific fact. True, the poetic aspiration is plain enough in his
+Emperor or Galilean; but it is one of Ibsen's distinctions that nothing
+was valid for him but science; and he left that vision of the future
+which his Roman seer calls 'the third Empire' behind him as a Utopian
+dream when he settled down to his serious grapple with realities in
+those plays of modern life with which he overcame Europe, and broke
+the dusty windows of every dry-rotten theatre in it from Moscow to
+Manchester.
+
+
+MY OWN PART IN THE MATTER
+
+In my own activities as a playwright I found this state of things
+intolerable. The fashionable theatre prescribed one serious subject:
+clandestine adultery: the dullest of all subjects for a serious author,
+whatever it may be for audiences who read the police intelligence
+and skip the reviews and leading articles. I tried slum-landlordism,
+doctrinaire Free Love (pseudo-Ibsenism), prostitution, militarism,
+marriage, history, current politics, natural Christianity, national
+and individual character, paradoxes of conventional society, husband
+hunting, questions of conscience, professional delusions and impostures,
+all worked into a series of comedies of manners in the classic fashion,
+which was then very much out of fashion, the mechanical tricks of
+Parisian 'construction' being _de rigueur_ in the theatre. But this,
+though it occupied me and established me professionally, did not
+constitute me an iconographer of the religion of my time, and thus
+fulfil my natural function as an artist. I was quite conscious of this;
+for I had always known that civilization needs a religion as a matter of
+life or death; and as the conception of Creative Evolution developed I
+saw that we were at last within reach of a faith which complied with
+the first condition of all the religions that have ever taken hold of
+humanity: namely, that it must be, first and fundamentally, a science
+of metabiology. This was a crucial point with me; for I had seen Bible
+fetichism, after standing up to all the rationalistic batteries of Hume,
+Voltaire, and the rest, collapse before the onslaught of much less
+gifted Evolutionists, solely because they discredited it as a biological
+document; so that from that moment it lost its hold, and left literate
+Christendom faithless. My own Irish eighteenth-centuryism made it
+impossible for me to believe anything until I could conceive it as
+a scientific hypothesis, even though the abominations, quackeries,
+impostures, venalities, credulities, and delusions of the camp followers
+of science, and the brazen lies and priestly pretensions of the
+pseudo-scientific cure-mongers, all sedulously inculcated by modern
+'secondary education,' were so monstrous that I was sometimes forced to
+make a verbal distinction between science and knowledge lest I should
+mislead my readers. But I never forgot that without knowledge even
+wisdom is more dangerous than mere opportunist ignorance, and that
+somebody must take the Garden of Eden in hand and weed it properly.
+
+Accordingly, in 1901, I took the legend of Don Juan in its Mozartian
+form and made it a dramatic parable of Creative Evolution. But being
+then at the height of my invention and comedic talent, I decorated it
+too brilliantly and lavishly. I surrounded it with a comedy of which it
+formed only one act, and that act was so completely episodical (it was
+a dream which did not affect the action of the piece) that the comedy
+could be detached and played by itself: indeed it could hardly be played
+at full length owing to the enormous length of the entire work, though
+that feat has been performed a few times in Scotland by Mr Esme Percy,
+who led one of the forlorn hopes of the advanced drama at that time.
+Also I supplied the published work with an imposing framework consisting
+of a preface, an appendix called The Revolutionist's Handbook, and a
+final display of aphoristic fireworks. The effect was so vertiginous,
+apparently, that nobody noticed the new religion in the centre of the
+intellectual whirlpool. Now I protest I did not cut these cerebral
+capers in mere inconsiderate exuberance. I did it because the worst
+convention of the criticism of the theatre current at that time was that
+intellectual seriousness is out of place on the stage; that the theatre
+is a place of shallow amusement; that people go there to be soothed
+after the enormous intellectual strain of a day in the city: in short,
+that a playwright is a person whose business it is to make unwholesome
+confectionery out of cheap emotions. My answer to this was to put all
+my intellectual goods in the shop window under the sign of Man and
+Superman. That part of my design succeeded. By good luck and acting, the
+comedy triumphed on the stage; and the book was a good deal discussed.
+Since then the sweet-shop view of the theatre has been out of
+countenance; and its critical exponents have been driven to take an
+intellectual pose which, though often more trying than their old
+intellectually nihilistic vulgarity, at least concedes the dignity
+of the theatre, not to mention the usefulness of those who live by
+criticizing it. And the younger playwrights are not only taking their
+art seriously, but being taken seriously themselves. The critic who
+ought to be a newsboy is now comparatively rare.
+
+I now find myself inspired to make a second legend of Creative Evolution
+without distractions and embellishments. My sands are running out; the
+exuberance of 1901 has aged into the garrulity of 1930; and the war has
+been a stern intimation that the matter is not one to be trifled with. I
+abandon the legend of Don Juan with its erotic associations, and go back
+to the legend of the Garden of Eden. I exploit the eternal interest of
+the philosopher's stone which enables men to live for ever. I am not, I
+hope, under more illusion than is humanly inevitable as to the crudity
+of this my beginning of a Bible for Creative Evolution. I am doing the
+best I can at my age. My powers are waning; but so much the better for
+those who found me unbearably brilliant when I was in my prime. It is
+my hope that a hundred apter and more elegant parables by younger hands
+will soon leave mine as far behind as the religious pictures of the
+fifteenth century left behind the first attempts of the early Christians
+at iconography. In that hope I withdraw and ring up the curtain.
+
+
+
+BACK TO METHUSELAH.
+
+PART I
+
+In the Beginning
+
+ACT I
+
+
+_The Garden of Eden. Afternoon. An immense serpent is sleeping with
+her head buried in a thick bed of Johnswort, and her body coiled in
+apparently endless rings through the branches of a tree, which is
+already well grown; for the days of creation have been longer than our
+reckoning. She is not yet visible to anyone unaware of her presence, as
+her colors of green and brown make a perfect camouflage. Near her head a
+low rock shows above the Johnswort.
+
+The rock and tree are on the border of a glade in which lies a dead fawn
+all awry, its neck being broken. Adam, crouching with one hand on the
+rock, is staring in consternation at the dead body. He has not noticed
+the serpent on his left hand. He turns his face to his right and calls
+excitedly._
+
+ADAM. Eve! Eve!
+
+EVE'S VOICE. What is it, Adam?
+
+ADAM. Come here. Quick. Something has happened.
+
+EVE [_running in_] What? Where? [_Adam points to the fawn_]. Oh! [_She
+goes to it; and he is emboldened to go with her_]. What is the matter
+with its eyes?
+
+ADAM. It is not only its eyes. Look. [_He kicks it._]
+
+EVE. Oh don't! Why doesn't it wake?
+
+ADAM. I don't know. It is not asleep.
+
+EVE. Not asleep?
+
+ADAM. Try.
+
+EVE [_trying to shake it and roll it over_] It is stiff and cold.
+
+ADAM. Nothing will wake it.
+
+EVE. It has a queer smell. Pah! [_She dusts her hands, and draws away
+from it_]. Did you find it like that?
+
+ADAM. No. It was playing about; and it tripped and went head over heels.
+It never stirred again. Its neck is wrong [_he stoops to lift the neck
+and shew her_].
+
+EVE. Dont touch it. Come away from it.
+
+_They both retreat, and contemplate it from a few steps' distance with
+growing repulsion._
+
+EVE. Adam.
+
+ADAM. Yes?
+
+EVE. Suppose you were to trip and fall, would you go like that?
+
+ADAM. Ugh! [_He shudders and sits down on the rock_].
+
+EVE [_throwing herself on the ground beside him, and grasping his knee_]
+You must be careful. Promise me you will be careful.
+
+ADAM. What is the good of being careful? We have to live here for ever.
+Think of what for ever means! Sooner or later I shall trip and fall. It
+may be tomorrow; it may be after as many days as there are leaves in
+the garden and grains of sand by the river. No matter: some day I shall
+forget and stumble.
+
+EVE. I too.
+
+ADAM [_horrified_] Oh no, no. I should be alone. Alone for ever. You
+must never put yourself in danger of stumbling. You must not move about.
+You must sit still. I will take care of you and bring you what you want.
+
+EVE [_turning away from him with a shrug, and hugging her ankles_] I
+should soon get tired of that. Besides, if it happened to you, _I_
+should be alone. I could not sit still then. And at last it would happen
+to me too.
+
+ADAM. And then?
+
+EVE. Then we should be no more. There would be only the things on all
+fours, and the birds, and the snakes.
+
+ADAM. That must not be.
+
+EVE. Yes: that must not be. But it might be.
+
+ADAM. No. I tell you it must not be. I know that it must not be.
+
+EVE. We both know it. How do we know it?
+
+ADAM. There is a voice in the garden that tells me things.
+
+EVE. The garden is full of voices sometimes. They put all sorts of
+thoughts into my head.
+
+ADAM. To me there is only one voice. It is very low; but it is so near
+that it is like a whisper from within myself. There is no mistaking it
+for any voice of the birds or beasts, or for your voice.
+
+EVE. It is strange that I should hear voices from all sides and you only
+one from within. But I have some thoughts that come from within me and
+not from the voices. The thought that we must not cease to be comes from
+within.
+
+ADAM [_despairingly_] But we shall cease to be. We shall fall like the
+fawn and be broken. [_Rising and moving about in his agitation_]. I
+cannot bear this knowledge. I will not have it. It must not be, I tell
+you. Yet I do not know how to prevent it.
+
+EVE. That is just what I feel; but it is very strange that you should
+say so: there is no pleasing you. You change your mind so often.
+
+ADAM [_scolding her_] Why do you say that? How have I changed my mind?
+
+EVE. You say we must not cease to exist. But you used to complain
+of having to exist always and for ever. You sometimes sit for hours
+brooding and silent, hating me in your heart. When I ask you what I have
+done to you, you say you are not thinking of me, but of the horror of
+having to be here for ever. But I know very well that what you mean is
+the horror of having to be here with me for ever.
+
+ADAM. Oh! That is what you think, is it? Well, you are wrong. [_He sits
+down again, sulkily_]. It is the horror of having to be with myself for
+ever. I like you; but I do not like myself. I want to be different; to
+be better, to begin again and again; to shed myself as a snake sheds its
+skin. I am tired of myself. And yet I must endure myself, not for a day
+or for many days, but for ever. That is a dreadful thought. That is what
+makes me sit brooding and silent and hateful. Do you never think of
+that?
+
+EVE. No: I do not think about myself: what is the use? I am what I am:
+nothing can alter that. I think about you.
+
+ADAM. You should not. You are always spying on me. I can never be alone.
+You always want to know what I have been doing. It is a burden. You
+should try to have an existence of your own, instead of occupying
+yourself with my existence.
+
+EVE. I _have_ to think about you. You are lazy: you are dirty: you
+neglect yourself: you are always dreaming: you would eat bad food and
+become disgusting if I did not watch you and occupy myself with you. And
+now some day, in spite of all my care, you will fall on your head and
+become dead.
+
+ADAM. Dead? What word is that?
+
+EVE [_pointing to the fawn_] Like that. I call it dead.
+
+ADAM [_rising and approaching it slowly_] There is something uncanny
+about it.
+
+EVE [_joining him_] Oh! It is changing into little white worms.
+
+ADAM. Throw it into the river. It is unbearable.
+
+EVE. I dare not touch it.
+
+ADAM. Then I must, though I loathe it. It is poisoning the air. [_He
+gathers its hooves in his hand and carries it away in the direction from
+which Eve came, holding it as far from him as possible_].
+
+Eve looks after them for a moment; then, with a shiver of disgust, sits
+down on the rock, brooding. The body of the serpent becomes visible,
+glowing with wonderful new colors. She rears her head slowly from the
+bed of Johnswort, and speaks into Eve's ear in a strange seductively
+musical whisper.
+
+THE SERPENT. Eve.
+
+EVE [_startled_] Who is that?
+
+THE SERPENT. It is I. I have come to shew you my beautiful new hood. See
+[_she spreads a magnificent amethystine hood_]!
+
+EVE [_admiring it_] Oh! But who taught you to speak?
+
+THE SERPENT. You and Adam. I have crept through the grass, and hidden,
+and listened to you.
+
+EVE. That was wonderfully clever of you.
+
+THE SERPENT. I am the most subtle of all the creatures of the field.
+
+EVE. Your hood is most lovely. [_She strokes it and pets the serpent_].
+Pretty thing! Do you love your godmother Eve?
+
+THE SERPENT. I adore her. [_She licks Eve's neck with her double
+tongue_].
+
+EVE [_petting her_] Eve's wonderful darling snake. Eve will never be
+lonely now that her snake can talk to her.
+
+THE SNAKE. I can talk of many things. I am very wise. It was I who
+whispered the word to you that you did not know. Dead. Death. Die.
+
+EVE [_shuddering_] Why do you remind me of it? I forgot it when I saw
+your beautiful hood. You must not remind me of unhappy things.
+
+THE SERPENT. Death is not an unhappy thing when you have learnt how to
+conquer it.
+
+EVE. How can I conquer it?
+
+THE SERPENT. By another thing, called birth.
+
+EVE. What? [_Trying to pronounce it_] B-birth?
+
+THE SERPENT. Yes, birth.
+
+EVE. What is birth?
+
+THE SERPENT. The serpent never dies. Some day you shall see me come out
+of this beautiful skin, a new snake with a new and lovelier skin. That
+is birth.
+
+EVE. I have seen that. It is wonderful.
+
+THE SERPENT. If I can do that, what can I not do? I tell you I am very
+subtle. When you and Adam talk, I hear you say 'Why?' Always 'Why?' You
+see things; and you say 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I
+say 'Why not?' I made the word dead to describe my old skin that I cast
+when I am renewed. I call that renewal being born.
+
+EVE. Born is a beautiful word.
+
+THE SERPENT. Why not be born again and again as I am, new and beautiful
+every time?
+
+EVE. I! It does not happen: that is why.
+
+THE SERPENT. That is how; but it is not why. Why not?
+
+EVE. But I should not like it. It would be nice to be new again; but my
+old skin would lie on the ground looking just like me; and Adam would
+see it shrivel up and--
+
+THE SERPENT. No. He need not. There is a second birth.
+
+EVE. A second birth?
+
+THE SERPENT. Listen. I will tell you a great secret. I am very subtle;
+and I have thought and thought and thought. And I am very wilful, and
+must have what I want; and I have willed and willed and willed. And I
+have eaten strange things: stones and apples that you are afraid to eat.
+
+EVE. You dared!
+
+THE SERPENT. I dared everything. And at last I found a way of gathering
+together a part of the life in my body--
+
+EVE. What is the life?
+
+THE SERPENT. That which makes the difference between the dead fawn and
+the live one.
+
+EVE. What a beautiful word! And what a wonderful thing! Life is the
+loveliest of all the new words.
+
+THE SERPENT. Yes: it was by meditating on Life that I gained the power
+to do miracles.
+
+EVE. Miracles? Another new word.
+
+THE SERPENT. A miracle is an impossible thing that is nevertheless
+possible. Something that never could happen, and yet does happen.
+
+EVE. Tell me some miracle that you have done.
+
+THE SERPENT. I gathered a part of the life in my body, and shut it into
+a tiny white case made of the stones I had eaten.
+
+EVE. And what good was that?
+
+THE SERPENT. I shewed the little case to the sun, and left it in its
+warmth. And it burst; and a little snake came out; and it became bigger
+and bigger from day to day until it was as big as I. That was the second
+birth.
+
+EVE. Oh! That is too wonderful. It stirs inside me. It hurts.
+
+THE SERPENT. It nearly tore me asunder. Yet I am alive, and can burst my
+skin and renew myself as before. Soon there will be as many snakes in
+Eden as there are scales on my body. Then death will not matter: this
+snake and that snake will die; but the snakes will live.
+
+EVE. But the rest of us will die sooner or later, like the fawn. And
+then there will be nothing but snakes, snakes, snakes everywhere.
+
+THE SERPENT. That must not be. I worship you, Eve. I must have something
+to worship. Something quite different to myself, like you. There must be
+something greater than the snake.
+
+EVE. Yes: it must not be. Adam must not perish. You are very subtle:
+tell me what to do.
+
+THE SERPENT. Think. Will. Eat the dust. Lick the white stone: bite the
+apple you dread. The sun will give life.
+
+EVE. I do not trust the sun. I will give life myself. I will tear.
+another Adam from my body if I tear my body to pieces in the act.
+
+THE SERPENT. Do. Dare it. Everything is possible: everything. Listen.
+I am old. I am the old serpent, older than Adam, older than Eve. I
+remember Lilith, who came before Adam and Eve. I was her darling as I am
+yours. She was alone: there was no man with her. She saw death as you
+saw it when the fawn fell; and she knew then that she must find out how
+to renew herself and cast the skin like me. She had a mighty will: she
+strove and strove and willed and willed for more moons than there are
+leaves on all the trees of the garden. Her pangs were terrible: her
+groans drove sleep from Eden. She said it must never be again: that the
+burden of renewing life was past bearing: that it was too much for one.
+And when she cast the skin, lo! there was not one new Lilith but two:
+one like herself, the other like Adam. You were the one: Adam was the
+other.
+
+EVE. But why did she divide into two, and make us different?
+
+THE SERPENT. I tell you the labor is too much for one. Two must share
+it.
+
+EVE. Do you mean that Adam must share it with me? He will not. He cannot
+bear pain, nor take trouble with his body.
+
+THE SERPENT. He need not. There will be no pain for him. He will implore
+you to let him do his share. He will be in your power through his
+desire.
+
+EVE. Then I will do it. But how? How did Lilith work this miracle?
+
+THE SERPENT. She imagined it.
+
+EVE. What is imagined?
+
+THE SERPENT. She told it to me as a marvellous story of something that
+never happened to a Lilith that never was. She did not know then that
+imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire;
+you will what you imagine; and at last you create what you will.
+
+EVE. How can I create out of nothing?
+
+THE SERPENT. Everything must have been created out of nothing. Look at
+that thick roll of hard flesh on your strong arm! That was not always
+there: you could not climb a tree when I first saw you. But you willed
+and tried and willed and tried; and your will created out of nothing the
+roll on your arm until you had your desire, and could draw yourself up
+with one hand and seat yourself on the bough that was above your head.
+
+EVE. That was practice.
+
+THE SERPENT. Things wear out by practice: they do not grow by it. Your
+hair streams in the wind as if it were trying to stretch itself further
+and further. But it does not grow longer for all its practice in
+streaming, because you have not willed it so. When Lilith told me what
+she had imagined in our silent language (for there were no words then) I
+bade her desire it and will it; and then, to our great wonder, the thing
+she had desired and willed created itself in her under the urging of her
+will. Then I too willed to renew myself as two instead of one; and after
+many days the miracle happened, and I burst from my skin another snake
+interlaced with me; and now there are two imaginations, two desires, two
+wills to create with.
+
+EVE. To desire, to imagine, to will, to create. That is too long a
+story. Find me one word for it all: you, who are so clever at words.
+
+THE SERPENT. In one word, to conceive. That is the word that means both
+the beginning in imagination and the end in creation.
+
+EVE. Find me a word for the story Lilith imagined and told you in your
+silent language: the story that was too wonderful to be true, and yet
+came true.
+
+THE SERPENT. A poem.
+
+EVE. Find me another word for what Lilith was to me.
+
+THE SERPENT. She was your mother.
+
+EVE. And Adam's mother?
+
+THE SERPENT. Yes.
+
+EVE [_about to rise_] I will go and tell Adam to conceive.
+
+THE SERPENT [_laughs_]!!!
+
+EVE [_jarred and startled_] What a hateful noise! What is the matter
+with you? No one has ever uttered such a sound before.
+
+THE SERPENT. Adam cannot conceive.
+
+EVE. Why?
+
+THE SERPENT. Lilith did not imagine him so. He can imagine: he can
+will: he can desire: he can gather his life together for a great spring
+towards creation: he can create all things except one; and that one is
+his own kind.
+
+EVE. Why did Lilith keep this from him?
+
+THE SERPENT. Because if he could do that he could do without Eve.
+
+EVE. That is true. It is I who must conceive.
+
+THE SERPENT. Yes. By that he is tied to you.
+
+EVE. And I to him!
+
+THE SERPENT. Yes, until you create another Adam.
+
+EVE. I had not thought of that. You are very subtle. But if I create
+another Eve he may turn to her and do without me. I will not create any
+Eves, only Adams.
+
+THE SERPENT. They cannot renew themselves without Eves. Sooner or later
+you will die like the fawn; and the new Adams will be unable to create
+without new Eves. You can imagine such an end; but you cannot desire it,
+therefore cannot will it, therefore cannot create Adams only.
+
+EVE. If I am to die like the fawn, why should not the rest die too? What
+do I care?
+
+THE SERPENT. Life must not cease. That comes before everything. It is
+silly to say you do not care. You do care. It is that care that
+will prompt your imagination; inflame your desires; make your will
+irresistible; and create out of nothing.
+
+EVE [_thoughtfully_] There can be no such thing as nothing. The garden
+is full, not empty.
+
+THE SERPENT. I had not thought of that. That is a great thought. Yes:
+there is no such thing as nothing, only things we cannot see. The
+chameleon eats the air.
+
+EVE. I have another thought: I must tell it to Adam. [_Calling_] Adam!
+Adam! Coo-ee!
+
+ADAM'S VOICE. Coo-ee!
+
+EVE. This will please him, and cure his fits of melancholy.
+
+THE SERPENT. Do not tell him yet. I have not told you the great secret.
+
+EVE. What more is there to tell? It is I who have to do the miracle.
+
+THE SERPENT. No: he, too, must desire and will. But he must give his
+desire and his will to you.
+
+EVE. How?
+
+THE SERPENT. That is the great secret. Hush! he is coming.
+
+ADAM [_returning_] Is there another voice in the garden besides our
+voices and the Voice? I heard a new voice.
+
+EVE [_rising and running to him_] Only think, Adam! Our snake has learnt
+to speak by listening to us.
+
+ADAM [_delighted_] Is it so? [_He goes past her to the stone, and
+fondles the serpent_].
+
+THE SERPENT [_responding affectionately_] It is so, dear Adam.
+
+EVE. But I have more wonderful news than that. Adam: we need not live
+for ever.
+
+ADAM [_dropping the snake's head in his excitement_] What! Eve: do not
+play with me about this. If only there may be an end some day, and yet
+no end! If only I can be relieved of the horror of having to endure
+myself for ever! If only the care of this terrible garden may pass on
+to some other gardener! If only the sentinel set by the Voice can be
+relieved! If only the rest and sleep that enable me to bear it from
+day to day could grow after many days into an eternal rest, an eternal
+sleep, then I could face my days, however long they may last. Only,
+there must be some end, some end: I am not strong enough to bear
+eternity.
+
+THE SERPENT. You need not live to see another summer; and yet there
+shall be no end.
+
+ADAM. That cannot be.
+
+THE SERPENT. It can be.
+
+EVE. It shall be.
+
+THE SERPENT. It is. Kill me; and you will find another snake in the
+garden tomorrow. You will find more snakes than there are fingers on
+your hands.
+
+EVE. I will make other Adams, other Eves.
+
+ADAM. I tell you you must not make up stories about this. It cannot
+happen.
+
+THE SERPENT. I can remember when you were yourself a thing that could
+not happen. Yet you are.
+
+ADAM [_struck_] That must be true. [_He sits down on the stone_].
+
+THE SERPENT. I will tell Eve the secret; and she will tell it to you.
+
+ADAM. The secret! [_He turns quickly towards the serpent, and in doing
+so puts his foot on something sharp_]. Oh!
+
+EVE. What is it?
+
+ADAM [_rubbing his foot_] A thistle. And there, next to it, a briar. And
+nettles, too! I am tired of pulling these things up to keep the garden
+pleasant for us for ever.
+
+THE SERPENT. They do not grow very fast. They will not overrun the whole
+garden for a long time: not until you have laid down your burden and
+gone to sleep for ever. Why should you trouble yourself? Let the new
+Adams clear a place for themselves.
+
+ADAM. That is very true. You must tell us your secret. You see, Eve,
+what a splendid thing it is not to have to live for ever.
+
+EVE [_throwing herself down discontentedly and plucking at the grass_]
+That is so like a man. The moment you find we need not last for ever,
+you talk as if we were going to end today. You must clear away some of
+those horrid things, or we shall be scratched and stung whenever we
+forget to look where we are stepping.
+
+ADAM. Oh yes, some of them, of course. But only some. I will clear them
+away tomorrow.
+
+THE SERPENT [_laughs_]!!!
+
+ADAM. That is a funny noise to make. I like it.
+
+EVE. I do not. Why do you make it again?
+
+THE SERPENT. Adam has invented something new. He has invented tomorrow.
+You will invent things every day now that the burden of immortality is
+lifted from you.
+
+EVE. Immortality? What is that?
+
+THE SERPENT. My new word for having to live for ever.
+
+EVE. The serpent has made a beautiful word for being. Living.
+
+ADAM. Make me a beautiful word for doing things tomorrow; for that
+surely is a great and blessed invention.
+
+THE SERPENT. Procrastination.
+
+EVE. That is a sweet word. I wish I had a serpent's tongue.
+
+THE SERPENT. That may come too. Everything is possible.
+
+ADAM [_springing up in sudden terror_] Oh!
+
+EVE. What is the matter now?
+
+ADAM. My rest! My escape from life!
+
+THE SERPENT. Death. That is the word.
+
+ADAM. There is a terrible danger in this procrastination.
+
+EVE. What danger?
+
+ADAM. If I put off death until tomorrow, I shall never die. There is no
+such day as tomorrow, and never can be.
+
+THE SERPENT. I am very subtle; but Man is deeper in his thought than
+I am. The woman knows that there is no such thing as nothing: the man
+knows that there is no such day as tomorrow. I do well to worship them.
+
+ADAM. If I am to overtake death, I must appoint a real day, not a
+tomorrow. When shall I die?
+
+EVE. You may die when I have made another Adam. Not before. But then,
+as soon as you like. [_She rises, and passing behind him, strolls off
+carelessly to the tree and leans against it, stroking a ring of the
+snake_].
+
+ADAM. There need be no hurry even then.
+
+EVE. I see you will put it off until tomorrow.
+
+ADAM. And you? Will you die the moment you have made a new Eve?
+
+EVE. Why should I? Are you eager to be rid of me? Only just now you
+wanted me to sit still and never move lest I should stumble and die like
+the fawn. Now you no longer care.
+
+ADAM. It does not matter so much now.
+
+EVE [_angrily to the snake_] This death that you have brought into the
+garden is an evil thing. He wants me to die.
+
+THE SERPENT [_to Adam_] Do you want her to die?
+
+ADAM. No. It is I who am to die. Eve must not die before me. I should be
+lonely.
+
+EVE. You could get one of the new Eves.
+
+ADAM. That is true. But they might not be quite the same. They could
+not: I feel sure of that. They would not have the same memories. They
+would be--I want a word for them.
+
+THE SERPENT. Strangers.
+
+ADAM. Yes: that is a good hard word. Strangers.
+
+EVE. When there are new Adams and new Eves we shall live in a garden of
+strangers. We shall need each other. [_She comes quickly behind him and
+turns up his face to her_]. Do not forget that, Adam. Never forget it.
+
+ADAM. Why should I forget it? It is I who have thought of it.
+
+EVE. I, too, have thought of something. The fawn stumbled and fell and
+died. But you could come softly up behind me and [_she suddenly pounces
+on his shoulders and throws him forward on his face_] throw me down so
+that I should die. I should not dare to sleep if there were no reason
+why you should not make me die.
+
+ADAM [_scrambling up in horror_] Make you die!!! What a frightful
+thought!
+
+THE SERPENT. Kill, kill, kill, kill. That is the word.
+
+EVE. The new Adams and Eves might kill us. I shall not make them. [_She
+sits on the rock and pulls him down beside her, clasping him to her with
+her right arm_].
+
+THE SERPENT. You must. For if you do not there will be an end.
+
+ADAM. No: they will not kill us: they will feel as I do. There is
+something against it. The Voice in the garden will tell them that they
+must not kill, as it tells me.
+
+THE SERPENT. The voice in the garden is your own voice.
+
+ADAM. It is; and it is not. It is something greater than me: I am only a
+part of it.
+
+EVE. The Voice does not tell me not to kill you. Yet I do not want you
+to die before me. No voice is needed to make me feel that.
+
+ADAM [_throwing his arm round her shoulder with an expression of
+anguish_] Oh no: that is plain without any voice. There is something
+that holds us together, something that has no word--
+
+THE SERPENT. Love. Love. Love.
+
+ADAM. That is too short a word for so long a thing.
+
+THE SERPENT [_laughs_]!!!
+
+EVE [_turning impatiently to the snake_] That heart-biting sound again!
+Do not do it. Why do you do it?
+
+THE SERPENT. Love may be too long a word for so short a thing soon. But
+when it is short it will be very sweet.
+
+ADAM [_ruminating_] You puzzle me. My old trouble was heavy; but it was
+simple. These wonders that you promise to do may tangle up my being
+before they bring me the gift of death. I was troubled with the burden
+of eternal being; but I was not confused in my mind. If I did not know
+that I loved Eve, at least I did not know that she might cease to love
+me, and come to love some other Adam and desire my death. Can you find a
+name for that knowledge?
+
+THE SERPENT. Jealousy. Jealousy. Jealousy.
+
+ADAM. A hideous word.
+
+EVE [_shaking him_] Adam: you must not brood. You think too much.
+
+ADAM [_angrily_] How can I help brooding when the future has become
+uncertain? Anything is better than uncertainty. Life has become
+uncertain. Love is uncertain. Have you a word for this new misery?
+
+THE SERPENT. Fear. Fear. Fear.
+
+ADAM. Have you a remedy for it?
+
+THE SERPENT. Yes. Hope. Hope. Hope.
+
+ADAM. What is hope?
+
+THE SERPENT. As long as you do not know the future you do not know that
+it will not be happier than the past. That is hope.
+
+ADAM. It does not console me. Fear is stronger in me than hope. I must
+have certainty. [_He rises threateningly_]. Give it to me; or I will
+kill you when next I catch you asleep.
+
+EVE [_throwing her arms round the serpent_] My beautiful snake. Oh no.
+How can you even think such a horror?
+
+ADAM. Fear will drive me to anything. The serpent gave me fear. Let it
+now give me certainty or go in fear of me.
+
+THE SERPENT. Bind the future by your will. Make a vow.
+
+ADAM. What is a vow?
+
+THE SERPENT. Choose a day for your death; and resolve to die on that
+day. Then death is no longer uncertain but certain. Let Eve vow to love
+you until your death. Then love will be no longer uncertain.
+
+ADAM. Yes: that is splendid: that will bind the future.
+
+EVE [_displeased, turning away from the serpent_] But it will destroy
+hope.
+
+ADAM [_angrily_] Be silent, woman. Hope is wicked. Happiness is wicked.
+Certainty is blessed.
+
+THE SERPENT. What is wicked? You have invented a word.
+
+ADAM. Whatever I fear to do is wicked. Listen to me, Eve; and you,
+snake, listen too, that your memory may hold my vow. I will live a
+thousand sets of the four seasons--
+
+THE SERPENT. Years. Years.
+
+ADAM. I will live a thousand years; and then I will endure no more: I
+will die and take my rest. And I will love Eve all that time and no
+other woman.
+
+EVE. And if Adam keeps his vow I will love no other man until he dies.
+
+THE SERPENT. You have both invented marriage. And what he will be to you
+and not to any other woman is husband; and what you will be to him and
+not to any other man is wife.
+
+ADAM [_instinctively moving his hand towards her_] Husband and wife.
+
+EVE [_slipping her hand into his_] Wife and husband.
+
+THE SERPENT [_laughs_]!!!
+
+EVE [_snatching herself loose from Adam_] Do not make that odious noise,
+I tell you.
+
+ADAM. Do not listen to her: the noise is good: it lightens my heart.
+You are a jolly snake. But you have not made a vow yet. What vow do you
+make?
+
+THE SERPENT. I make no vows. I take my chance.
+
+ADAM. Chance? What does that mean?
+
+THE SERPENT. It means that I fear certainty as you fear uncertainty. It
+means that nothing is certain but uncertainty. If I bind the future I
+bind my will. If I bind my will I strangle creation.
+
+EVE. Creation must not be strangled. I tell you I will create, though I
+tear myself to pieces in the act.
+
+ADAM. Be silent, both of you. I _will_ bind the future. I will be
+delivered from fear. [_To Eve_] We have made our vows; and if you must
+create, you shall create within the bounds of those vows. You shall not
+listen to that snake any more. Come [_he seizes her by the hair to drag
+her away_].
+
+EVE. Let me go, you fool. It has not yet told me the secret.
+
+ADAM [_releasing her_] That is true. What is a fool?
+
+EVE. I do not know: the word came to me. It is what you are when you
+forget and brood and are filled with fear. Let us listen to the snake.
+
+ADAM. No: I am afraid of it. I feel as if the ground were giving way
+under my feet when it speaks. Do you stay and listen to it.
+
+THE SERPENT [_laughs_]!!!
+
+ADAM [_brightening_] That noise takes away fear. Funny. The snake and
+the woman are going to whisper secrets. [_He chuckles and goes away
+slowly, laughing his first laugh_].
+
+EVE. Now the secret. The secret. [_She sits on the rock and throws her
+arms round the serpent, who begins whispering to her_].
+
+_Eve's face lights up with intense interest, which increases until an
+expression of overwhelming repugnance takes its place. She buries her
+face in her hands_.
+
+
+
+ACT II
+
+
+_A few centuries later. Morning. An oasis in Mesopotamia. Close at hand
+the end of a log house abuts on a kitchen garden. Adam is digging in the
+middle of the garden. On his right, Eve sits on a stool in the shadow
+of a tree by the doorway, spinning flax. Her wheel, which she turns by
+hand, is a large disc of heavy wood, practically a flywheel. At the
+opposite side of the garden is a thorn brake with a passage through it
+barred by a hurdle.
+
+The two are scantily and carelessly dressed in rough linen and leaves.
+They have lost their youth and grace; and Adam has an unkempt beard and
+jaggedly cut hair; but they are strong and in the prime of life. Adam
+looks worried, like a farmer. Eve, better humored (having given up
+worrying), sits and spins and thinks._
+
+A MAN'S VOICE. Hallo, mother!
+
+EVE [_looking across the garden towards the hurdle_] Here is Cain.
+
+ADAM [_uttering a grunt of disgust_]!!! [_He goes on digging without
+raising his head_].
+
+_Cain kicks the hurdle out of his way, and strides into the garden. In
+pose, voice, and dress he is insistently warlike. He is equipped with
+huge spear and broad brass-bound leather shield; his casque is a tiger's
+head with bull's horns; he wears a scarlet cloak with gold brooch over a
+lion's skin with the claws dangling; his feet are in sandals with brass
+ornaments; his shins are in brass greaves; and his bristling military
+moustache glistens with oil. To his parents he has the self-assertive,
+not-quite-at-ease manner of a revolted son who knows that he is not
+forgiven nor approved of._
+
+CAIN [_to Adam_] Still digging? Always dig, dig, dig. Sticking in the
+old furrow. No progress! no advanced ideas! no adventures! What should I
+be if I had stuck to the digging you taught me?
+
+ADAM. What are you now, with your shield and spear, and your brother's
+blood crying from the ground against you?
+
+CAIN. I am the first murderer: you are only the first man. Anybody could
+be the first man: it is as easy as to be the first cabbage. To be the
+first murderer one must be a man of spirit.
+
+ADAM. Begone. Leave us in peace. The world is wide enough to keep us
+apart.
+
+EVE. Why do you want to drive him away? He is mine. I made him out of my
+own body. I want to see my work sometimes.
+
+ADAM. You made Abel also. He killed Abel. Can you bear to look at him
+after that?
+
+CAIN. Whose fault was it that I killed Abel? Who invented killing? Did
+I? No: he invented it himself. I followed your teaching. I dug and dug
+and dug. I cleared away the thistles and briars. I ate the fruits of the
+earth. I lived in the sweat of my brow, as you do. I was a fool. But
+Abel was a discoverer, a man of ideas, of spirit: a true Progressive. He
+was the discoverer of blood. He was the inventor of killing. He found
+out that the fire of the sun could be brought down by a dewdrop. He
+invented the altar to keep the fire alive. He changed the beasts he
+killed into meat by the fire on the altar. He kept himself alive by
+eating meat. His meal cost him a day's glorious health-giving sport and
+an hour's amusing play with the fire. You learnt nothing from him: you
+drudged and drudged and drudged, and dug and dug and dug, and made me do
+the same. I envied his happiness, his freedom. I despised myself for
+not doing as he did instead of what you did. He became so happy that he
+shared his meal with the Voice that had whispered all his inventions to
+him. He said that the Voice was the voice of the fire that cooked his
+food, and that the fire that could cook could also eat. It was true: I
+saw the fire consume the food on his altar. Then I, too, made an altar,
+and offered my food on it, my grains, my roots, my fruit. Useless:
+nothing happened. He laughed at me; and then came my great idea: why not
+kill him as he killed the beasts? I struck; and he died, just as they
+did. Then I gave up your old silly drudging ways, and lived as he had
+lived, by the chase, by the killing, and by the fire. Am I not better
+than you? stronger, happier, freer?
+
+ADAM. You are not stronger: you are shorter in the wind: you cannot
+endure. You have made the beasts afraid of us; and the snake has
+invented poison to protect herself against you. I fear you myself. If
+you take a step towards your mother with that spear of yours I will
+strike you with my spade as you struck Abel.
+
+EVE. He will not strike me. He loves me.
+
+ADAM. He loved his brother. But he killed him.
+
+CAIN. I do not want to kill women. I do not want to kill my mother. And
+for her sake I will not kill you, though I could send this spear through
+you without coming within reach of your spade. But for her, I could not
+resist the sport of trying to kill you, in spite of my fear that you
+would kill me. I have striven with a boar and with a lion as to which of
+us should kill the other. I have striven with a man: spear to spear and
+shield to shield. It is terrible; but there is no joy like it. I call
+it fighting. He who has never fought has never lived. That is what has
+brought me to my mother today.
+
+ADAM. What have you to do with one another now? She is the creator, you
+the destroyer.
+
+CAIN. How can I destroy unless she creates? I want her to create more
+and more men: aye, and more and more women, that they may in turn create
+more men. I have imagined a glorious poem of many men, of more men than
+there are leaves on a thousand trees. I will divide them into two great
+hosts. One of them I will lead; and the other will be led by the man I
+fear most and desire to fight and kill most. And each host shall try
+to kill the other host. Think of that! all those multitudes of men
+fighting, fighting, killing, killing! The four rivers running with
+blood! The shouts of triumph! the howls of rage! the curses of despair!
+the shrieks of torment! That will be life indeed: life lived to the very
+marrow: burning, overwhelming life. Every man who has not seen it, heard
+it, felt it, risked it, will feel a humbled fool in the presence of the
+man who has.
+
+EVE. And I! I am to be a mere convenience to make men for you to kill!
+
+ADAM. Or to kill you, you fool.
+
+CAIN. Mother: the making of men is your right, your risk, your agony,
+your glory, your triumph. You make my father here your mere convenience,
+as you call it, for that. He has to dig for you, sweat for you, plod
+for you, like the ox who helps him to tear up the ground or the ass who
+carries his burdens for him. No woman shall make me live my father's
+life. I will hunt: I will fight and strive to the very bursting of my
+sinews. When I have slain the boar at the risk of my life, I will throw
+it to my woman to cook, and give her a morsel of it for her pains. She
+shall have no other food; and that will make her my slave. And the man
+that slays me shall have her for his booty. Man shall be the master of
+Woman, not her baby and her drudge.
+
+_Adam throws down his spade, and stands looking darkly at Eve._
+
+EVE. Are you tempted, Adam? Does this seem a better thing to you than
+love between us?
+
+CAIN. What does he know of love? Only when he has fought, when he has
+faced terror and death, when he has striven to the spending of the last
+rally of his strength, can he know what it is to rest in love in the
+arms of a woman. Ask that woman whom you made, who is also my wife,
+whether she would have me as I was in the days when I followed the ways
+of Adam, and was a digger and a drudge?
+
+EVE [_angrily throwing down her distaff_] What! You dare come here
+boasting about that good-for-nothing Lua, the worst of daughters and the
+worst of wives! You her master! You are more her slave than Adam's ox or
+your own sheepdog. Forsooth, when you have slain the boar at the risk
+of your life, you will throw her a morsel of it for her pains! Ha! Poor
+wretch: do you think I do not know her, and know you, better than that?
+Do you risk your life when you trap the ermine and the sable and the
+blue fox to hang on her lazy shoulders and make her look more like an
+animal than a woman? When you have to snare the little tender birds
+because it is too much trouble for her to chew honest food, how much of
+a great warrior do you feel then? You slay the tiger at the risk of your
+life; but who gets the striped skin you have run that risk for? She
+takes it to lie on, and flings you the carrion flesh you cannot eat. You
+fight because you think that your fighting makes her admire and desire
+you. Fool: she makes you fight because you bring her the ornaments and
+the treasures of those you have slain, and because she is courted and
+propitiated with power and gold by the people who fear you. You say that
+I make a mere convenience of Adam: I who spin and keep the house, and
+bear and rear children, and am a woman and not a pet animal to please
+men and prey on them! What are you, you poor slave of a painted face and
+a bundle of skunk's fur? You were a man-child when I bore you. Lua was a
+woman-child when I bore her. What have you made of yourselves?
+
+CAIN [_letting his spear fall into the crook of his shield arm, and
+twirling his moustache_] There is something higher than man. There is
+hero and superman.
+
+EVE. Superman! You are no superman: you are Anti-Man: you are to other
+men what the stoat is to the rabbit; and she is to you what the leech is
+to the stoat. You despise your father; but when he dies the world will
+be the richer because he lived. When you die, men will say, 'He was a
+great warrior; but it would have been better for the world if he had
+never been born.' And of Lua they will say nothing; but when they think
+of her they will spit.
+
+CAIN. She is a better sort of woman to live with than you. If Lua nagged
+at me as you are nagging, and as you nag at Adam, I would beat her black
+and blue from head to foot. I have done it too, slave as you say I am.
+
+EVE. Yes, because she looked at another man. And then you grovelled at
+her feet, and cried, and begged her to forgive you, and were ten times
+more her slave than ever; and she, when she had finished screaming and
+the pain went off a little, she forgave you, did she not?
+
+CAIN. She loved me more than ever. That is the true nature of woman.
+
+EVE [_now pitying him maternally_] Love! You call that love! You call
+that the nature of woman! My boy: this is neither man nor woman nor love
+nor life. You have no real strength in your bones nor sap in your flesh.
+
+CAIN. Ha! [_he seizes his spear and swings it muscularly_].
+
+EVE. Yes: you have to twirl a stick to feel your strength: you cannot
+taste life without making it bitter and boiling hot: you cannot love
+Lua until her face is painted, nor feel the natural warmth of her flesh
+until you have stuck a squirrel's fur on it. You can feel nothing but a
+torment, and believe nothing but a lie. You will not raise your head to
+look at all the miracles of life that surround you; but you will run ten
+miles to see a fight or a death.
+
+ADAM. Enough said. Let the boy alone.
+
+CAIN. Boy! Ha! ha!
+
+EVE [_to Adam_] You think, perhaps, that his way of life may be better
+than yours after all. You are still tempted. Well, will you pamper me as
+he pampers his woman? Will you kill tigers and bears until I have a heap
+of their skins to lounge on? Shall I paint my face and let my arms waste
+into pretty softness, and eat partridges and doves, and the flesh of
+kids whose milk you will steal for me?
+
+ADAM. You are hard enough to bear with as you are. Stay as you are; and
+I will stay as I am.
+
+CAIN. You neither of you know anything about life. You are simple
+country folk. You are the nurses and valets of the oxen and dogs and
+asses you have tamed to work for you. I can raise you out of that. I
+have a plan. Why not tame men and women to work for us? Why not bring
+them up from childhood never to know any other lot, so that they may
+believe that we are gods, and that they are here only to make life
+glorious for us?
+
+ADAM [_impressed_] That is a great thought, certainly.
+
+EVE [_contemptuously_] Great thought!
+
+ADAM. Well, as the serpent used to say, why not?
+
+EVE. Because I would not have such wretches in my house. Because I hate
+creatures with two heads, or with withered limbs, or that are distorted
+and perverted and unnatural. I have told Cain already that he is not a
+man and that Lua is not a woman: they are monsters. And now you want to
+make still more unnatural monsters, so that you may be utterly lazy and
+worthless, and that your tamed human animals may find work a blasting
+curse. A fine dream, truly! [_To Cain_] Your father is a fool skin deep;
+but you are a fool to your very marrow; and your baggage of a wife is
+worse.
+
+ADAM. Why am I a fool? How am I a greater fool than you?
+
+EVE. You said there would be no killing because the Voice would tell our
+children that they must not kill. Why did it not tell Cain that?
+
+CAIN. It did; but I am not a child to be afraid of a Voice. The Voice
+thought I was nothing but my brother's keeper. It found that I was
+myself, and that it was for Abel to be himself also, and look to
+himself. He was not my keeper any more than I was his: why did he not
+kill me? There was no more to prevent him than there was to prevent me:
+it was man to man; and I won. I was the first conqueror.
+
+ADAM. What did the Voice say to you when you thought all that?
+
+CAIN. Why, it gave me right. It said that my deed was as a mark on me, a
+burnt-in mark such as Abel put on his sheep, that no man should slay me.
+And here I stand unslain, whilst the cowards who have never slain, the
+men who are content to be their brothers' keepers instead of their
+masters, are despised and rejected, and slain like rabbits. He who bears
+the brand of Cain shall rule the earth. When he falls, he shall be
+avenged sevenfold: the Voice has said it; so beware how you plot against
+me, you and all the rest.
+
+ADAM. Cease your boasting and bullying, and tell the truth. Does not the
+Voice tell you that as no man dare slay you for murdering your brother,
+you ought to slay yourself?
+
+CAIN. No.
+
+ADAM. Then there is no such thing as divine justice, unless you are
+lying.
+
+CAIN. I am not lying: I dare all truths. There is divine justice. For
+the Voice tells me that I must offer myself to every man to be killed if
+he can kill me. Without danger I cannot be great. That is how I pay for
+Abel's blood. Danger and fear follow my steps everywhere. Without them
+courage would have no sense. And it is courage, courage, courage, that
+raises the blood of life to crimson splendor.
+
+ADAM [_picking up his spade and preparing to dig again_] Take yourself
+off then. This splendid life of yours does not last for a thousand
+years; and I must last for a thousand years. When you fighters do not
+get killed in fighting one another or fighting the beasts, you die from
+mere evil in yourselves. Your flesh ceases to grow like man's flesh: it
+grows like a fungus on a tree. Instead of breathing you sneeze, or cough
+up your insides, and wither and perish. Your bowels become rotten; your
+hair falls from you; your teeth blacken and drop out; and you die before
+your time, not because you will, but because you must. I will dig, and
+live.
+
+CAIN. And pray, what use is this thousand years of life to you, you
+old vegetable? Do you dig any better because you have been digging for
+hundreds of years? I have not lived as long as you; but I know all there
+is to be known of the craft of digging. By quitting it I have set myself
+free to learn nobler crafts of which you know nothing. I know the craft
+of fighting and of hunting: in a word, the craft of killing. What
+certainty have you of your thousand years? I could kill both of you; and
+you could no more defend yourselves than a couple of sheep. I spare you;
+but others may kill you. Why not live bravely, and die early and make
+room for others? Why, I--I! that know many more crafts than either of
+you, am tired of myself when I am not fighting or hunting. Sooner than
+face a thousand years of it I should kill myself, as the Voice sometimes
+tempts me to do already.
+
+ADAM. Liar: you denied just now that it called on you to pay for Abel's
+life with your own.
+
+CAIN. The Voice does not speak to me as it does to you. I am a man: you
+are only a grown-up child. One does not speak to a child as to a man.
+And a man does not listen and tremble in silence. He replies: he makes
+the Voice respect him: in the end he dictates what the Voice shall say.
+
+ADAM. May your tongue be accurst for such blasphemy!
+
+EVE. Keep a guard on your own tongue; and do not curse my son. It was
+Lilith who did wrong when she shared the labor of creation so unequally
+between man and wife. If you, Cain, had had the trouble of making Abel,
+or had had to make another man to replace him when he was gone, you
+would not have killed him: you would have risked your own life to save
+his. That is why all this empty talk of yours, which tempted Adam just
+now when he threw down his spade and listened to you for a while, went
+by me like foul wind that has passed over a dead body. That is why there
+is enmity between Woman the creator and Man the destroyer. I know you: I
+am your mother. You are idle: you are selfish. It is long and hard and
+painful to create life: it is short and easy to steal the life others
+have made. When you dug, you made the earth live and bring forth as I
+live and bring forth. It was for that that Lilith set you free from the
+travail of women, not for theft and murder.
+
+CAIN. The Devil thank her for it! I can make better use of my time than
+to play the husband to the clay beneath my feet.
+
+ADAM. Devil? What new word is that?
+
+CAIN. Hearken to me, old fool. I have never in my soul listened
+willingly when you have told me of the Voice that whispers to you. There
+must be two Voices: one that gulls and despises you, and another that
+trusts and respects me. I call yours the Devil. Mine I call the Voice of
+God.
+
+ADAM. Mine is the Voice of Life: yours the Voice of Death.
+
+CAIN. Be it so. For it whispers to me that death is not really death:
+that it is the gate of another life: a life infinitely splendid and
+intense: a life of the soul alone: a life without clods or spades,
+hunger or fatigue--
+
+EVE. Selfish and idle, Cain. I know.
+
+CAIN. Selfish, yes: a life in which no man is his brother's keeper,
+because his brother can keep himself. But am I idle? In rejecting your
+drudgery, have I not embraced evils and agonies of which you know
+nothing? The arrow is lighter in the hand than the spade; but the energy
+that drives it through the breast of a fighter is as fire to water
+compared with the strength that drives the spade into the harmless dirty
+clay. My strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure.
+
+ADAM. What is that word? What is pure?
+
+CAIN. Turned from the clay. Turned upward to the sun, to the clear clean
+heavens.
+
+ADAM. The heavens are empty, child. The earth is fruitful. The earth
+feeds us. It gives us the strength by which we made you and all mankind.
+Cut off from the clay which you despise, you would perish miserably.
+
+CAIN. I revolt against the clay. I revolt against the food. You say it
+gives us strength: does it not also turn into filth and smite us with
+diseases? I revolt against these births that you and mother are so proud
+of. They drag us down to the level of the beasts. If that is to be the
+last thing as it has been the first, let mankind perish. If I am to
+eat like a bear, if Lua is to bring forth cubs like a bear, then I had
+rather be a bear than a man; for the bear is not ashamed: he knows no
+better. If you are content, like the bear, I am not. Stay with the woman
+who gives you children: I will go to the woman who gives me dreams.
+Grope in the ground for your food: I will bring it from the skies with
+my arrows, or strike it down as it roams the earth in the pride of its
+life. If I must have food or die, I will at least have it at as far a
+remove from the earth as I can. The ox shall make it something nobler
+than grass before it comes to me. And as the man is nobler than the ox,
+I shall some day let my enemy eat the ox; and then I will slay and eat
+him.
+
+ADAM. Monster! You hear this, Eve?
+
+EVE. So that is what comes of turning your face to the clean clear
+heavens! Man-eating! Child-eating! For that is what it would come to,
+just as it came to lambs and kids when Abel began with sheep and goats.
+You are a poor silly creature after all. Do you think I never have these
+thoughts: I! who have the labor of the child-bearing: I! who have the
+drudgery of preparing the food? I thought for a moment that perhaps this
+strong brave son of mine, who could imagine something better, and could
+desire what he imagined, might also be able to will what he desired
+until he created it. And all that comes of it is that he wants to be a
+bear and eat children. Even a bear would not eat a man if it could get
+honey instead.
+
+CAIN. I do not want to be a bear. I do not want to eat children. I do
+not know what I want, except that I want to be something higher and
+nobler than this stupid old digger whom Lilith made to help you to bring
+me into the world, and whom you despise now that he has served your
+turn.
+
+ADAM [_in sullen rage_] I have half a mind to shew you that my spade can
+split your undutiful head open, in spite of your spear.
+
+CAIN. Undutiful! Ha! ha! [_Flourishing his spear_] Try it, old
+everybody's father. Try a taste of fighting.
+
+EVE. Peace, peace, you two fools. Sit down and be quiet; and listen to
+me. [_Adam, with a weary shrug, throws down his spade. Cain, with
+a laughing one, throws down his shield and spear. Both sit on the
+ground_]. I hardly know which of you satisfies me least, you with your
+dirty digging, or he with his dirty killing. I cannot think it was for
+either of these cheap ways of life that Lilith set you free. [_To Adam_]
+You dig roots and coax grains out of the earth: why do you not draw down
+a divine sustenance from the skies? He steals and kills for his food;
+and makes up idle poems of life after death; and dresses up his
+terror-ridden life with fine words and his disease-ridden body with fine
+clothes, so that men may glorify and honor him instead of cursing him as
+murderer and thief. All you men, except only Adam, are my sons, or my
+sons' sons, or my sons' sons' sons: you all come to see me: you all shew
+off before me: all your little wisdoms and accomplishments are trotted
+out before mother Eve. The diggers come: the fighters and killers come:
+they are both very dull; for they either complain to me of the last
+harvest, or boast to me of the last fight; and one harvest is just like
+another, and the last fight only a repetition of the first. Oh, I have
+heard it all a thousand times. They tell me too of their last-born:
+the clever thing the darling child said yesterday, and how much more
+wonderful or witty or quaint it is than any child that ever was born
+before. And I have to pretend to be surprised, delighted, interested;
+though the last child is like the first, and has said and done nothing
+that did not delight Adam and me when you and Abel said it. For you were
+the first children in the world, and filled us with such wonder and
+delight as no couple can ever again feel while the world lasts. When I
+can bear no more, I go to our old garden, that is now a mass of nettles
+and thistles, in the hope of finding the serpent to talk to. But you
+have made the serpent our enemy: she has left the garden, or is dead: I
+never see her now. So I have to come back and listen to Adam saying the
+same thing for the ten-thousandth time, or to receive a visit from the
+last great-great-grandson who has grown up and wants to impress me with
+his importance. Oh, it is dreary, dreary! And there is yet nearly seven
+hundred years of it to endure.
+
+CAIN. Poor mother! You see, life is too long. One tires of everything.
+There is nothing new under the sun.
+
+ADAM [_to Eve, grumpily_] Why do you live on, if you can find nothing
+better to do than complain?
+
+EVE. Because there is still hope.
+
+CAIN. Of what?
+
+EVE. Of the coming true of your dreams and mine. Of newly created
+things. Of better things. My sons and my son's sons are not all diggers
+and fighters. Some of them will neither dig nor fight: they are more
+useless than either of you: they are weaklings and cowards: they are
+vain; yet they are dirty and will not take the trouble to cut their
+hair. They borrow and never pay; but one gives them what they want,
+because they tell beautiful lies in beautiful words. They can remember
+their dreams. They can dream without sleeping. They have not will enough
+to create instead of dreaming; but the serpent said that every dream
+could be willed into creation by those strong enough to believe in it.
+There are others who cut reeds of different lengths and blow through
+them, making lovely patterns of sound in the air; and some of them can
+weave the patterns together, sounding three reeds at the same time, and
+raising my soul to things for which I have no words. And others make
+little mammoths out of clay, or make faces appear on flat stones, and
+ask me to create women for them with such faces. I have watched those
+faces and willed; and then I have made a woman-child that has grown up
+quite like them. And others think of numbers without having to count on
+their fingers, and watch the sky at night, and give names to the stars,
+and can foretell when the sun will be covered with a black saucepan lid.
+And there is Tubal, who made this wheel for me which has saved me so
+much labor. And there is Enoch, who walks on the hills, and hears the
+Voice continually, and has given up his will to do the will of the
+Voice, and has some of the Voice's greatness. When they come, there is
+always some new wonder, or some new hope: something to live for. They
+never want to die, because they are always learning and always creating
+either things or wisdom, or at least dreaming of them. And then you,
+Cain, come to me with your stupid fighting and destroying, and your
+foolish boasting; and you want me to tell you that it is all splendid,
+and that you are heroic, and that nothing but death or the dread of
+death makes life worth living. Away with you, naughty child; and do you,
+Adam, go on with your work and not waste your time listening to him.
+
+CAIN. I am not, perhaps, very clever; but--
+
+EVE [_interrupting him_] Perhaps not; but do not begin to boast of that.
+It is no credit to you.
+
+CAIN. For all that, mother, I have an instinct which tells me that death
+plays its part in life. Tell me this: who invented death?
+
+_Adam springs to his feet. Eve drops her distaff. Both shew the greatest
+consternation._
+
+CAIN. What is the matter with you both?
+
+ADAM. Boy: you have asked us a terrible question.
+
+EVE. You invented murder. Let that be enough for you.
+
+CAIN. Murder is not death. You know what I mean. Those whom I slay would
+die if I spared them. If I am not slain, yet I shall die. Who put this
+upon me? I say, who invented death?
+
+ADAM. Be reasonable, boy. Could you bear to live for ever? You think you
+could, because you know that you will never have to make your thought
+good. But I have known what it is to sit and brood under the terror of
+eternity, of immortality. Think of it, man: to have no escape! to be
+Adam, Adam, Adam through more days than there are grains of sand by the
+two rivers, and then be as far from the end as ever! I, who have so much
+in me that I hate and long to cast off! Be thankful to your parents, who
+enabled you to hand on your burden to new and better men, and won for
+you an eternal rest; for it was we who invented death.
+
+CAIN [_rising_] You did well: I, too, do not want to live for ever. But
+if you invented death, why do you blame me, who am a minister of death?
+
+ADAM. I do not blame you. Go in peace. Leave me to my digging, and your
+mother to her spinning.
+
+CAIN. Well, I will leave you to it, though I have shewn you a better
+way. [_He picks up his shield and spear_]. I will go back to my brave
+warrior friends and their splendid women. [_He strides to the thorn
+brake_]. When Adam delved and Eve span, where was then the gentleman?
+[_He goes away roaring with laughter, which ceases as he cries from the
+distance_] Goodbye, mother.
+
+ADAM [_grumbling_] He might have put the hurdle back, lazy hound! [_He
+replaces the hurdle across the passage_].
+
+EVE. Through him and his like, death is gaining on life. Already most of
+our grandchildren die before they have sense enough to know how to live.
+
+ADAM. No matter. [_He spits on his hands, and takes up the spade
+again_]. Life is still long enough to learn to dig, short as they are
+making it.
+
+EVE [_musing_] Yes, to dig. And to fight. But is it long enough for the
+other things, the great things? Will they live long enough to eat manna?
+
+ADAM. What is manna?
+
+EVE. Food drawn down from heaven, made out of the air, not dug dirtily
+from the earth. Will they learn all the ways of all the stars in their
+little time? It took Enoch two hundred years to learn to interpret the
+will of the Voice. When he was a mere child of eighty, his babyish
+attempts to understand the Voice were more dangerous than the wrath of
+Cain. If they shorten their lives, they will dig and fight and kill and
+die; and their baby Enochs will tell them that it is the will of the
+Voice that they should dig and fight and kill and die for ever.
+
+ADAM. If they are lazy and have a will towards death I cannot help it.
+I will live my thousand years: if they will not, let them die and be
+damned.
+
+EVE. Damned? What is that?
+
+ADAM. The state of them that love death more than life. Go on with your
+spinning; and do not sit there idle while I am straining my muscles for
+you.
+
+EVE [_slowly taking up her distaff_] If you were not a fool you would
+find something better for both of us to live by than this spinning and
+digging.
+
+ADAM. Go on with your work, I tell you; or you shall go without bread.
+
+EVE. Man need not always live by bread alone. There is something else.
+We do not yet know what it is; but some day we shall find out; and then
+we will live on that alone; and there shall be no more digging nor
+spinning, nor fighting nor killing.
+
+_She spins resignedly; he digs impatiently._
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas
+
+
+_In the first years after the war an impressive-looking gentleman of 50
+is seated writing in a well-furnished spacious study. He is dressed in
+black. His coat is a frock-coat; his tie is white; and his waistcoat,
+though it is not quite a clergyman's waistcoat, and his collar, though
+it buttons in front instead of behind, combine with the prosperity
+indicated by his surroundings, and his air of personal distinction, to
+suggest the clerical dignitary. Still, he is clearly neither dean nor
+bishop; he is rather too starkly intellectual for a popular Free Church
+enthusiast; and he is not careworn enough to be a great headmaster.
+
+The study windows, which have broad comfortable window seats, overlook
+Hampstead Heath towards London. Consequently, it being a fine afternoon
+in spring, the room is sunny. As you face these windows, you have on
+your right the fireplace, with a few logs smouldering in it, and a
+couple of comfortable library chairs on the hearthrug; beyond it and
+beside it the door; before you the writing-table, at which the clerical
+gentleman sits a little to your left facing the door with his right
+profile presented to you; on your left a settee; and on your right a
+couple of Chippendale chairs. There is also an upholstered square stool
+in the middle of the room, against the writing-table. The walls are
+covered with bookshelves above and lockers beneath.
+
+The door opens; and another gentleman, shorter than the clerical one,
+within a year or two of the same age, dressed in a well-worn tweed
+lounge suit, with a short beard and much less style in his bearing and
+carriage, looks in._
+
+THE CLERICAL GENTLEMAN [_familiar and by no means cordial_] Hallo! I
+didn't expect you until the five o'clock train.
+
+THE TWEEDED GENTLEMAN [_coming in very slowly_] I have something on my
+mind. I thought I'd come early.
+
+THE CLERICAL GENTLEMAN [_throwing down his pen_] What is on your mind?
+
+THE TWEEDED GENTLEMAN [_sitting down on the stool, heavily preoccupied
+with his thought_] I have made up my mind at last about the time. I make
+it three hundred years.
+
+THE CLERICAL GENTLEMAN [_sitting up energetically_] Now that is
+extraordinary. Most extraordinary. The very last words I wrote when you
+interrupted me were 'at least three centuries.' [_He snatches up his
+manuscript, and points to it_]. Here it is: [_reading_] 'the term of
+human life must be extended to at least three centuries.'
+
+THE TWEEDED GENTLEMAN. How did you arrive at it?
+
+_A parlor maid opens the door, ushering in a young clergyman._
+
+THE PARLOR MAID. Mr Haslam. [_She withdraws_].
+
+_The visitor is so very unwelcome that his host forgets to rise; and
+the two brothers stare at the intruder, quite unable to conceal their
+dismay. Haslam, who has nothing clerical about him except his collar,
+and wears a snuff-colored suit, smiles with a frank school-boyishness
+that makes it impossible to be unkind to him, and explodes into
+obviously unpremeditated speech._
+
+HASLAM. I'm afraid I'm an awful nuisance. I'm the rector; and I suppose
+one ought to call on people.
+
+THE TWEEDED GENTLEMAN [_in ghostly tones_] We're not Church people, you
+know.
+
+HASLAM. Oh, I don't mind that, if you don't. The Church people here are
+mostly as dull as ditch-water. I have heard such a lot about you; and
+there are so jolly few people to talk to. I thought you perhaps wouldn't
+mind. _Do_ you mind? for of course I'll go like a shot if I'm in the
+way.
+
+THE CLERICAL GENTLEMAN [_rising, disarmed_] Sit down, Mr--er?
+
+HASLAM. Haslam.
+
+THE CLERICAL GENTLEMAN. Mr Haslam.
+
+THE TWEEDED GENTLEMAN [_rising and offering him the stool_] Sit down.
+[_He retreats towards the Chippendale chairs_].
+
+HASLAM [_sitting down on the stool_] Thanks awfully.
+
+THE CLERICAL GENTLEMAN [_resuming his seat_] This is my brother Conrad,
+Professor of Biology at Jarrowfields University: Dr. Conrad Barnabas. My
+name is Franklyn: Franklyn Barnabas. I was in the Church myself for some
+years.
+
+HASLAM [_sympathizing_] Yes: one cant help it. If theres a living in
+the family, or one's Governor knows a patron, one gets shoved into the
+Church by one's parents.
+
+CONRAD [_sitting down on the furthest Chippendale with a snort of
+amusement_] Mp!
+
+FRANKLYN. One gets shoved out of it, sometimes, by one's conscience.
+
+HASLAM. Oh yes; but where is a chap like me to go? I'm afraid I'm not
+intellectual enough to split straws when theres a job in front of me,
+and nothing better for me to do. I daresay the Church was a bit thick
+for you; but it's good enough for me. It will last my time, anyhow [_he
+laughs good-humoredly_].
+
+FRANKLYN [_with renewed energy_] There again! You see, Con. It will last
+his time. Life is too short for men to take it seriously.
+
+HASLAM. Thats a way of looking at it, certainly.
+
+FRANKLYN. I was not shoved into the Church, Mr Haslam: I felt it to be
+my vocation to walk with God, like Enoch. After twenty years of it I
+realized that I was walking with my own ignorance and self-conceit, and
+that I was not within a hundred and fifty years of the experience and
+wisdom I was pretending to.
+
+HASLAM. Now I come to think of it, old Methuselah must have had to think
+twice before he took on anything for life. If I thought I was going to
+live nine hundred and sixty years, I don't think I should stay in the
+Church.
+
+FRANKLYN. If men lived even a third of that time, the Church would be
+very different from the thing it is.
+
+CONRAD. If I could count on nine hundred and sixty years I could make
+myself a real biologist, instead of what I am now: a child trying to
+walk. Are you sure you might not become a good clergyman if you had a
+few centuries to do it in?
+
+HASLAM. Oh, theres nothing much the matter with _me_: it's quite easy to
+be a decent parson. It's the Church that chokes me off. I couldnt stick
+it for nine hundred years. I should chuck it. You know, sometimes, when
+the bishop, who is the most priceless of fossils, lets off something
+more than usually out-of-date, the bird starts in my garden.
+
+FRANKLYN. The bird?
+
+HASLAM. Oh yes. Theres a bird there that keeps on singing 'Stick it or
+chuck it: stick it or chuck it'--just like that--for an hour on end in
+the spring. I wish my father had found some other shop for me.
+
+_The parlor maid comes back._
+
+THE PARLOR MAID. Any letters for the post, sir?
+
+FRANKLYN. These. [_He proffers a basket of letters. She comes to the
+table and takes them_].
+
+HASLAM [_to the maid_] Have you told Mr Barnabas yet?
+
+THE PARLOR MAID [_flinching a little_] No, sir.
+
+FRANKLYN. Told me what?
+
+HASLAM. She is going to leave you?
+
+FRANKLYN. Indeed? I'm sorry. Is it our fault, Mr Haslam?
+
+HASLAM. Not a bit. She is jolly well off here.
+
+THE PARLOR MAID [_reddening_] I have never denied it, sir: I couldnt ask
+for a better place. But I have only one life to live; and I maynt get
+a second chance. Excuse me, sir; but the letters must go to catch the
+post. [_She goes out with the letters._]
+
+_The two brothers look inquiringly at Haslam._
+
+HASLAM. Silly girl! Going to marry a village woodman and live in a hovel
+with him and a lot of kids tumbling over one another, just because the
+fellow has poetic-looking eyes and a moustache.
+
+CONRAD [_demurring_] She said it was because she had only one life.
+
+HASLAM. Same thing, poor girl! The fellow persuaded her to chuck it; and
+when she marries him she'll have to stick it. Rotten state of things, I
+call it.
+
+CONRAD. You see, she hasnt time to find out what life really means. She
+has to die before she knows.
+
+HASLAM [_agreeably_] Thats it.
+
+FRANKLYN. She hasnt time to form a well-instructed conscience.
+
+HASLAM [_still more cheerfully_] Quite.
+
+FRANKLYN. It goes deeper. She hasnt time to form a genuine conscience
+at all. Some romantic points of honor and a few conventions. A world
+without conscience: that is the horror of our condition.
+
+HASLAM [_beaming_] Simply fatuous. [_Rising_] Well, I suppose I'd better
+be going. It's most awfully good of you to put up with my calling.
+
+CONRAD [_in his former low ghostly tone_] You neednt go, you know, if
+you are really interested.
+
+HASLAM [_fed up_] Well, I'm afraid I ought to--I really must get back--I
+have something to do in the--
+
+FRANKLYN [_smiling benignly and rising to proffer his hand_] Goodbye.
+
+CONRAD [_gruffly, giving him up as a bad job_] Goodbye.
+
+HASLAM. Goodbye. Sorry--er--
+
+_As the rector moves to shake hands with Franklyn, feeling that he is
+making a frightful mess of his departure, a vigorous sunburnt young lady
+with hazel hair cut to the level of her neck, like an Italian youth in a
+Gozzoli picture, comes in impetuously. She seems to have nothing on but
+her short skirt, her blouse, her stockings, and a pair of Norwegian
+shoes: in short, she is a Simple-Lifer._
+
+THE SIMPLE-LIFER [_swooping on Conrad and kissing him_] Hallo, Nunk.
+Youre before your time.
+
+CONRAD. Behave yourself. Theres a visitor.
+
+_She turns quickly and sees the rector. She instinctively switches at
+her Gozzoli fringe with her fingers, but gives it up as hopeless._
+
+FRANKLYN. Mr Haslam, our new rector. [_To Haslam_] My daughter Cynthia.
+
+CONRAD. Usually called Savvy, short for Savage.
+
+SAVVY. I usually call Mr Haslam Bill, short for William. [_She strolls
+to the hearthrug, and surveys them calmly from that commanding
+position_].
+
+FRANKLYN. You know him?
+
+SAVVY. Rather. Sit down, Bill.
+
+FRANKLYN. Mr Haslam is going, Savvy. He has an engagement.
+
+SAVVY. I know. I'm the engagement.
+
+CONRAD. In that case, would you mind taking him into the garden while I
+talk to your father?
+
+SAVVY [_to Haslam_] Tennis?
+
+HASLAM. Rather!
+
+SAVVY. Come on. [_She dances out. He runs boyishly after her_].
+
+FRANKLYN [_leaving his table and beginning to walk up and down the room
+discontentedly_] Savvy's manners jar on me. They would have horrified
+her grandmother.
+
+CONRAD [_obstinately_] They are happier manners than Mother's manners.
+
+FRANKLYN. Yes: they are franker, wholesomer, better in a hundred ways.
+And yet I squirm at them. I cannot get it out of my head that Mother was
+a well-mannered woman, and that Savvy has no manners at all.
+
+CONRAD. There wasnt any pleasure in Mother's fine manners. That makes a
+biological difference.
+
+FRANKLYN. But there was beauty in Mother's manners, grace in them, style
+in them: above all, decision in them. Savvy is such a cub.
+
+CONRAD. So she ought to be, at her age.
+
+FRANKLYN. There it comes again! Her age! her age!
+
+CONRAD. You want her to be fully grown at eighteen. You want to force
+her into a stuck-up, artificial, premature self-possession before she
+has any self to possess. You just let her alone: she is right enough for
+her years.
+
+FRANKLYN. I have let her alone; and look at the result! Like all the
+other young people who have been let alone, she becomes a Socialist.
+That is, she becomes hopelessly demoralized.
+
+CONRAD. Well, arnt you a Socialist?
+
+FRANKLYN. Yes; but that is not the same thing. You and I were brought
+up in the old bourgeois morality. We were taught bourgeois manners and
+bourgeois points of honor. Bourgeois manners may be snobbish manners:
+there may be no pleasure in them, as you say; but they are better than
+no manners. Many bourgeois points of honor may be false; but at least
+they exist. The women know what to expect and what is expected of
+them. Savvy doesn't. She is a Bolshevist and nothing else. She has to
+improvise her manners and her conduct as she goes along. It's often
+charming, no doubt; but sometimes she puts her foot in it frightfully;
+and then I feel that she is blaming me for not teaching her better.
+
+CONRAD. Well, you have something better to teach her now, at all events.
+
+FRANKLYN. Yes: but it is too late. She doesn't trust me now. She doesn't
+talk about such things to me. She doesnt read anything I write. She
+never comes to hear me lecture. I am out of it as far as Savvy is
+concerned. [_He resumes his seat at the writing-table_].
+
+CONRAD. I must have a talk to her.
+
+FRANKLYN. Perhaps she will listen to you. You are not her father.
+
+CONRAD. I sent her my last book. I can break the ice by asking her what
+she made of it.
+
+FRANKLYN. When she heard you were coming, she asked me whether all the
+leaves were cut, in case it fell into your hands. She hasnt read a word
+of it.
+
+CONRAD [_rising indignantly_] What!
+
+FRANKLYN [_inexorably_] Not a word of it.
+
+CONRAD [_beaten_] Well, I suppose it's only natural. Biology is a dry
+subject for a girl; and I am a pretty dry old codger.
+
+[_He sits down again resignedly_].
+
+FRANKLYN. Brother: if that is so; if biology as you have worked at it,
+and religion as I have worked at it, are dry subjects like the old stuff
+they taught under these names, and we two are dry old codgers, like the
+old preachers and professors, then the Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas
+is a delusion. Unless this withered thing religion, and this dry thing
+science, have come alive in our hands, alive and intensely interesting,
+we may just as well go out and dig the garden until it is time to dig
+our graves. [_The parlor maid returns. Franklyn is impatient at the
+interruption_]. Well? what is it now?
+
+THE PARLOR MAID. Mr Joyce Burge on the telephone, sir. He wants to speak
+to you.
+
+FRANKLYN [_astonished_] Mr Joyce Burge!
+
+THE PARLOR MAID. Yes, sir.
+
+FRANKLYN [_to Conrad_] What on earth does this mean? I havnt heard from
+him nor exchanged a word with him for years. I resigned the chairmanship
+of the Liberal Association and shook the dust of party politics from
+my feet before he was Prime Minister in the Coalition. Of course, he
+dropped me like a hot potato.
+
+CONRAD. Well, now that the Coalition has chucked him out, and he is only
+one of the half-dozen leaders of the Opposition, perhaps he wants to
+pick you up again.
+
+THE PARLOR MAID [_warningly_] He is holding the line, sir.
+
+FRANKLYN. Yes: all right [_he hurries out_].
+
+_The parlor maid goes to the hearthrug to make up the fire. Conrad
+rises and strolls to the middle of the room, where he stops and looks
+quizzically down at her._
+
+CONRAD. So you have only one life to live, eh?
+
+THE PARLOR MAID [_dropping on her knees in consternation_] I meant no
+offence, sir.
+
+CONRAD. You didn't give any. But you know you could live a devil of a
+long life if you really wanted to.
+
+THE PARLOR MAID [_sitting down on her heels_] Oh, dont say that, sir.
+It's so unsettling.
+
+CONRAD. Why? Have you been thinking about it?
+
+THE PARLOR MAID. It would never have come into my head if you hadnt put
+it there, sir. Me and cook had a look at your book.
+
+CONRAD. What!
+
+
+   You and cook
+   Had a look
+   At my book!
+
+
+And my niece wouldn't open it! The prophet is without honor in his own
+family. Well, what do you think of living for several hundred years? Are
+you going to have a try for it?
+
+THE PARLOR MAID. Well, of course youre not in earnest, sir. But it does
+set one thinking, especially when one is going to be married.
+
+CONRAD. What has that to do with it? He may live as long as you, you
+know.
+
+THE PARLOR MAID. Thats just it, sir. You see, he must take me for better
+for worse, til death do us part. Do you think he would be so ready to do
+that, sir, if he thought it might be for several hundred years?
+
+CONRAD. Thats true. And what about yourself?
+
+THE PARLOR MAID. Oh, I tell you straight out, sir, I'd never
+promise to live with the same man as long as that. I wouldnt put
+up with my own children as long as that. Why, cook figured it
+out, sir, that when you were only 200, you might marry your own
+great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson and not even know who he
+was.
+
+CONRAD. Well, why not? For all you know, the man you are going to
+marry may be your great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother's
+great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson.
+
+THE PARLOR MAID. But do you think it would ever be thought respectable,
+sir?
+
+CONRAD. My good girl, all biological necessities have to be made
+respectable whether we like it or not; so you neednt worry yourself
+about that.
+
+_Franklyn returns and crosses the room to his chair, but does not sit
+down. The parlor maid goes out._
+
+CONRAD. Well, what does Joyce Burge want?
+
+FRANKLYN. Oh, a silly misunderstanding. I have promised to address a
+meeting in Middlesborough; and some fool has put it into the papers that
+I am 'coming to Middlesborough,' without any explanation. Of course, now
+that we are on the eve of a general election, political people think I
+am coming there to contest the parliamentary seat. Burge knows that I
+have a following, and thinks I could get into the House of Commons and
+head a group there. So he insists on coming to see me. He is staying
+with some people at Dollis Hill, and can be here in five or ten minutes,
+he says.
+
+CONRAD. But didn't you tell him that it's a false alarm?
+
+FRANKLYN. Of course I did; but he wont believe me.
+
+CONRAD. Called you a liar, in fact?
+
+FRANKLYN. No: I wish he had: any sort of plain speaking is better than
+the nauseous sham good fellowship our democratic public men get up for
+shop use. He pretends to believe me, and assures me his visit is quite
+disinterested; but why should he come if he has no axe to grind? These
+chaps never believe anything they say themselves; and naturally they
+cannot believe anything anyone else says.
+
+CONRAD [_rising_] Well, I shall clear out. It was hard enough to stand
+the party politicians before the war; but now that they have managed to
+half kill Europe between them, I cant be civil to them, and I dont see
+why I should be.
+
+FRANKLYN. Wait a bit. We have to find out how the world will take our
+new gospel. [_Conrad sits down again_]. Party politicians are still
+unfortunately an important part of the world. Suppose we try it on Joyce
+Burge.
+
+CONRAD. How can you? You can tell things only to people who can listen.
+Joyce Burge has talked so much that he has lost the power of listening.
+He doesnt listen even in the House of Commons.
+
+_Savvy rushes in breathless, followed by Haslam, who remains timidly
+just inside the door._
+
+SAVVY [_running to Franklyn_] I say! Who do you think has just driven up
+in a big car?
+
+FRANKLYN. Mr Joyce Burge, perhaps.
+
+SAVVY [_disappointed_] Oh, they know, Bill. Why didnt you tell us he was
+coming? I have nothing on.
+
+HASLAM. I'd better go, hadnt I?
+
+CONRAD. You just wait here, both of you. When you start yawning, Joyce
+Burge will take the hint, perhaps.
+
+SAVVY [_to Franklyn_] May we?
+
+FRANKLYN. Yes, if you promise to behave yourself.
+
+SAVVY [_making a wry face_] That will be a treat, wont it?
+
+THE PARLOR MAID [_entering and announcing_] Mr Joyce Burge.
+
+_Haslam hastily moves to the fireplace; and the parlor maid goes out and
+shuts the door when the visitor has passed in._
+
+FRANKLYN [_hurrying past Savvy to his guest with the false cordiality he
+has just been denouncing_] Oh! Here you are. Delighted to see you. [_He
+shakes Burge's hand, and introduces Savvy_] My daughter.
+
+SAVVY [_not daring to approach_] Very kind of you to come.
+
+_Joyce Burge stands fast and says nothing; but he screws up his cheeks
+into a smile at each introduction, and makes his eyes shine in a very
+winning manner. He is a well-fed man turned fifty, with broad forehead,
+and grey hair which, his neck being short, falls almost to his collar._
+
+FRANKLYN. Mr Haslam, our rector.
+
+_Burge conveys an impression of shining like a church window; and Haslam
+seizes the nearest library chair on the hearth, and swings it round for
+Burge between the stool and Conrad. He then retires to the window seat
+at the other side of the room, and is joined by Savvy. They sit there,
+side by side, hunched up with their elbows on their knees and their
+chins on their hands, providing Burge with a sort of Stranger's Gallery
+during the ensuing sitting._
+
+FRANKLYN. I forget whether you know my brother Conrad. He is a
+biologist.
+
+BURGE [_suddenly bursting into energetic action and shaking hands
+heartily with Conrad_] By reputation only, but very well, of course.
+How I wish I could have devoted myself to biology! I have always been
+interested in rocks and strata and volcanoes and so forth: they throw
+such a light on the age of the earth. [_With conviction_] There is
+nothing like biology. 'The cloud-capped towers, the solemn binnacles,
+the gorgeous temples, the great globe itself: yea, all that it inherit
+shall dissolve, and, like this influential pageant faded, leave not a
+rack behind.' Thats biology, you know: good sound biology. [_He sits
+down. So do the others, Franklyn on the stool, and Conrad on his
+Chippendale_]. Well, my dear Barnabas, what do you think of the
+situation? Dont you think the time has come for us to make a move?
+
+FRANKLYN. The time has always come to make a move.
+
+BURGE. How true! But what is the move to be? You are a man of enormous
+influence. We know that. Weve always known it. We have to consult you
+whether we like it or not. We--
+
+FRANKLYN [_interrupting firmly_] I never meddle in party politics now.
+
+SAVVY. It's no use saying you have no influence, daddy. Heaps of people
+swear by you.
+
+BURGE [_shining at her_] Of course they do. Come! let me prove to you
+what we think of you. Shall we find you a first-rate constituency
+to contest at the next election? One that wont cost you a penny. A
+metropolitan seat. What do you say to the Strand?
+
+FRANKLYN. My dear Burge, I am not a child. Why do you go on wasting your
+party funds on the Strand? You know you cannot win it.
+
+BURGE. We cannot win it; but you--
+
+FRANKLYN. Oh, please!
+
+SAVVY. The Strand's no use, Mr Burge. I once canvassed for a Socialist
+there. Cheese it.
+
+BURGE. Cheese it!
+
+HASLAM [_spluttering with suppressed laughter_] Priceless!
+
+SAVVY. Well, I suppose I shouldnt say cheese it to a Right Honorable.
+But the Strand, you know! Do come off it.
+
+FRANKLYN. You must excuse my daughter's shocking manners, Burge; but I
+agree with her that popular democratic statesmen soon come to believe
+that everyone they speak to is an ignorant dupe and a born fool into the
+bargain.
+
+BURGE [_laughing genially_] You old aristocrat, you! But believe me, the
+instinct of the people is sound--
+
+CONRAD [_cutting in sharply_] Then why are you in the Opposition instead
+of in the Government?
+
+BURGE [_shewing signs of temper under this heckling_] I deny that I
+am in the Opposition _morally_. The Government does not represent the
+country. I was chucked out of the Coalition by a Tory conspiracy. The
+people want me back. I dont want to go back.
+
+FRANKLYN [_gently remonstrant_] My dear Burge: of course you do.
+
+BURGE [_turning on him_] Not a bit of it. I want to cultivate my garden.
+I am not interested in politics: I am interested in roses. I havnt a
+scrap of ambition. I went into politics because my wife shoved me into
+them, bless her! But I want to serve my country. What else am I for? I
+want to save my country from the Tories. They dont represent the people.
+The man they have made Prime Minister has never represented the people;
+and you know it. Lord Dunreen is the bitterest old Tory left alive. What
+has he to offer to the people?
+
+FRANKLYN [_cutting in before Burge can proceed--as he evidently
+intends--to answer his own question_] I will tell you. He has
+ascertainable beliefs and principles to offer. The people know where
+they are with Lord Dunreen. They know what he thinks right and what he
+thinks wrong. With your followers they never know where they are. With
+you they never know where they are.
+
+BURGE [_amazed_] With me!
+
+FRANKLYN. Well, where are you? What are you?
+
+BURGE. Barnabas: you must be mad. You ask me what I am?
+
+FRANKLYN. I do.
+
+BURGE. I am, if I mistake not, Joyce Burge, pretty well known throughout
+Europe, and indeed throughout the world, as the man who--unworthily
+perhaps, but not quite unsuccessfully--held the helm when the ship
+of State weathered the mightiest hurricane that has ever burst with
+earth-shaking violence on the land of our fathers.
+
+FRANKLYN. I know that. I know who you are. And the earth-shaking part of
+it to me is that though you were placed in that enormously responsible
+position, neither I nor anyone else knows what your beliefs are, or even
+whether you have either beliefs or principles. What we did know was that
+your Government was formed largely of men who regarded you as a robber
+of henroosts, and whom you regarded as enemies of the people.
+
+BURGE [_adroitly, as he thinks_] I agree with you. I agree with you
+absolutely. I dont believe in coalition governments.
+
+FRANKLYN. Precisely. Yet you formed two.
+
+BURGE. Why? Because we were at war. That is what you fellows never would
+realize. The Hun was at the gate. Our country, our lives, the honor of
+our wives and mothers and daughters, the tender flesh of our innocent
+babes, were at stake. Was that a time to argue about principles?
+
+FRANKLYN. I should say it was the time of all others to confirm the
+resolution of our own men and gain the confidence and support of public
+opinion throughout the world by a declaration of principle. Do you think
+the Hun would ever have come to the gate if he had known that it would
+be shut in his face on principle? Did he not hold his own against you
+until America boldly affirmed the democratic principle and came to our
+rescue? Why did you let America snatch that honor from England?
+
+BURGE. Barnabas: America was carried away by words, and had to eat them
+at the Peace Conference. Beware of eloquence: it is the bane of popular
+speakers like you.
+
+
+   FRANKLYN} [_exclaiming_]{Well!!
+   SAVVY} [_all_]{I like that!
+   HASLAM} [_together_]{Priceless!
+
+
+BURGE [_continuing remorselessly_] Come down to facts. It wasn't
+principle that won the war: it was the British fleet and the blockade.
+America found the talk: I found the shells. You cannot win wars by
+principles; but you _can_ win elections by them. There I am with you.
+You want the next election to be fought on principles: that is what it
+comes to, doesnt it?
+
+FRANKLYN. I dont want it to be fought at all! An election is a moral
+horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood: a mud bath for every
+soul concerned in it. You know very well that it will not be fought on
+principle.
+
+BURGE. On the contrary it will be fought on nothing else. I believe a
+program is a mistake. I agree with you that principle is what we want.
+
+FRANKLYN. Principle without program, eh?
+
+BURGE. Exactly. There it is in three words.
+
+FRANKLYN. Why not in one word? Platitudes. That is what principle
+without program means.
+
+BURGE [_puzzled but patient, trying to get at Franklyn's drift in order
+to ascertain his price_] I have not made myself clear. Listen. I am
+agreeing with you. I am on your side. I am accepting your proposal.
+There isnt going to be any more coalition. This time there wont be a
+Tory in the Cabinet. Every candidate will have to pledge himself to Free
+Trade, slightly modified by consideration for our Overseas Dominions; to
+Disestablishment; to Reform of the House of Lords; to a revised scheme
+of Taxation of Land Values; and to doing something or other to keep the
+Irish quiet. Does that satisfy you?
+
+FRANKLYN. It does not even interest me. Suppose your friends do commit
+themselves to all this! What does it prove about them except that they
+are hopelessly out of date even in party politics? that they have learnt
+nothing and forgotten nothing since 1885? What is it to me that they
+hate the Church and hate the landed gentry; that they are jealous of the
+nobility, and have shipping shares instead of manufacturing businesses
+in the Midlands? I can find you hundreds of the most sordid rascals, or
+the most densely stupid reactionaries, with all these qualifications.
+
+BURGE. Personal abuse proves nothing. Do you suppose the Tories are all
+angels because they are all members of the Church of England?
+
+FRANKLYN. No; but they stand together as members of the Church of
+England, whereas your people, in attacking the Church, are all over the
+shop. The supporters of the Church are of one mind about religion: its
+enemies are of a dozen minds. The Churchmen are a phalanx: your people
+are a mob in which atheists are jostled by Plymouth Brethren, and
+Positivists by Pillars of Fire. You have with you all the crudest
+unbelievers and all the crudest fanatics.
+
+BURGE. We stand, as Cromwell did, for liberty of conscience, if that is
+what you mean.
+
+FRANKLYN. How can you talk such rubbish over the graves of your
+conscientious objectors? All law limits liberty of conscience: if a
+man's conscience allows him to steal your watch or to shirk military
+service, how much liberty do you allow it? Liberty of conscience is not
+my point.
+
+BURGE [_testily_] I wish you would come to your point. Half the time
+you are saying that you must have principles; and when I offer you
+principles you say they wont work.
+
+FRANKLYN. You have not offered me any principles. Your party shibboleths
+are not principles. If you get into power again you will find yourself
+at the head of a rabble of Socialists and anti-Socialists, of Jingo
+Imperialists and Little Englanders, of cast-iron Materialists
+and ecstatic Quakers, of Christian Scientists and Compulsory
+Inoculationists, of Syndicalists and Bureaucrats: in short, of men
+differing fiercely and irreconcilably on every principle that goes to
+the root of human society and destiny; and the impossibility of keeping
+such a team together will force you to sell the pass again to the solid
+Conservative Opposition.
+
+BURGE [_rising in wrath_] Sell the pass again! You accuse me of having
+sold the pass!
+
+FRANKLYN. When the terrible impact of real warfare swept your
+parliamentary sham warfare into the dustbin, you had to go behind the
+backs of your followers and make a secret agreement with the leaders of
+the Opposition to keep you in power on condition that you dropped all
+legislation of which they did not approve. And you could not even hold
+them to their bargain; for they presently betrayed the secret and forced
+the coalition on you.
+
+BURGE. I solemnly declare that this is a false and monstrous accusation.
+
+FRANKLYN. Do you deny that the thing occurred? Were the uncontradicted
+reports false? Were the published letters forgeries?
+
+BURGE. Certainly not. But _I_ did not do it. I was not Prime Minister
+then. It was that old dotard, that played-out old humbug Lubin. He was
+Prime Minister then, not I.
+
+FRANKLYN. Do you mean to say you did not know?
+
+BURGE [_sitting down again with a shrug_] Oh, I had to be told. But what
+could I do? If we had refused we might have had to go out of office.
+
+FRANKLYN. Precisely.
+
+BURGE. Well, could we desert the country at such a crisis? The Hun was
+at the gate. Everyone has to make sacrifices for the sake of the country
+at such moments. We had to rise above party; and I am proud to say we
+never gave party a second thought. We stuck to--
+
+CONRAD. Office?
+
+SURGE [_turning on him_] Yes, sir, to office: that is, to
+responsibility, to danger, to heart-sickening toil, to abuse and
+misunderstanding, to a martyrdom that made us envy the very soldiers in
+the trenches. If you had had to live for months on aspirin and bromide
+of potassium to get a wink of sleep, you wouldn't talk about office as
+if it were a catch.
+
+FRANKLYN. Still, you admit that under our parliamentary system Lubin
+could not have helped himself?
+
+BURGE. On that subject my lips are closed. Nothing will induce me to say
+one word against the old man. I never have; and I never will. Lubin is
+old: he has never been a real statesman: he is as lazy as a cat on
+a hearthrug: you cant get him to attend to anything: he is good for
+nothing but getting up and making speeches with a peroration that goes
+down with the back benches. But I say nothing against him. I gather that
+you do not think much of me as a statesman; but at all events I can get
+things done. I can hustle: even you will admit that. But Lubin! Oh my
+stars, Lubin!! If you only knew--
+
+_The parlor maid opens the door and announces a visitor._
+
+THE PARLOR MAID. Mr Lubin.
+
+SURGE [_bounding from his chair_] Lubin! Is this a conspiracy?
+
+_They all rise in amazement, staring at the door. Lubin enters: a man
+at the end of his sixties, a Yorkshireman with the last traces of
+Scandinavian flax still in his white hair, undistinguished in stature,
+unassuming in his manner, and taking his simple dignity for granted,
+but wonderfully comfortable and quite self-assured in contrast to
+the intellectual restlessness of Franklyn and the mesmeric
+self-assertiveness of Burge. His presence suddenly brings out the fact
+that they are unhappy men, ill at ease, square pegs in round holes,
+whilst he flourishes like a primrose.
+
+The parlor maid withdraws._
+
+LUBIN [_coming to Franklyn_] How do you do, Mr Barnabas? [_He speaks
+very comfortably and kindly, much as if he were the host, and Franklyn
+an embarrassed but welcome guest_]. I had the pleasure of meeting you
+once at the Mansion House. I think it was to celebrate the conclusion of
+the hundred years peace with America.
+
+FRANKLYN [_shaking hands_] It was long before that: a meeting about
+Venezuela, when we were on the point of going to war with America.
+
+LUBIN [_not at all put out_] Yes: you are quite right. I knew it was
+something about America. [_He pats Franklyn's hand_]. And how have you
+been all this time? Well, eh?
+
+FRANKLYN [_smiling to soften the sarcasm_] A few vicissitudes of health
+naturally in so long a time.
+
+LUBIN. Just so. Just so. [_Looking round at Savvy_] The young lady is--?
+
+FRANKLYN. My daughter, Savvy.
+
+_Savvy comes from the window between her father and Lubin._
+
+LUBIN [_taking her hand affectionately in both his_] And why has she
+never come to see us?
+
+BURGE. I don't know whether you have noticed, Lubin, that I am present.
+
+_Savvy takes advantage of this diversion to slip away to the settee,
+where she is stealthily joined by Haslam, who sits down on her left._
+
+LUBIN [_seating himself in Burge's chair with ineffable
+comfortableness_] My dear Burge: if you imagine that it is possible to
+be within ten miles of your energetic presence without being acutely
+aware of it, you do yourself the greatest injustice. How are you?
+And how are your good newspaper friends? [_Burge makes an explosive
+movement; but Lubin goes on calmly and sweetly_] And what are you doing
+here with my old friend Barnabas, if I may ask?
+
+BURGE [_sitting down in Conrad's chair, leaving him standing uneasily in
+the corner_] Well, just what you are doing, if you want to know. I am
+trying to enlist Mr Barnabas's valuable support for my party.
+
+LUBIN. Your party, eh? The newspaper party?
+
+BURGE. The Liberal Party. The party of which I have the honor to be
+leader.
+
+LUBIN. Have you now? Thats very interesting; for I thought _I_ was the
+leader of the Liberal Party. However, it is very kind of you to take it
+off my hands, if the party will let you.
+
+BURGE. Do you suggest that I have not the support and confidence of the
+party?
+
+LUBIN. I dont suggest anything, my dear Burge. Mr Barnabas will tell you
+that we all think very highly of you. The country owes you a great deal.
+During the war, you did very creditably over the munitions; and if you
+were not quite so successful with the peace, nobody doubted that you
+meant well.
+
+BURGE. Very kind of you, Lubin. Let me remark that you cannot lead a
+progressive party without getting a move on.
+
+LUBIN. You mean you cannot. I did it for ten years without the least
+difficulty. And very comfortable, prosperous, pleasant years they were.
+
+BURGE. Yes; but what did they end in?
+
+LUBIN. In you, Burge. You don't complain of that, do you?
+
+BURGE [_fiercely_] In plague, pestilence, and famine; battle, murder,
+and sudden death.
+
+LUBIN [_with an appreciative chuckle_] The Nonconformist can quote the
+prayer-book for his own purposes, I see. How you enjoyed yourself over
+that business, Burge! Do you remember the Knock-Out Blow?
+
+BURGE. It came off: don't forget that. Do _you_ remember fighting to the
+last drop of your blood?
+
+LUBIN [_unruffled, to Franklyn_] By the way, I remember your brother
+Conrad--a wonderful brain and a dear good fellow--explaining to me that
+I couldn't fight to the last drop of my blood, because I should be dead
+long before I came to it. Most interesting, and quite true. He was
+introduced to me at a meeting where the suffragettes kept disturbing me.
+They had to be carried out kicking and making a horrid disturbance.
+
+CONRAD. No: it was later, at a meeting to support the Franchise Bill
+which gave them the vote.
+
+LUBIN [_discovering Conrad's presence for the first time_] Youre right:
+it was. I knew it had something to do with women. My memory never
+deceives me. Thank you. Will you introduce me to this gentleman,
+Barnabas?
+
+CONRAD [_not at all affably_] I am the Conrad in question. [_He sits
+down in dudgeon on the vacant Chippendale_].
+
+LUBIN. Are you? [_Looking at him pleasantly_] Yes: of course you are. I
+never forget a face. But [_with an arch turn of his eyes to Savvy_] your
+pretty niece engaged all my powers of vision.
+
+BURGE. I wish youd be serious, Lubin. God knows we have passed through
+times terrible enough to make any man serious.
+
+LUBIN. I do not think I need to be reminded of that. In peace time
+I used to keep myself fresh for my work by banishing all worldly
+considerations from my mind on Sundays; but war has no respect for the
+Sabbath; and there have been Sundays within the last few years on which
+I have had to play as many as sixty-six games of bridge to keep my mind
+off the news from the front.
+
+BURGE [_scandalized_] Sixty-six games of bridge on Sunday!!!
+
+LUBIN. You probably sang sixty-six hymns. But as I cannot boast either
+your admirable voice or your spiritual fervor, I had to fall back on
+bridge.
+
+FRANKLYN. If I may go back to the subject of your visit, it seems to me
+that you may both be completely superseded by the Labor Party.
+
+BURGE. But I am in the truest sense myself a Labor leader. I--[_he
+stops, as Lubin has risen with a half-suppressed yawn, and is already
+talking calmly, but without a pretence of interest_].
+
+LUBIN. The Labor Party! Oh no, Mr Barnabas. No, no, no, no, no. [_He
+moves in Savvy's direction_]. There will be no trouble about that. Of
+course we must give them a few seats: more, I quite admit, than we
+should have dreamt of leaving to them before the war; but--[_by this
+time he has reached the sofa where Savvy and Haslam are seated. He sits
+down between them; takes her hand; and drops the subject of Labor_].
+Well, my dear young lady? What is the latest news? Whats going on? Have
+you seen Shoddy's new play? Tell me all about it, and all about the
+latest books, and all about everything.
+
+SAVVY. You have not met Mr Haslam. Our Rector.
+
+LUBIN [_who has quite overlooked Haslam_] Never heard of him. Is he any
+good?
+
+FRANKLYN. I was introducing him. This is Mr Haslam.
+
+HASLAM. How d'ye do?
+
+LUBIN. I beg your pardon, Mr Haslam. Delighted to meet you. [_To Savvy_]
+Well, now, how many books have you written?
+
+SAVVY [_rather overwhelmed but attracted_] None. I don't write.
+
+LUBIN. You dont say so; Well, what do you do? Music? Skirt-dancing?
+
+SAVVY. I dont do anything.
+
+LUBIN. Thank God! You and I were born for one another. Who is your
+favorite poet, Sally?
+
+SAVVY. Savvy.
+
+LUBIN. Savvy! I never heard of him. Tell me all about him. Keep me up to
+date.
+
+SAVVY. It's not a poet. _I_ am Savvy, not Sally.
+
+LUBIN. Savvy! Thats a funny name, and very pretty. Savvy. It sounds
+Chinese. What does it mean?
+
+CONRAD. Short for Savage.
+
+LUBIN [_patting her hand_] La belle Sauvage.
+
+HASLAM [_rising and surrendering Savvy to Lubin by crossing to the
+fireplace_] I suppose the Church is out of it as far as progressive
+politics are concerned.
+
+BURGE. Nonsense! That notion about the Church being unprogressive is one
+of those shibboleths that our party must drop. The Church is all right
+essentially. Get rid of the establishment; get rid of the bishops; get
+rid of the candlesticks; get rid of the 39 articles; and the Church of
+England is just as good as any other Church; and I don't care who hears
+me say so.
+
+LUBIN. It doesn't matter a bit who hears you say so, my dear Burge. [_To
+Savvy_] Who did you say your favorite poet was?
+
+SAVVY. I dont make pets of poets. Who's yours?
+
+LUBIN. Horace.
+
+SAVVY. Horace who?
+
+LUBIN. Quintus Horatius Flaccus: the noblest Roman of them all, my dear.
+
+SAVVY. Oh, if he is dead, that explains it. I have a theory that all the
+dead people we feel especially interested in must have been ourselves.
+You must be Horace's reincarnation.
+
+LUBIN [_delighted_] That is the very most charming and penetrating and
+intelligent thing that has ever been said to me. Barnabas: will you
+exchange daughters with me? I can give you your choice of two.
+
+FRANKLYN. Man proposes. Savvy disposes.
+
+LUBIN. What does Savvy say?
+
+BURGE. Lubin: I came here to talk politics.
+
+LUBIN. Yes: you have only one subject, Burge. I came here to talk to
+Savvy. Take Burge into the next room, Barnabas; and let him rip.
+
+BURGE [_half-angry, half-indulgent_] No; but really, Lubin, we are at a
+crisis--
+
+LUBIN. My dear Burge, life is a disease; and the only difference between
+one man and another is the stage of the disease at which he lives. You
+are always at the crisis; I am always in the convalescent stage. I enjoy
+convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worth while.
+
+SAVVY [_half-rising_] Perhaps I'd better run away. I am distracting you.
+
+LUBIN [_making her sit down again_] Not at all, my dear. You are only
+distracting Burge. Jolly good thing for him to be distracted by a pretty
+girl. Just what he needs.
+
+BURGE. I sometimes envy you, Lubin. The great movement of mankind, the
+giant sweep of the ages, passes you by and leaves you standing.
+
+LUBIN. It leaves me sitting, and quite comfortable, thank you. Go on
+sweeping. When you are tired of it, come back; and you will find England
+where it was, and me in my accustomed place, with Miss Savvy telling me
+all sorts of interesting things.
+
+SAVVY [_who has been growing more and more restless_] Dont let him shut
+you up, Mr Burge. You know, Mr Lubin, I am frightfully interested in the
+Labor movement, and in Theosophy, and in reconstruction after the war,
+and all sorts of things. I daresay the flappers in your smart set are
+tremendously flattered when you sit beside them and are nice to them
+as you are being nice to me; but I am not smart; and I am no use as
+a flapper. I am dowdy and serious. I want you to be serious. If you
+refuse, I shall go and sit beside Mr Burge, and ask him to hold my hand.
+
+LUBIN. He wouldnt know how to do it, my dear. Burge has a reputation as
+a profligate--
+
+BURGE [_starting_] Lubin: this is monstrous. I--
+
+LUBIN [_continuing_]--but he is really a model of domesticity. His name
+is coupled with all the most celebrated beauties; but for him there is
+only one woman; and that is not you, my dear, but his very charming
+wife.
+
+BURGE. You are destroying my character in the act of pretending to save
+it. Have the goodness to confine yourself to your own character and your
+own wife. Both of them need all your attention.
+
+LUBIN. I have the privilege of my age and of my transparent innocence. I
+have not to struggle with your volcanic energy.
+
+BURGE [_with an immense sense of power_] No, by George!
+
+FRANKLYN. I think I shall speak both for my brother and myself, and
+possibly also for my daughter, if I say that since the object of your
+visit and Mr Joyce Burge's is to some extent political, we should hear
+with great interest something about your political aims, Mr Lubin.
+
+LUBIN [_assenting with complete good humor, and becoming attentive,
+clear, and businesslike in his tone_] By all means, Mr Barnabas. What
+we have to consider first, I take it, is what prospect there is of our
+finding you beside us in the House after the next election.
+
+FRANKLYN. When I speak of politics, Mr Lubin, I am not thinking of
+elections, or available seats, or party funds, or the registers, or
+even, I am sorry to have to add, of parliament as it exists at present.
+I had much rather you talked about bridge than about electioneering: it
+is the more interesting game of the two.
+
+BURGE. He wants to discuss principles, Lubin.
+
+LUBIN [_very cool and clear_] I understand Mr Barnabas quite well. But
+elections are unsettled things; principles are settled things.
+
+CONRAD [_impatiently_] Great Heavens!--
+
+LUBIN [_interrupting him with quiet authority_] One moment, Dr Barnabas.
+The main principles on which modern civilized society is founded
+are pretty well understood among educated people. That is what our
+dangerously half-educated masses and their pet demagogues--if Burge will
+excuse that expression--
+
+BURGE. Dont mind me. Go on. I shall have something to say presently.
+
+LUBIN.--that is what our dangerously half-educated people do not
+realize. Take all this fuss about the Labor Party, with its imaginary
+new principles and new politics. The Labor members will find that
+the immutable laws of political economy take no more notice of their
+ambitions and aspirations than the law of gravitation. I speak, if I may
+say so, with knowledge; for I have made a special, study of the Labor
+question.
+
+FRANKLYN [_with interest and some surprise_] Indeed?
+
+LUBIN. Yes. It occurred quite at the beginning of my career. I was asked
+to deliver an address to the students at the Working Men's College; and
+I was strongly advised to comply, as Gladstone and Morley and others
+were doing that sort of thing at the moment. It was rather a troublesome
+job, because I had not gone into political economy at the time. As you
+know, at the university I was a classical scholar; and my profession
+was the Law. But I looked up the text-books, and got up the case most
+carefully. I found that the correct view is that all this Trade Unionism
+and Socialism and so forth is founded on the ignorant delusion that
+wages and the production and distribution of wealth can be controlled by
+legislation or by any human action whatever. They obey fixed scientific
+laws, which have been ascertained and settled finally by the highest
+economic authorities. Naturally I do not at this distance of time
+remember the exact process of reasoning; but I can get up the case again
+at any time in a couple of days; and you may rely on me absolutely,
+should the occasion arise, to deal with all these ignorant and
+unpractical people in a conclusive and convincing way, except, of
+course, as far as it may be advisable to indulge and flatter them a
+little so as to let them down without creating ill feeling in the
+working-class electorate. In short, I can get that lecture up again
+almost at a moment's notice.
+
+SAVVY. But, Mr Lubin, I have had a university education too; and all
+this about wages and distribution being fixed by immutable laws of
+political economy is obsolete rot.
+
+FRANKLYN [_shocked_] Oh, my dear! That is not polite.
+
+LUBIN. No, no, no. Dont scold her. She mustnt be scolded. [_To Savvy_] I
+understand. You are a disciple of Karl Marx.
+
+SAVVY. No, no. Karl Marx's economics are all rot.
+
+LUBIN [_at last a little taken aback_] Dear me!
+
+SAVVY. You must excuse me, Mr Lubin; but it's like hearing a man talk
+about the Garden of Eden.
+
+CONRAD. Why shouldnt he talk about the Garden of Eden? It was a first
+attempt at biology anyhow.
+
+LUBIN [_recovering his self-possession_] I am sound on the Garden of
+Eden. I have heard of Darwin.
+
+SAVVY. But Darwin is all rot.
+
+LUBIN. What! Already!
+
+SAVVY. It's no good your smiling at me like a Cheshire cat, Mr Lubin;
+and I am not going to sit here mumchance like an old-fashioned goody
+goody wife while you men monopolize the conversation and pay out the
+very ghastliest exploded drivel as the latest thing in politics. I am
+not giving you my own ideas, Mr Lubin, but just the regular orthodox
+science of today. Only the most awful old fossils think that Socialism
+is bad economics and that Darwin invented Evolution. Ask Papa. Ask
+Uncle. Ask the first person you meet in the street. [_She rises and
+crosses to Haslam_]. Give me a cigaret, Bill, will you?
+
+HASLAM. Priceless. [_He complies_].
+
+FRANKLYN. Savvy has not lived long enough to have any manners, Mr Lubin;
+but that is where you stand with the younger generation. Dont smoke,
+dear.
+
+_Savvy, with a shrug of rather mutinous resignation, throws the cigaret
+into the fire. Haslam, on the point of lighting one for himself, changes
+his mind._
+
+LUBIN [_shrewd and serious_] Mr Barnabas: I confess I am surprised; and
+I will not pretend that I am convinced. But I am open to conviction. I
+may be wrong.
+
+BURGE [_in a burst of irony_] Oh no. Impossible! Impossible!
+
+LUBIN. Yes, Mr Barnabas, though I do not possess Burge's genius for
+being always wrong, I have been in that position once or twice. I could
+not conceal from you, even if I wished to, that my time has been so
+completely filled by my professional work as a lawyer, and later on
+by my duties as leader of the House of Commons in the days when Prime
+Ministers were also leaders--
+
+BURGE [_stung_] Not to mention bridge and smart society.
+
+LUBIN.--not to mention the continual and trying effort to make Burge
+behave himself, that I have not been able to keep my academic reading up
+to date. I have kept my classics brushed up out of sheer love for them;
+but my economics and my science, such as they were, may possibly be a
+little rusty. Yet I think I may say that if you and your brother will
+be so good as to put me on the track of the necessary documents, I will
+undertake to put the case to the House or to the country to your entire
+satisfaction. You see, as long as you can shew these troublesome
+half-educated people who want to turn the world upside down that they
+are talking nonsense, it really does not matter very much whether you do
+it in terms of what Miss Barnabas calls obsolete rot or in terms of
+what her granddaughter will probably call unmitigated tosh. I have no
+objection whatever to denounce Karl Marx. Anything I can say against
+Darwin will please a large body of sincerely pious voters. If it will be
+easier to carry on the business of the country on the understanding
+that the present state of things is to be called Socialism, I have no
+objection in the world to call it Socialism. There is the precedent
+of the Emperor Constantine, who saved the society of his own day by
+agreeing to call his Imperialism Christianity. Mind: I must not go ahead
+of the electorate. You must not call a voter a Socialist until--
+
+FRANKLYN. Until he is a Socialist. Agreed.
+
+LUBIN. Oh, not at all. You need not wait for that. You must not call
+him a Socialist until he wishes to be called a Socialist: that is all.
+Surely you would not say that I must not address my constituents as
+gentlemen until they are gentlemen. I address them as gentlemen because
+they wish to be so addressed. [_He rises from the sofa and goes to
+Franklyn, placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder_]. Do not be afraid
+of Socialism, Mr Barnabas. You need not tremble for your property or
+your position or your dignity. England will remain what England is, no
+matter what new political names may come into vogue. I do not intend to
+resist the transition to Socialism. You may depend on me to guide it, to
+lead it, to give suitable expression to its aspirations, and to steer it
+clear of Utopian absurdities. I can honestly ask for your support on the
+most advanced Socialist grounds no less than on the soundest Liberal
+ones.
+
+BURGE. In short, Lubin, youre incorrigible. You dont believe anything
+is going to change. The millions are still to toil--the people--my
+people--for I am a man of the people--
+
+LUBIN [_interrupting him contemptuously_] Dont be ridiculous, Burge. You
+are a country solicitor, further removed from the people, more foreign
+to them, more jealous of letting them up to your level, than any duke or
+any archbishop.
+
+BURGE [_hotly_] I deny it. You think I have never been poor. You think
+I have never cleaned my own boots. You think my fingers have never come
+out through the soles when I was cleaning them. You think--
+
+LUBIN. I think you fall into the very common mistake of supposing that
+it is poverty that makes the proletarian and money that makes the
+gentleman. You are quite wrong. You never belonged to the people: you
+belonged to the impecunious. Impecuniosity and broken boots are the lot
+of the unsuccessful middle class, and the commonplaces of the early
+struggles of the professional and younger son class. I defy you to find
+a farm laborer in England with broken boots. Call a mechanic one of the
+poor, and he'll punch your head. When you talk to your constituents
+about the toiling millions, they don't consider that you are referring
+to them. They are all third cousins of somebody with a title or a park.
+I am a Yorkshireman, my friend. I know England; and you don't. If you
+did you would know--
+
+SURGE. What do you know that I don't know?
+
+LUBIN. I know that we are taking up too much of Mr Barnabas's time.
+[_Franklyn rises_]. May I take it, my dear Barnabas, that I may count
+on your support if we succeed in forcing an election before the new
+register is in full working order?
+
+SURGE [_rising also_] May the party count on your support? I say nothing
+about myself. Can the party depend on you? Is there any question of
+yours that I have left unanswered?
+
+
+CONRAD. We havnt asked you any, you know.
+
+BURGE. May I take that as a mark of confidence?
+
+CONRAD. If I were a laborer in your constituency, I should ask you a
+biological question?
+
+LUBIN. No you wouldnt, my dear Doctor. Laborers never ask questions.
+
+BURGE. Ask it now. I have never flinched from being heckled. Out with
+it. Is it about the land?
+
+CONRAD. No.
+
+SURGE. Is it about the Church?
+
+CONRAD. No.
+
+BURGE. Is it about the House of Lords?
+
+CONRAD. No.
+
+BURGE. Is it about Proportional Representation?
+
+CONRAD. No.
+
+SURGE. Is it about Free Trade?
+
+CONRAD. No.
+
+SURGE. Is it about the priest in the school?
+
+CONRAD. No.
+
+BURGE. Is it about Ireland?
+
+CONRAD. No.
+
+BURGE. Is it about Germany?
+
+CONRAD. No.
+
+BURGE. Well, is it about Republicanism? Come! I wont flinch. Is it about
+the Monarchy?
+
+CONRAD. No.
+
+SURGE. Well, what the devil is it about, then?
+
+CONRAD. You understand that I am asking the question in the character of
+a laborer who earned thirteen shillings a week before the war and earns
+thirty now, when he can get it?
+
+BURGE. Yes: I understand that. I am ready for you. Out with it.
+
+CONRAD. And whom you propose to represent n parliament?
+
+SURGE. Yes, yes, yes. Come on.
+
+CONRAD. The question is this. Would you allow your son to marry my
+daughter, or your daughter to marry my son?
+
+BURGE [_taken aback_] Oh, come! Thats not a political question.
+
+CONRAD. Then, as a biologist, I don't take the slightest interest in
+your politics; and I shall not walk across the street to vote for you or
+anyone else at the election. Good evening.
+
+LUBIN. Serve you right, Burge! Dr Barnabas: you have my assurance that
+my daughter shall marry the man of her choice, whether he be lord or
+laborer. May _I_ count on your support?
+
+SURGE [_hurling the epithet at him_] Humbug!
+
+SAVVY. Stop. [_They all stop short in the movement of leave-taking to
+look at her_]. Daddy: are you going to let them off like this? How are
+they to know anything if nobody ever tells them? If you don't, I will.
+
+CONRAD. You cant. You didn't read my book; and you know nothing about
+it. You just hold your tongue.
+
+SAVVY. I just wont, Nunk. I shall have a vote when I am thirty; and I
+ought to have it now. Why are these two ridiculous people to be allowed
+to come in and walk over us as if the world existed only to play their
+silly parliamentary game?
+
+FRANKLYN [_severely_] Savvy: you really must not be uncivil to our
+guests.
+
+SAVVY. I'm sorry. But Mr Lubin didn't stand on much ceremony with me,
+did he? And Mr Burge hasnt addressed a single word to me. I'm not going
+to stand it. You and Nunk have a much better program than either of
+them. It's the only one we are going to vote for; and they ought to be
+told about it for the credit of the family and the good of their own
+souls. You just tip them a chapter from the gospel of the brothers
+Barnabas, Daddy.
+
+_Lubin and Burge turn inquiringly to Franklyn, suspecting a move to form
+a new party._
+
+FRANKLYN. It is quite true, Mr Lubin, that I and my brother have a
+little program of our own which--
+
+CONRAD [_interrupting_] It's not a little program: it's an almighty big
+one. It's not our own: it's the program of the whole of civilization.
+
+BURGE. Then why split the party before you have put it to us? For God's
+sake let us have no more splits. I am here to learn. I am here to gather
+your opinions and represent them. I invite you to put your views before
+me. I offer myself to be heckled. You have asked me only an absurd
+non-political question.
+
+FRANKLYN. Candidly, I fear our program will be thrown away on you. It
+would not interest you.
+
+BURGE [_with challenging audacity_] Try. Lubin can go if he likes; but I
+am still open to new ideas, if only I can find them.
+
+FRANKLYN [_to Lubin_] Are you prepared to listen, Mr Lubin; or shall I
+thank you for your very kind and welcome visit, and say good evening?
+
+LUBIN [_sitting down resignedly on the settee, but involuntarily making
+a movement which looks like the stifling of a yawn_] With pleasure, Mr
+Barnabas. Of course you know that before I can adopt any new plank
+in the party platform, it will have to reach me through the National
+Liberal Federation, which you can approach through your local Liberal
+and Radical Association.
+
+FRANKLYN. I could recall to you several instances of the addition
+to your party program of measures of which no local branch of your
+Federation had ever dreamt. But I understand that you are not really
+interested. I will spare you, and drop the subject.
+
+LUBIN [_waking up a little_] You quite misunderstand me. Please do not
+take it in that way. I only--
+
+BURGE [_talking him down_] Never mind the Federation: _I_ will answer
+for the Federation. Go on, Barnabas: go on. Never mind Lubin [_he sits
+down in the chair from which Lubin first displaced him_].
+
+FRANKLYN. Our program is only that the term of human life shall be
+extended to three hundred years.
+
+LUBIN [_softly_] Eh?
+
+BURGE [_explosively_] What!
+
+SAVVY. Our election cry is 'Back to Methuselah!'
+
+HASLAM. Priceless!
+
+_Lubin and Surge look at one another._
+
+CONRAD. No. We are not mad.
+
+SAVVY. Theyre not joking either. They mean it.
+
+LUBIN [_cautiously_] Assuming that, in some sense which I am for the
+moment unable to fathom, you are in earnest, Mr Barnabas, may I ask what
+this has to do with politics?
+
+FRANKLYN. The connection is very evident. You are now, Mr Lubin, within
+immediate reach of your seventieth year. Mr Joyce Surge is your junior
+by about eleven years. You will go down to posterity as one of a
+European group of immature statesmen and monarchs who, doing the very
+best for your respective countries of which you were capable, succeeded
+in all-but-wrecking the civilization of Europe, and did, in effect, wipe
+out of existence many millions of its inhabitants.
+
+BURGE. Less than a million.
+
+FRANKLYN. That was our loss alone.
+
+BURGE. Oh, if you count foreigners--!
+
+HAS LAM. God counts foreigners, you know.
+
+SAVVY [_with intense satisfaction_] Well said, Bill.
+
+FRANKLYN. I am not blaming you. Your task was beyond human capacity.
+What with our huge armaments, our terrible engines of destruction, our
+systems of coercion manned by an irresistible police, you were called on
+to control powers so gigantic that one shudders at the thought of their
+being entrusted even to an infinitely experienced and benevolent God,
+much less to mortal men whose whole life does not last a hundred years.
+
+BURGE. We won the war: don't forget that.
+
+FRANKLYN. No: the soldiers and sailors won it, and left you to finish
+it. And you were so utterly incompetent that the multitudes of children
+slain by hunger in the first years of peace made us all wish we were at
+war again.
+
+CONRAD. It's no use arguing about it. It is now absolutely certain that
+the political and social problems raised by our civilization cannot be
+solved by mere human mushrooms who decay and die when they are just
+beginning to have a glimmer of the wisdom and knowledge needed for their
+own government.
+
+LUBIN. Quite an interesting idea, Doctor. Extravagant. Fantastic. But
+quite interesting. When I was young I used to feel my human limitations
+very acutely.
+
+BURGE. God knows I have often felt that I could not go on if it had not
+been for the sense that I was only an instrument in the hands of a Power
+above us.
+
+CONRAD. I'm glad you both agree with us, and with one another.
+
+LUBIN. I have not gone so far as that, I think. After all, we have had
+many very able political leaders even within your recollection and mine.
+
+FRANKLYN. Have you read the recent biographies--Dilke's, for
+instance--which revealed the truth about them?
+
+LUBIN. I did not discover any new truth revealed in these books, Mr
+Barnabas.
+
+FRANKLYN. What! Not the truth that England was governed all that time by
+a little woman who knew her own mind?
+
+SAVVY. Hear, hear!
+
+LUBIN. That often happens. Which woman do you mean?
+
+FRANKLYN. Queen Victoria, to whom your Prime Ministers stood in the
+relation of naughty children whose heads she knocked together when their
+tempers and quarrels became intolerable. Within thirteen years of her
+death Europe became a hell.
+
+SURGE. Quite true. That was because she was piously brought up, and
+regarded herself as an instrument. If a statesman remembers that he is
+only an instrument, and feels quite sure that he is rightly interpreting
+the divine purpose, he will come out all right, you know.
+
+FRANKLYN. The Kaiser felt like that. Did he come out all right?
+
+SURGE. Well, let us be fair, even to the Kaiser. Let us be fair.
+
+FRANKLYN. Were you fair to him when you won an election on the program
+of hanging him?
+
+SURGE. Stuff! I am the last man alive to hang anybody; but the people
+wouldnt listen to reason. Besides, I knew the Dutch wouldnt give him up.
+
+SAVVY. Oh, don't start arguing about poor old Bill. Stick to our point.
+Let these two gentlemen settle the question for themselves. Mr Burge: do
+you think Mr Lubin is fit to govern England?
+
+SURGE. No. Frankly, I dont.
+
+LUBIN [_remonstrant_] Really!
+
+CONRAD. Why?
+
+BURGE. Because he has no conscience: thats why.
+
+LUBIN [_shocked and amazed_] Oh!
+
+FRANKLYN. Mr Lubin: do you consider Joyce Burge qualified to govern
+England?
+
+LUBIN [_with dignified emotion, wounded, but without bitterness_] Excuse
+me, Mr Barnabas; but before I answer that question I want to say this.
+Burge: we have had differences of opinion; and your newspaper friends
+have said hard things of me. But we worked together for years; and I
+hope I have done nothing to justify you in the amazing accusation you
+have just brought against me. Do you realize that you said that I have
+no conscience?
+
+BURGE. Lubin: I am very accessible to an appeal to my emotions; and you
+are very cunning in making such appeals. I will meet you to this extent.
+I dont mean that you are a bad man. I dont mean that I dislike you, in
+spite of your continual attempts to discourage and depress me. But you
+have a mind like a looking-glass. You are very clear and smooth and
+lucid as to what is standing in front of you. But you have no foresight
+and no hindsight. You have no vision and no memory. You have no
+continuity; and a man without continuity can have neither conscience nor
+honor from one day to another. The result is that you have always been
+a damned bad minister; and you have sometimes been a damned bad friend.
+Now you can answer Barnabas's question and take it out of me to your
+heart's content. He asked you was I fit to govern England.
+
+LUBIN [_recovering himself_] After what has just passed I sincerely
+wish I could honestly say yes, Burge. But it seems to me that you have
+condemned yourself out of your own mouth. You represent something which
+has had far too much influence and popularity in this country since
+Joseph Chamberlain set the fashion; and that is mere energy without
+intellect and without knowledge. Your mind is not a trained mind: it has
+not been stored with the best information, nor cultivated by intercourse
+with educated minds at any of our great seats of learning. As I happen
+to have enjoyed that advantage, it follows that you do not understand my
+mind. Candidly, I think that disqualifies you. The peace found out your
+weaknesses.
+
+BURGE. Oh! What did it find out in you?
+
+LUBIN. You and your newspaper confederates took the peace out of my
+hands. The peace did not find me out because it did not find me in.
+
+FRANKLYN. Come! Confess, both of you! You were only flies on the wheel.
+The war went England's way; but the peace went its own way, and not
+England's way nor any of the ways you had so glibly appointed for it.
+Your peace treaty was a scrap of paper before the ink dried on it. The
+statesmen of Europe were incapable of governing Europe. What they needed
+was a couple of hundred years training and experience: what they had
+actually had was a few years at the bar or in a counting-house or on
+the grouse moors and golf courses. And now we are waiting, with monster
+cannons trained on every city and seaport, and huge aeroplanes ready to
+spring into the air and drop bombs every one of which will obliterate a
+whole street, and poison gases that will strike multitudes dead with a
+breath, until one of you gentlemen rises in his helplessness to tell us,
+who are as helpless as himself, that we are at war again.
+
+CONRAD. Aha! What consolation will it be for us then that you two are
+able to tell off one another's defects so cleverly in your afternoon
+chat?
+
+BURGE [_angrily_] If you come to that, what consolation will it be that
+you two can sit there and tell both of us off? you, who have had no
+responsibility! you, who havnt lifted a finger, as far as I know, to
+help us through this awful crisis which has left me ten years older than
+my proper age! Can you tell me a single thing you did to help us during
+the whole infernal business?
+
+CONRAD. We're not blaming you: you hadnt lived long enough. No more had
+we. Cant you see that three-score-and-ten, though it may be long
+enough for a very crude sort of village life, isnt long enough for a
+complicated civilization like ours? Flinders Petrie has counted nine
+attempts at civilization made by people exactly like us; and every one
+of them failed just as ours is failing. They failed because the citizens
+and statesmen died of old age or over-eating before they had grown out
+of schoolboy games and savage sports and cigars and champagne. The signs
+of the end are always the same: Democracy, Socialism, and Votes for
+Women. We shall go to smash within the lifetime of men now living unless
+we recognize that we must live longer.
+
+LUBIN. I am glad you agree with me that Socialism and Votes for Women
+are signs of decay.
+
+FRANKLYN. Not at all: they are only the difficulties that overtax your
+capacity. If you cannot organize Socialism you cannot organize civilized
+life; and you will relapse into barbarism accordingly.
+
+SAVVY. Hear, hear!
+
+SURGE. A useful point. We cannot put back the clock.
+
+HASLAM. _I_ can. Ive often done it.
+
+LUBIN. Tut tut! My dear Burge: what are you dreaming of? Mr Barnabas: I
+am a very patient man. But will you tell me what earthly use or interest
+there is in a conclusion that cannot be realized? I grant you that if
+we could live three hundred years we should all be, perhaps wiser,
+certainly older. You will grant me in return, I hope, that if the sky
+fell we should all catch larks.
+
+FRANKLYN. Your turn now, Conrad. Go ahead.
+
+CONRAD. I don't think it's any good. I don't think they want to live
+longer than usual.
+
+LUBIN. Although I am a mere child of 69, I am old enough to have lost,
+the habit of crying for the moon.
+
+BURGE. Have you discovered the elixir of life or have you not? If not, I
+agree with Lubin that you are wasting our time.
+
+CONRAD. Is your time of any value?
+
+SURGE [_unable to believe his ears_] My time of any value! What do you
+mean?
+
+LUBIN [_smiling comfortably_] From your high scientific point of view,
+I daresay, none whatever, Professor. In any case I think a little
+perfectly idle discussion would do Burge good. After all, we might as
+well hear about the elixir of life as read novels, or whatever Burge
+does when he is not playing golf on Walton Heath. What is your elixir,
+Dr Barnabas? Lemons? Sour milk? Or what is the latest?
+
+SURGE. We were just beginning to talk seriously; and now you snatch at
+the chance of talking rot. [_He rises_]. Good evening. [_He turns to the
+door_].
+
+CONRAD [_rudely_] Die as soon as you like. Good evening.
+
+BURGE [_hesitating_] Look here. I took sour milk twice a day until
+Metchnikoff died. He thought it would keep him alive for ever; and he
+died of it.
+
+CONRAD. You might as well have taken sour beer.
+
+BURGE. You believe in lemons?
+
+CONRAD. I wouldn't eat a lemon for ten pounds.
+
+BURGE [_sitting down again_] What do you recommend?
+
+CONRAD [_rising with a gesture of despair_] Whats the use of going on,
+Frank? Because I am a doctor, and because they think I have a bottle to
+give them that will make them live for ever, they are listening to me
+for the first time with their mouths open and their eyes shut. Thats
+their notion of science.
+
+SAVVY. Steady, Nunk! Hold the fort.
+
+CONRAD [_growls and sits down_]!!!
+
+LUBIN. You volunteered the consultation, Doctor. I may tell you that,
+far from sharing the credulity as to science which is now the fashion, I
+am prepared to demonstrate that during the last fifty years, though the
+Church has often been wrong, and even the Liberal Party has not been
+infallible, the men of science have always been wrong.
+
+CONRAD. Yes: the fellows you call men of science. The people who make
+money by it, and their medical hangers-on. But has anybody been right?
+
+LUBIN. The poets and story tellers, especially the classical poets and
+story tellers, have been, in the main, right. I will ask you not
+to repeat this as my opinion outside; for the vote of the medical
+profession and its worshippers is not to be trifled with.
+
+FRANKLYN. You are quite right: the poem is our real clue to biological
+science. The most scientific document we possess at present is, as your
+grandmother would have told you quite truly, the story of the Garden of
+Eden.
+
+BURGE [_pricking up his ears_] Whats that? If you can establish that,
+Barnabas, I am prepared to hear you out with my very best attention. I
+am listening. Go on.
+
+FRANKLYN. Well, you remember, don't you, that in the Garden of Eden Adam
+and Eve were not created mortal, and that natural death, as we call it,
+was not a part of life, but a later and quite separate invention?
+
+SURGE. Now you mention it, thats true. Death came afterwards.
+
+LUBIN. What about accidental death? That was always possible.
+
+FRANKLYN. Precisely. Adam and Eve were hung up between two frightful
+possibilities. One was the extinction of mankind by their accidental
+death. The other was the prospect of living for ever. They could bear
+neither. They decided that they would just take a short turn of a
+thousand years, and meanwhile hand on their work to a new pair.
+Consequently, they had to invent natural birth and natural death, which
+are, after all, only modes of perpetuating life without putting on any
+single creature the terrible burden of immortality.
+
+LUBIN. I see. The old must make room for the new.
+
+SURGE. Death is nothing but making room. Thats all there is in it or
+ever has been in it.
+
+FRANKLYN. Yes; but the old must not desert their posts until the new are
+ripe for them. They desert them now two hundred years too soon.
+
+SAVVY. I believe the old people are the new people reincarnated, Nunk.
+I suspect I am Eve. I am very fond of apples; and they always disagree
+with me.
+
+CONRAD. You are Eve, in a sense. The Eternal Life persists; only It
+wears out Its bodies and minds and gets new ones, like new clothes. You
+are only a new hat and frock on Eve.
+
+FRANKLYN. Yes. Bodies and minds ever better and better fitted to carry
+out Its eternal pursuit.
+
+LUBIN [_with quiet scepticism_] What pursuit, may one ask, Mr Barnabas?
+
+FRANKLYN. The pursuit of omnipotence and omniscience. Greater power and
+greater knowledge: these are what we are all pursuing even at the risk
+of our lives and the sacrifice of our pleasures. Evolution is that
+pursuit and nothing else. It is the path to godhead. A man differs from
+a microbe only in being further on the path.
+
+LUBIN. And how soon do you expect this modest end to be reached?
+
+FRANKLYN. Never, thank God! As there is no limit to power and knowledge
+there can be no end. 'The power and the glory, world without end': have
+those words meant nothing to you?
+
+BURGE [_pulling out an old envelope_] I should like to make a note of
+that. [_He does so_].
+
+CONRAD. There will always be something to live for.
+
+SURGE [_pocketing his envelope and becoming more and more businesslike_]
+Right: I have got that. Now what about sin? What about the Fall? How do
+you work them in?
+
+CONRAD. I don't work in the Fall. The Fall is outside Science. But I
+daresay Frank can work it in for you.
+
+SURGE [_to Franklyn_] I wish you would, you know. It's important. Very
+important.
+
+FRANKLYN. Well, consider it this way. It is clear that when Adam and
+Eve were immortal it was necessary that they should make the earth an
+extremely comfortable place to live in.
+
+BURGE. True. If you take a house on a ninety-nine years lease, you
+spend a good deal of money on it. If you take it for three months you
+generally have a bill for dilapidations to pay at the end of them.
+
+FRANKLYN. Just so. Consequently, when Adam had the Garden of Eden on a
+lease for ever, he took care to make it what the house agents call a
+highly desirable country residence. But the moment he invented death,
+and became a tenant for life only, the place was no longer worth the
+trouble. It was then that he let the thistles grow. Life was so short
+that it was no longer worth his while to do anything thoroughly well.
+
+BURGE. Do you think that is enough to constitute what an average elector
+would consider a Fall? Is it tragic enough?
+
+FRANKLYN. That is only the first step of the Fall. Adam did not fall
+down that step only: he fell down a whole flight. For instance, before
+he invented birth he dared not have lost his temper; for if he had
+killed Eve he would have been lonely and barren to all eternity. But
+when he invented birth, and anyone who was killed could be replaced, he
+could afford to let himself go. He undoubtedly invented wife-beating;
+and that was another step down. One of his sons invented meat-eating.
+The other was horrified at the innovation. With the ferocity which
+is still characteristic of bulls and other vegetarians, he slew his
+beefsteak-eating brother, and thus invented murder. That was a very
+steep step. It was so exciting that all the others began to kill one
+another for sport, and thus invented war, the steepest step of all. They
+even took to killing animals as a means of killing time, and then, of
+course, ate them to save the long and difficult labor of agriculture. I
+ask you to contemplate our fathers as they came crashing down all the
+steps of this Jacob's ladder that reached from paradise to a hell on
+earth in which they had multiplied the chances of death from violence,
+accident, and disease until they could hardly count on three score and
+ten years of life, much less the thousand that Adam had been ready to
+face! With that picture before you, will you now ask me where was the
+Fall? You might as well stand at the foot of Snowdon and ask me where is
+the mountain. The very children see it so plainly that they compress its
+history into a two line epic:
+
+
+    Old Daddy Long Legs wouldn't say his prayers:
+    Take him by the hind legs and throw him downstairs.
+
+
+LUBIN [_still immovably sceptical_] And what does Science say to this
+fairy tale, Doctor Barnabas? Surely Science knows nothing of Genesis, or
+of Adam and Eve.
+
+CONRAD. Then it isnt Science: thats all. Science has to account for
+everything; and everything includes the Bible.
+
+FRANKLYN. The Book of Genesis is a part of nature like any other part of
+nature. The fact that the tale of the Garden of Eden has survived and
+held the imagination of men spellbound for centuries, whilst hundreds
+of much more plausible and amusing stories have gone out of fashion
+and perished like last year's popular song, is a scientific fact; and
+Science is bound to explain it. You tell me that Science knows nothing
+of it. Then Science is more ignorant than the children at any village
+school.
+
+CONRAD. Of course if you think it more scientific to say that what we
+are discussing is not Adam and Eve and Eden, but the phylogeny of the
+blastoderm--
+
+SAVVY. You neednt swear, Nunk.
+
+CONRAD. Shut up, you: I am not swearing. [_To Lubin_] If you want the
+professional humbug of rewriting the Bible in words of four syllables,
+and pretending it's something new, I can humbug you to your heart's
+content. I can call Genesis Phylogenesis. Let the Creator say, if you
+like, 'I will establish an antipathetic symbiosis between thee and the
+female, and between thy blastoderm and her blastoderm.' Nobody will
+understand you; and Savvy will think you are swearing. The meaning is
+the same.
+
+HASLAM. Priceless. But it's quite simple. The one version is poetry: the
+other is science.
+
+FRANKLYN. The one is classroom jargon: the other is inspired human
+language.
+
+LUBIN [_calmly reminiscent_] One of the few modern authors into whom
+I have occasionally glanced is Rousseau, who was a sort of Deist like
+Burge--
+
+BURGE [_interrupting him forcibly_] Lubin: has this stupendously
+important communication which Professor Barnabas has just made to us: a
+communication for which I shall be indebted to him all my life long: has
+this, I say, no deeper effect on you than to set you pulling my leg by
+trying to make out that I am an infidel?
+
+LUBIN. It's very interesting and amusing, Burge; and I think I see a
+case in it. I think I could undertake to argue it in an ecclesiastical
+court. But important is hardly a word I should attach to it.
+
+BURGE. Good God! Here is this professor: a man utterly removed from the
+turmoil of our political life: devoted to pure learning in its most
+abstract phases; and I solemnly declare he is the greatest politician,
+the most inspired party leader, in the kingdom. I take off my hat to
+him. I, Joyce Burge, give him best. And you sit there purring like an
+Angora cat, and can see nothing in it!
+
+CONRAD [_opening his eyes widely_] Hallo! What have I done to deserve
+this tribute?
+
+SURGE. Done! You have put the Liberal Party into power for the next
+thirty years, Doctor: thats what you've done.
+
+CONRAD. God forbid!
+
+BURGE. It's all up with the Church now. Thanks to you, we go to the
+country with one cry and one only. Back to the Bible! Think of the
+effect on the Nonconformist vote. You gather that in with one hand; and
+you gather in the modern scientific sceptical professional vote with the
+other. The village atheist and the first cornet in the local Salvation
+Army band meet on the village green and shake hands. You take your
+school children, your Bible class under the Cowper-Temple clause, into
+the museum. You shew the kids the Piltdown skull; and you say, 'Thats
+Adam. Thats Eve's husband.' You take the spectacled science student
+from the laboratory in Owens College; and when he asks you for a truly
+scientific history of Evolution, you put into his hand The Pilgrim's
+Progress. You--[_Savvy and Haslam explode into shrieks of merriment_].
+What are you two laughing at?
+
+SAVVY. Oh, go on, Mr Burge. Dont stop.
+
+HASLAM. Priceless!
+
+FRANKLYN. Would thirty years of office for the Liberal Party seem so
+important to you, Mr Burge, if you had another two and a half centuries
+to live?
+
+BURGE [_decisively_] No. You will have to drop that part of it. The
+constituencies wont swallow it.
+
+LUBIN [_seriously_] I am not so sure of that, Burge. I am not sure that
+it may not prove the only point they will swallow.
+
+BURGE. It will be no use to us even if they do. It's not a party point.
+It's as good for the other side as for us.
+
+LUBIN. Not necessarily. If we get in first with it, it will be
+associated in the public mind with our party. Suppose I put it forward
+as a plank in our program that we advocate the extension of human life
+to three hundred years! Dunreen, as leader of the opposite party, will
+be bound to oppose me: to denounce me as a visionary and so forth. By
+doing so he will place himself in the position of wanting to rob the
+people of two hundred and thirty years of their natural life. The
+Unionists will become the party of Premature Death; and we shall become
+the Longevity party.
+
+BURGE [_shaken_] You really think the electorate would swallow it?
+
+LUBIN. My dear Burge: is there anything the electorate will not swallow
+if it is judiciously put to them? But we must make sure of our ground.
+We must have the support of the men of science. Is there serious
+agreement among them, Doctor, as to the possibility of such an evolution
+as you have described?
+
+CONRAD. Yes. Ever since the reaction against Darwin set in at the
+beginning of the present century, all scientific opinion worth counting
+has been converging rapidly upon Creative Evolution.
+
+FRANKLYN. Poetry has been converging on it: philosophy has been
+converging on it: religion has been converging on it. It is going to
+be the religion of the twentieth century: a religion that has its
+intellectual roots in philosophy and science just as medieval
+Christianity had its intellectual roots in Aristotle.
+
+LUBIN. But surely any change would be so extremely gradual that--
+
+CONRAD. Dont deceive yourself. It's only the politicians who improve the
+world so gradually that nobody can see the improvement. The notion that
+Nature does not proceed by jumps is only one of the budget of plausible
+lies that we call classical education. Nature always proceeds by jumps.
+She may spend twenty thousand years making up her mind to jump; but when
+she makes it up at last, the jump is big enough to take us into a new
+age.
+
+LUBIN [_impressed_] Fancy my being leader of the party for the next
+three hundred years!
+
+BURGE. What!!
+
+LUBIN. Perhaps hard on some of the younger men. I think in fairness I
+shall have to step aside to make room after another century or so: that
+is, if Mimi can be persuaded to give up Downing Street.
+
+BURGE. This is too much. Your colossal conceit blinds you to the most
+obvious necessity of the political situation.
+
+LUBIN. You mean my retirement. I really cannot see that it is a
+necessity. I could not see it when I was almost an old man--or at least
+an elderly one. Now that it appears that I am a young man, the case
+for it breaks down completely. [_To Conrad_] May I ask are there any
+alternative theories? Is there a scientific Opposition?
+
+CONRAD. Well, some authorities hold that the human race is a failure,
+and that a new form of life, better adapted to high civilization, will
+supersede us as we have superseded the ape and the elephant.
+
+BURGE. The superman: eh!
+
+CONRAD. No. Some being quite different from us.
+
+LUBIN. Is that altogether desirable?
+
+FRANKLYN. I fear so. However that may be, we may be quite sure of one
+thing. We shall not be let alone. The force behind evolution, call it
+what you will, is determined to solve the problem of civilization; and
+if it cannot do it through us, it will produce some more capable agents.
+Man is not God's last word: God can still create. If you cannot do His
+work He will produce some being who can.
+
+BURGE [_with zealous reverence_] What do we know about Him, Barnabas?
+What does anyone know about Him?
+
+CONRAD. We know this about Him with absolute certainty. The power my
+brother calls God proceeds by the method of Trial and Error; and if we
+turn out to be one of the errors, we shall go the way of the mastodon
+and the megatherium and all the other scrapped experiments.
+
+LUBIN [_rising and beginning to walk up and down the room with his
+considering cap on_] I admit that I am impressed, gentlemen. I will go
+so far as to say that your theory is likely to prove more interesting
+than ever Welsh Disestablishment was. But as a practical politician--hm!
+Eh, Burge?
+
+CONRAD. We are not practical politicians. We are out to get something
+done. Practical politicians are people who have mastered the art of
+using parliament to prevent anything being done.
+
+FRANKLYN. When we get matured statesmen and citizens--
+
+LUBIN [_stopping short_] Citizens! Oh! Are the citizens to live three
+hundred years as well as the statesmen?
+
+CONRAD. Of course.
+
+LUBIN. I confess that had not occurred to me [_he sits down abruptly,
+evidently very unfavorably affected by this new light_].
+
+_Savvy and Haslam look at one another with unspeakable feelings._
+
+BURGE. Do you think it would be wise to go quite so far at first? Surely
+it would be more prudent to begin with the best men.
+
+FRANKLYN. You need not be anxious about that. It will begin with the
+best men.
+
+LUBIN. I am glad to hear you say so. You see, we must put this into a
+practical parliamentary shape.
+
+BURGE. We shall have to draft a Bill: that is the long and the short of
+it. Until you have your Bill drafted you don't know what you are really
+doing: that is my experience.
+
+LUBIN. Quite so. My idea is that whilst we should interest the
+electorate in this as a sort of religious aspiration and personal hope,
+using it at the same time to remove their prejudices against those of us
+who are getting on in years, it would be in the last degree upsetting
+and even dangerous to enable everyone to live longer than usual.
+Take the mere question of the manufacture of the specific, whatever
+it may be! There are forty millions of people in the country. Let
+me assume for the sake of illustration that each person would
+have to consume, say, five ounces a day of the elixir. That
+would be--let me see--five times three hundred and sixty-five
+is--um--twenty-five--thirty-two--eighteen--eighteen hundred and
+twenty-five ounces a year: just two ounces over the hundredweight.
+
+BURGE. Two million tons a year, in round numbers, of stuff that everyone
+would clamor for: that men would trample down women and children in the
+streets to get at. You couldnt produce it. There would be blue murder.
+It's out of the question. We must keep the actual secret to ourselves.
+
+CONRAD [_staring at them_] The actual secret! What on earth is the man
+talking about?
+
+BURGE. The stuff. The powder. The bottle. The tabloid. Whatever it is.
+You said it wasnt lemons.
+
+CONRAD. My good sir: I have no powder, no bottle, no tabloid. I am not a
+quack: I am a biologist. This is a thing thats going to happen.
+
+LUBIN [_completely let down_] Going to happen! Oh! Is that all? [_He
+looks at his watch_].
+
+BURGE. Going to happen! What do you mean? Do you mean that you cant make
+it happen?
+
+CONRAD. No more than I could have made you happen.
+
+FRANKLYN. We can put it into men's heads that there is nothing to
+prevent its happening but their own will to die before their work is
+done, and their own ignorance of the splendid work there is for them to
+do.
+
+CONRAD. Spread that knowledge and that conviction; and as surely as the
+sun will rise tomorrow, the thing will happen.
+
+FRANKLYN. We don't know where or when or to whom it will happen. It may
+happen first to someone in this room.
+
+HASLAM. It wont happen to me: thats jolly sure.
+
+CONRAD. It might happen to anyone. It might happen to the parlor maid.
+How do we know?
+
+SAVVY. The parlor maid! Oh, thats nonsense, Nunk.
+
+LUBIN [_once more quite comfortable_] I think Miss Savvy has delivered
+the final verdict.
+
+BURGE. Do you mean to say that you have nothing more practical to offer
+than the mere wish to live longer? Why, if people could live by merely
+wishing to, we should all be living for ever already! Everybody would
+like to live for ever. Why don't they?
+
+CONRAD. Pshaw! Everybody would like to have a million of money. Why
+havnt they? Because the men who would like to be millionaires wont save
+sixpence even with the chance of starvation staring them in the face.
+The men who want to live for ever wont cut off a glass of beer or a pipe
+of tobacco, though they believe the teetotallers and non-smokers live
+longer. That sort of liking is not willing. See what they do when they
+know they must.
+
+FRANKLYN. Do not mistake mere idle fancies for the tremendous
+miracle-working force of Will nerved to creation by a conviction of
+Necessity. I tell you men capable of such willing, and realizing its
+necessity, will do it reluctantly, under inner compulsion, as all great
+efforts are made. They will hide what they are doing from themselves:
+they will take care not to know what they are doing. They will live
+three hundred years, not because they would like to, but because the
+soul deep down in them will know that they must, if the world is to be
+saved.
+
+LUBIN [_turning to Franklyn and patting him almost paternally_] Well,
+my dear Barnabas, for the last thirty years the post has brought me at
+least once a week a plan from some crank or other for the establishment
+of the millennium. I think you are the maddest of all the cranks; but
+you are much the most interesting. I am conscious of a very curious
+mixture of relief and disappointment in finding that your plan is all
+moonshine, and that you have nothing practical to offer us. But what
+a pity! It is such a fascinating idea! I think you are too hard on us
+practical men; but there are men in every Government, even on the Front
+Bench, who deserve all you say. And now, before dropping the subject,
+may I put just one question to you? An idle question, since nothing can
+come of it; but still--
+
+FRANKLYN. Ask your question.
+
+LUBIN. Why do you fix three hundred years as the exact figure?
+
+FRANKLYN. Because we must fix some figure. Less would not be enough; and
+more would be more than we dare as yet face.
+
+LUBIN. Pooh! I am quite prepared to face three thousand, not to say
+three million.
+
+CONRAD. Yes, because you don't believe you Will be called on to make
+good your word.
+
+FRANKLYN [_gently_] Also, perhaps, because you have never been troubled
+much by vision of the future.
+
+BURGE [_with intense conviction_] The future does not exist for Henry
+Hopkins Lubin.
+
+LUBIN. If by the future you mean the millennial delusions which you
+use as a bunch of carrots to lure the uneducated British donkey to the
+polling booth to vote for you, it certainly does not.
+
+SURGE. I can see the future not only because, if I may say so in all
+humility, I have been gifted with a certain power of spiritual vision,
+but because I have practised as a solicitor. A solicitor has to advise
+families. He has to think of the future and know the past. His office is
+the real modern confessional. Among other things he has to make people's
+wills for them. He has to shew them how to provide for their daughters
+after their deaths. Has it occurred to you, Lubin, that if you live
+three hundred years, your daughters will have to wait a devilish long
+time for their money?
+
+FRANKLYN. The money may not wait for them. Few investments flourish for
+three hundred years.
+
+SAVVY. And what about before your death? Suppose they didn't get
+married! Imagine a girl living at home with her mother and on her father
+for three hundred years! Theyd murder her if she didn't murder them
+first.
+
+LUBIN. By the way, Barnabas, is your daughter to keep her good looks all
+the time?
+
+FRANKLYN. Will it matter? Can you conceive the most hardened flirt going
+on flirting for three centuries? At the end of half the time we shall
+hardly notice whether it is a woman or a man we are speaking to.
+
+LUBIN [_not quite relishing this ascetic prospect_] Hm! [_He rises_].
+Ah, well: you must come and tell my wife and my young people all about
+it; and you will bring your daughter with you, of course. [_He shakes
+hands with Savvy_]. Goodbye. [_He shakes hands with Franklyn_]. Goodbye,
+Doctor. [_He shakes hands with Conrad_]. Come on, Burge: you must
+really tell me what line you are going to take about the Church at the
+election?
+
+BURGE. Havnt you heard? Havnt you taken in the revelation that has been
+vouchsafed to us? The line I am going to take is Back to Methuselah.
+
+LUBIN [_decisively_] Dont be ridiculous, Burge. You don't suppose, do
+you, that our friends here are in earnest, or that our very pleasant
+conversation has had anything to do with practical politics! They have
+just been pulling our legs very wittily. Come along. [_He goes out,
+Franklyn politely going with him, but shaking his head in mute
+protest_].
+
+BURGE [_shaking Conrad's hand_] It's beyond the old man, Doctor. No
+spiritual side to him: only a sort of classical side that goes down with
+his own set. Besides, he's done, gone, past, burnt out, burst up; thinks
+he is our leader and is only our rag and bottle department. But you may
+depend on me. I will work this stunt of yours in. I see its value. [_He
+begins moving towards the door with Conrad_]. Of course I cant put it
+exactly in your way; but you are quite right about our needing something
+fresh; and I believe an election can be fought on the death rate and on
+Adam and Eve as scientific facts. It will take the Opposition right out
+of its depth. And if we win there will be an O.M. for somebody when the
+first honors list comes round [_by this time he has talked himself out
+of the room and out of earshot, Conrad accompanying him_].
+
+_Savvy and Haslam, left alone, seize each other in an ecstasy of
+amusement, and jazz to the settee, where they sit down again side by
+side._
+
+HASLAM [_caressing her_] Darling! what a priceless humbug old Lubin is!
+
+SAVVY. Oh, sweet old thing! I love him. Burge is a flaming fraud if you
+like.
+
+HASLAM. Did you notice one thing? It struck me as rather curious.
+
+SAVVY. What?
+
+HASLAM. Lubin and your father have both survived the war. But their sons
+were killed in it.
+
+SAVVY [_sobered_] Yes. Jim's death killed mother.
+
+HASLAM. And they never said a word about it!
+
+SAVVY. Well, why should they? The subject didn't come up. _I_ forgot
+about it too; and I was very fond of Jim.
+
+HASLAM. _I_ didn't forget it, because I'm of military age; and if I
+hadnt been a parson I'd have had to go out and be killed too. To me the
+awful thing about their political incompetence was that they had to
+kill their own sons. It was the war casualty lists and the starvation
+afterwards that finished me up with politics and the Church and
+everything else except you.
+
+SAVVY. Oh, I was just as bad as any of them. I sold flags in the streets
+in my best clothes; and--hsh! [_she jumps up and pretends to be looking
+for a book on the shelves behind the settee_].
+
+_Franklyn and Conrad return, looking weary and glum._
+
+CONRAD. Well, thats how the gospel of the brothers Barnabas is going to
+be received! [_He drops into Burge's chair_].
+
+FRANKLYN [_going back to his seat at the table_] It's no use. Were you
+convinced, Mr Haslam?
+
+HASLAM. About our being able to live three hundred years? Frankly no.
+
+CONRAD [_to Savvy_] Nor you, I suppose?
+
+SAVVY. Oh, I don't know. I thought I was for a moment. I can believe, in
+a sort of way, that people might live for three hundred years. But when
+you came down to tin tacks, and said that the parlor maid might, then I
+saw how absurd it was.
+
+FRANKLYN. Just so. We had better hold our tongues about it, Con. We
+should only be laughed at, and lose the little credit we earned on false
+pretences in the days of our ignorance.
+
+CONRAD. I daresay. But Creative Evolution doesnt stop while people are
+laughing. Laughing may even lubricate its job.
+
+SAVVY. What does that mean?
+
+CONRAD. It means that the first man to live three hundred years maynt
+have the slightest notion that he is going to do it, and may be the
+loudest laugher of the lot.
+
+SAVVY. Or the first woman?
+
+CONRAD [_assenting_] Or the first woman.
+
+HASLAM. Well, it wont be one of us, anyhow.
+
+FRANKLYN. How do you know?
+
+_This is unanswerable. None of them have anything more to say._
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+The Thing Happens
+
+
+_A summer afternoon in the year 2170 A.D. The official parlor of the
+President of the British Islands. A board table, long enough for three
+chairs at each side besides the presidential chair at the head and an
+ordinary chair at the foot, occupies the breadth of the room. On the
+table, opposite every chair, a small switchboard with a dial. There is
+no fireplace. The end wall is a silvery screen nearly as large as a pair
+of folding doors. The door is on your left as you face the screen; and
+there is a row of thick pegs, padded and covered with velvet, beside it.
+
+A stoutish middle-aged man, good-looking and breezily genial, dressed
+in a silk smock, stockings, handsomely ornamented sandals, and a gold
+fillet round his brows, comes in. He is like Joyce Burge, yet also like
+Lubin, as if Nature had made a composite photograph of the two men.
+He takes off the fillet and hangs it on a peg; then sits down in the
+presidential chair at the head of the table, which is at the end
+farthest from the door. He puts a peg into his switchboard; turns
+the pointer on the dial; puts another peg in; and presses a button.
+Immediately the silvery screen vanishes; and in its place appears, in
+reverse from right to left, another office similarly furnished, with a
+thin, unamiable man similarly dressed, but in duller colors, turning
+over some documents at the table. His gold fillet is hanging up on a
+similar peg beside the door. He is rather like Conrad Barnabas, but
+younger, and much more commonplace._
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Hallo, Barnabas!
+
+BARNABAS [_without looking round_] What number?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Five double x three two gamma. Burge-Lubin.
+
+_Barnabas puts a plug in number five; turns his pointer to double x; and
+another plug in 32; presses a button and looks round at Burge-Lubin, who
+is now visible to him as well as audible._
+
+BARNABAS [_curtly_] Oh! That you, President?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Yes. They told me you wanted me to ring you up. Anything
+wrong?
+
+BARNABAS [_harsh and querulous_] I wish to make a protest.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_good-humored and mocking_] What! Another protest! Whats
+wrong now?
+
+BARNABAS. If you only knew all the protests I havnt made, you would be
+surprised at my patience. It is you who are always treating me with the
+grossest want of consideration.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. What have I done now?
+
+BARNABAS. You have put me down to go to the Record Office today to
+receive that American fellow, and do the honors of a ridiculous cinema
+show. That is not the business of the Accountant General: it is the
+business of the President. It is an outrageous waste of my time, and an
+unjustifiable shirking of your duty at my expense. I refuse to go. You
+must go.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. My dear boy, nothing would give me greater pleasure than to
+take the job off your hands--
+
+BARNABAS. Then do it. Thats all I want [_he is about to switch off_].
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Dont switch off. Listen. This American has invented a
+method of breathing under water.
+
+BARNABAS. What do I care? I don't want to breathe under water.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. You may, my dear Barnabas, at any time. You know you never
+look where you are going when you are immersed in your calculations.
+Some day you will walk into the Serpentine. This man's invention may
+save your life.
+
+BARNABAS [_angrily_] Will you tell me what that has to do with your
+putting your ceremonial duties on to my shoulders? I will not be trifled
+[_he vanishes and is replaced by the blank screen_]--
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_indignantly holding down his button_] Dont cut us off,
+please: we have not finished. I am the President, speaking to the
+Accountant General. What are you dreaming of?
+
+A WOMAN'S VOICE. Sorry. [_The screen shews Barnabas as before_].
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Since you take it that way, I will go in your place. It's a
+pity, because, you see, this American thinks you are the greatest living
+authority on the duration of human life; and--
+
+BARNABAS [_interrupting_] The American thinks! What do you mean? I am
+the greatest living authority on the duration of human life. Who dares
+dispute it?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Nobody, dear lad, nobody. Dont fly out at me. It is evident
+that you have not read the American's book.
+
+BARNABAS. Dont tell me that you have, or that you have read any book
+except a novel for the last twenty years; for I wont believe you.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Quite right, dear old fellow: I havnt read it. But I have
+read what The Times Literary Supplement says about it.
+
+BARNABAS. I don't care two straws what it says about it. Does it say
+anything about me?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Yes.
+
+BARNABAS. Oh, does it? What?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. It points out that an extraordinary number of first-rate
+persons like you and me have died by drowning during the last two
+centuries, and that when this invention of breathing under water takes
+effect, your estimate of the average duration of human life will be
+upset.
+
+BARNABAS [_alarmed_] Upset my estimate! Gracious Heavens! Does the fool
+realize what that means? Do you realize what that means?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. I suppose it means that we shall have to amend the Act.
+
+BARNABAS. Amend my Act! Monstrous!
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. But we must. We cant ask people to go on working until they
+are forty-three unless our figures are unchallengeable. You know what
+a row there was over those last three years, and how nearly the
+too-old-at-forty people won.
+
+BARNABAS. They would have made the British Islands bankrupt if theyd
+won. But you dont care for that; you care for nothing but being popular.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Oh, well: I shouldn't worry if I were you; for most people
+complain that there is not enough work for them, and would be only too
+glad to stick on instead of retiring at forty-three, if only they were
+asked as a favor instead of having to.
+
+BARNABAS. Thank you: I need no consolation. [_He rises determinedly and
+puts on his fillet_].
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Are you off? Where are you going to?
+
+BARNABAS. To that cinema tomfoolery, of course. I shall put this
+American impostor in his place. [_He goes out_].
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_calling after him_] God bless you, dear old chap! [_With
+a chuckle, he switches off; and the screen becomes blank. He presses a
+button and holds it down while he calls_] Hallo!
+
+A WOMAN'S VOICE. Hallo!
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_formally_] The President respectfully solicits the
+privilege of an interview with the Chief Secretary, and holds himself
+entirely at his honor's august disposal.
+
+A CHINESE VOICE. He is coming.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Oh! That you, Confucius? So good of you. Come along [_he
+releases the button_].
+
+_A man in a yellow gown, presenting the general appearance of a Chinese
+sage, enters._
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_jocularly_] Well, illustrious Sage-&-Onions, how are your
+poor sore feet?
+
+CONFUCIUS [_gravely_] I thank you for your kind inquiries. I am well.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Thats right. Sit down and make yourself comfortable. Any
+business for me today?
+
+CONFUCIUS [_sitting down on the first chair round the corner of the
+table to the President's right_] None.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Have you heard the result of the bye-election?
+
+CONFUCIUS. A walk-over. Only one candidate.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Any good?
+
+CONFUCIUS. He was released from the County Lunatic Asylum a fortnight
+ago. Not mad enough for the lethal chamber: not sane enough for any
+place but the division lobby. A very popular speaker.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. I wish the people would take a serious interest in
+politics.
+
+CONFUCIUS. I do not agree. The Englishman is not fitted by nature to
+understand politics. Ever since the public services have been manned by
+Chinese, the country has been well and honestly governed. What more is
+needed?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. What I cant make out is that China is one of the worst
+governed countries on earth.
+
+CONFUCIUS. No. It was badly governed twenty years ago; but since we
+forbade any Chinaman to take part in our public services, and imported
+natives of Scotland for that purpose, we have done well. Your
+information here is always twenty years out of date.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. People don't seem to be able to govern themselves. I cant
+understand it. Why should it be so?
+
+CONFUCIUS. Justice is impartiality. Only strangers are impartial.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. It ends in the public services being so good that the
+Government has nothing to do but think.
+
+CONFUCIUS. Were it otherwise, the Government would have too much to do
+to think.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Is that any excuse for the English people electing a
+parliament of lunatics?
+
+CONFUCIUS. The English people always did elect parliaments of lunatics.
+What does it matter if your permanent officials are honest and
+competent?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. You do not know the history of this country. What would my
+ancestors have said to the menagerie of degenerates that is still called
+the House of Commons? Confucius: you will not believe me; and I do not
+blame you for it; but England once saved the liberties of the world by
+inventing parliamentary government, which was her peculiar and supreme
+glory.
+
+CONFUCIUS. I know the history of your country perfectly well. It proves
+the exact contrary.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. How do you make that out?
+
+CONFUCIUS. The only power your parliament ever had was the power of
+withholding supplies from the king.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Precisely. That great Englishman Simon de Montfort--
+
+CONFUCIUS. He was not an Englishman: he was a Frenchman. He imported
+parliaments from France.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_surprised_] You dont say so!
+
+CONFUCIUS. The king and his loyal subjects killed Simon for forcing his
+French parliament on them. The first thing British parliaments always
+did was to grant supplies to the king for life with enthusiastic
+expressions of loyalty, lest they should have any real power, and be
+expected to do something.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Look here, Confucius: you know more history than I do, of
+course; but democracy--
+
+CONFUCIUS. An institution peculiar to China. And it was never really a
+success there.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. But the Habeas Corpus Act!
+
+CONFUCIUS. The English always suspended it when it threatened to be of
+the slightest use.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Well, trial by jury: you cant deny that we established
+that?
+
+CONFUCIUS. All cases that were dangerous to the governing classes were
+tried in the Star Chamber or by Court Martial, except when the prisoner
+was not tried at all, but executed after calling him names enough to
+make him unpopular.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Oh, bother! You may be right in these little details; but
+in the large we have managed to hold our own as a great race. Well,
+people who could do nothing couldnt have done that, you know.
+
+CONFUCIUS. I did not say you could do nothing. You could fight. You
+could eat. You could drink. Until the twentieth century you could
+produce children. You could play games. You could work when you were
+forced to. But you could not govern yourselves.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Then how did we get our reputation as the pioneers of
+liberty?
+
+CONFUCIUS. By your steadfast refusal to be governed at all. A horse that
+kicks everyone who tries to harness and guide him may be a pioneer of
+liberty; but he is not a pioneer of government. In China he would be
+shot.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Stuff! Do you imply that the administration of which I am
+president is no Government?
+
+CONFUCIUS. I do. _I_ am the Government.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. You! You!! You fat yellow lump of conceit!
+
+CONFUCIUS. Only an Englishman could be so ignorant of the nature of
+government as to suppose that a capable statesman cannot be fat, yellow,
+and conceited. Many Englishmen are slim, red-nosed, and modest. Put them
+in my place, and within a year you will be back in the anarchy and chaos
+of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Oh, if you go back to the dark ages, I have nothing more to
+say. But we did not perish. We extricated ourselves from that chaos. We
+are now the best governed country in the world. How did we manage that
+if we are such fools as you pretend?
+
+CONFUCIUS. You did not do it until the slaughter and ruin produced by
+your anarchy forced you at last to recognize two inexorable facts.
+First, that government is absolutely necessary to civilization, and that
+you could not maintain civilization by merely doing down your neighbor,
+as you called it, and cutting off the head of your king whenever he
+happened to be a logical Scot and tried to take his position seriously.
+Second, that government is an art of which you are congenitally
+incapable. Accordingly, you imported educated negresses and Chinese to
+govern you. Since then you have done very well.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. So have you, you old humbug. All the same, I don't know
+how you stand the work you do. You seem to me positively to like public
+business. Why wont you let me take you down to the coast some week-end
+and teach you marine golf?
+
+CONFUCIUS. It does not interest me. I am not a barbarian.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. You mean that I am?
+
+CONFUCIUS. That is evident.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. How?
+
+CONFUCIUS. People like you. They like cheerful goodnatured barbarians.
+They have elected you President five times in succession. They will
+elect you five times more. _I_ like you. You are better company than a
+dog or a horse because you can speak.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Am I a barbarian because you like me?
+
+CONFUCIUS. Surely. Nobody likes me: I am held in awe. Capable persons
+are never liked. I am not likeable; but I am indispensable.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Oh, cheer up, old man: theres nothing so disagreeable about
+you as all that. I don't dislike you; and if you think I'm afraid of
+you, you jolly well don't know Burge-Lubin: thats all.
+
+CONFUCIUS. You are brave: yes. It is a form of stupidity.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. You may not be brave: one doesn't expect it from a Chink.
+But you have the devil's own cheek.
+
+CONFUCIUS. I have the assured certainty of the man who sees and knows.
+Your genial bluster, your cheery self-confidence, are pleasant, like the
+open air. But they are blind: they are vain. I seem to see a great dog
+wag his tail and bark joyously. But if he leaves my heel he is lost.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Thank you for a handsome compliment. I have a big dog; and
+he is the best fellow I know. If you knew how much uglier you are than a
+chow, you wouldn't start those comparisons, though. [_Rising_] Well, if
+you have nothing for me to do, I am going to leave your heel for the
+rest of the day and enjoy myself. What would you recommend me to do with
+myself?
+
+CONFUCIUS. Give yourself up to contemplation; and great thoughts will
+come to you.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Will they? If you think I am going to sit here on a fine
+day like this with my legs crossed waiting for great thoughts, you
+exaggerate my taste for them. I prefer marine golf. [_Stopping short_]
+Oh, by the way, I forgot something. I have a word or two to say to the
+Minister of health. [_He goes back to his chair_].
+
+CONFUCIUS. Her number is--
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. I know it.
+
+CONFUCIUS [_rising_] I cannot understand her attraction for you. For me
+a woman who is not yellow does not exist, save as an official. [_He goes
+out_].
+
+_Burge-Lubin operates his switchboard as before. The screen vanishes:
+and a dainty room with a bed, a wardrobe, and a dressing-table with a
+mirror and a switch on it, appears. Seated at it a handsome negress is
+trying on a brilliant head scarf. Her dressing-gown is thrown back
+from her shoulders to her chair. She is in corset, knickers, and silk
+stockings._
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_horrified_] I beg your pardon a thousand times--[_The
+startled negress snatches the peg out of her switchboard and vanishes_].
+
+THE NEGRESS'S VOICE. Who is it?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Me. The President. Burge-Lubin. I had no idea your bedroom
+switch was in. I beg your pardon.
+
+_The negress reappears. She has pulled the dressing-gown perfunctorily
+over her shoulders, and continues her experiments with the scarf, not at
+all put out, and rather amused by Surge's prudery._
+
+THE NEGRESS. Stupid of me. I was talking to another lady this morning;
+and I left the peg in.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. But I am so sorry.
+
+THE NEGRESS [_sunnily: still busy with the scarf_] Why? It was my fault.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_embarrassed_] Well--er--But I suppose you were used to it
+in Africa.
+
+THE NEGRESS. Your delicacy is very touching, Mr President. It would be
+funny if it were not so unpleasant, because, like all white delicacy, it
+is in the wrong place. How do you think this suits my complexion?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. How can any really vivid color go wrong with a black satin
+skin? It is our women's wretched pale faces that have to be matched and
+lighted. Yours is always right.
+
+THE NEGRESS. Yes: it is a pity your white beauties have all the same
+ashy faces, the same colorless drab, the same age. But look at their
+beautiful noses and little lips! They are physically insipid: they have
+no beauty: you cannot love them; but how elegant!
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Cant you find an official pretext for coming to see me?
+Isnt it ridiculous that we have never met? It's so tantalizing to see
+you and talk to you, and to know all the time that you are two hundred
+miles away, and that I cant touch you?
+
+THE NEGRESS. I cannot live on the East Coast: it is hard enough to keep
+my blood warm here. Besides, my friend, it would not be safe. These
+distant flirtations are very charming; and they teach self-control.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Damn self-control! I want to hold you in my arms--to--[_the
+negress snatches out the peg from the switchboard and vanishes. She
+is still heard laughing_]. Black devil! [_He snatches out his peg
+furiously: her laugh is no longer heard_]. Oh, these sex episodes! Why
+can I not resist them? Disgraceful!
+
+_Confucius returns._
+
+CONFUCIUS. I forgot. There is something for you to do this morning. You
+have to go to the Record Office to receive the American barbarian.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Confucius: once for all, I object to this Chinese habit of
+describing white men as barbarians.
+
+CONFUCIUS [_standing formally at the end of the table with his hands
+palm to palm_] I make a mental note that you do not wish the Americans
+to be described as barbarians.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Not at all. The Americans are barbarians. But we are not. I
+suppose the particular barbarian you are speaking of is the American who
+has invented a means of breathing under water.
+
+CONFUCIUS. He says he has invented such a method. For some reason which
+is not intelligible in China, Englishmen always believe any statement
+made by an American inventor, especially one who has never invented
+anything. Therefore you believe this person and have given him a public
+reception. Today the Record Office is entertaining him with a display of
+the cinematographic records of all the eminent Englishmen who have lost
+their lives by drowning since the cinema was invented. Why not go to see
+it if you are at a loss for something to do?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. What earthly interest is there in looking at a moving
+picture of a lot of people merely because they were drowned? If they had
+had any sense, they would not have been drowned, probably.
+
+CONFUCIUS. That is not so. It has never been noticed before; but the
+Record Office has just made two remarkable discoveries about the public
+men and women who have displayed extraordinary ability during the
+past century. One is that they retained unusual youthfulness up to an
+advanced age. The other is that they all met their death by drowning.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Yes: I know. Can you explain it?
+
+CONFUCIUS. It cannot be explained. It is not reasonable. Therefore I do
+not believe it.
+
+_The Accountant General rushes in, looking ghastly. He staggers to the
+middle of the table._
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Whats the matter? Are you ill?
+
+BARNABAS [_choking_] No. I--[_he collapses into the middle chair_]. I
+must speak to you in private.
+
+_Confucius calmly withdraws._
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. What on earth is it? Have some oxygen.
+
+BARNABAS. I have had some. Go to the Record Office. You will see men
+fainting there again and again, and being revived with oxygen, as I have
+been. They have seen with their own eyes as I have.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Seen what?
+
+BARNABAS. Seen the Archbishop of York.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Well, why shouldn't they see the Archbishop of York? What
+are they fainting for? Has he been murdered?
+
+BARNABAS. No: he has been drowned.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Good God! Where? When? How? Poor fellow!
+
+BARNABAS. Poor fellow! Poor thief! Poor swindler! Poor robber of his
+country's Exchequer! Poor fellow indeed! Wait til I catch him.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. How can you catch him when he is dead? Youre mad.
+
+BARNABAS. Dead! Who said he was dead?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. You did. Drowned.
+
+BARNABAS [_exasperated_] Will you listen to me? Was old Archbishop
+Haslam, the present man's last predecessor but four, drowned or not?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. I don't know. Look him up in the Encyclopedia Britannica.
+
+BARNABAS. Yah! Was Archbishop Stickit, who wrote Stickit on the Psalms,
+drowned or not?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Yes, mercifully. He deserved it.
+
+BARNABAS. Was President Dickenson drowned? Was General Bullyboy drowned?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Who is denying it?
+
+BARNABAS. Well, wave had moving pictures of all four put on the screen
+today for this American; and they and the Archbishop are the same man.
+Now tell me I am mad.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. I do tell you you are mad. Stark raving mad.
+
+BARNABAS. Am I to believe my own eyes or am I not?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. You can do as you please. All I can tell you is that _I_
+don't believe your eyes if they cant see any difference between a live
+archbishop and two dead ones. [_The apparatus rings, he holds the button
+down_]. Yes?
+
+THE WOMAN'S VOICE. The Archbishop of York, to see the President.
+
+BARNABAS [_hoarse with rage_] Have him in. I'll talk to the scoundrel.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_releasing the button_] Not while you are in this state.
+
+BARNABAS [_reaching furiously for his button and holding it down_] Send
+the Archbishop in at once.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. If you lose your temper, Barnabas, remember that we shall
+be two to one.
+
+_The Archbishop enters. He has a white band round his throat, set in a
+black stock. He wears a sort of kilt of black ribbons, and soft black
+boots that button high up on his calves. His costume does not differ
+otherwise from that of the President and the Accountant General; but
+its color scheme is black and white. He is older than the Reverend Bill
+Haslam was when he wooed Miss Savvy Barnabas; but he is recognizably the
+same man. He does not look a day over fifty, and is very well preserved
+even at that; but his boyishness of manner is quite gone: he now has
+complete authority and self-possession: in fact the President is a
+little afraid of him; and it seems quite natural and inevitable that he
+should speak fast._
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Good day, Mr President.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Good day, Mr Archbishop. Be seated.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP [_sitting down between them_] Good day, Mr Accountant
+General.
+
+BARNABAS [_malevolently_] Good day to you. I have a question to put to
+you, if you don't mind.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP [_looking curiously at him, jarred by his uncivil tone_]
+Certainly. What is it?
+
+BARNABAS. What is your definition of a thief?
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Rather an old-fashioned word, is it not?
+
+BARNABAS. It survives officially in my department.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Our departments are full of survivals. Look at my tie!
+my apron! my boots! They are all mere survivals; yet it seems that
+without them I cannot be a proper Archbishop.
+
+BARNABAS. Indeed! Well, in my department the word thief survives,
+because in the community the thing thief survives. And a very despicable
+and dishonorable thing he is, too.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP [_coolly_] I daresay.
+
+BARNABAS. In my department, sir, a thief is a person who lives longer
+than the statutory expectation of life entitles him to, and goes on
+drawing public money when, if he were an honest man, he would be dead.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Then let me say, sir, that your department does not
+understand its own business. If you have miscalculated the duration of
+human life, that is not the fault of the persons whose longevity you
+have miscalculated. And if they continue to work and produce, they pay
+their way, even if they live two or three centuries.
+
+BARNABAS. I know nothing about their working and producing. That is not
+the business of my department. I am concerned with their expectation of
+life; and I say that no man has any right to go on living and drawing
+money when he ought to be dead.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. You do not comprehend the relation between income and
+production.
+
+BARNABAS. I understand my own department.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. That is not enough. Your department is part of a
+synthesis which embraces all the departments.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Synthesis! This is an intellectual difficulty. This is a
+job for Confucius. I heard him use that very word the other day; and I
+wondered what the devil he meant. [_Switching on_] Hallo! Put me through
+to the Chief Secretary.
+
+CONFUCIUS'S VOICE. You are speaking to him.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. An intellectual difficulty, old man. Something we don't
+understand. Come and help us out.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. May I ask how the question has arisen?
+
+BARNABAS. Ah! You begin to smell a rat, do you? You thought yourself
+pretty safe. You--
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Steady, Barnabas. Dont be in a hurry.
+
+_Confucius enters._
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP [_rising_] Good morning, Mr Chief Secretary.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_rising in instinctive imitation of the Archbishop_] Honor
+us by taking a seat, O sage.
+
+CONFUCIUS. Ceremony is needless. [_He bows to the company, and takes the
+chair at the foot of the table_].
+
+_The President and the Archbishop resume their seats._
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. We wish to put a case to you, Confucius. Suppose a man,
+instead of conforming to the official estimate of his expectation of
+life, were to live for more than two centuries and a half, would the
+Accountant General be justified in calling him a thief?
+
+CONFUCIUS. No. He would be justified in calling him a liar.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. I think not, Mr Chief Secretary. What do you suppose my
+age is?
+
+CONFUCIUS. Fifty.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. You don't look it. Forty-five; and young for your age.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. My age is two hundred and eighty-three.
+
+BARNABAS [_morosely triumphant_] Hmp! Mad, am I?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Youre both mad. Excuse me, Archbishop; but this is getting
+a bit--well--
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP [_to Confucius_] Mr Chief Secretary: will you, to oblige
+me, assume that I have lived nearly three centuries? As a hypothesis?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. What is a hypothesis?
+
+CONFUCIUS. It does not matter. I understand. [To _the Archbishop_] Am I
+to assume that you have lived in your ancestors, or by metempsychosis--
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Met--Emp--Sy--Good Lord! What a brain, Confucius! What a
+brain!
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Nothing of that kind. Assume in the ordinary sense that
+I was born in the year 1887, and that I have worked continuously in one
+profession or another since the year 1910. Am I a thief?
+
+CONFUCIUS. I do not know. Was that one of your professions?
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. No. I have been nothing worse than an Archbishop, a
+President, and a General.
+
+BARNABAS. Has he or has he not robbed the Exchequer by drawing five or
+six incomes when he was only entitled to one? Answer me that.
+
+CONFUCIUS. Certainly not. The hypothesis is that he has worked
+continuously since 1910. We are now in the year 2170. What is the
+official lifetime?
+
+BARNABAS. Seventy-eight. Of course it's an average; and we don't mind a
+man here and there going on to ninety, or even, as a curiosity, becoming
+a centenarian. But I say that a man who goes beyond that is a swindler.
+
+CONFUCIUS. Seventy-eight into two hundred and eighty-three goes more
+than three and a half times. Your department owes the Archbishop two and
+a half educations and three and a half retiring pensions.
+
+BARNABAS. Stuff! How can that be?
+
+CONFUCIUS. At what age do your people begin to work for the community?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Three. They do certain things every day when they are
+three. Just to break them in, you know. But they become self-supporting,
+or nearly so, at thirteen.
+
+CONFUCIUS. And at what age do they retire?
+
+BARNABAS. Forty-three.
+
+CONFUCIUS. That is, they do thirty years' work; and they receive
+maintenance and education, without working, for thirteen years of
+childhood and thirty-five years of superannuation, forty-eight years
+in all, for each thirty years' work. The Archbishop has given you 260
+years' work, and has received only one education and no superannuation.
+You therefore owe him over 300 years of leisure and nearly eight
+educations. You are thus heavily in his debt. In other words, he has
+effected an enormous national economy by living so long; and you, by
+living only seventy-eight years, are profiting at his expense. He is the
+benefactor: you are the thief. [_Half rising_] May I now withdraw and
+return to my serious business, as my own span is comparatively short?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Dont be in a hurry, old chap. [_Confucius sits down
+again_]. This hypothecary, or whatever you call it, is put up seriously.
+I don't believe it; but if the Archbishop and the Accountant General are
+going to insist that it's true, we shall have either to lock them up or
+to see the thing through.
+
+BARNABAS. It's no use trying these Chinese subtleties on me. I'm a plain
+man; and though I don't understand metaphysics, and don't believe in
+them, I understand figures; and if the Archbishop is only entitled to
+seventy-eight years, and he takes 283, I say he takes more than he is
+entitled to. Get over that if you can.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. I have not taken 283 years: I have taken 23 and given
+260.
+
+CONFUCIUS. Do your accounts shew a deficiency or a surplus?
+
+BARNABAS. A surplus. Thats what I cant make out. Thats the artfulness of
+these people.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. That settles it. Whats the use of arguing? The Chink says
+you are wrong; and theres an end of it.
+
+BARNABAS. I say nothing against the Chink's arguments. But what about my
+facts?
+
+CONFUCIUS. If your facts include a case of a man living 283 years, I
+advise you to take a few weeks at the seaside.
+
+BARNABAS. Let there be an end of this hinting that I am out of my mind.
+Come and look at the cinema record. I tell you this man is Archbishop
+Haslam, Archbishop Stickit, President Dickenson, General Bullyboy and
+himself into the bargain; all five of them.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. I do not deny it. I never have denied it. Nobody has
+ever asked me.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. But damn it, man--I beg your pardon, Archbishop; but
+really, really--
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Dont mention it. What were you going to say?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Well, you were drowned four times over. You are not a cat,
+you know.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. That is very easy to understand. Consider my situation
+when I first made the amazing discovery that I was destined to live
+three hundred years! I--
+
+CONFUCIUS [_interrupting him_] Pardon me. Such a discovery was
+impossible. You have not made it yet. You may live a million years
+if you have already lived two hundred. There is no question of three
+hundred years. You have made a slip at the very beginning of your fairy
+tale, Mr Archbishop.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Good, Confucius! [_To the Archbishop_] He has you there. I
+don't see how you can get over that.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Yes: it is quite a good point. But if the Accountant
+General will go to the British Museum library, and search the catalogue,
+he will find under his own name a curious and now forgotten book, dated
+1924, entitled The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas. That gospel was that
+men must live three hundred years if civilization is to be saved. It
+shewed that this extension of individual human life was possible, and
+how it was likely to come about. I married the daughter of one of the
+brothers.
+
+BARNABAS. Do you mean to say you claim to be a connection of mine?
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. I claim nothing. As I have by this time perhaps three or
+four million cousins of one degree or another, I have ceased to call on
+the family.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Gracious heavens! Four million relatives! Is that
+calculation correct, Confucius?
+
+CONFUCIUS. In China it might be forty millions if there were no checks
+on population.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. This is a staggerer. It brings home to one--but
+[_recovering_] it isnt true, you know. Let us keep sane.
+
+CONFUCIUS [_to the Archbishop_] You wish us to understand that the
+illustrious ancestors of the Accountant General communicated to you a
+secret by which you could attain the age of three hundred years.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. No. Nothing of the kind. They simply believed that
+mankind could live any length of time it knew to be absolutely necessary
+to save civilization from extinction. I did not share their belief: at
+least I was not conscious of sharing it: I thought I was only amused by
+it. To me my father-in-law and his brother were a pair of clever
+cranks who had talked one another into a fixed idea which had become a
+monomania with them. It was not until I got into serious difficulties
+with the pension authorities after turning seventy that I began to
+suspect the truth.
+
+CONFUCIUS. The truth?
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Yes, Mr Chief Secretary: the truth. Like all
+revolutionary truths, it began as a joke. As I shewed no signs of ageing
+after forty-five, my wife used to make fun of me by saying that I was
+certainly going to live three hundred years. She was sixty-eight when
+she died; and the last thing she said to me, as I sat by her bedside
+holding her hand, was 'Bill: you really don't look fifty. I wonder--'
+She broke off, and fell asleep wondering, and never awoke. Then I began
+to wonder too. That is the explanation of the three hundred years, Mr
+Secretary.
+
+CONFUCIUS. It is very ingenious, Mr Archbishop. And very well told.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Of course you understand that _I_ don't for a moment
+suggest the very faintest doubt of your absolute veracity, Archbishop.
+You know that, don't you?
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Quite, Mr President. Only you don't believe me: that is
+all. I do not expect you to. In your place I should not believe. You had
+better have a look at the films. [_Pointing to the Accountant General_]
+He believes.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. But the drowning? What about the drowning? A man might get
+drowned once, or even twice if he was exceptionally careless. But he
+couldn't be drowned four times. He would run away from water like a mad
+dog.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Perhaps Mr Chief Secretary can guess the explanation of
+that.
+
+CONFUCIUS. To keep your secret, you had to die.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. But dash it all, man, he isn't dead.
+
+CONFUCIUS. It is socially impossible not to do what everybody else does.
+One must die at the usual time.
+
+BARNABAS. Of course. A simple point of honour.
+
+CONFUCIUS. Not at all. A simple necessity.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Well, I'm hanged if I see it. I should jolly well live for
+ever if I could.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. It is not so easy as you think. You, Mr Chief Secretary,
+have grasped the difficulties of the position. Let me remind you,
+Mr President, that I was over eighty before the 1969 Act for the
+Redistribution of Income entitled me to a handsome retiring pension.
+Owing to my youthful appearance I was prosecuted for attempting to
+obtain public money on false pretences when I claimed it. I could prove
+nothing; for the register of my birth had been blown to pieces by a bomb
+dropped on a village church years before in the first of the big modern
+wars. I was ordered back to work as a man of forty, and had to work for
+fifteen years more, the retiring age being then fifty-five.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. As late as fifty-five! How did people stand it?
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. They made difficulties about letting me go even then, I
+still looked so young. For some years I was in continual trouble. The
+industrial police rounded me up again and again, refusing to believe
+that I was over age. They began to call me The Wandering Jew. You see
+how impossible my position was. I foresaw that in twenty years more my
+official record would prove me to be seventy-five; my appearance would
+make it impossible to believe that I was more than forty-five; and my
+real age would be one hundred and seventeen. What was I to do? Bleach
+my hair? Hobble about on two sticks? Mimic the voice of a centenarian?
+Better have killed myself.
+
+BARNABAS. You ought to have killed yourself. As an honest man you were
+entitled to no more than an honest man's expectation of life.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. I did kill myself. It was quite easy. I left a suit of
+clothes by the seashore during the bathing season, with documents in the
+pockets to identify me. I then turned up in a strange place, pretending
+that I had lost my memory, and did not know my name or my age or
+anything about myself. Under treatment I recovered my health, but not my
+memory. I have had several careers since I began this routine of life
+and death. I have been an archbishop three times. When I persuaded
+the authorities to knock down all our towns and rebuild them from the
+foundations, or move them, I went into the artillery, and became a
+general. I have been President.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Dickenson?
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Yes.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. But they found Dickenson's body: its ashes are buried in St
+Paul's.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. They almost always found the body. During the bathing
+season there are plenty of bodies. I have been cremated again and again.
+At first I used to attend my own funeral in disguise, because I had read
+about a man doing that in an old romance by an author named Bennett,
+from whom I remember borrowing five pounds in 1912. But I got tired of
+that. I would not cross the street now to read my latest epitaph.
+
+_The Chief Secretary and the President look very glum. Their incredulity
+is vanquished at last._
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Look here. Do you chaps realize how awful this is? Here we
+are sitting calmly in the presence of a man whose death is overdue by
+two centuries. He may crumble into dust before our eyes at any moment.
+
+BARNABAS. Not he. He'll go on drawing his pension until the end of the
+world.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Not quite that. My expectation of life is only three
+hundred years.
+
+BARNABAS. You will last out my time anyhow: that's enough for me.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP [_coolly_] How do you know?
+
+BARNABAS [_taken aback_] How do I know!
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Yes: how do you know? I did not begin even to suspect
+until I was nearly seventy. I was only vain of my youthful appearance.
+I was not quite serious about it until I was ninety. Even now I am not
+sure from one moment to another, though I have given you my reason
+for thinking that I have quite unintentionally committed myself to a
+lifetime of three hundred years.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. But how do you do it? Is it lemons? Is it Soya beans? Is
+it--
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. I do not do it. It happens. It may happen to anyone. It
+may happen to you.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_the full significance of this for himself dawning on him_]
+Then we three may be in the same boat with you, for all we know?
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. You may. Therefore I advise you to be very careful how
+you take any step that will make my position uncomfortable.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Well, I'm dashed! One of my secretaries was remarking
+only this morning how well and young I am looking. Barnabas: I have an
+absolute conviction that I am one of the--the--shall I say one of the
+victims?--of this strange destiny.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Your great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather
+formed the same conviction when he was between sixty and seventy. I knew
+him.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_depressed_] Ah! But he died.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. No.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_hopefully_] Do you mean to say he is still alive?
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. No. He was shot. Under the influence of his belief that
+he was going to live three hundred years he became a changed man. He
+began to tell people the truth; and they disliked it so much that they
+took advantage of certain clauses of an Act of Parliament he had himself
+passed during the Four Years War, and had purposely forgotten to repeal
+afterwards. They took him to the Tower of London and shot him.
+
+_The apparatus rings._
+
+CONFUCIUS [_answering_] Yes? [_He listens_].
+
+A WOMAN'S VOICE. The Domestic Minister has called.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_not quite catching the answer_] Who does she say has
+called?
+
+CONFUCIUS. The Domestic Minister.
+
+BARNABAS. Oh, dash it! That awful woman!
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. She certainly is a bit of a terror. I don't exactly know
+why; for she is not at all bad-looking.
+
+BARNABAS [_out of patience_] For Heaven's sake, don't be frivolous.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. He cannot help it, Mr Accountant General. Three of his
+sixteen great-great-great-grandfathers married Lubins.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Tut tut! I am not frivolling. _I_ did not ask the lady
+here. Which of you did?
+
+CONFUCIUS. It is her official duty to report personally to the President
+once a quarter.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Oh, that. Then I suppose it's my official duty to receive
+her. Theyd better send her in. You don't mind, do you? She will bring us
+back to real life. I don't know how you fellows feel; but I'm just going
+dotty.
+
+CONFUCIUS [_into the telephone_] The President will receive the Domestic
+Minister at once.
+
+_They watch the door in silence for the entrance of the Domestic
+Minister._
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_suddenly, to the Archbishop_] I suppose you have been
+married over and over again.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Once. You do not make vows until death when death is
+three hundred years off.
+
+_They relapse into uneasy silence. The Domestic Minister enters. She is
+a handsome woman, apparently in the prime of life, with elegant, tense,
+well held-up figure, and the walk of a goddess. Her expression and
+deportment are grave, swift, decisive, awful, unanswerable. She wears a
+Dianesque tunic instead of a blouse, and a silver coronet instead of a
+gold fillet. Her dress otherwise is not markedly different from that
+of the men, who rise as she enters, and incline their heads with
+instinctive awe. She comes to the vacant chair between Barnabas and
+Confucius._
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_resolutely genial and gallant_] Delighted to see you, Mrs
+Lutestring.
+
+CONFUCIUS. We are honored by your celestial presence.
+
+BARNABAS. Good day, madam.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. I have not had the pleasure of meeting you before. I am
+the Archbishop of York.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. Surely we have met, Mr Archbishop. I remember your face.
+We--[_she checks herself suddenly_] Ah, no: I remember now: it was
+someone else. [_She sits down_]. They all sit down.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP [_also puzzled_] Are you sure you are mistaken? I also
+have some association with your face, Mrs Lutestring. Something like a
+door opening continually and revealing you. And a smile of welcome when
+you recognized me. Did you ever open a door for me, I wonder?
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. I often opened a door for the person you have just
+reminded me of. But he has been dead many years. The rest, except the
+Archbishop, look at one another quickly.
+
+CONFUCIUS. May I ask how many years?
+
+MRS LUTESTRING [_struck by his tone, looks at him for a moment with some
+displeasure; then replies_] It does not matter. A long time.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. You mustnt rush to conclusions about the Archbishop, Mrs
+Lutestring. He is an older bird than you think. Older than you, at all
+events.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING [_with a melancholy smile_] I think not, Mr President.
+But the subject is a delicate one. I had rather not pursue it.
+
+CONFUCIUS. There is a question which has not been asked.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING [_very decisively_] If it is a question about my age, Mr
+Chief Secretary, it had better not be asked. All that concerns you about
+my personal affairs can be found in the books of the Accountant General.
+
+CONFUCIUS. The question I was thinking of will not be addressed to you.
+But let me say that your sensitiveness on the point is very strange,
+coming from a woman so superior to all common weaknesses as we know you
+to be.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. I may have reasons which have nothing to do with common
+weaknesses, Mr Chief Secretary. I hope you will respect them.
+
+CONFUCIUS [_after bowing to her in assent_] I will now put my question.
+Have you, Mr Archbishop, any ground for assuming, as you seem to do,
+that what has happened to you has not happened to other people as well?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Yes, by George! I never thought of that.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. I have never met any case but my own.
+
+CONFUCIUS. How do you know?
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Well, no one has ever told me that they were in this
+extraordinary position.
+
+CONFUCIUS. That proves nothing. Did you ever tell anybody that you were
+in it? You never told us. Why did you never tell us?
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. I am surprised at the question, coming from so astute a
+mind as yours, Mr Secretary. When you reach the age I reached before I
+discovered what was happening to me, I was old enough to know and fear
+the ferocious hatred with which human animals, like all other animals,
+turn upon any unhappy individual who has the misfortune to be unlike
+themselves in every respect: to be unnatural, as they call it. You will
+still find, among the tales of that twentieth-century classic, Wells,
+a story of a race of men who grew twice as big as their fellows, and
+another story of a man who fell into the hands of a race of blind men.
+The big people had to fight the little people for their lives; and the
+man with eyes would have had his eyes put out by the blind had he not
+fled to the desert, where he perished miserably. Wells's teaching, on
+that and other matters, was not lost on me. By the way, he lent me five
+pounds once which I never repaid; and it still troubles my conscience.
+
+CONFUCIUS. And were you the only reader of Wells? If there were others
+like you, had they not the same reason for keeping the secret?
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. That is true. But I should know. You short-lived people
+are so childish. If I met a man of my own age I should recognize him at
+once. I have never done so.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. Would you recognize a woman of your age, do you think?
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. I--[_He stops and turns upon her with a searching look,
+startled by the suggestion and the suspicion it rouses_].
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. What is your age, Mr Archbishop?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Two hundred and eighty-three, he says. That is his little
+joke. Do you know, Mrs Lutestring, he had almost talked us into
+believing him when you came in and cleared the air with your robust
+common sense.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. Do you really feel that, Mr President? I hear the note
+of breezy assertion in your voice. I miss the note of conviction.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_jumping up_] Look here. Let us stop talking damned
+nonsense. I don't wish to be disagreeable; but it's getting on my
+nerves. The best joke won't bear being pushed beyond a certain point.
+That point has been reached. I--I'm rather busy this morning. We all
+have our hands pretty full. Confucius here will tell you that I have a
+heavy day before me.
+
+BARNABAS. Have you anything more important than this thing, if it's
+true?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Oh, if if, if it's true! But it isn't true.
+
+BARNABAS. Have you anything at all to do?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Anything to do! Have you forgotten, Barnabas, that I happen
+to be President, and that the weight of the entire public business of
+this country is on my shoulders?
+
+BARNABAS. Has he anything to do, Confucius?
+
+CONFUCIUS. He has to be President.
+
+BARNABAS. That means that he has nothing to do.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_sulkily_] Very well, Barnabas. Go on making a fool of
+yourself. [_He sits down_]. Go on.
+
+BARNABAS. I am not going to leave this room until we get to the bottom
+of this swindle.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING [_turning with deadly gravity on the Accountant General_]
+This what, did you say?
+
+CONFUCIUS. These expressions cannot be sustained. You obscure the
+discussion in using them.
+
+BARNABAS [_glad to escape from her gaze by addressing Confucius_] Well,
+this unnatural horror. Will that satisfy you?
+
+CONFUCIUS. That is in order. But we do not commit ourselves to the
+implications of the word horror.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. By the word horror the Accountant General means only
+something unusual.
+
+CONFUCIUS. I notice that the honorable Domestic Minister, on learning
+the advanced age of the venerable prelate, shews no sign of surprise or
+incredulity.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. She doesn't take it seriously. Who would? Eh, Mrs
+Lutestring?
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. I take it very seriously indeed, Mr President. I see now
+that I was not mistaken at first. I have met the Archbishop before.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. I felt sure of it. This vision of a door opening to me,
+and a woman's face welcoming me, must be a reminiscence of something
+that really happened; though I see it now as an angel opening the gate
+of heaven.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. Or a parlor maid opening the door of the house of the
+young woman you were in love with?
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP [_making a wry face_] Is that the reality? How these
+things grow in our imagination! But may I say, Mrs Lutestring, that the
+transfiguration of a parlor maid to an angel is not more amazing than
+her transfiguration to the very dignified and able Domestic Minister I
+am addressing. I recognize the angel in you. Frankly, I do not recognize
+the parlor maid.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Whats a parlor maid?
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. An extinct species. A woman in a black dress and white
+apron, who opened the house door when people knocked or rang, and was
+either your tyrant or your slave. I was a parlor maid in the house of
+one of the Accountant General's remote ancestors. [_To Confucius_] You
+asked me my age, Mr Chief Secretary, I am two hundred and seventy-four.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_gallantly_] You don't look it. You really don't look it.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING [_turning her face gravely towards him_] Look again, Mr
+President.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_looking at her bravely until the smile fades from his
+face, and he suddenly covers his eyes with his hands_] Yes: you do
+look it. I am convinced. It's true. Now call up the Lunatic Asylum,
+Confucius; and tell them to send an ambulance for me.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING [_to the Archbishop_] Why have you given away your
+secret? our secret?
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. They found it out. The cinema records betrayed me. But I
+never dreamt that there were others. Did you?
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. I knew one other. She was a cook. She grew tired, and
+killed herself.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Dear me! However, her death simplifies the situation, as
+I have been able to convince these gentlemen that the matter had better
+go no further.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. What! When the President knows! It will be all over the
+place before the end of the week.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_injured_] Really, Mrs Lutestring! You speak as if I were a
+notoriously indiscreet person. Barnabas: have I such a reputation?
+
+BARNABAS [_resignedly_] It cant be helped. It's constitutional.
+
+CONFUCIUS. It is utterly unconstitutional. But, as you say, it cannot be
+helped.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_solemnly_] I deny that a secret of State has ever passed
+my lips--except perhaps to the Minister of Health, who is discretion
+personified. People think, because she is a negress--
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. It does not matter much now. Once, it would have
+mattered a great deal. But my children are all dead.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Yes: the children must have been a terrible difficulty.
+Fortunately for me, I had none.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. There was one daughter who was the child of my very
+heart. Some years after my first drowning I learnt that she had lost her
+sight. I went to her. She was an old woman of ninety-six, blind. She
+asked me to sit and talk with her because my voice was like the voice of
+her dead mother.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. The complications must be frightful. Really I hardly know
+whether I do want to live much longer than other people.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. You can always kill yourself, as cook did; but that
+was influenza. Long life is complicated, and even terrible; but it is
+glorious all the same. I would no more change places with an ordinary
+woman than with a mayfly that lives only an hour.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. What set you thinking of it first?
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. Conrad Barnabas's book. Your wife told me it was more
+wonderful than Napoleon's Book of Fate and Old Moore's Almanac, which
+cook and I used to read. I was very ignorant: it did not seem so
+impossible to me as to an educated woman. Yet I forgot all about it, and
+married and drudged as a poor man's wife, and brought up children, and
+looked twenty years older than I really was, until one day, long after
+my husband died and my children were out in the world working for
+themselves, I noticed that I looked twenty years younger than I really
+was. The truth came to me in a flash.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. An amazing moment. Your feelings must have been beyond
+description. What was your first thought?
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. Pure terror. I saw that the little money I had laid up
+would not last, and that I must go out and: work again. They had things
+called Old Age Pensions then: miserable pittances for worn-out old
+laborers to die on. I thought I should be found out if I went on drawing
+it too long. The horror of facing another lifetime of drudgery, of
+missing my hard-earned rest and losing my poor little savings, drove
+everything else out of my mind. You people nowadays can have no
+conception of the dread of poverty that hung over us then, or of the
+utter tiredness of forty years' unending overwork and striving to make a
+shilling do the work of a pound.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. I wonder you did not kill yourself. I often wonder why
+the poor in those evil old times did not kill themselves. They did not
+even kill other people.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. You never kill yourself, because you always may as well
+wait until tomorrow. And you have not energy or conviction enough to
+kill the others. Besides, how can you blame them when you would do as
+they do if you were in their place?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Devilish poor consolation, that.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. There were other consolations in those days for people
+like me. We drank preparations of alcohol to relieve the strain of
+living and give us an artificial happiness.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN {[[_all together,_]} Alcohol! CONFUCIUS {[_making_] } Pfff
+...! BARNABAS {[_wry faces_]] } Disgusting.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. A little alcohol would improve your temper and manners,
+and make you much easier to live with, Mr Accountant General.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_laughing_] By George, I believe you! Try it, Barnabas.
+
+CONFUCIUS. No. Try tea. It is the more civilized poison of the two.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. You, Mr President, were born intoxicated with your own
+well-fed natural exuberance. You cannot imagine what alcohol was to an
+underfed poor woman. I had carefully arranged my little savings so that
+I could get drunk, as we called it, once a week; and my only pleasure
+was looking forward to that poor little debauch. That is what saved
+me from suicide. I could not bear to miss my next carouse. But when
+I stopped working, and lived on my pension, the fatigue of my life's
+drudgery began to wear off, because, you see, I was not really old. I
+recuperated. I looked younger and younger. And at last I was rested
+enough to have courage and strength to begin life again. Besides,
+political changes were making it easier: life was a little better worth
+living for the nine-tenths of the people who used to be mere drudges.
+After that, I never turned back or faltered. My only regret now is that
+I shall die when I am three hundred or thereabouts. There was only one
+thing that made life hard; and that is gone now.
+
+CONFUCIUS. May we ask what that was?
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. Perhaps you will be offended if I tell you.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Offended! My dear lady, do you suppose, after such
+a stupendous revelation, that anything short of a blow from a
+sledge-hammer could produce the smallest impression on any of us?
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. Well, you see, it has been so hard on me never to meet a
+grown-up person. You are all such children. And I never was very fond of
+children, except that one girl who woke up the mother passion in me. I
+have been very lonely sometimes.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_again gallant_] But surely, Mrs Lutestring, that has been
+your own fault. If I may say so, a lady of your attractions need never
+have been lonely.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. Why?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Why! Well--. Well, er--. Well, er er--. Well! [_he gives it
+up_].
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. He means that you might have married. Curious, how
+little they understand our position.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. I did marry. I married again on my hundred and first
+birthday. But of course I had to marry an elderly man: a man over sixty.
+He was a great painter. On his deathbed he said to me 'It has taken me
+fifty years to learn my trade, and to paint all the foolish pictures a
+man must paint and get rid of before he comes through them to the
+great things he ought to paint. And now that my foot is at last on the
+threshold of the temple I find that it is also the threshold of my
+tomb.' That man would have been the greatest painter of all time if he
+could have lived as long as I. I saw him die of old age whilst he
+was still, as he said himself, a gentleman amateur, like all modern
+painters.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. But why had you to marry an elderly man? Why not marry a
+young one? or shall I say a middle-aged one? If my own affections were
+not already engaged; and if, to tell the truth, I were not a
+little afraid of you--for you are a very superior woman, as we all
+acknowledge--I should esteem myself happy in--er--er--
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. Mr President: have you ever tried to take advantage of
+the innocence of a little child for the gratification of your senses?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Good Heavens, madam, what do you take me for? What right
+have you to ask me such a question?
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. I am at present in my two hundred and seventy-fifth
+year. You suggest that I should take advantage of the innocence of a
+child of thirty, and marry it.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Can you shortlived people not understand that as the
+confusion and immaturity and primitive animalism in which we live for
+the first hundred years of our life is worse in this matter of sex than
+in any other, you are intolerable to us in that relation?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Do you mean to say, Mrs Lutestring, that you regard me as a
+child?
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. Do you expect me to regard you as a completed soul? Oh,
+you may well be afraid of me. There are moments when your levity, your
+ingratitude, your shallow jollity, make my gorge rise so against you
+that if I could not remind myself that you are a child I should be
+tempted to doubt your right to live at all.
+
+CONFUCIUS. Do you grudge us the few years we have? you who have three
+hundred!
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. You accuse me of levity! Must I remind you, madam, that I
+am the President, and that you are only the head of a department?
+
+BARNABAS. Ingratitude too! You draw a pension for three hundred years
+when we owe you only seventy-eight; and you call us ungrateful!
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. I do. When I think of the blessings that have been
+showered on you, and contrast them with the poverty! the humiliations!
+the anxieties! the heartbreak! the insolence and tyranny that were the
+daily lot of mankind when I was learning to suffer instead of learning
+to live! when I see how lightly you take it all! how you quarrel over
+the crumpled leaves in your beds of roses! how you are so dainty about
+your work that unless it is made either interesting or delightful to you
+you leave it to negresses and Chinamen, I ask myself whether even
+three hundred years of thought and experience can save you from being
+superseded by the Power that created you and put you on your trial.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. My dear lady: our Chinese and colored friends are perfectly
+happy. They are twenty times better off here than they would be in China
+or Liberia. They do their work admirably; and in doing it they set us
+free for higher employments.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP [_who has caught the infection of her indignation_] What
+higher employments are you capable of? you that are superannuated at
+seventy and dead at eighty!
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. You are not really doing higher work. You are supposed
+to make the decisions and give the orders; but the negresses and the
+Chinese make up your minds for you and tell you what orders to give,
+just as my brother, who was a sergeant in the Guards, used to prompt his
+officers in the old days. When I want to get anything done at the Health
+Ministry I do not come to you: I go to the black lady who has been the
+real president during your present term of office, or to Confucius, who
+goes on for ever while presidents come and presidents go.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. This is outrageous. This is treason to the white race. And
+let me tell you, madam, that I have never in my life met the Minister
+of Health, and that I protest against the vulgar color prejudice which
+disparages her great ability and her eminent services to the State. My
+relations with her are purely telephonic, gramophonic, photophonic, and,
+may I add, platonic.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. There is no reason why you should be ashamed of them in
+any case, Mr President. But let us look at the position impersonally.
+Can you deny that what is happening is that the English people have
+become a Joint Stock Company admitting Asiatics and Africans as
+shareholders?
+
+BARNABAS. Nothing like it. I know all about the old joint stock
+companies. The shareholders did no work.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. That is true; but we, like them, get our dividends
+whether we work or not. We work partly because we know there would be no
+dividends if we did not, and partly because if we refuse we are regarded
+as mentally deficient and put into a lethal chamber. But what do we work
+at? Before the few changes we were forced to make by the revolutions
+that followed the Four Years War, our governing classes had been so
+rich, as it was called, that they had become the most intellectually
+lazy and fat-headed people on the face of the earth. There is a good
+deal of that fat still clinging to us.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. As President, I must not listen to unpatriotic criticisms
+of our national character, Mr Archbishop.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. As Archbishop, Mr President, it is my official duty to
+criticize the national character unsparingly. At the canonization of
+Saint Henrik Ibsen, you yourself unveiled the monument to him which
+bears on its pedestal the noble inscription, 'I came not to call
+sinners, but the righteous, to repentance.' The proof of what I say
+is that our routine work, and what may be called our ornamental and
+figure-head work, is being more and more sought after by the English;
+whilst the thinking, organizing, calculating, directing work is done by
+yellow brains, brown brains, and black brains, just as it was done in
+my early days by Jewish brains, Scottish brains, Italian brains, German
+brains. The only white men who still do serious work are those who, like
+the Accountant General, have no capacity for enjoyment, and no social
+gifts to make them welcome outside their offices.
+
+BARNABAS. Confound your impudence! I had gifts enough to find you out,
+anyhow.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP [_disregarding this outburst_] If you were to kill me as
+I stand here, you would have to appoint an Indian to succeed me. I take
+precedence today not as an Englishman, but as a man with more than a
+century and a half of fully adult experience. We are letting all the
+power slip into the hands of the colored people. In another hundred
+years we shall be simply their household pets.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_reacting buoyantly_] Not the least danger of it. I grant
+you we leave the most troublesome part of the labor of the nation to
+them. And a good job too: why should we drudge at it? But think of the
+activities of our leisure! Is there a jollier place on earth to live
+in than England out of office hours? And to whom do we owe that? To
+ourselves, not to the niggers. The nigger and the Chink are all right
+from Tuesday to Friday; but from Friday to Tuesday they are simply
+nowhere; and the real life of England is from Friday to Tuesday.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. That is terribly true. In devising brainless amusements;
+in pursuing them with enormous vigor, and taking them with eager
+seriousness, our English people are the wonder of the world. They always
+were. And it is just as well; for otherwise their sensuality would
+become morbid and destroy them. What appals me is that their amusements
+should amuse them. They are the amusements of boys and girls. They
+are pardonable up to the age of fifty or sixty: after that they are
+ridiculous. I tell you, what is wrong with us is that we are a non-adult
+race; and the Irish and the Scots, and the niggers and Chinks, as you
+call them, though their lifetime is as short as ours, or shorter, yet do
+somehow contrive to grow up a little before they die. We die in boyhood:
+the maturity that should make us the greatest of all the nations lies
+beyond the grave for us. Either we shall go under as greybeards with
+golf clubs in our hands, or we must will to live longer.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. Yes: that is it. I could not have expressed it in words;
+but you have expressed it for me. I felt, even when I was an ignorant
+domestic slave, that we had the possibility of becoming a great nation
+within us; but our faults and follies drove me to cynical hopelessness.
+We all ended then like that. It is the highest creatures who take the
+longest to mature, and are the most helpless during their immaturity. I
+know now that it took me a whole century to grow up. I began my serious
+life when I was a hundred and twenty. Asiatics cannot control me: I am
+not a child in their hands, as you are, Mr President. Neither, I am
+sure, is the Archbishop. They respect me. You are not grown up enough
+even for that, though you were kind enough to say that I frighten you.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Honestly, you do. And will you think me very rude if I
+say that if I must choose between a white woman old enough to be my
+great-grandmother and a black woman of my own age, I shall probably find
+the black woman more sympathetic?
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. And more attractive in color, perhaps?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Yes. Since you ask me, more--well, not more attractive:
+I do not deny that you have an excellent appearance--but I will say,
+richer. More Venetian. Tropical. 'The shadowed livery of the burnished
+sun.'
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. Our women, and their favorite story writers, begin
+already to talk about men with golden complexions.
+
+CONFUCIUS [_expanding into a smile all across both face and body_]
+A-a-a-a-a-h!
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Well, what of it, madam? Have you read a very interesting
+book by the librarian of the Biological Society suggesting that the
+future of the world lies with the Mulatto?
+
+MRS LUTESTRING [_rising_] Mr Archbishop: if the white race is to be
+saved, our destiny is apparent.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Yes: our duty is pretty clear.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. Have you time to come home with me and discuss the
+matter?
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP [_rising_] With pleasure.
+
+BARNABAS [_rising also and rushing past Mrs Lutestring to the door,
+where he turns to bar her way_] No you don't. Burge: you understand,
+don't you?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. No. What is it?
+
+BARNABAS. These two are going to marry.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Why shouldn't they, if they want to?
+
+BARNABAS. They don't want to. They will do it in cold blood because
+their children will live three hundred years. It mustnt be allowed.
+
+CONFUCIUS. You cannot prevent it. There is no law that gives you power
+to interfere with them.
+
+BARNABAS. If they force me to it I will obtain legislation against
+marriages above the age of seventy-eight.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. There is not time for that before we are married, Mr
+Accountant General. Be good enough to get out of the lady's way.
+
+BARNABAS. There is time to send the lady to the lethal chamber before
+anything comes of your marriage. Dont forget that.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. What nonsense, Mr Accountant General! Good afternoon,
+Mr President. Good afternoon, Mr Chief Secretary. [_They rise and
+acknowledge her salutation with bows. She walks straight at the
+Accountant General, who instinctively shrinks out of her way as she
+leaves the room_].
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. I am surprised at you, Mr Barnabas. Your tone was like
+an echo from the Dark Ages. [_He follows the Domestic Minister_].
+
+_Confucius, shaking his head and clucking with his tongue in deprecation
+of this painful episode, moves to the chair just vacated by the
+Archbishop and stands behind it with folded palms, looking at the
+President. The Accountant General shakes his fist after the departed
+visitors, and bursts into savage abuse of them._
+
+BARNABAS. Thieves! Cursed thieves! Vampires! What are you going to do,
+Burge?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Do?
+
+BARNABAS. Yes, do. There must be dozens of these people in existence.
+Are you going to let them do what the two who have just left us mean to
+do, and crowd us off the face of the earth?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_sitting down_] Oh, come, Barnabas! What harm are they
+doing? Arnt you interested in them? Dont you like them?
+
+BARNABAS. Like them! I hate them. They are monsters, unnatural monsters.
+They are poison to me.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. What possible objection can there be to their living as
+long as they can? It does not shorten our lives, does it?
+
+BARNABAS. If I have to die when I am seventy-eight, I don't see
+why another man should be privileged to live to be two hundred and
+seventy-eight. It does shorten my life, relatively. It makes us
+ridiculous. If they grew to be twelve feet high they would make us all
+dwarfs. They talked to us as if we were children. There is no love lost
+between us: their hatred of us came out soon enough. You heard what the
+woman said, and how the Archbishop backed her up?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. But what can we do to them?
+
+BARNABAS. Kill them.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Nonsense!
+
+BARNABAS. Lock them up. Sterilize them somehow, anyhow.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. But what reason could we give?
+
+BARNABAS. What reason can you give for killing a snake? Nature tells you
+to do it.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. My dear Barnabas, you are out of your mind.
+
+BARNABAS. Havnt you said that once too often already this morning?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. I don't believe you will carry a single soul with you.
+
+BARNABAS. I understand. I know you. You think you are one of them.
+
+CONFUCIUS. Mr Accountant General: you may be one of them.
+
+BARNABAS. How dare you accuse me of such a thing? I am an honest man,
+not a monster. I won my place in public life by demonstrating that the
+true expectation of human life is seventy-eight point six. And I will
+resist any attempt to alter or upset it to the last drop of my blood if
+need be.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Oh, tut tut! Come, come! Pull yourself together. How can
+you, a descendant of the great Conrad Barnabas, the man who is still
+remembered by his masterly Biography of a Black Beetle, be so absurd?
+
+BARNABAS. You had better go and write the autobiography of a jackass. I
+am going to raise the country against this horror, and against you, if
+you shew the slightest sign of weakness about it.
+
+CONFUCIUS [_very impressively_] You will regret it if you do.
+
+BARNABAS. What is to make me regret it?
+
+CONFUCIUS. Every mortal man and woman in the community will begin to
+count on living for three centuries. Things will happen which you do not
+foresee: terrible things. The family will dissolve: parents and children
+will be no longer the old and the young: brothers and sisters will meet
+as strangers after a hundred years separation: the ties of blood will
+lose their innocence. The imaginations of men, let loose over the
+possibilities of three centuries of life, will drive them mad and wreck
+human society. This discovery must be kept a dead secret. [_He sits
+down_].
+
+BARNABAS. And if I refuse to keep the secret?
+
+CONFUCIUS. I shall have you safe in a lunatic asylum the day after you
+blab.
+
+BARNABAS. You forget that I can produce the Archbishop to prove my
+statement.
+
+CONFUCIUS. So can I. Which of us do you think he will support when I
+explain to him that your object in revealing his age is to get him
+killed?
+
+BARNABAS [_desperate_] Burge: are you going to back up this yellow
+abomination against me? Are we public men and members of the Government?
+or are we damned blackguards?
+
+CONFUCIUS [_unmoved_] Have you ever known a public man who was not what
+vituperative people called a damned blackguard when some inconsiderate
+person wanted to tell the public more than was good for it?
+
+BARNABAS. Hold your tongue, you insolent heathen. Burge: I spoke to you.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Well, you know, my dear Barnabas, Confucius is a very
+long-headed chap. I see his point.
+
+BARNABAS. Do you? Then let me tell you that, except officially, I will
+never speak to you again. Do you hear?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_cheerfully_] You will. You will.
+
+BARNABAS. And don't you ever dare speak to me again. Do you hear? [_He
+turns to the door_].
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. I will. I will. Goodbye, Barnabas. God bless you.
+
+BARNABAS. May you live forever, and be the laughingstock of the whole
+world! [_he dashes out in a fury_].
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_laughing indulgently_] He will keep the secret all right.
+I know Barnabas. You neednt worry.
+
+CONFUCIUS [_troubled and grave_] There are no secrets except the secrets
+that keep themselves. Consider. There are those films at the Record
+Office. We have no power to prevent the Master of the Records from
+publishing this discovery made in his department. We cannot silence the
+American--who can silence an American?--nor the people who were there
+today to receive him. Fortunately, a film can prove nothing but a
+resemblance.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Thats very true. After all, the whole thing is confounded
+nonsense, isnt it?
+
+CONFUCIUS [_raising his head to look at him_] You have decided not to
+believe it now that you realize its inconveniences. That is the English
+method. It may not work in this case.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. English be hanged! It's common sense. You know, those two
+people got us hypnotized: not a doubt of it. They must have been kidding
+us. They were, werent they?
+
+CONFUCIUS. You looked into that woman's face; and you believed.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Just so. Thats where she had me. I shouldn't have believed
+her a bit if she'd turned her back to me.
+
+CONFUCIUS [_shakes his head slowly and repeatedly_]???
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. You really think--? [_he hesitates_].
+
+CONFUCIUS. The Archbishop has always been a puzzle to me. Ever since
+I learnt to distinguish between one English face and another I have
+noticed what the woman pointed out: that the English face is not an
+adult face, just as the English mind is not an adult mind.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Stow it, John Chinaman. If ever there was a race divinely
+appointed to take charge of the non-adult races and guide them and train
+them and keep them out of mischief until they grow up to be capable of
+adopting our institutions, that race is the English race. It is the only
+race in the world that has that characteristic. Now!
+
+CONFUCIUS. That is the fancy of a child nursing a doll. But it is ten
+times more childish of you to dispute the highest compliment ever paid
+you.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. You call it a compliment to class us as grown-up children.
+
+CONFUCIUS. Not grown-up children, children at fifty, sixty, seventy.
+Your maturity is so late that you never attain to it. You have to be
+governed by races which are mature at forty. That means that you are
+potentially the most highly developed race on earth, and would be
+actually the greatest if you could live long enough to attain to
+maturity.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_grasping the idea at last_] By George, Confucius, youre
+right! I never thought of that. That explains everything. We are just
+a lot of schoolboys: theres no denying it. Talk to an Englishman about
+anything serious, and he listens to you curiously for a moment just as
+he listens to a chap playing classical music. Then he goes back to
+his marine golf, or motoring, or flying, or women, just like a bit of
+stretched elastic when you let it go. [_Soaring to the height of his
+theme_] Oh, youre quite right. We are only in our infancy. I ought to
+be in a perambulator, with a nurse shoving me along. It's true: it's
+absolutely true. But some day we'll grow up; and then, by Jingo, we'll
+shew em.
+
+CONFUCIUS. The Archbishop is an adult. When I was a child I was
+dominated and intimidated by people whom I now know to have been weaker
+and sillier than I, because there was some mysterious quality in their
+mere age that overawed me. I confess that, though I have kept up
+appearances, I have always been afraid of the Archbishop.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Between ourselves, Confucius, so have I.
+
+CONFUCIUS. It is this that convinced me. It was this in the woman's face
+that convinced you. Their new departure in the history of the race is no
+fraud. It does not even surprise me.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Oh, come! Not surprise you! It's your pose never to be
+surprised at anything; but if you are not surprised at this you are not
+human.
+
+CONFUCIUS. I am staggered, just as a man may be staggered by an
+explosion for which he has himself laid the charge and lighted the fuse.
+But I am not surprised, because, as a philosopher and a student of
+evolutionary biology, I have come to regard some such development as
+this as inevitable. If I had not thus prepared myself to be credulous,
+no mere evidence of films and well-told tales would have persuaded me to
+believe. As it is, I do believe.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Well, that being settled, what the devil is to happen next?
+Whats the next move for us?
+
+CONFUCIUS. We do not make the next move. The next move will be made by
+the Archbishop and the woman.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Their marriage?
+
+CONFUCIUS. More than that. They have made the momentous discovery that
+they are not alone in the world.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. You think there are others?
+
+CONFUCIUS. There must be many others. Each of them believes that he or
+she is the only one to whom the miracle has happened. But the Archbishop
+knows better now. He will advertise in terms which only the longlived
+people will understand. He will bring them together and organize them.
+They will hasten from all parts of the earth. They will become a great
+Power.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_a little alarmed_] I say, will they? I suppose they will.
+I wonder is Barnabas right after all? Ought we to allow it?
+
+CONFUCIUS. Nothing that we can do will stop it. We cannot in our souls
+really want to stop it: the vital force that has produced this change
+would paralyse our opposition to it, if we were mad enough to oppose.
+But we will not oppose. You and I may be of the elect, too.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Yes: thats what gets us every time. What the deuce ought we
+to do? Something must be done about it, you know.
+
+CONFUCIUS. Let us sit still, and meditate in silence on the vistas
+before us.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. By George, I believe youre right. Let us.
+
+_They sit meditating, the Chinaman naturally, the President with visible
+effort and intensity. He is positively glaring into the future when the
+voice of the Negress is heard._
+
+THE NEGRESS. Mr President.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_joyfully_] Yes. [_Taking up a peg_] Are you at home?
+
+THE NEGRESS. No. Omega, zero, x squared.
+
+_The President rapidly puts the peg in the switchboard; works the dial;
+and presses the button. The screen becomes transparent; and the Negress,
+brilliantly dressed, appears on what looks like the bridge of a steam
+yacht in glorious sea weather. The installation with which she is
+communicating is beside the binnacle._
+
+CONFUCIUS [_looking round, and recoiling with a shriek of disgust_] Ach!
+Avaunt! Avaunt! [_He rushes from the room_].
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. What part of the coast is that?
+
+THE NEGRESS. Fishguard Bay. Why not run over and join me for the
+afternoon? I am disposed to be approachable at last.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. But Fishguard! Two hundred and seventy miles!
+
+THE NEGRESS. There is a lightning express on the Irish Air Service at
+half-past sixteen. They will drop you by a parachute in the bay. The
+dip will do you good. I will pick you up and dry you and give you a
+first-rate time.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Delightful. But a little risky, isnt it?
+
+THE NEGRESS. Risky! I thought you were afraid of nothing.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. I am not exactly afraid; but--
+
+THE NEGRESS [_offended_] But you think it is not good enough. Very well
+[_she raises her hand to take the peg out of her switchboard_].
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_imploringly_] No: stop: let me explain: hold the line just
+one moment. Oh, please.
+
+THE NEGRESS [_waiting with her hand poised over the peg_] Well?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. The fact is, I have been behaving very recklessly for some
+time past under the impression that my life would be so short that
+it was not worth bothering about. But I have just learnt that I may
+live--well, much longer than I expected. I am sure your good sense will
+tell you that this alters the case. I--
+
+THE NEGRESS [_with suppressed rage_] Oh, quite. Pray don't risk your
+precious, life on my account. Sorry for troubling you. Goodbye. [_She
+snatches out her peg and vanishes_].
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_urgently_] No: please hold on. I can convince you--[_a
+loud buzz-uzz-uzz_]. Engaged! Who is she calling up now? [_Represses the
+button and calls_] The Chief Secretary. Say I want to see him again,
+just for a moment.
+
+CONFUCIUS'S VOICE. Is the woman gone?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Yes, yes: it's all right. Just a moment, if--[_Confucius
+returns_] Confucius: I have some important business at Fishguard. The
+Irish Air Service can drop me in the bay by parachute. I suppose it's
+quite safe, isnt it?
+
+CONFUCIUS. Nothing is quite safe. The air service is as safe as any
+other travelling service. The parachute is safe. But the water is not
+safe.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Why? They will give me an unsinkable tunic, wont they?
+
+CONFUCIUS. You will not sink; but the sea is very cold. You may get
+rheumatism for life.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. For life! That settles it: I wont risk it.
+
+CONFUCIUS. Good. You have at last become prudent: you are no longer what
+you call a sportsman: you are a sensible coward, almost a grown-up man.
+I congratulate you.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_resolutely_] Coward or no coward, I will not face an
+eternity of rheumatism for any woman that ever was born. [_He rises and
+goes to the rack for his fillet_] I have changed my mind: I am going
+home. [_He cocks the fillet rakishly_] Good evening.
+
+CONFUCIUS. So early? If the Minister of Health rings you up, what shall
+I tell her?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Tell her to go to the devil. [_He goes out_].
+
+CONFUCIUS [_shaking his head, shocked at the President's impoliteness_]
+No. No, no, no, no, no. Oh, these English! these crude young
+civilizations! Their manners! Hogs. Hogs.
+
+
+
+
+PART IV
+
+Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman
+
+
+ACT I
+
+
+_Burrin pier on the south shore of Galway Bay in Ireland, a region of
+stone-capped hills and granite fields. It is a fine summer day in the
+year 3000 A.D. On an ancient stone stump, about three feet thick and
+three feet high, used for securing ships by ropes to the shore, and
+called a bollard or holdfast, an elderly gentleman sits facing the land
+with his head bowed and his face in his hands, sobbing. His sunburnt
+skin contrasts with his white whiskers and eyebrows. He wears a black
+frock-coat, a white waistcoat, lavender trousers, a brilliant silk
+cravat with a jewelled pin stuck in it, a tall hat of grey felt, and
+patent leather boots with white spats. His starched linen cuffs protrude
+from his coat sleeves; and his collar, also of starched white linen, is
+Gladstonian. On his right, three or four full sacks, lying side by side
+on the flags, suggest that the pier, unlike many remote Irish piers,
+is occasionally useful as well as romantic. On his left, behind him, a
+flight of stone steps descends out of sight to the sea level.
+
+A woman in a silk tunic and sandals, wearing little else except a cap
+with the number 2 on it in gold, comes up the steps from the sea, and
+stares in astonishment at the sobbing man. Her age cannot be guessed:
+her face is firm and chiselled like a young face; but her expression is
+unyouthful in its severity and determination._
+
+THE WOMAN. What is the matter?
+
+_The elderly gentleman looks up; hastily pulls himself together; takes
+out a silk handkerchief and dries his tears lightly with a brave attempt
+to smile through them; and tries to rise gallantly, but sinks back._
+
+THE WOMAN. Do you need assistance?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No. Thank you very much. No. Nothing. The heat.
+[_He punctuates with sniffs, and dabs with his handkerchief at his eyes
+and nose._] Hay fever.
+
+THE WOMAN. You are a foreigner, are you not?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No. You must not regard me as a foreigner. I am a
+Briton.
+
+THE WOMAN. You come from some part of the British Commonwealth?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_amiably pompous_] From its capital, madam.
+
+THE WOMAN. From Baghdad?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Yes. You may not be aware, madam, that these
+islands were once the centre of the British Commonwealth, during a
+period now known as The Exile. They were its headquarters a thousand
+years ago. Few people know this interesting circumstance now; but I
+assure you it is true. I have come here on a pious pilgrimage to one of
+the numerous lands of my fathers. We are of the same stock, you and I.
+Blood is thicker than water. We are cousins.
+
+THE WOMAN. I do not understand. You say you have come here on a pious
+pilgrimage. Is that some new means of transport?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_again shewing signs of distress_] I find it
+very difficult to make myself understood here. I was not referring to a
+machine, but to a--a--a sentimental journey.
+
+THE WOMAN. I am afraid I am as much in the dark as before. You said also
+that blood is thicker than water. No doubt it is; but what of it?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Its meaning is obvious.
+
+THE WOMAN. Perfectly. But I assure you I am quite aware that blood is
+thicker than water.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_sniffing: almost in tears again_] We will leave
+it at that, madam.
+
+THE WOMAN [going _nearer to him and scrutinizing him with some concern_]
+I am afraid you are not well. Were you not warned that it is dangerous
+for shortlived people to come to this country? There is a deadly disease
+called discouragement, against which shortlived people have to take very
+strict precautions. Intercourse with us puts too great a strain on them.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_pulling himself together huffily_] It has no
+effect on me, madam. I fear my conversation does not interest you. If
+not, the remedy is in your own hands.
+
+THE WOMAN [_looking at her hands, and then looking inquiringly at him_]
+Where?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_breaking down_] Oh, this is dreadful. No
+understanding, no intelligence, no sympathy--[_his sobs choke him_].
+
+THE WOMAN. You see, you are ill.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_nerved by indignation_] I am not ill. I have
+never had a day's illness in my life.
+
+THE WOMAN. May I advise you?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I have no need of a lady doctor, thank you,
+madam.
+
+THE WOMAN [_shaking her head_] I am afraid I do not understand. I said
+nothing about a butterfly.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Well, _I_ said nothing about a butterfly.
+
+THE WOMAN. You spoke of a lady doctor. The word is known here only as
+the name of a butterfly.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_insanely_] I give up. I can bear this no longer.
+It is easier to go out of my mind at once. [_He rises and dances about,
+singing_]
+
+
+    I'd be a butterfly, born in a bower,
+    Making apple dumplings without any flour.
+
+
+THE WOMAN [_smiling gravely_] It must be at least a hundred and fifty
+years since I last laughed. But if you do that any more I shall
+certainly break out like a primary of sixty. Your dress is so
+extraordinarily ridiculous.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_halting abruptly in his antics_] My dress
+ridiculous! I may not be dressed like a Foreign Office clerk; but
+my clothes are perfectly in fashion in my native metropolis, where
+yours--pardon my saying so--would be considered extremely unusual and
+hardly decent.
+
+THE WOMAN. Decent? There is no such word in our language. What does it
+mean?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. It would not be decent for me to explain. Decency
+cannot be discussed without indecency.
+
+THE WOMAN. I cannot understand you at all. I fear you have not been
+observing the rules laid down for shortlived visitors.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Surely, madam, they do not apply to persons of my
+age and standing. I am not a child, nor an agricultural laborer.
+
+THE WOMAN [_severely_] They apply to you very strictly. You are expected
+to confine yourself to the society of children under sixty. You
+are absolutely forbidden to approach fully adult natives under any
+circumstances. You cannot converse with persons of my age for long
+without bringing on a dangerous attack of discouragement. Do you realize
+that you are already shewing grave symptoms of that very distressing and
+usually fatal complaint?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Certainly not, madam. I am fortunately in no
+danger of contracting it. I am quite accustomed to converse intimately
+and at the greatest length with the most distinguished persons. If you
+cannot discriminate between hay fever and imbecility, I can only say
+that your advanced years carry with them the inevitable penalty of
+dotage.
+
+THE WOMAN. I am one of the guardians of this district; and I am
+responsible for your welfare--
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. The Guardians! Do you take me for a pauper?
+
+THE WOMAN. I do not know what a pauper is. You must tell me who you are,
+if it is possible for you to express yourself intelligibly--
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_snorts indignantly_]!
+
+THE WOMAN [_continuing_]--and why you are wandering here alone without a
+nurse.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_outraged_] Nurse!
+
+THE WOMAN. Shortlived visitors are not allowed to go about here without
+nurses. Do you not know that rules are meant to be kept?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. By the lower classes, no doubt. But to persons
+in my position there are certain courtesies which are never denied by
+well-bred people; and--
+
+THE WOMAN. There are only two human classes here: the shortlived and
+the normal. The rules apply to the shortlived, and are for their own
+protection. Now tell me at once who you are.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_impressively_] Madam, I am a retired gentleman,
+formerly Chairman of the All-British Synthetic Egg and Vegetable Cheese
+Trust in Baghdad, and now President of the British Historical and
+Archaeological Society, and a Vice-President of the Travellers' Club.
+
+THE WOMAN. All that does not matter.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_again snorting_] Hm! Indeed!
+
+THE WOMAN. Have you been sent here to make your mind flexible?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. What an extraordinary question! Pray do you find
+my mind noticeably stiff?
+
+THE WOMAN. Perhaps you do not know that you are on the west coast of
+Ireland, and that it is the practice among natives of the Eastern Island
+to spend some years here to acquire mental flexibility. The climate has
+that effect.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_haughtily_] I was born, not in the Eastern
+Island, but, thank God, in dear old British Baghdad; and I am not in
+need of a mental health resort.
+
+THE WOMAN. Then why are you here?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Am I trespassing? I was not aware of it.
+
+THE WOMAN. Trespassing? I do not understand the word.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Is this land private property? If so, I make no
+claim. I proffer a shilling in satisfaction of damage (if any), and am
+ready to withdraw if you will be good enough to shew me the nearest way.
+[_He offers her a shilling_].
+
+THE WOMAN [_taking it and examining it without much interest_] I do not
+understand a single word of what you have just said.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I am speaking the plainest English. Are you the
+landlord?
+
+THE WOMAN [_shaking her head_] There is a tradition in this part of the
+country of an animal with a name like that. It used to be hunted and
+shot in the barbarous ages. It is quite extinct now.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_breaking down again_] It is a dreadful thing to
+be in a country where nobody understands civilized institutions. [_He
+collapses on the bollard, struggling with his rising sobs_]. Excuse me.
+Hay fever.
+
+THE WOMAN [_taking a tuning-fork from her girdle and holding it to her
+ear; then speaking into space on one note, like a chorister intoning
+a psalm_] Burrin Pier Galway please send someone to take charge of a
+discouraged shortliver who has escaped from his nurse male harmless
+babbles unintelligibly with moments of sense distressed hysterical
+foreign dress very funny has curious fringe of white sea-weed under his
+chin.
+
+THE GENTLEMAN. This is a gross impertinence. An insult.
+
+THE WOMAN [_replacing her tuning-fork and addressing the elderly
+gentleman_] These words mean nothing to me. In what capacity are you
+here? How did you obtain permission to visit us?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_importantly_] Our Prime Minister, Mr Badger
+Bluebin, has come to consult the oracle. He is my son-in-law. We are
+accompanied by his wife and daughter: my daughter and granddaughter. I
+may mention that General Aufsteig, who is one of our party, is really
+the Emperor of Turania travelling incognito. I understand he has a
+question to put to the oracle informally. I have come solely to visit
+the country.
+
+THE WOMAN. Why should you come to a place where you have no business?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Great Heavens, madam, can anything be more
+natural? I shall be the only member of the Travellers' Club who has set
+foot on these shores. Think of that! My position will be unique.
+
+THE WOMAN. Is that an advantage? We have a person here who has lost both
+legs in an accident. His position is unique. But he would much rather be
+like everyone else.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. This is maddening. There is no analogy whatever
+between the two cases.
+
+THE WOMAN. They are both unique.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Conversation in this place seems to consist of
+ridiculous quibbles. I am heartily tired of them.
+
+THE WOMAN. I conclude that your Travellers' Club is an assembly of
+persons who wish to be able to say that they have been in some place
+where nobody else has been.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Of Course if you wish to sneer at us--
+
+THE WOMAN. What is sneer?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_with a wild sob_] I shall drown myself.
+
+_He makes desperately for the edge of the pier, but is confronted by
+a man with the number one on his cap, who comes up the steps and
+intercepts him. He is dressed like the woman, but a slight moustache
+proclaims his sex._
+
+THE MAN [_to the elderly gentleman_] Ah, here you are. I shall really
+have to put a collar and lead on you if you persist in giving me the
+slip like this.
+
+THE WOMAN. Are you this stranger's nurse?
+
+THE MAN. Yes. I am very tired of him. If I take my eyes off him for a
+moment, he runs away and talks to everybody.
+
+THE WOMAN [_after taking out her tuning-fork and sounding it, intones as
+before_] Burrin Pier. Wash out. [_She puts up the fork, and addresses
+the man_]. I sent a call for someone to take care of him. I have been
+trying to talk to him; but I can understand very little of what he says.
+You must take better care of him: he is badly discouraged already. If
+I can be of any further use, Fusima, Gort, will find me. [_She goes
+away_].
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Any further use! She has been of no use to me.
+She spoke to me without any introduction, like any improper female. And
+she has made off with my shilling.
+
+THE MAN. Please speak slowly. I cannot follow. What is a shilling? What
+is an introduction? Improper female doesnt make sense.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Nothing seems to make sense here. All I can tell
+you is that she was the most impenetrably stupid woman I have ever met
+in the whole course of my life.
+
+THE MAN. That cannot be. She cannot appear stupid to you. She is a
+secondary, and getting on for a tertiary at that.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. What is a tertiary? Everybody here keeps talking
+to me about primaries and secondaries and tertiaries as if people were
+geological strata.
+
+THE MAN. The primaries are in their first century. The secondaries are
+in their second century. I am still classed as a primary [_he points to
+his number_]; but I may almost call myself a secondary, as I shall be
+ninety-five next January. The tertiaries are in their third century. Did
+you not see the number two on her badge? She is an advanced secondary.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. That accounts for it. She is in her second
+childhood.
+
+THE MAN. Her second childhood! She is in her fifth childhood.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_again resorting to the bollard_] Oh! I cannot
+bear these unnatural arrangements.
+
+THE MAN [_impatient and helpless_] You shouldn't have come among us.
+This is no place for you.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_nerved by indignation_] May I ask why? I am a
+Vice-President of the Travellers' Club. I have been everywhere: I hold
+the record in the Club for civilized countries.
+
+THE MAN. What is a civilized country?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. It is--well, it is a civilized country.
+[_Desperately_] I don't know: I--I--I--I shall go mad if you keep on
+asking me to tell you things that everybody knows. Countries where you
+can travel comfortably. Where there are good hotels. Excuse me; but,
+though you say you are ninety-four, you are worse company than a child
+of five with your eternal questions. Why not call me Daddy at once?
+
+THE MAN. I did not know your name was Daddy.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. My name is Joseph Popham Bolge Bluebin Barlow,
+O.M.
+
+THE MAN. That is five men's names. Daddy is shorter. And O.M. will not
+do here. It is our name for certain wild creatures, descendants of
+the aboriginal inhabitants of this coast. They used to be called the
+O'Mulligans. We will stick to Daddy.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. People will think I am your father.
+
+THE MAN [_shocked_] Sh-sh! People here never allude to such
+relationships. It is not quite delicate, is it? What does it matter
+whether you are my father or not?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. My worthy nonagenarian friend: your faculties are
+totally decayed. Could you not find me a guide of my own age?
+
+THE MAN. A young person?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Certainly not. I cannot go about with a young
+person.
+
+THE MAN. Why?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Why! Why!! Why!!! Have you no moral sense?
+
+THE MAN. I shall have to give you up. I cannot understand you.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. But you meant a young woman, didn't you?
+
+THE MAN. I meant simply somebody of your own age. What difference does
+it make whether the person is a man or a woman?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I could not have believed in the existence of
+such scandalous insensibility to the elementary decencies of human
+intercourse.
+
+THE MAN. What are decencies?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_shrieking_] Everyone asks me that.
+
+THE MAN [_taking out a tuning-fork and using it as the woman did_] Zozim
+on Burrin Pier to Zoo Ennistymon I have found the discouraged shortliver
+he has been talking to a secondary and is much worse I am too old he is
+asking for someone of his own age or younger come if you can. [_He puts
+up his fork and turns to the Elderly Gentleman_]. Zoo is a girl of
+fifty, and rather childish at that. So perhaps she may make you happy.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Make me happy! A bluestocking of fifty! Thank
+you.
+
+THE MAN. Bluestocking? The effort to make out your meaning is fatiguing.
+Besides, you are talking too much to me: I am old enough to discourage
+you. Let us be silent until Zoo comes. [_He turns his back on the
+Elderly Gentleman, and sits down on the edge of the pier, with his legs
+dangling over the water_].
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Certainly. I have no wish to force my
+conversation on any man who does not desire it. Perhaps you would like
+to take a nap. If so, pray do not stand on ceremony.
+
+THE MAN. What is a nap?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_exasperated, going to him and speaking with
+great precision and distinctness_] A nap, my friend, is a brief period
+of sleep which overtakes superannuated persons when they endeavor to
+entertain unwelcome visitors or to listen to scientific lectures. Sleep.
+Sleep. [_Bawling into his ear_] Sleep.
+
+THE MAN. I tell you I am nearly a secondary. I never sleep.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_awestruck_] Good Heavens!
+
+_A young woman with the number one on her cap arrives by land. She looks
+no older than Savvy Barnabas, whom she somewhat resembles, looked a
+thousand years before. Younger, if anything._
+
+THE YOUNG WOMAN. Is this the patient?
+
+THE MAN [_scrambling up_] This is Zoo. [_To Zoo_] Call him Daddy.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_vehemently_] No.
+
+THE MAN [_ignoring the interruption_] Bless you for taking him off my
+hands! I have had as much of him as I can bear. [_He goes down the steps
+and disappears_].
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_ironically taking off his hat and making a
+sweeping bow from the edge of the pier in the direction of the
+Atlantic Ocean_] Good afternoon, sir; and thank you very much for your
+extraordinary politeness, your exquisite consideration for my feelings,
+your courtly manners. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. [_Clapping
+his hat on again_] Pig! Ass!
+
+ZOO [_laughs very heartily at him_]!!!
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_turning sharply on her_] Good afternoon, madam.
+I am sorry to have had to put your friend in his place; but I find that
+here as elsewhere it is necessary to assert myself if I am to be treated
+with proper consideration. I had hoped that my position as a guest would
+protect me from insult.
+
+ZOO. Putting my friend in his place. That is some poetic expression, is
+it not? What does it mean?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Pray, is there no one in these islands who
+understands plain English?
+
+ZOO. Well, nobody except the oracles. They have to make a special
+historical study of what we call the dead thought.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Dead thought! I have heard of the dead languages,
+but never of the dead thought.
+
+ZOO. Well, thoughts die sooner than languages. I understand your
+language; but I do not always understand your thought. The oracles will
+understand you perfectly. Have you had your consultation yet?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I did not come to consult the oracle, madam. I am
+here simply as a gentleman travelling for pleasure in the company of my
+daughter, who is the wife of the British Prime Minister, and of General
+Aufsteig, who, I may tell you in confidence, is really the Emperor of
+Turania, the greatest military genius of the age.
+
+ZOO. Why should you travel for pleasure! Can you not enjoy yourself at
+home?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I wish to see the World.
+
+ZOO. It is too big. You can see a bit of it anywhere.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_out of patience_] Damn it, madam, you don't want
+to spend your life looking at the same bit of it! [_Checking himself_] I
+beg your pardon for swearing in your presence.
+
+ZOO. Oh! That is swearing, is it? I have read about that. It sounds
+quite pretty. Dammitmaddam, dammitmaddam, dammitmaddam, dammitmaddam.
+Say it as often as you please: I like it.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_expanding with intense relief_] Bless you for
+those profane but familiar words! Thank you, thank you. For the first
+time since I landed in this terrible country I begin to feel at home.
+The strain which was driving me mad relaxes: I feel almost as if I were
+at the club. Excuse my taking the only available seat: I am not so young
+as I was. [_He sits on the bollard_]. Promise me that you will not hand
+me over to one of these dreadful tertiaries or secondaries or whatever
+you call them.
+
+ZOO. Never fear. They had no business to give you in charge to Zozim.
+You see he is just on the verge of becoming a secondary; and these
+adolescents will give themselves the airs of tertiaries. You naturally
+feel more at home with a flapper like me. [_She makes herself
+comfortable on the sacks_].
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Flapper? What does that mean?
+
+ZOO. It is an archaic word which we still use to describe a female who
+is no longer a girl and is not yet quite adult.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. A very agreeable age to associate with, I find. I
+am recovering rapidly. I have a sense of blossoming like a flower. May I
+ask your name?
+
+ZOO. Zoo.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Miss Zoo.
+
+ZOO. Not Miss Zoo. Zoo.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Precisely. Er--Zoo what?
+
+ZOO. No. Not Zoo What. Zoo. Nothing but Zoo.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_puzzled_] Mrs Zoo, perhaps.
+
+ZOO. No. Zoo. Cant you catch it? Zoo.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Of course. Believe me, I did not really think you
+were married: you are obviously too young; but here it is so hard to
+feel sure--er--
+
+ZOO [_hopelessly puzzled_] What?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Marriage makes a difference, you know. One can
+say things to a married lady that would perhaps be in questionable taste
+to anyone without that experience.
+
+ZOO. You are getting out of my depth: I dont understand a word you are
+saying. Married and questionable taste convey nothing to me. Stop,
+though. Is married an old form of the word mothered?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Very likely. Let us drop the subject. Pardon me
+for embarrassing you. I should not have mentioned it.
+
+ZOO. What does embarrassing mean?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Well, really! I should have thought that so
+natural and common a condition would be understood as long as human
+nature lasted. To embarrass is to bring a blush to the cheek.
+
+ZOO. What is a blush?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_amazed_] Dont you blush???
+
+ZOO. Never heard of it. We have a word flush, meaning a rush of blood to
+the skin. I have noticed it in my babies, but not after the age of two.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Your babies!!! I fear I am treading on very
+delicate ground; but your appearance is extremely youthful; and if I may
+ask how many--?
+
+ZOO. Only four as yet. It is a long business with us. I specialize in
+babies. My first was such a success that they made me go on. I--
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_reeling on the bollard_] Oh! dear!
+
+ZOO. Whats the matter? Anything wrong?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. In Heaven's name, madam, how old are you?
+
+ZOO. Fifty-six.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. My knees are trembling. I fear I am really ill.
+Not so young as I was.
+
+ZOO. I noticed that you are not strong on your legs yet. You have many
+of the ways and weaknesses of a baby. No doubt that is why I feel called
+on to mother you. You certainly are a very silly little Daddy.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_stimulated by indignation_] My name, I repeat,
+is Joseph Popham Bolge Bluebin Barlow, O.M.
+
+ZOO. What a ridiculously long name! I cant call you all that. What did
+your mother call you?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. You recall the bitterest struggles of my
+childhood. I was sensitive on the point. Children suffer greatly from
+absurd nicknames. My mother thoughtlessly called me Iddy Toodles. I
+was called Iddy until I went to school, when I made my first stand for
+children's rights by insisting on being called at least Joe. At fifteen
+I refused to answer to anything shorter than Joseph. At eighteen I
+discovered that the name Joseph was supposed to indicate an unmanly
+prudery because of some old story about a Joseph who rejected the
+advances of his employer's wife: very properly in my opinion. I then
+became Popham to my family and intimate friends, and Mister Barlow
+to the rest of the world. My mother slipped back into Iddy when her
+faculties began to fail her, poor woman; but I could not resent that, at
+her age.
+
+ZOO. Do you mean to say that your mother bothered about you after you
+were ten?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Naturally, madam. She was my mother. What would
+you have had her do?
+
+ZOO. Go on to the next, of course. After eight or nine children become
+quite uninteresting, except to themselves. I shouldnt know my two eldest
+if I met them.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_again drooping_] I am dying. Let me die. I wish
+to die.
+
+ZOO [_going to him quickly and supporting him_] Hold up. Sit up
+straight. Whats the matter?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_faintly_] My spine, I think. Shock. Concussion.
+
+ZOO [_maternally_] Pow wow wow! What is there to shock you? [_Shaking
+him playfully_] There! Sit up; and be good.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_still feebly_] Thank you. I am better now.
+
+ZOO [_resuming her seat on the sacks_] But what was all the rest of that
+long name for? There was a lot more of it. Blops Booby or something.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_impressively_] Bolge Bluebin, madam: a
+historical name. Let me inform you that I can trace my family back for
+more than a thousand years, from the Eastern Empire to its ancient seat
+in these islands, to a time when two of my ancestors, Joyce Bolge
+and Hengist Horsa Bluebin, wrestled with one another for the prime
+ministership of the British Empire, and occupied that position
+successively with a glory of which we can in these degenerate days form
+but a faint conception. When I think of these mighty men, lions in war,
+sages in peace, not babblers and charlatans like the pigmies who now
+occupy their places in Baghdad, but strong silent men, ruling an empire
+on which the sun never set, my eyes fill with tears: my heart bursts
+with emotion: I feel that to have lived but to the dawn of manhood in
+their day, and then died for them, would have been a nobler and happier
+lot than the ignominious ease of my present longevity.
+
+ZOO. Longevity! [_she laughs_].
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Yes, madam, relative longevity. As it is, I have
+to be content and proud to know that I am descended from both those
+heroes.
+
+ZOO. You must be descended from every Briton who was alive in their
+time. Dont you know that?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Do not quibble, madam. I bear their names, Bolge
+and Bluebin; and I hope I have inherited something of their majestic
+spirit. Well, they were born in these islands. I repeat, these islands
+were then, incredible as it now seems, the centre of the British Empire.
+When that centre shifted to Baghdad, and the Englishman at last returned
+to the true cradle of his race in Mesopotamia, the western islands were
+cast off, as they had been before by the Roman Empire. But it was to the
+British race, and in these islands, that the greatest miracle in history
+occurred.
+
+ZOO. Miracle?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Yes: the first man to live three hundred years
+was an Englishman. The first, that is, since the contemporaries of
+Methuselah.
+
+ZOO. Oh, that!
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Yes, that, as you call it so flippantly. Are you
+aware, madam, that at that immortal moment the English race had lost
+intellectual credit to such an extent that they habitually spoke of
+one another as fatheads? Yet England is now a sacred grove to which
+statesmen from all over the earth come to consult English sages who
+speak with the experience of two and a half centuries of life. The land
+that once exported cotton shirts and hardware now exports nothing but
+wisdom. You see before you, madam, a man utterly weary of the week-end
+riverside hotels of the Euphrates, the minstrels and pierrots on the
+sands of the Persian Gulf, the toboggans and funiculars of the Hindoo
+Koosh. Can you wonder that I turn, with a hungry heart, to the mystery
+and beauty of these haunted islands, thronged with spectres from a magic
+past, made holy by the footsteps of the wise men of the West. Consider
+this island on which we stand, the last foothold of man on this side
+of the Atlantic: this Ireland, described by the earliest bards as an
+emerald gem set in a silver sea! Can I, a scion of the illustrious
+British race, ever forget that when the Empire transferred its seat to
+the East, and said to the turbulent Irish race which it had oppressed
+but never conquered, 'At last we leave you to yourselves; and much good
+may it do you,' the Irish as one man uttered the historic shout 'No:
+we'll be damned if you do,' and emigrated to the countries where there
+was still a Nationalist question, to India, Persia, and Corea, to
+Morocco, Tunis, and Tripoli. In these countries they were ever
+foremost in the struggle for national independence; and the world rang
+continually with the story of their sufferings and wrongs. And what poem
+can do justice to the end, when it came at last? Hardly two hundred
+years had elapsed when the claims of nationality were so universally
+conceded that there was no longer a single country on the face of the
+earth with a national grievance or a national movement. Think of the
+position of the Irish, who had lost all their political faculties by
+disuse except that of nationalist agitation, and who owed their position
+as the most interesting race on earth solely to their sufferings! The
+very countries they had helped to set free boycotted them as intolerable
+bores. The communities which had once idolized them as the incarnation
+of all that is adorable in the warm heart and witty brain, fled from
+them as from a pestilence. To regain their lost prestige, the Irish
+claimed the city of Jerusalem, on the ground that they were the lost
+tribes of Israel; but on their approach the Jews abandoned the city
+and redistributed themselves throughout Europe. It was then that these
+devoted Irishmen, not one of whom had ever seen Ireland, were counselled
+by an English Archbishop, the father of the oracles, to go back to their
+own country. This had never once occurred to them, because there was
+nothing to prevent them and nobody to forbid them. They jumped at the
+suggestion. They landed here: here in Galway Bay, on this very ground.
+When they reached the shore the older men and women flung themselves
+down and passionately kissed the soil of Ireland, calling on the young
+to embrace the earth that had borne their ancestors. But the young
+looked gloomily on, and said 'There is no earth, only stone.' You will
+see by looking round you why they said that: the fields here are of
+stone: the hills are capped with granite. They all left for England next
+day; and no Irishman ever again confessed to being Irish, even to his
+own children; so that when that generation passed away the Irish race
+vanished from human knowledge. And the dispersed Jews did the same lest
+they should be sent back to Palestine. Since then the world, bereft of
+its Jews and its Irish, has been a tame dull place. Is there no pathos
+for you in this story? Can you not understand now why I am come to visit
+the scene of this tragic effacement of a race of heroes and poets?
+
+ZOO. We still tell our little children stories like that, to help them
+to understand. But such things do not happen really. That scene of the
+Irish landing here and kissing the ground might have happened to a
+hundred people. It couldn't have happened to a hundred thousand: you
+know that as well as I do. And what a ridiculous thing to call people
+Irish because they live in Ireland! you might as well call them Airish
+because they live in air. They must be just the same as other people.
+Why do you shortlivers persist in making up silly stories about the
+world and trying to act as if they were true? Contact with truth hurts
+and frightens you: you escape from it into an imaginary vacuum in which
+you can indulge your desires and hopes and loves and hates without any
+obstruction from the solid facts of life. You love to throw dust in your
+own eyes.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. It is my turn now, madam, to inform you that I do
+not understand a single word you are saying. I should have thought that
+the use of a vacuum for removing dust was a mark of civilization rather
+than of savagery.
+
+ZOO [_giving him up as hopeless_] Oh, Daddy, Daddy: I can hardly believe
+that you are human, you are so stupid. It was well said of your people
+in the olden days, 'Dust thou art; and to dust thou shalt return.'
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_nobly_] My body is dust, madam: not my soul.
+What does it matter what my body is made of? the dust of the ground,
+the particles of the air, or even the slime of the ditch? The important
+thing is that when my Creator took it, whatever it was, He breathed into
+its nostrils the breath of life; and Man became a living soul. Yes,
+madam, a living soul. I am not the dust of the ground: I am a living
+soul. That is an exalting, a magnificent thought. It is also a great
+scientific fact. I am not interested in the chemicals and the microbes:
+I leave them to the chumps and noodles, to the blockheads and the
+muckrakers who are incapable of their own glorious destiny, and
+unconscious of their own divinity. They tell me there are leucocytes
+in my blood, and sodium and carbon in my flesh. I thank them for the
+information, and tell them that there are blackbeetles in my kitchen,
+washing soda in my laundry, and coal in my cellar. I do not deny their
+existence; but I keep them in their proper place, which is not, if I may
+be allowed to use an antiquated form of expression, the temple of the
+Holy Ghost. No doubt you think me behind the times; but I rejoice in my
+enlightenment; and I recoil from your ignorance, your blindness, your
+imbecility. Humanly I pity you. Intellectually I despise you.
+
+ZOO. Bravo, Daddy! You have the root of the matter in you. You will not
+die of discouragement after all.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I have not the smallest intention of doing so,
+madam. I am no longer young; and I have moments of weakness; but when
+I approach this subject the divine spark in me kindles and glows, the
+corruptible becomes incorruptible, and the mortal Bolge Bluebin Barlow
+puts on immortality. On this ground I am your equal, even if you survive
+me by ten thousand years.
+
+ZOO. Yes; but what do we know about this breath of life that puffs you
+up so exaltedly? Just nothing. So let us shake hands as cultivated
+Agnostics, and change the subject.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Cultivated fiddlesticks, madam! You cannot change
+this subject until the heavens and the earth pass away. I am not an
+Agnostic: I am a gentleman. When I believe a thing I say I believe it:
+when I don't believe it I say I don't believe it. I do not shirk my
+responsibilities by pretending that I know nothing and therefore can
+believe nothing. We cannot disclaim knowledge and shirk responsibility.
+We must proceed on assumptions of some sort or we cannot form a human
+society.
+
+ZOO. The assumptions must be scientific, Daddy. We must live by science
+in the long run.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I have the utmost respect, madam, for the
+magnificent discoveries which we owe to science. But any fool can make
+a discovery. Every baby has to discover more in the first years of its
+life than Roger Bacon ever discovered in his laboratory. When I was
+seven years old I discovered the sting of the wasp. But I do not ask
+you to worship me on that account. I assure you, madam, the merest
+mediocrities can discover the most surprising facts about the physical
+universe as soon as they are civilized enough to have time to study
+these things, and to invent instruments and apparatus for research. But
+what is the consequence? Their discoveries discredit the simple stories
+of our religion. At first we had no idea of astronomical space. We
+believed the sky to be only the ceiling of a room as large as the earth,
+with another room on top of it. Death was to us a going upstairs into
+that room, or, if we did not obey the priests, going downstairs into
+the coal cellar. We founded our religion, our morality, our laws, our
+lessons, our poems, our prayers, on that simple belief. Well, the moment
+men became astronomers and made telescopes, their belief perished. When
+they could no longer believe in the sky, they found that they could no
+longer believe in their Deity, because they had always thought of him
+as living in the sky. When the priests themselves ceased to believe in
+their Deity and began to believe in astronomy, they changed their name
+and their dress, and called themselves doctors and men of science. They
+set up a new religion in which there was no Deity, but only wonders
+and miracles, with scientific instruments and apparatus as the wonder
+workers. Instead of worshipping the greatness and wisdom of the Deity,
+men gaped foolishly at the million billion miles of space and worshipped
+the astronomer as infallible and omniscient. They built temples for his
+telescopes. Then they looked into their own bodies with microscopes, and
+found there, not the soul they had formerly believed in, but millions of
+micro-organisms; so they gaped at these as foolishly as at the millions
+of miles, and built microscope temples in which horrible sacrifices
+were offered. They even gave their own bodies to be sacrificed by the
+microscope man, who was worshipped, like the astronomer, as infallible
+and omniscient. Thus our discoveries instead of increasing our wisdom,
+only destroyed the little childish wisdom we had. All I can grant you is
+that they increased our knowledge.
+
+ZOO. Nonsense! Consciousness of a fact is not knowledge of it: if it
+were, the fish would know more of the sea than the geographers and the
+naturalists.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. That is an extremely acute remark, madam. The
+dullest fish could not possibly know less of the majesty of the ocean
+than many geographers and naturalists of my acquaintance.
+
+ZOO. Just so. And the greatest fool on earth, by merely looking at a
+mariners' compass, may become conscious of the fact that the needle
+turns always to the pole. Is he any the less a fool with that
+consciousness than he was without it?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Only a more conceited one, madam, no doubt.
+Still, I do not quite see how you can be aware of the existence of a
+thing without knowing it.
+
+ZOO. Well, you can see a man without knowing him, can you not?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_illuminated_] Oh how true! Of course, of course.
+There is a member of the Travellers' Club who has questioned the
+veracity of an experience of mine at the South Pole. I see that man
+almost every day when I am at home. But I refuse to know him.
+
+ZOO. If you could see him much more distinctly through a magnifying
+glass, or examine a drop of his blood through a microscope, or dissect
+out all his organs and analyze them chemically, would you know him then?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Certainly not. Any such investigation could
+only increase the disgust with which he inspires me, and make me more
+determined than ever not to know him on any terms.
+
+ZOO. Yet you would be much more conscious of him, would you not?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I should not allow that to commit me to any
+familiarity with the fellow. I have been twice at the Summer Sports at
+the South Pole; and this man pretended he had been to the North Pole,
+which can hardly be said to exist, as it is in the middle of the sea. He
+declared he had hung his hat on it.
+
+ZOO [_laughing_] He knew that travellers are amusing only when they are
+telling lies. Perhaps if you looked at that man through a microscope you
+would find some good in him.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I do not want to find any good in him. Besides,
+madam, what you have just said encourages me to utter an opinion of
+mine which is so advanced! so intellectually daring! that I have never
+ventured to confess to it before, lest I should be imprisoned for
+blasphemy, or even burnt alive.
+
+ZOO. Indeed! What opinion is that?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_after looking cautiously round_] I do not
+approve of microscopes. I never have.
+
+ZOO. You call that advanced! Oh, Daddy, that is pure obscurantism.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Call it so if you will, madam; but I maintain
+that it is dangerous to shew too much to people who do not know what
+they are looking at. I think that a man who is sane as long as he looks
+at the world through his own eyes is very likely to become a dangerous
+madman if he takes to looking at the world through telescopes and
+microscopes. Even when he is telling fairy stories about giants and
+dwarfs, the giants had better not be too big nor the dwarfs too small
+and too malicious. Before the microscope came, our fairy stories only
+made the children's flesh creep pleasantly, and did not frighten
+grown-up persons at all. But the microscope men terrified themselves and
+everyone else out of their wits with the invisible monsters they saw:
+poor harmless little things that die at the touch of a ray of sunshine,
+and are themselves the victims of all the diseases they are supposed to
+produce! Whatever the scientific people may say, imagination without
+microscopes was kindly and often courageous, because it worked on things
+of which it had some real knowledge. But imagination with microscopes,
+working on a terrifying spectacle of millions of grotesque creatures
+of whose nature it had no knowledge, became a cruel, terror-stricken,
+persecuting delirium. Are you aware, madam, that a general massacre
+of men of science took place in the twenty-first century of the
+pseudo-Christian era, when all their laboratories were demolished, and
+all their apparatus destroyed?
+
+ZOO. Yes: the shortlived are as savage in their advances as in their
+relapses. But when Science crept back, it had been taught its place. The
+mere collectors of anatomical or chemical facts were not supposed to
+know more about Science than the collector of used postage stamps about
+international trade or literature. The scientific terrorist who was
+afraid to use a spoon or a tumbler until he had dipt it in some
+poisonous acid to kill the microbes, was no longer given titles,
+pensions, and monstrous powers over the bodies of other people: he was
+sent to an asylum, and treated there until his recovery. But all that is
+an old story: the extension of life to three hundred years has provided
+the human race with capable leaders, and made short work of such
+childish stuff.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_pettishly_] You seem to credit every advance in
+civilization to your inordinately long lives. Do you not know that this
+question was familiar to men who died before they had reached my own
+age?
+
+ZOO. Oh yes: one or two of them hinted at it in a feeble way. An
+ancient writer whose name has come down to us in several forms, such
+as Shakespear, Shelley, Sheridan, and Shoddy, has a remarkable passage
+about your dispositions being horridly shaken by thoughts beyond the
+reaches of your souls. That does not come to much, does it?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. At all events, madam, I may remind you, if you
+come to capping ages, that whatever your secondaries and tertiaries may
+be, you are younger than I am.
+
+ZOO. Yes, Daddy; but it is not the number of years we have behind us,
+but the number we have before us, that makes us careful and responsible
+and determined to find out the truth about everything. What does it
+matter to you whether anything is true or not? your flesh is as grass:
+you come up like a flower, and wither in your second childhood. A lie
+will last your time: it will not last mine. If I knew I had to die in
+twenty years it would not be worth my while to educate myself: I should
+not bother about anything but having a little pleasure while I lasted.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Young woman: you are mistaken. Shortlived as we
+are, we--the best of us, I mean--regard civilization and learning, art
+and science, as an ever-burning torch, which passes from the hand of one
+generation to the hand of the next, each generation kindling it to a
+brighter, prouder flame. Thus each lifetime, however short, contributes
+a brick to a vast and growing edifice, a page to a sacred volume, a
+chapter to a Bible, a Bible to a literature. We may be insects; but like
+the coral insect we build islands which become continents: like the bee
+we store sustenance for future communities. The individual perishes;
+but the race is immortal. The acorn of today is the oak of the next
+millennium. I throw my stone on the cairn and die; but later comers add
+another stone and yet another; and lo! a mountain. I--
+
+ZOO [_interrupts him by laughing heartily at him_]!!!!!!
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_with offended dignity_] May I ask what I have
+said that calls for this merriment?
+
+ZOO. Oh, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, you are a funny little man, with your
+torches, and your flames, and your bricks and edifices and pages and
+volumes and chapters and coral insects and bees and acorns and stones
+and mountains.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Metaphors, madam. Metaphors merely.
+
+ZOO. Images, images, images. I was talking about men, not about images.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I was illustrating--not, I hope, quite
+infelicitously--the great march of Progress. I was shewing you how,
+shortlived as we orientals are, mankind gains in stature from generation
+to generation, from epoch to epoch, from barbarism to civilization, from
+civilization to perfection.
+
+ZOO. I see. The father grows to be six feet high, and hands on his six
+feet to his son, who adds another six feet and becomes twelve feet high,
+and hands his twelve feet on to his son, who is full-grown at eighteen
+feet, and so on. In a thousand years you would all be three or four
+miles high. At that rate your ancestors Bilge and Bluebeard, whom you
+call giants, must have been about quarter of an inch high.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I am not here to bandy quibbles and paradoxes
+with a girl who blunders over the greatest names in history. I am in
+earnest. I am treating a solemn theme seriously. I never said that the
+son of a man six feet high would be twelve feet high.
+
+ZOO. You didn't mean that?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Most certainly not.
+
+ZOO. Then you didn't mean anything. Now listen to me, you little
+ephemeral thing. I knew quite well what you meant by your torch handed
+on from generation to generation. But every time that torch is handed
+on, it dies down to the tiniest spark; and the man who gets it can
+rekindle it only by his own light. You are no taller than Bilge or
+Bluebeard; and you are no wiser. Their wisdom, such as it was, perished
+with them: so did their strength, if their strength ever existed outside
+your imagination. I do not know how old you are: you look about five
+hundred--
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Five hundred! Really, madam--
+
+ZOO [_continuing_]; but I know, of course, that you are an ordinary
+shortliver. Well, your wisdom is only such wisdom as a man can have
+before he has had experience enough to distinguish his wisdom from his
+folly, his destiny from his delusions, his--
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. In short, such wisdom as your own.
+
+ZOO. No, no, no, no. How often must I tell you that we are made wise not
+by the recollections of our past, but by the responsibilities of our
+future. I shall be more reckless when I am a tertiary than I am today.
+If you cannot understand that, at least you must admit that I have
+learnt from tertiaries. I have seen their work and lived under their
+institutions. Like all young things I rebelled against them; and in
+their hunger for new lights and new ideas they listened to me and
+encouraged me to rebel. But my ways did not work; and theirs did; and
+they were able to tell me why. They have no power over me except that
+power: they refuse all other power; and the consequence is that there
+are no limits to their power except the limits they set themselves. You
+are a child governed by children, who make so many mistakes and are so
+naughty that you are in continual rebellion against them; and as they
+can never convince you that they are right: they can govern you only by
+beating you, imprisoning you, torturing you, killing you if you disobey
+them without being strong enough to kill or torture them.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. That may be an unfortunate fact. I condemn it and
+deplore it. But our minds are greater than the facts. We know better.
+The greatest ancient teachers, followed by the galaxy of Christs who
+arose in the twentieth century, not to mention such comparatively modern
+spiritual leaders as Blitherinjam, Tosh, and Spiffkins, all taught that
+punishment and revenge, coercion and militarism, are mistakes, and that
+the golden rule--
+
+ZOO. [_interrupting_] Yes, yes, yes, Daddy: we longlived people know
+that quite well. But did any of their disciples ever succeed in
+governing you for a single day on their Christ-like principles? It
+is not enough to know what is good: you must be able to do it. They
+couldn't do it because they did not live long enough to find out how
+to do it, or to outlive the childish passions that prevented them from
+really wanting to do it. You know very well that they could only keep
+order--such as it was--by the very coercion and militarism they were
+denouncing and deploring. They had actually to kill one another for
+preaching their own gospel, or be killed themselves.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. The blood of the martyrs, madam, is the seed of
+the Church.
+
+ZOO. More images, Daddy! The blood of the shortlived falls on stony
+ground.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_rising, very testy_] You are simply mad on the
+subject of longevity. I wish you would change it. It is rather personal
+and in bad taste. Human nature is human nature, longlived or shortlived,
+and always will be.
+
+ZOO. Then you give up the idea of progress? You cry off the torch, and
+the brick, and the acorn, and all the rest of it?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I do nothing of the sort. I stand for progress
+and for freedom broadening down from precedent to precedent.
+
+ZOO. You are certainly a true Briton.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I am proud of it. But in your mouth I feel that
+the compliment hides some insult; so I do not thank you for it.
+
+ZOO. All I meant was that though Britons sometimes say quite clever
+things and deep things as well as silly and shallow things, they always
+forget them ten minutes after they have uttered them.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Leave it at that, madam: leave it at that.
+[_He sits down again_]. Even a Pope is not expected to be continually
+pontificating. Our flashes of inspiration shew that our hearts are in
+the right place.
+
+ZOO. Of course. You cannot keep your heart in any place but the right
+place.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Tcha!
+
+ZOO. But you can keep your hands in the wrong place. In your neighbor's
+pockets, for example. So, you see, it is your hands that really matter.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_exhausted_] Well, a woman must have the last
+word. I will not dispute it with you.
+
+ZOO. Good. Now let us go back to the really interesting subject of our
+discussion. You remember? The slavery of the shortlived to images and
+metaphors.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_aghast_] Do you mean to say, madam, that after
+having talked my head off, and reduced me to despair and silence by your
+intolerable loquacity, you actually propose to begin all over again? I
+shall leave you at once.
+
+ZOO. You must not. I am your nurse; and you must stay with me.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I absolutely decline to do anything of the sort
+[_he rises and walks away with marked dignity_].
+
+ZOO [_using her tuning-fork_] Zoo on Burrin Pier to Oracle Police at
+Ennistymon have you got me?... What?... I am picking you up now but you
+are flat to my pitch.... Just a shade sharper.... That's better: still a
+little more.... Got you: right. Isolate Burrin Pier quick.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_is heard to yell_] Oh!
+
+ZOO [_still intoning_] Thanks.... Oh nothing serious I am nursing a
+shortliver and the silly creature has run away he has discouraged
+himself very badly by gadding about and talking to secondaries and I
+must keep him strictly to heel.
+
+_The Elderly Gentleman returns, indignant._
+
+ZOO. Here he is you can release the Pier thanks. Goodbye. [_She puts up
+her tuning-fork_].
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. This is outrageous. When I tried to step off the
+pier on to the road, I received a shock, followed by an attack of pins
+and needles which ceased only when I stepped back on to the stones.
+
+ZOO. Yes: there is an electric hedge there. It is a very old and very
+crude method of keeping animals from straying.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. We are perfectly familiar with it in Baghdad,
+madam; but I little thought I should live to have it ignominiously
+applied to myself. You have actually Kiplingized me.
+
+ZOO. Kiplingized! What is that?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. About a thousand years ago there were two authors
+named Kipling. One was an eastern and a writer of merit: the other,
+being a western, was of course only an amusing barbarian. He is said to
+have invented the electric hedge. I consider that in using it on me you
+have taken a very great liberty.
+
+ZOO. What is a liberty?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_exasperated_] I shall not explain, madam. I
+believe you know as well as I do. [_He sits down on the bollard in
+dudgeon_].
+
+ZOO. No: even you can tell me things I do not know. Havnt you noticed
+that all the time you have been here we have been asking you questions?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Noticed it! It has almost driven me mad. Do you
+see my white hair? It was hardly grey when I landed: there were patches
+of its original auburn still distinctly discernible.
+
+ZOO. That is one of the symptoms of discouragement. But have you noticed
+something much more important to yourself: that is, that you have never
+asked us any questions, although we know so much more than you do?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I am not a child, madam. I believe I have had
+occasion to say that before. And I am an experienced traveller. I know
+that what the traveller observes must really exist, or he could not
+observe it. But what the natives tell him is invariably pure fiction.
+
+ZOO. Not here, Daddy. With us life is too long for telling lies. They
+all get found out. Youd better ask me questions while you have the
+chance.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. If I have occasion to consult the oracle I shall
+address myself to a proper one: to a tertiary: not to a primary flapper
+playing at being an oracle. If you are a nurserymaid, attend to your
+duties; and do not presume to ape your elders.
+
+ZOO. [_rising ominously and reddening_] You silly--
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_thundering_] Silence! Do you hear! Hold your
+tongue.
+
+ZOO. Something very disagreeable is happening to me. I feel hot all
+over. I have a horrible impulse to injure you. What have you done to me?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_triumphant_] Aha! I have made you blush. Now you
+know what blushing means. Blushing with shame!
+
+ZOO. Whatever you are doing, it is something so utterly evil that if you
+do not stop I will kill you.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_apprehending his danger_] Doubtless you think it
+safe to threaten an old man--
+
+ZOO [_fiercely_] Old! You are a child: an evil child. We kill evil
+children here. We do it even against our own wills by instinct. Take
+care.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_rising with crestfallen courtesy_] I did not
+mean to hurt your feelings. I--[_swallowing the apology with an effort_]
+I beg your pardon. [_He takes off his hat, and bows_].
+
+ZOO. What does that mean?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I withdraw what I said.
+
+ZOO. How can you withdraw what you said?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I can say no more than that I am sorry.
+
+ZOO. You have reason to be. That hideous sensation you gave me is
+subsiding; but you have had a very narrow escape. Do not attempt to kill
+me again; for at the first sign in your voice or face I shall strike you
+dead.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. _I_ attempt to kill you! What a monstrous
+accusation!
+
+ZOO [_frowns_]!
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_prudently correcting himself_] I mean
+misunderstanding. I never dreamt of such a thing. Surely you cannot
+believe that I am a murderer.
+
+ZOO. I know you are a murderer. It is not merely that you threw words at
+me as if they were stones, meaning to hurt me. It was the instinct to
+kill that you roused in me. I did not know it was in my nature: never
+before has it wakened and sprung out at me, warning me to kill or be
+killed. I must now reconsider my whole political position. I am no
+longer a Conservative.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_dropping his hat_] Gracious Heavens! you have
+lost your senses. I am at the mercy of a madwoman: I might have known it
+from the beginning. I can bear no more of this. [_Offering his chest for
+the sacrifice_] Kill me at once; and much good may my death do you!
+
+ZOO. It would be useless unless all the other shortlivers were killed
+at the same time. Besides, it is a measure which should be taken
+politically and constitutionally, not privately. However, I am prepared
+to discuss it with you.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No, no, no. I had much rather discuss your
+intention of withdrawing from the Conservative party. How the
+Conservatives have tolerated your opinions so far is more than I can
+imagine: I can only conjecture that you have contributed very liberally
+to the party funds. [_He picks up his hat, and sits down again_].
+
+ZOO. Do not babble so senselessly: our chief political controversy is
+the most momentous in the world for you and your like.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_interested_] Indeed? Pray, may I ask what it is?
+I am a keen politician, and may perhaps be of some use. [_He puts on his
+hat, cocking it slightly_].
+
+ZOO. We have two great parties: the Conservative party and the
+Colonization party. The Colonizers are of opinion that we should
+increase our numbers and colonize. The Conservatives hold that we should
+stay as we are, confined to these islands, a race apart, wrapped up in
+the majesty of our wisdom on a soil held as holy ground for us by an
+adoring world, with our sacred frontier traced beyond dispute by the
+sea. They contend that it is our destiny to rule the world, and that
+even when we were shortlived we did so. They say that our power and our
+peace depend on our remoteness, our exclusiveness, our separation, and
+the restriction of our numbers. Five minutes ago that was my political
+faith. Now I do not think there should be any shortlived people at all.
+[_She throws herself again carelessly on the sacks_].
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Am I to infer that you deny my right to live
+because I allowed myself--perhaps injudiciously--to give you a slight
+scolding?
+
+ZOO. Is it worth living for so short a time? Are you any good to
+yourself?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_stupent_] Well, upon my soul!
+
+ZOO. It is such a very little soul. You only encourage the sin of pride
+in us, and keep us looking down at you instead of up to something higher
+than ourselves.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Is not that a selfish view, madam? Think of the
+good you do us by your oracular counsels!
+
+ZOO. What good have our counsels ever done you? You come to us for
+advice when you know you are in difficulties. But you never know you are
+in difficulties until twenty years after you have made the mistakes that
+led to them; and then it is too late. You cannot understand our advice:
+you often do more mischief by trying to act on it than if you had been
+left to your own childish devices. If you were not childish you would
+not come to us at all: you would learn from experience that your
+consultations of the oracle are never of any real help to you. You draw
+wonderful imaginary pictures of us, and write fictitious tales and poems
+about our beneficent operations in the past, our wisdom, our justice,
+our mercy: stories in which we often appear as sentimental dupes of your
+prayers and sacrifices; but you do it only to conceal from yourselves
+the truth that you are incapable of being helped by us. Your Prime
+Minister pretends that he has come to be guided by the oracle; but we
+are not deceived: we know quite well that he has come here so that
+when he goes back he may have the authority and dignity of one who has
+visited the holy islands and spoken face to face with the ineffable
+ones. He will pretend that all the measures he wishes to take for his
+own purposes have been enjoined on him by the oracle.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. But you forget that the answers of the oracle
+cannot be kept secret or misrepresented. They are written and
+promulgated. The Leader of the Opposition can obtain copies. All the
+nations know them. Secret diplomacy has been totally abolished.
+
+ZOO. Yes: you publish documents; but they are garbled or forged. And
+even if you published our real answers it would make no difference,
+because the shortlived cannot interpret the plainest writings. Your
+scriptures command you in the plainest terms to do exactly the contrary
+of everything your own laws and chosen rulers command and execute. You
+cannot defy Nature. It is a law of Nature that there is a fixed relation
+between conduct and length of life.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I have never heard of any such law, madam.
+
+ZOO. Well, you are hearing of it now.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Let me tell you that we shortlivers, as you call
+us, have lengthened our lives very considerably.
+
+ZOO. How?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. By saving time. By enabling men to cross the
+ocean in an afternoon, and to see and speak to one another when they are
+thousands of miles apart. We hope shortly to organize their labor, and
+press natural forces into their service, so scientifically that the
+burden of labor will cease to be perceptible, leaving common men more
+leisure than they will know what to do with.
+
+ZOO. Daddy: the man whose life is lengthened in this way may be busier
+than a savage; but the difference between such men living seventy years
+and those living three hundred would be all the greater; for to a
+shortliver increase of years is only increase of sorrow; but to a
+long-liver every extra year is a prospect which forces him to stretch
+his faculties to the utmost to face it. Therefore I say that we who
+live three hundred years can be of no use to you who live less than a
+hundred, and that our true destiny is not to advise and govern you, but
+to supplant and supersede you. In that faith I now declare myself a
+Colonizer and an Exterminator.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Oh, steady! steady! Pray! pray! Reflect, I
+implore you. It is possible to colonize without exterminating the
+natives. Would you treat us less mercifully than our barbarous
+forefathers treated the Redskin and the Negro? Are we not, as Britons,
+entitled at least to some reservations?
+
+ZOO. What is the use of prolonging the agony? You would perish slowly
+in our presence, no matter what we did to preserve you. You were almost
+dead when I took charge of you today, merely because you had talked for
+a few minutes to a secondary. Besides, we have our own experience to go
+upon. Have you never heard that our children occasionally revert to the
+ancestral type, and are born shortlived?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_eagerly_] Never. I hope you will not be offended
+if I say that it would be a great comfort to me if I could be placed in
+charge of one of those normal individuals.
+
+ZOO. Abnormal, you mean. What you ask is impossible: we weed them all
+out.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. When you say that you weed them out, you send
+a cold shiver down my spine. I hope you don't mean that you--that
+you--that you assist Nature in any way?
+
+ZOO. Why not? Have you not heard the saying of the Chinese sage Dee
+Ning, that a good garden needs weeding? But it is not necessary for us
+to interfere. We are naturally rather particular as to the conditions on
+which we consent to live. One does not mind the accidental loss of an
+arm or a leg or an eye: after all, no one with two legs is unhappy
+because he has not three; so why should a man with one be unhappy
+because he has not two? But infirmities of mind and temper are quite
+another matter. If one of us has no self-control, or is too weak to bear
+the strain of our truthful life without wincing, or is tormented by
+depraved appetites and superstitions, or is unable to keep free from
+pain and depression, he naturally becomes discouraged, and refuses to
+live.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Good Lord! Cuts his throat, do you mean?
+
+ZOO. No: why should he cut his throat? He simply dies. He wants to. He
+is out of countenance, as we call it.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Well!!! But suppose he is depraved enough not to
+want to die, and to settle the difficulty by killing all the rest of
+you?
+
+ZOO. Oh, he is one of the thoroughly degenerate shortlivers whom we
+occasionally produce. He emigrates.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. And what becomes of him then?
+
+ZOO. You shortlived people always think very highly of him. You accept
+him as what you call a great man.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. You astonish me; and yet I must admit that what
+you tell me accounts for a great deal of the little I know of the
+private life of our great men. We must be very convenient to you as a
+dumping place for your failures.
+
+ZOO. I admit that.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Good. Then if you carry out your plan of
+colonization, and leave no shortlived countries in the world, what will
+you do with your undesirables?
+
+ZOO. Kill them. Our tertiaries are not at all squeamish about killing.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Gracious Powers!
+
+ZOO [_glancing up at the sun_] Come. It is just sixteen o'clock; and you
+have to join your party at half-past in the temple in Galway.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_rising_] Galway! Shall I at last be able to
+boast of having seen that magnificent city?
+
+ZOO. You will be disappointed: we have no cities. There is a temple of
+the oracle: that is all.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Alas! and I came here to fulfil two
+long-cherished dreams. One was to see Galway. It has been said, 'See
+Galway and die.' The other was to contemplate the ruins of London.
+
+ZOO. Ruins! We do not tolerate ruins. Was London a place of any
+importance?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_amazed_] What! London! It was the mightiest city
+of antiquity. [_Rhetorically_] Situate just where the Dover Road crosses
+the Thames, it--
+
+ZOO [_curtly interrupting_] There is nothing there now. Why should
+anybody pitch on such a spot to live? The nearest houses are at a place
+called Strand-on-the-Green: it is very old. Come. We shall go across the
+water. [_She goes down the steps_].
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Sic transit gloria mundi!
+
+ZOO [_from below_] What did you say?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_despairingly_] Nothing. You would not
+understand. [_He goes down the steps_].
+
+
+
+
+ACT II
+
+
+_A courtyard before the columned portico of a temple. The temple door
+is in the middle of the portico. A veiled and robed woman of majestic
+carriage passes along behind the columns towards the entrance. From the
+opposite direction a man of compact figure, clean-shaven, saturnine, and
+self-centred: in short, very like Napoleon I, and wearing a military
+uniform of Napoleonic cut, marches with measured steps; places his hand
+in his lapel in the traditional manner; and fixes the woman with his
+eye. She stops, her attitude expressing haughty amazement at his
+audacity. He is on her right: she on his left._
+
+NAPOLEON [_impressively_] I am the Man of Destiny.
+
+THE VEILED WOMAN [_unimpressed_] How did you get in here?
+
+NAPOLEON. I walked in. I go on until I am stopped. I never am stopped. I
+tell you I am the Man of Destiny.
+
+THE VEILED WOMAN. You will be a man of very short destiny if you wander
+about here without one of our children to guide you. I suppose you
+belong to the Baghdad envoy.
+
+NAPOLEON. I came with him; but I do not belong to him. I belong to
+myself. Direct me to the oracle if you can. If not, do not waste my
+time.
+
+THE VEILED WOMAN. Your time, poor creature, is short. I will not waste
+it. Your envoy and his party will be here presently. The consultation of
+the oracle is arranged for them, and will take place according to the
+prescribed ritual. You can wait here until they come [_she turns to go
+into the temple_].
+
+NAPOLEON. I never wait. [_She stops_]. The prescribed ritual is,
+I believe, the classical one of the pythoness on her tripod, the
+intoxicating fumes arising from the abyss, the convulsions of the
+priestess as she delivers the message of the God, and so on. That sort
+of thing does not impose on me: I use it myself to impose on simpletons.
+I believe that what is, is. I know that what is not, is not. The antics
+of a woman sitting on a tripod and pretending to be drunk do not
+interest me. Her words are put into her mouth, not by a god, but by a
+man three hundred years old, who has had the capacity to profit by his
+experience. I wish to speak to that man face to face, without mummery or
+imposture.
+
+THE VEILED WOMAN. You seem to be an unusually sensible person. But there
+is no old man. I am the oracle on duty today. I am on my way to take my
+place on the tripod, and go through the usual mummery, as you rightly
+call it, to impress your friend the envoy. As you are superior to that
+kind of thing, you may consult me now. [_She leads the way into the
+middle of the courtyard_]. What do you want to know?
+
+NAPOLEON [_following her_] Madam: I have not come all this way to
+discuss matters of State with a woman. I must ask you to direct me to
+one of your oldest and ablest men.
+
+THE ORACLE. None of our oldest and ablest men or women would dream of
+wasting their time on you. You would die of discouragement in their
+presence in less than three hours.
+
+NAPOLEON. You can keep this idle fable of discouragement for people
+credulous enough to be intimidated by it, madam. I do not believe in
+metaphysical forces.
+
+THE ORACLE. No one asks you to. A field is something physical, is it
+not. Well, I have a field.
+
+NAPOLEON. I have several million fields. I am Emperor of Turania.
+
+THE ORACLE. You do not understand. I am not speaking of an agricultural
+field. Do you not know that every mass of matter in motion carries with
+it an invisible gravitational field, every magnet an invisible magnetic
+field, and every living organism a mesmeric field? Even you have a
+perceptible mesmeric field. Feeble as it is, it is the strongest I have
+yet observed in a shortliver.
+
+NAPOLEON. By no means feeble, madam. I understand you now; and I may
+tell you that the strongest characters blench in my presence, and submit
+to my domination. But I do not call that a physical force.
+
+THE ORACLE. What else do you call it, pray? Our physicists deal with it.
+Our mathematicians express its measurements in algebraic equations.
+
+NAPOLEON. Do you mean that they could measure mine?
+
+THE ORACLE. Yes: by a figure infinitely near to zero. Even in us the
+force is negligible during our first century of life. In our second it
+develops quickly, and becomes dangerous to shortlivers who venture into
+its field. If I were not veiled and robed in insulating material you
+could not endure my presence; and I am still a young woman: one hundred
+and seventy if you wish to know exactly.
+
+NAPOLEON [_folding his arms_] I am not intimidated: no woman alive, old
+or young, can put me out of countenance. Unveil, madam. Disrobe. You
+will move this temple as easily as shake me.
+
+THE ORACLE. Very well [_she throws back her veil_].
+
+NAPOLEON [_shrieking, staggering, and covering his eyes_] No. Stop. Hide
+your face again. [_Shutting his eyes and distractedly clutching at his
+throat and heart_] Let me go. Help! I am dying.
+
+THE ORACLE. Do you still wish to consult an older person?
+
+NAPOLEON. No, no. The veil, the veil, I beg you.
+
+THE ORACLE [_replacing the veil_] So.
+
+NAPOLEON. Ouf! One cannot always be at one's best. Twice before in my
+life I have lost my nerve and behaved like a poltroon. But I warn you
+not to judge my quality by these involuntary moments.
+
+THE ORACLE. I have no occasion to judge of your quality. You want my
+advice. Speak quickly; or I shall go about my business.
+
+NAPOLEON [_After a moment's hesitation, sinks respectfully on one knee_]
+I--
+
+THE ORACLE. Oh, rise, rise. Are you so foolish as to offer me this
+mummery which even you despise?
+
+NAPOLEON [_rising_] I knelt in spite of myself. I compliment you on your
+impressiveness, madam.
+
+THE ORACLE [_impatiently_] Time! time! time! time!
+
+NAPOLEON. You will not grudge me the necessary time, madam, when you
+know my case. I am a man gifted with a certain specific talent in a
+degree altogether extraordinary. I am not otherwise a very extraordinary
+person: my family is not influential; and without this talent I should
+cut no particular figure in the world.
+
+THE ORACLE. Why cut a figure in the world?
+
+NAPOLEON. Superiority will make itself felt, madam. But when I say I
+possess this talent I do not express myself accurately. The truth is
+that my talent possesses me. It is genius. It drives me to exercise it.
+I must exercise it. I am great when I exercise it. At other moments I am
+nobody.
+
+THE ORACLE. Well, exercise it. Do you need an oracle to tell you that?
+
+NAPOLEON. Wait. This talent involves the shedding of human blood.
+
+THE ORACLE. Are you a surgeon, or a dentist?
+
+NAPOLEON. Psha! You do not appreciate me, madam. I mean the shedding of
+oceans of blood, the death of millions of men.
+
+THE ORACLE. They object, I suppose.
+
+NAPOLEON. Not at all. They adore me.
+
+THE ORACLE. Indeed!
+
+NAPOLEON. I have never shed blood with my own hand. They kill each
+other: they die with shouts of triumph on their lips. Those who die
+cursing do not curse me. My talent is to organize this slaughter; to
+give mankind this terrible joy which they call glory; to let loose the
+devil in them that peace has bound in chains.
+
+THE ORACLE. And you? Do you share their joy?
+
+NAPOLEON. Not at all. What satisfaction is it to me to see one fool
+pierce the entrails of another with a bayonet? I am a man of princely
+character, but of simple personal tastes and habits. I have the virtues
+of a laborer: industry and indifference to personal comfort. But I must
+rule, because I am so superior to other men that it is intolerable to
+me to be misruled by them. Yet only as a slayer can I become a ruler. I
+cannot be great as a writer: I have tried and failed. I have no talent
+as a sculptor or painter; and as lawyer, preacher, doctor, or actor,
+scores of second-rate men can do as well as I, or better. I am not even
+a diplomatist: I can only play my trump card of force. What I can do
+is to organize war. Look at me! I seem a man like other men, because
+nine-tenths of me is common humanity. But the other tenth is a faculty
+for seeing things as they are that no other man possesses.
+
+THE ORACLE. You mean that you have no imagination?
+
+NAPOLEON [_forcibly_] I mean that I have the only imagination worth
+having: the power of imagining things as they are, even when I cannot
+see them. You feel yourself my superior, I know: nay, you are my
+superior: have I not bowed my knee to you by instinct? Yet I challenge
+you to a test of our respective powers. Can you calculate what the
+methematicians call vectors, without putting a single algebraic symbol
+on paper? Can you launch ten thousand men across a frontier and a chain
+of mountains and know to a mile exactly where they will be at the end
+of seven weeks? The rest is nothing: I got it all from the books at my
+military school. Now this great game of war, this playing with armies
+as other men play with bowls and skittles, is one which I must go on
+playing, partly because a man must do what he can and not what he would
+like to do, and partly because, if I stop, I immediately lose my power
+and become a beggar in the land where I now make men drunk with glory.
+
+THE ORACLE. No doubt then you wish to know how to extricate yourself
+from this unfortunate position?
+
+NAPOLEON. It is not generally considered unfortunate, madam. Supremely
+fortunate rather.
+
+THE ORACLE. If you think so, go on making them drunk with glory. Why
+trouble me with their folly and your vectors?
+
+NAPOLEON. Unluckily, madam, men are not only heroes: they are also
+cowards. They desire glory; but they dread death.
+
+THE ORACLE. Why should they? Their lives are too short to be worth
+living. That is why they think your game of war worth playing.
+
+NAPOLEON. They do not look at it quite in that way. The most worthless
+soldier wants to live for ever. To make him risk being killed by the
+enemy I have to convince him that if he hesitates he will inevitably be
+shot at dawn by his own comrades for cowardice.
+
+THE ORACLE. And if his comrades refuse to shoot him?
+
+NAPOLEON. They will be shot too, of course.
+
+THE ORACLE. By whom?
+
+NAPOLEON. By their comrades.
+
+THE ORACLE. And if they refuse?
+
+NAPOLEON. Up to a certain point they do not refuse.
+
+THE ORACLE. But when that point is reached, you have to do the shooting
+yourself, eh?
+
+NAPOLEON. Unfortunately, madam, when that point is reached, they shoot
+me.
+
+THE ORACLE. Mf! It seems to me they might as well shoot you first as
+last. Why don't they?
+
+NAPOLEON. Because their love of fighting, their desire for glory, their
+shame of being branded as dastards, their instinct to test themselves in
+terrible trials, their fear of being killed or enslaved by the enemy,
+their belief that they are defending their hearths and homes, overcome
+their natural cowardice, and make them willing not only to risk their
+own lives but to kill everyone who refuses to take that risk. But if war
+continues too long, there comes a time when the soldiers, and also the
+taxpayers who are supporting and munitioning them, reach a condition
+which they describe as being fed up. The troops have proved their
+courage, and want to go home and enjoy in peace the glory it has earned
+them. Besides, the risk of death for each soldier becomes a certainty if
+the fighting goes on for ever: he hopes to escape for six months, but
+knows he cannot escape for six years. The risk of bankruptcy for the
+citizen becomes a certainty in the same way. Now what does this mean for
+me?
+
+THE ORACLE. Does that matter in the midst of such calamity?
+
+NAPOLEON. Psha! madam: it is the only thing that matters: the value
+of human life is the value of the greatest living man. Cut off that
+infinitesimal layer of grey matter which distinguishes my brain from
+that of the common man, and you cut down the stature of humanity from
+that of a giant to that of a nobody. I matter supremely: my soldiers do
+not matter at all: there are plenty more where they came from. If you
+kill me, or put a stop to my activity (it is the same thing), the
+nobler part of human life perishes. You must save the world from
+that catastrophe, madam. War has made me popular, powerful, famous,
+historically immortal. But I foresee that if I go on to the end it will
+leave me execrated, dethroned, imprisoned, perhaps executed. Yet if I
+stop fighting I commit suicide as a great man and become a common one.
+How am I to escape the horns of this tragic dilemma? Victory I
+can guarantee: I am invincible. But the cost of victory is the
+demoralization, the depopulation, the ruin of the victors no less than
+of the vanquished. How am I to satisfy my genius by fighting until I
+die? that is my question to you.
+
+THE ORACLE. Were you not rash to venture into these sacred islands with
+such a question on your lips? Warriors are not popular here, my friend.
+
+NAPOLEON. If a soldier were restrained by such a consideration, madam,
+he would no longer be a soldier. Besides [_he produces a pistol_], I
+have not come unarmed.
+
+THE ORACLE. What is that thing?
+
+NAPOLEON. It is an instrument of my profession, madam. I raise this
+hammer; I point the barrel at you; I pull this trigger that is against
+my forefinger; and you fall dead.
+
+THE ORACLE. Shew it to me [_she puts out her hand to take it from him_].
+
+NAPOLEON [_retreating a step_] Pardon me, madam. I never trust my life
+in the hands of a person over whom I have no control.
+
+THE ORACLE [_sternly_] Give it to me [_she raises her hand to her
+veil_].
+
+NAPOLEON [_dropping the pistol and covering his eyes_] Quarter! Kamerad!
+Take it, madam [_he kicks it towards her_]: I surrender.
+
+THE ORACLE. Give me that thing. Do you expect me to stoop for it?
+
+NAPOLEON [_taking his hands from his eyes with an effort_] A poor
+victory, madam [_he picks up the pistol and hands it to her_]: there was
+no vector strategy needed to win it. [Making a pose of his humiliation]
+But enjoy your triumph: you have made me--ME! Cain Adamson Charles
+Napoleon! Emperor of Turania! cry for quarter.
+
+THE ORACLE. The way out of your difficulty, Cain Adamson, is very
+simple.
+
+NAPOLEON [_eagerly_] Good. What is it?
+
+THE ORACLE. To die before the tide of glory turns. Allow me [_she shoots
+him_].
+
+_He falls with a shriek. She throws the pistol away and goes haughtily
+into the temple._
+
+NAPOLEON [_scrambling to his feet_] Murderess! Monster! She-devil!
+Unnatural, inhuman wretch! You deserve to be hanged, guillotined, broken
+on the wheel, burnt alive. No sense of the sacredness of human life! No
+thought for my wife and children! Bitch! Sow! Wanton! [_He picks up the
+pistol_]. And missed me at five yards! Thats a woman all over.
+
+_He is going away whence he came when Zoo arrives and confronts him
+at the head of a party consisting of the British Envoy, the Elderly
+Gentleman, the Envoy's wife, and her daughter, aged about eighteen. The
+envoy, a typical politician, looks like an imperfectly reformed criminal
+disguised by a good tailor. The dress of the ladies is coeval with that
+of the Elderly Gentleman, and suitable for public official ceremonies in
+western capitals at the XVIII-XIX fin de siècle._
+
+_They file in under the portico. Zoo immediately comes out imperiously
+to Napoleon's right, whilst the Envoy's wife hurries effusively to his
+left. The Envoy meanwhile passes along behind the columns to the door,
+followed by his daughter. The Elderly Gentleman stops just where he
+entered, to see why Zoo has swooped so abruptly on the Emperor of
+Turania._
+
+ZOO [_to Napoleon, severely_] What are you doing here by yourself? You
+have no business to go about here alone. What was that noise just now?
+What is that in your hand?
+
+_Napoleon glares at her in speechless fury; pockets the pistol; and
+produces a whistle._
+
+THE ENVOY'S WIFE. Arnt you coming with us to the oracle, sire?
+
+NAPOLEON. To hell with the oracle, and with you too [_he turns to go_]!
+
+
+    THE ENVOY'S WIFE} [_together_] {Oh, sire!!
+    ZOO} {Where are you going?}
+
+
+NAPOLEON. To fetch the police. [_He goes out past Zoo, almost jostling
+her, and blowing piercing blasts on his whistle_].
+
+ZOO [_whipping out her tuning-fork and intoning_] Hallo Galway Central.
+[_The whistling continues_]. Stand by to isolate. [_To the Elderly
+Gentleman, who is staring after the whistling Emperor_] How far has he
+gone?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. To that curious statue of a fat old man.
+
+ZOO [_quickly, intoning_] Isolate the Falstaff monument isolate hard.
+Paralyze--[_the whistling stops_]. Thank you. [_She puts up her
+tuning-fork_]. He shall not move a muscle until I come to fetch him.
+
+THE ENVOY'S WIFE. Oh! he will be frightfully angry! Did you hear what he
+said to me?
+
+ZOO. Much we care for his anger!
+
+THE DAUGHTER [_coming forward between her mother and Zoo_]. Please,
+madam, whose statue is it? and where can I buy a picture postcard of it?
+It is so funny. I will take a snapshot when we are coming back; but they
+come out so badly sometimes.
+
+ZOO. They will give you pictures and toys in the temple to take away
+with you. The story of the statue is too long. It would bore you [_she
+goes past them across the courtyard to get rid of them_].
+
+THE WIFE [_gushing_] Oh no, I assure you.
+
+THE DAUGHTER [_copying her mother_] We should be so interested.
+
+ZOO. Nonsense! All I can tell you about it is that a thousand years ago,
+when the whole world was given over to you shortlived people, there was
+a war called the War to end War. In the war which followed it about ten
+years later, hardly any soldiers were killed; but seven of the capital
+cities of Europe were wiped out of existence. It seems to have been a
+great joke: for the statesmen who thought they had sent ten million
+common men to their deaths were themselves blown into fragments with
+their houses and families, while the ten million men lay snugly in the
+caves they had dug for themselves. Later on even the houses escaped; but
+their inhabitants were poisoned by gas that spared no living soul.
+Of course the soldiers starved and ran wild; and that was the end of
+pseudo-Christian civilization. The last civilized thing that happened
+was that the statesmen discovered that cowardice was a great patriotic
+virtue; and a public monument was erected to its first preacher, an
+ancient and very fat sage called Sir John Falstaff. Well [_pointing_],
+thats Falstaff.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_coming from the portico to his granddaughter's
+right_] Great Heavens! And at the base of this monstrous poltroon's
+statue the War God of Turania is now gibbering impotently.
+
+ZOO. Serve him right! War God indeed!
+
+THE ENVOY [_coming between his wife and Zoo_] I don't know any history:
+a modern Prime Minister has something better to do than sit reading
+books; but--
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_interrupting him encouragingly_] You make
+history, Ambrose.
+
+THE ENVOY. Well, perhaps I do; and perhaps history makes me. I hardly
+recognize myself in the newspapers sometimes, though I suppose leading
+articles are the materials of history, as you might say. But what I want
+to know is, how did war come back again? and how did they make those
+poisonous gases you speak of? We should be glad to know; for they might
+come in very handy if we have to fight Turania. Of course I am all for
+peace, and don't hold with the race of armaments in principle; still, we
+must keep ahead or be wiped out.
+
+ZOO. You can make the gases for yourselves when your chemists find out
+how. Then you will do as you did before: poison each other until there
+are no chemists left, and no civilization. You will then begin all over
+again as half-starved ignorant savages, and fight with boomerangs
+and poisoned arrows until you work up to the poison gases and high
+explosives once more, with the same result. That is, unless we have
+sense enough to make an end of this ridiculous game by destroying you.
+
+THE ENVOY [_aghast_] Destroying us!
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I told you, Ambrose. I warned you.
+
+THE ENVOY. But--
+
+ZOO [_impatiently_] I wonder what Zozim is doing. He ought to be here to
+receive you.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Do you mean that rather insufferable young man
+whom you found boring me on the pier?
+
+ZOO. Yes. He has to dress-up in a Druid's robe, and put on a wig and a
+long false beard, to impress you silly people. I have to put on a purple
+mantle. I have no patience with such mummery; but you expect it from us;
+so I suppose it must be kept up. Will you wait here until Zozim comes,
+please [_she turns to enter the temple_].
+
+THE ENVOY. My good lady, is it worth while dressing-up and putting on
+false beards for us if you tell us beforehand that it is all humbug?
+
+ZOO. One would not think so; but if you wont believe in anyone who is
+not dressed-up, why, we must dress-up for you. It was you who invented
+all this nonsense, not we.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. But do you expect us to be impressed after this?
+
+ZOO. I don't expect anything. I know, as a matter of experience, that
+you will be impressed. The oracle will frighten you out of your wits.
+[_She goes into the temple_].
+
+THE WIFE. These people treat us as if we were dirt beneath their feet. I
+wonder at you putting up with it, Amby. It would serve them right if we
+went home at once: wouldnt it, Eth?
+
+THE DAUGHTER. Yes, mamma. But perhaps they wouldnt mind.
+
+THE ENVOY. No use talking like that, Molly. Ive got to see this oracle.
+The folks at home wont know how we have been treated: all theyll know
+is that Ive stood face to face with the oracle and had the straight tip
+from her. I hope this Zozim chap is not going to keep us waiting much
+longer; for I feel far from comfortable about the approaching interview;
+and thats the honest truth.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I never thought I should want to see that man
+again; but now I wish he would take charge of us instead of Zoo. She was
+charming at first: quite charming; but she turned into a fiend because I
+had a few words with her. You would not believe: she very nearly killed
+me. You heard what she said just now. She belongs to a party here which
+wants to have us all killed.
+
+THE WIFE [_terrified_] Us! But we have done nothing: we have been as
+nice to them as nice could be. Oh, Amby, come away, come away: there is
+something dreadful about this place and these people.
+
+THE ENVOY. There is, and no mistake. But youre safe with me: you ought
+to have sense enough to know that.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I am sorry to say, Molly, that it is not merely
+us four poor weak creatures they want to kill, but the entire race of
+Man, except themselves.
+
+THE ENVOY. Not so poor neither, Poppa. Nor so weak, if you are going to
+take in all the Powers. If it comes to killing, two can play at that
+game, longlived or shortlived.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No, Ambrose: we should have no chance. We are
+worms beside these fearful people: mere worms.
+
+_Zozim comes from the temple, robed majestically, and wearing a wreath
+of mistletoe in his flowing white wig. His false beard reaches almost to
+his waist. He carries a staff with a curiously carved top._
+
+ZOZIM [_in the doorway, impressively_] Hail, strangers!
+
+ALL [_reverently_] Hail!
+
+ZOZIM. Are ye prepared?
+
+THE ENVOY. We are.
+
+ZOZIM [_unexpectedly becoming conversational, and strolling down
+carelessly to the middle of the group between the two ladies_] Well, I'm
+sorry to say the oracle is not. She was delayed by some member of your
+party who got loose; and as the show takes a bit of arranging, you will
+have to wait a few minutes. The ladies can go inside and look round the
+entrance hall and get pictures and things if they want them.
+
+
+                              {Thank you.}
+    THE WIFE}    [_together_] {I should like to,} [_They go into_]
+    THE DAUGHTER}             {very much.}        [_the temple_]
+
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_in dignified rebuke of Zozim's levity_] Taken in
+this spirit, sir, the show, as you call it, becomes almost an insult to
+our common sense.
+
+ZOZIM. Quite, I should say. You need not keep it up with me.
+
+THE ENVOY [_suddenly making himself very agreeable_] Just so: just so.
+We can wait as long as you please. And now, if I may be allowed to seize
+the opportunity of a few minutes' friendly chat--?
+
+ZOZIM. By all means, if only you will talk about things I can
+understand.
+
+THE ENVOY. Well, about this colonizing plan of yours. My father-in-law
+here has been telling me something about it; and he has just now let out
+that you want not only to colonize us, but to--to--to--well, shall we
+say to supersede us? Now why supersede us? Why not live and let live?
+Theres not a scrap of ill-feeling on our side. We should welcome a
+colony of immortals--we may almost call you that--in the British Middle
+East. No doubt the Turanian Empire, with its Mahometan traditions,
+overshadows us now. We have had to bring the Emperor with us on this
+expedition, though of course you know as well as I do that he has
+imposed himself on my party just to spy on me. I dont deny that he has
+the whip hand of us to some extent, because if it came to a war none of
+our generals could stand up against him. I give him best at that game:
+he is the finest soldier in the world. Besides, he is an emperor and
+an autocrat; and I am only an elected representative of the British
+democracy. Not that our British democrats wont fight: they will fight
+the heads off all the Turanians that ever walked; but then it takes so
+long to work them up to it, while he has only to say the word and march.
+But you people would never get on with him. Believe me, you would not be
+as comfortable in Turania as you would be with us. We understand you. We
+like you. We are easy-going people; and we are rich people. That will
+appeal to you. Turania is a poor place when all is said. Five-eighths of
+it is desert. They dont irrigate as we do. Besides--now I am sure this
+will appeal to you and to all right-minded men--we are Christians.
+
+ZOZIM. The old uns prefer Mahometans.
+
+THE ENVOY [_shocked_] What!
+
+ZOZIM [_distinctly_] They prefer Mahometans. Whats wrong with that?
+
+THE ENVOY. Well, of all the disgraceful--
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_diplomatically interrupting his scandalized
+son-in-law_] There can be no doubt, I am afraid, that by clinging too
+long to the obsolete features of the old pseudo-Christian Churches we
+allowed the Mahometans to get ahead of us at a very critical period of
+the development of the Eastern world. When the Mahometan Reformation
+took place, it left its followers with the enormous advantage of having
+the only established religion in the world in whose articles of faith
+any intelligent and educated person could believe.
+
+THE ENVOY. But what about our Reformation? Dont give the show away,
+Poppa. We followed suit, didnt we?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Unfortunately, Ambrose, we could not follow suit
+very rapidly. We had not only a religion to deal with, but a Church.
+
+ZOZIM. What is a Church?
+
+THE ENVOY. Not know what a Church is! Well!
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. You must excuse me; but if I attempted to explain
+you would only ask me what a bishop is; and that is a question that no
+mortal man can answer. All I can tell you is that Mahomet was a truly
+wise man; for he founded a religion without a Church; consequently when
+the time came for a Reformation of the mosques there were no bishops and
+priests to obstruct it. Our bishops and priests prevented us for two
+hundred years from following suit; and we have never recovered the start
+we lost then. I can only plead that we did reform our Church at last. No
+doubt we had to make a few compromises as a matter of good taste;
+but there is now very little in our Articles of Religion that is not
+accepted as at least allegorically true by our Higher Criticism.
+
+THE ENVOY [_encouragingly_] Besides, does it matter? Why, _I_ have never
+read the Articles in my life; and I am Prime Minister! Come! if my
+services in arranging for the reception of a colonizing party would be
+acceptable, they are at your disposal. And when I say a reception I mean
+a reception. Royal honors, mind you! A salute of a hundred and one guns!
+The streets lined with troops! The Guards turned out at the Palace!
+Dinner at the Guildhall!
+
+ZOZIM. Discourage me if I know what youre talking about! I wish Zoo
+would come: she understands these things. All I can tell you is that
+the general opinion among the Colonizers is in favor of beginning in a
+country where the people are of a different color from us; so that we
+can make short work without any risk of mistakes.
+
+THE ENVOY. What do you mean by short work? I hope--
+
+ZOZIM [_with obviously feigned geniality_] Oh, nothing, nothing,
+nothing. We are thinking of trying North America: thats all. You see,
+the Red Men of that country used to be white. They passed through a
+period of sallow complexions, followed by a period of no complexions
+at all, into the red characteristic of their climate. Besides, several
+cases of long life have occurred in North America. They joined us here;
+and their stock soon reverted to the original white of these islands.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. But have you considered the possibility of your
+colony turning red?
+
+ZOZIM. That wont matter. We are not particular about our pigmentation.
+The old books mention red-faced Englishmen: they appear to have been
+common objects at one time.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_very persuasively_] But do you think you would
+be popular in North America? It seems to me, if I may say so, that on
+your own shewing you need a country in which society is organized in a
+series of highly exclusive circles, in which the privacy of private life
+is very jealously guarded, and in which no one presumes to speak to
+anyone else without an introduction following a strict examination of
+social credentials. It is only in such a country that persons of special
+tastes and attainments can form a little world of their own, and protect
+themselves absolutely from intrusion by common persons. I think I may
+claim that our British society has developed this exclusiveness to
+perfection. If you would pay us a visit and see the working of our caste
+system, our club system, our guild system, you would admit that nowhere
+else in the world, least of all, perhaps in North America, which has a
+regrettable tradition of social promiscuity, could you keep yourselves
+so entirely to yourselves.
+
+ZOZIM [_good-naturedly embarrassed_] Look here. There is no good
+discussing this. I had rather not explain; but it wont make any
+difference to our Colonizers what sort of short-livers they come across.
+We shall arrange all that. Never mind how. Let us join the ladies.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_throwing off his diplomatic attitude and
+abandoning himself to despair_] We understand you only too well, sir.
+Well, kill us. End the lives you have made miserably unhappy by opening
+up to us the possibility that any of us may live three hundred years. I
+solemnly curse that possibility. To you it may be a blessing, because
+you do live three hundred years. To us, who live less than a hundred,
+whose flesh is as grass, it is the most unbearable burden our poor
+tortured humanity has ever groaned under.
+
+THE ENVOY. Hullo, Poppa! Steady! How do you make that out?
+
+ZOZIM. What is three hundred years? Short enough, if you ask me. Why, in
+the old days you people lived on the assumption that you were going to
+last out for ever and ever and ever. Immortal, you thought yourselves.
+Were you any happier then?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. As President of the Baghdad Historical Society
+I am in a position to inform you that the communities which took this
+monstrous pretension seriously were the most wretched of which we have
+any record. My Society has printed an editio princeps of the works of
+the father of history, Thucyderodotus Macolly-buckle. Have you read his
+account of what was blasphemously called the Perfect City of God, and
+the attempt made to reproduce it in the northern part of these islands
+by Jonhobsnoxius, called the Leviathan? Those misguided people
+sacrificed the fragment of life that was granted to them to an imaginary
+immortality. They crucified the prophet who told them to take no thought
+for the morrow, and that here and now was their Australia: Australia
+being a term signifying paradise, or an eternity of bliss. They tried
+to produce a condition of death in life: to mortify the flesh, as they
+called it.
+
+ZOZIM. Well, you are not suffering from that, are you? You have not a
+mortified air.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Naturally we are not absolutely insane and
+suicidal. Nevertheless we impose on ourselves abstinences and
+disciplines and studies that are meant to prepare us for living three
+centuries. And we seldom live one. My childhood was made unnecessarily
+painful, my boyhood unnecessarily laborious, by ridiculous preparations
+for a length of days which the chances were fifty thousand to one
+against my ever attaining. I have been cheated out of the natural joys
+and freedoms of my life by this dream to which the existence of these
+islands and their oracles gives a delusive possibility of realization.
+I curse the day when long life was invented, just as the victims of
+Jonhobsnoxius cursed the day when eternal life was invented.
+
+ZOZIM. Pooh! You could live three centuries if you chose.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. That is what the fortunate always say to the
+unfortunate. Well, I do not choose. I accept my three score and ten
+years. If they are filled with usefulness, with justice, with mercy,
+with good-will: if they are the lifetime of a soul that never loses its
+honor and a brain that never loses its eagerness, they are enough for
+me, because these things are infinite and eternal, and can make ten of
+my years as long as thirty of yours. I shall not conclude by saying live
+as long as you like and be damned to you, because I have risen for the
+moment far above any ill-will to you or to any fellow-creature; but I
+am your equal before that eternity in which the difference between your
+lifetime and mine is as the difference between one drop of water
+and three in the eyes of the Almighty Power from which we have both
+proceeded.
+
+ZOZIM [_impressed_] You spoke that piece very well, Daddy. I couldnt
+talk like that if I tried. It sounded fine. Ah! here comes the ladies.
+
+_To his relief, they have just appeared on the threshold of the temple._
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_passing from exaltation to distress_] It means
+nothing to him: in this land of discouragement the sublime has become
+the ridiculous. [_Turning on the hopelessly puzzled Zozim_] 'Behold,
+thou hast made my days as it were a span long; and mine age is even as
+nothing in respect of thee.'
+
+
+                              {Poppa, Poppa: dont look like
+    THE WIFE.}    [_running_] {that.
+    THE DAUGHTER.}[_to him_] {Oh, granpa, whats the matter?
+
+
+ZOZIM [_with a shrug_] Discouragement!
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_throwing off the women with a superb gesture_]
+Liar! [_Recollecting himself, he adds, with noble courtesy, raising his
+hat and bowing_] I beg your pardon, sir; but I am NOT discouraged.
+
+_A burst of orchestral music, through which a powerful gong sounds, is
+heard from the temple. Zoo, in a purple robe, appears in the doorway._
+
+ZOO. Come. The oracle is ready.
+
+_Zozim motions them to the threshold with a wave of his staff. The Envoy
+and the Elderly Gentleman take off their hats and go into the temple on
+tiptoe, Zoo leading the way. The Wife and Daughter, frightened as they
+are, raise their heads uppishly and follow flatfooted, sustained by a
+sense of their Sunday clothes and social consequence. Zozim remains in
+the portico, alone._
+
+ZOZIM [_taking off his wig, beard, and robe, and bundling them under his
+arm_] Ouf! [He goes home].
+
+
+
+
+ACT III
+
+
+_Inside the temple. A gallery overhanging an abyss. Dead silence. The
+gallery is brightly lighted; but beyond is a vast gloom, continually
+changing in intensity. A shaft of violet light shoots upward; and a very
+harmonious and silvery carillon chimes. When it ceases the violet ray
+vanishes._
+
+_Zoo comes along the gallery, followed by the Envoy's daughter, his
+wife, the Envoy himself, and the Elderly Gentleman. The two men are
+holding their hats with the brims near their noses, as if prepared to
+pray into them at a moment's notice. Zoo halts: they all follow her
+example. They contemplate the void with awe. Organ music of the kind
+called sacred in the nineteenth century begins. Their awe deepens. The
+violet ray, now a diffused mist, rises again from the abyss._
+
+THE WIFE [_to Zoo, in a reverent whisper_] Shall we kneel?
+
+ZOO [_loudly_] Yes, if you want to. You can stand on your head if you
+like. [_She sits down carelessly on the gallery railing, with her back
+to the abyss_].
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_jarred by her callousness_] We desire to behave
+in a becoming manner.
+
+ZOO. Very well. Behave just as you feel. It doesn't matter how you
+behave. But keep your wits about you when the pythoness ascends, or you
+will forget the questions you have come to ask her.
+
+
+     THE ENVOY}               {[[_very nervous, takes out a paper to_]
+              } [[_simul-_]   {[_refresh his memory_]] Ahem!
+  THE DAUGHTER} [_taneously_]]{[[_alarmed_]] The pythoness? Is she
+              }               {a snake?
+
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Tch-ch! The priestess of the oracle. A sybil. A
+prophetess. Not a snake.
+
+THE WIFE. How awful!
+
+ZOO. I'm glad you think so.
+
+THE WIFE. Oh dear! Dont you think so?
+
+ZOO. No. This sort of thing is got up to impress you, not to impress me.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I wish you would let it impress us, then, madam.
+I am deeply impressed; but you are spoiling the effect.
+
+ZOO. You just wait. All this business with colored lights and chords on
+that old organ is only tomfoolery. Wait til you see the pythoness.
+
+_The Envoy's wife falls on her knees, and takes refuge in prayer._
+
+THE DAUGHTER [_trembling_] Are we really going to see a woman who has
+lived three hundred years?
+
+ZOO. Stuff! Youd drop dead if a tertiary as much as looked at you. The
+oracle is only a hundred and seventy; and you'll find it hard enough to
+stand her.
+
+THE DAUGHTER [_piteously_] Oh! [_she falls on her knees_].
+
+THE ENVOY. Whew! Stand by me, Poppa. This is a little more than I
+bargained for. Are you going to kneel; or how?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Perhaps it would be in better taste.
+
+_The two men kneel._
+
+_The vapor of the abyss thickens; and a distant roll of thunder seems to
+come from its depths. The pythoness, seated on her tripod, rises slowly
+from it. She has discarded the insulating robe and veil in which she
+conversed with Napoleon, and is now draped and hooded in voluminous
+folds of a single piece of grey-white stuff. Something supernatural
+about her terrifies the beholders, who throw themselves on their faces.
+Her outline flows and waves: she is almost distinct at moments, and
+again vague and shadowy: above all, she is larger than life-size, not
+enough to be measured by the flustered congregation, but enough to
+affect them with a dreadful sense of her supernaturalness._
+
+ZOO. Get up, get up. Do pull yourselves together, you people.
+
+_The Envoy and his family, by shuddering negatively, intimate that it
+is impossible. The Elderly Gentleman manages to get on his hands and
+knees._
+
+ZOO. Come on, Daddy: you are not afraid. Speak to her. She wont wait
+here all day for you, you know.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_rising very deferentially to his feet_] Madam:
+you will excuse my very natural nervousness in addressing, for the first
+time in my life, a--a--a--a goddess. My friend and relative the Envoy is
+unhinged. I throw myself upon your indulgence--
+
+ZOO [_interrupting him intolerantly_] Dont throw yourself on anything
+belonging to her or you will go right through her and break your neck.
+She isnt solid, like you.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I was speaking figuratively--
+
+ZOO. You have been told not to do it. Ask her what you want to know; and
+be quick about it.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_stooping and taking the prostrate Envoy by the
+shoulders_] Ambrose: you must make an effort. You cannot go back to
+Baghdad without the answers to your questions.
+
+THE ENVOY [_rising to his knees_] I shall be only too glad to get back
+alive on any terms. If my legs would support me I'd just do a bunk
+straight for the ship.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No, no. Remember: your dignity--
+
+THE ENVOY. Dignity be damned! I'm terrified. Take me away, for God's
+sake.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_producing a brandy flask and taking the cap
+off_] Try some of this. It is still nearly full, thank goodness!
+
+THE ENVOY [_clutching it and drinking eagerly_] Ah! Thats better. [_He
+tries to drink again. Finding that he has emptied it, he hands it back
+to his father-in-law upside down_].
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_taking it_] Great heavens! He has swallowed
+half-a-pint of neat brandy. [_Much perturbed, he screws the cap on
+again, and pockets the flask_].
+
+THE ENVOY [_staggering to his feet; pulling a paper from his pocket; and
+speaking with boisterous confidence_] Get up, Molly. Up with you, Eth.
+
+_The two women rise to their knees._
+
+THE ENVOY. What I want to ask is this. [_He refers to the paper_]. Ahem!
+Civilization has reached a crisis. We are at the parting of the ways. We
+stand on the brink of the Rubicon. Shall we take the plunge? Already a
+leaf has been torn out of the book of the Sybil. Shall we wait until the
+whole volume is consumed? On our right is the crater of the volcano: on
+our left the precipice. One false step, and we go down to annihilation
+dragging the whole human race with us. [_He pauses for breath_].
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_recovering his spirits under the familiar
+stimulus of political oratory_] Hear, hear!
+
+ZOO. What are you raving about? Ask your question while you have the
+chance. What is it you want to know?
+
+THE ENVOY [_patronizing her in the manner of a Premier debating with a
+very young member of the Opposition_] A young woman asks me a question.
+I am always glad to see the young taking an interest in politics. It is
+an impatient question; but it is a practical question, an intelligent
+question. She asks why we seek to lift a corner of the veil that shrouds
+the future from our feeble vision.
+
+ZOO. I don't. I ask you to tell the oracle what you want, and not keep
+her sitting there all day.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_warmly_] Order, order!
+
+ZOO. What does 'Order, order!' mean?
+
+THE ENVOY. I ask the august oracle to listen to my voice--
+
+ZOO. You people seem never to tire of listening to your voices; but it
+doesn't amuse us. What do you want?
+
+THE ENVOY. I want, young woman, to be allowed to proceed without
+unseemly interruptions.
+
+_A low roll of thunder comes from the abyss._
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. There! Even the oracle is indignant. [_To the
+Envoy_] Do not allow yourself to be put down by this lady's rude clamor,
+Ambrose. Take no notice. Proceed.
+
+THE ENVOY'S WIFE. I cant bear this much longer, Amby. Remember: I havn't
+had any brandy.
+
+HIS DAUGHTER [_trembling_] There are serpents curling in the vapor. I am
+afraid of the lightning. Finish it, Papa; or I shall die.
+
+THE ENVOY [_sternly_] Silence. The destiny of British civilization is at
+stake. Trust me. I am not afraid. As I was saying--where was I?
+
+ZOO. I don't know. Does anybody?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_tactfully_] You were just coming to the
+election, I think.
+
+THE ENVOY [_reassured_] Just so. The election. Now what we want to
+know is this: ought we to dissolve in August, or put it off until next
+spring?
+
+ZOO. Dissolve? In what? [_Thunder_]. Oh! My fault this time. That means
+that the oracle understands you, and desires me to hold my tongue.
+
+THE ENVOY [_fervently_] I thank the oracle.
+
+THE WIFE [_to Zoo_] Serve you right!
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Before the oracle replies, I should like to be
+allowed to state a few of the reasons why, in my opinion, the Government
+should hold on until the spring. In the first--
+
+_Terrific lightning and thunder. The Elderly Gentleman is knocked flat;
+but as he immediately sits up again dazedly it is clear that he is none
+the worse for the shock. The ladies cower in terror. The Envoy's hat is
+blown off; but he seizes it just as it quits his temples, and holds it
+on with both hands. He is recklessly drunk, but quite articulate, as he
+seldom speaks in public without taking stimulants beforehand._
+
+THE ENVOY [_taking one hand from his hat to make a gesture of stilling
+the tempest_] Thats enough. We know how to take a hint. I'll put the
+case in three words. I am the leader of the Potterbill party. My party
+is in power. I am Prime Minister. The Opposition--the Rotterjacks--have
+won every bye-election for the last six months. They--
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_scrambling heatedly to his feet_] Not by fair
+means. By bribery, by misrepresentation, by pandering to the vilest
+prejudices [_muttered thunder_]--I beg your pardon [_he is silent_].
+
+THE ENVOY. Never mind the bribery and lies. The oracle knows all about
+that. The point is that though our five years will not expire until the
+year after next, our majority will be eaten away at the bye-elections
+by about Easter. We can't wait: we must start some question that will
+excite the public, and go to the country on it. But some of us say do it
+now. Others say wait til the spring. We cant make up our minds one way
+or the other. Which would you advise?
+
+ZOO. But what is the question that is to excite your public?
+
+THE ENVOY. That doesnt matter. I dont know yet. We will find a question
+all right enough. The oracle can foresee the future: we cannot.
+[_Thunder_]. What does that mean? What have I done now?
+
+ZOO. [_severely_] How often must you be told that we cannot foresee the
+future? There is no such thing as the future until it is the present.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Allow me to point out, madam, that when the
+Potterbill party sent to consult the oracle fifteen years ago, the
+oracle prophesied that the Potterbills would be victorious at the
+General Election; and they were. So it is evident that the oracle can
+foresee the future, and is sometimes willing to reveal it.
+
+THE ENVOY. Quite true. Thank you, Poppa. I appeal now, over your head,
+young woman, direct to the August Oracle, to repeat the signal favor
+conferred on my illustrious predecessor, Sir Fuller Eastwind, and to
+answer me exactly as he was answered.
+
+_The oracle raises her hands to command silence._
+
+ALL. Sh-sh-sh!
+
+_Invisible trombones utter three solemn blasts in the manner of Die
+Zauberflöte._
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. May I--
+
+ZOO [_quickly_] Hush. The oracle is going to speak.
+
+THE ORACLE. Go home, poor fool.
+
+_She vanishes; and the atmosphere changes to prosaic daylight. Zoo comes
+off the railing; throws off her robe; makes a bundle of it; and tucks it
+under her arm. The magic and mystery are gone. The women rise to their
+feet. The Envoy's party stare at one another helplessly._
+
+ZOO. The same reply, word for word, that your illustrious predecessor,
+as you call him, got fifteen years ago. You asked for it; and you got
+it. And just think of all the important questions you might have asked.
+She would have answered them, you know. It is always like that. I
+will go and arrange to have you sent home: you can wait for me in the
+entrance hall [_she goes out_].
+
+THE ENVOY. What possessed me to ask for the same answer old Eastwind
+got?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. But it was not the same answer. The answer to
+Eastwind was an inspiration to our party for years. It won us the
+election.
+
+THE ENVOY'S DAUGHTER. I learnt it at school, granpa. It wasn't the same
+at all. I can repeat it. [_She quotes_] 'When Britain was cradled in the
+west, the east wind hardened her and made her great. Whilst the east
+wind prevails Britain shall prosper. The east wind shall wither
+Britain's enemies in the day of contest. Let the Rotterjacks look to
+it.'
+
+THE ENVOY. The old man invented that. I see it all. He was a doddering
+old ass when he came to consult the oracle. The oracle naturally said
+'Go home, poor fool.' There was no sense in saying that to me; but as
+that girl said, I asked for it. What else could the poor old chap do but
+fake up an answer fit for publication? There were whispers about it; but
+nobody believed them. I believe them now.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Oh, I cannot admit that Sir Fuller Eastwind was
+capable of such a fraud.
+
+THE ENVOY. He was capable of anything: I knew his private secretary.
+And now what are we going to say? You don't suppose I am going back to
+Baghdad to tell the British Empire that the oracle called me a fool, do
+you?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Surely we must tell the truth, however painful it
+may be to our feelings.
+
+THE ENVOY. I am not thinking of my feelings: I am not so selfish as
+that, thank God. I am thinking of the country: of our party. The truth,
+as you call it, would put the Rotterjacks in for the next twenty years.
+It would be the end of me politically. Not that I care for that: I am
+only too willing to retire if you can find a better man. Dont hesitate
+on my account.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No, Ambrose: you are indispensable. There is no
+one else.
+
+THE ENVOY. Very well, then. What are you going to do?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. My dear Ambrose, you are the leader of the party,
+not I. What are you going to do?
+
+THE ENVOY. I am going to tell the exact truth; thats what I'm going to
+do. Do you take me for a liar?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_puzzled_] Oh. I beg your pardon. I understood
+you to say--
+
+THE ENVOY [_cutting him short_] You understood me to say that I am going
+back to Baghdad to tell the British electorate that the oracle repeated
+to me, word for word, what it said to Sir Fuller Eastwind fifteen years
+ago. Molly and Ethel can bear me out. So must you, if you are an honest
+man. Come on.
+
+_He goes out, followed by his wife and daughter._
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_left alone and shrinking into an old and
+desolate figure_] What am I to do? I am a most perplexed and wretched
+man. [_He falls on his knees, and stretches his hands in entreaty over
+the abyss_]. I invoke the oracle. I cannot go back and connive at a
+blasphemous lie. I implore guidance.
+
+_The Pythoness walks in on the gallery behind him, and touches him on
+the shoulder. Her size is now natural. Her face is hidden by her hood.
+He flinches as if from an electric shock; turns to her; and cowers,
+covering his eyes in terror._
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No: not close to me. I'm afraid I can't bear it.
+
+THE ORACLE [_with grave pity_] Come: look at me. I am my natural size
+now: what you saw there was only a foolish picture of me thrown on a
+cloud by a lantern. How can I help you?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. They have gone back to lie about your answer. I
+cannot go with them. I cannot live among people to whom nothing is real.
+I have become incapable of it through my stay here. I implore to be
+allowed to stay.
+
+THE ORACLE. My friend: if you stay with us you will die of
+discouragement.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. If I go back I shall die of disgust and despair.
+I take the nobler risk. I beg you, do not cast me out.
+
+_He catches her robe and holds her._
+
+THE ORACLE. Take care. I have been here one hundred and seventy years.
+Your death does not mean to me what it means to you.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. It is the meaning of life, not of death, that
+makes banishment so terrible to me.
+
+THE ORACLE. Be it so, then. You may stay.
+
+_She offers him her hands. He grasps them and raises himself a little by
+clinging to her. She looks steadily into his face. He stiffens; a little
+convulsion shakes him; his grasp relaxes; and he falls dead._
+
+THE ORACLE [_looking down at the body_] Poor shortlived thing! What else
+could I do for you?
+
+
+
+
+PART V.
+
+As Far as Thought can Reach
+
+
+_Summer afternoon in the year 31,920 A.D. A sunlit glade at the southern
+foot of a thickly wooded hill. On the west side of it, the steps and
+columned porch of a dainty little classic temple. Between it and the
+hill, a rising path to the wooded heights begins with rough steps of
+stones in the moss. On the opposite side, a grove. In the middle of the
+glade, an altar in the form of a low marble table as long as a man, set
+parallel to the temple steps and pointing to the hill. Curved marble
+benches radiate from it into the foreground; but they are not joined to
+it: there is plenty of space to pass between the altar and the benches.
+
+A dance of youths and maidens is in progress. The music is provided by a
+few fluteplayers seated carelessly on the steps of the temple. There are
+no children; and none of the dancers seems younger than eighteen. Some
+of the youths have beards. Their dress, like the architecture of the
+theatre and the design of the altar and curved seats, resembles Grecian
+of the fourth century B.C., freely handled. They move with perfect
+balance and remarkable grace, racing through a figure like a farandole.
+They neither romp nor hug in our manner.
+
+At the first full close they clap their hands to stop the musicians, who
+recommence with a saraband, during which a strange figure appears on the
+path beyond the temple. He is deep in thought, with his eyes closed
+and his feet feeling automatically for the rough irregular steps as he
+slowly descends them. Except for a sort of linen kilt consisting mainly
+of a girdle carrying a sporran and a few minor pockets, he is naked. In
+physical hardihood and uprightness he seems to be in the prime of life;
+and his eyes and mouth shew no signs of age; but his face, though fully
+and firmly fleshed, bears a network of lines, varying from furrows to
+hairbreadth reticulations, as if Time had worked over every inch of it
+incessantly through whole geologic periods. His head is finely domed
+and utterly bald. Except for his eyelashes he is quite hairless. He is
+unconscious of his surroundings, and walks right into one of the dancing
+couples, separating them. He wakes up and stares about him. The couple
+stop indignantly. The rest stop. The music stops. The youth whom he has
+jostled accosts him without malice, but without anything that we should
+call manners._
+
+THE YOUTH. Now, then, ancient sleepwalker, why don't you keep your eyes
+open and mind where you are going?
+
+THE ANCIENT [_mild, bland, and indulgent_] I did not know there was a
+nursery here, or I should not have turned my face in this direction.
+Such accidents cannot always be avoided. Go on with your play: I will
+turn back.
+
+THE YOUTH. Why not stay with us and enjoy life for once in a way? We
+will teach you to dance.
+
+THE ANCIENT. No, thank you. I danced when I was a child like you.
+Dancing is a very crude attempt to get into the rhythm of life. It would
+be painful to me to go back from that rhythm to your babyish gambols: in
+fact I could not do it if I tried. But at your age it is pleasant: and I
+am sorry I disturbed you.
+
+THE YOUTH. Come! own up: arnt you very unhappy? It's dreadful to see
+you ancients going about by yourselves, never noticing anything, never
+dancing, never laughing, never singing, never getting anything out of
+life. None of us are going to be like that when we grow up. It's a dog's
+life.
+
+THE ANCIENT. Not at all. You repeat that old phrase without knowing
+that there was once a creature on earth called a dog. Those who are
+interested in extinct forms of life will tell you that it loved the
+sound of its own voice and bounded about when it was happy, just as you
+are doing here. It is you, my children, who are living the dog's life.
+
+THE YOUTH. The dog must have been a good sensible creature: it set you
+a very wise example. You should let yourself go occasionally and have a
+good time.
+
+THE ANCIENT. My children: be content to let us ancients go our ways and
+enjoy ourselves in our own fashion.
+
+_He turns to go._
+
+THE MAIDEN. But wait a moment. Why will you not tell us how you enjoy
+yourself? You must have secret pleasures that you hide from us, and that
+you never get tired of. I get tired of all our dances and all our tunes.
+I get tired of all my partners.
+
+THE YOUTH [_suspiciously_] Do you? I shall bear that in mind.
+
+_They all look at one another as if there were some sinister
+significance in what she has said._
+
+THE MAIDEN. We all do: what is the use of pretending we don't? It is
+natural.
+
+SEVERAL YOUNG PEOPLE. No, no. We don't. It is not natural.
+
+THE ANCIENT. You are older than he is, I see. You are growing up.
+
+THE MAIDEN. How do you know? I do not look so much older, do I?
+
+THE ANCIENT. Oh, I was not looking at you. Your looks do not interest
+me.
+
+THE MAIDEN. Thank you.
+
+_They all laugh._
+
+THE YOUTH. You old fish! I believe you don't know the difference between
+a man and a woman.
+
+THE ANCIENT. It has long ceased to interest me in the way it interests
+you. And when anything no longer interests us we no longer know it.
+
+THE MAIDEN. You havnt told me how I shew my age. That is what I want to
+know. As a matter of fact I am older than this boy here: older than he
+thinks. How did you find that out?
+
+THE ANCIENT. Easily enough. You are ceasing to pretend that these
+childish games--this dancing and singing and mating--do not become
+tiresome and unsatisfying after a while. And you no longer care to
+pretend that you are younger than you are. These are the signs of
+adolescence. And then, see these fantastic rags with which you have
+draped yourself. [_He takes up a piece of her draperies in his hand_].
+It is rather badly worn here. Why do you not get a new one?
+
+THE MAIDEN. Oh, I did not notice it. Besides, it is too much trouble.
+Clothes are a nuisance. I think I shall do without them some day, as you
+ancients do.
+
+THE ANCIENT. Signs of maturity. Soon you will give up all these toys and
+games and sweets.
+
+THE YOUTH. What! And be as miserable as you?
+
+THE ANCIENT. Infant: one moment of the ecstasy of life as we live it
+would strike you dead. [_He stalks gravely out through the grove_].
+
+_They stare after him, much damped._
+
+THE YOUTH [_to the musicians_] Let us have another dance.
+
+_The musicians shake their heads; get up from their seats on the steps;
+and troop away into the temple. The others follow them, except the
+Maiden, who sits down on the altar._
+
+A MAIDEN [_as she goes_] There! The ancient has put them out of
+countenance. It is your fault, Strephon, for provoking him. [_She
+leaves, much disappointed_].
+
+A YOUTH. Why need you have cheeked him like that? [_He goes grumbling_].
+
+STREPHON [_calling after him_] I thought it was understood that we are
+always to cheek the ancients on principle.
+
+ANOTHER YOUTH. Quite right too! There would be no holding them if we
+didn't. [_He goes_].
+
+THE MAIDEN. Why don't you really stand up to them? _I_ did.
+
+ANOTHER YOUTH. Sheer, abject, pusillanimous, dastardly cowardice. Thats
+why. Face the filthy truth. [_He goes_].
+
+ANOTHER YOUTH [_turning on the steps as he goes out_] And don't you
+forget, infant, that one moment of the ecstasy of life as I live it
+would strike you dead. Haha!
+
+STREPHON [_now the only one left, except the Maiden_] Arnt you coming,
+Chloe?
+
+THE MAIDEN [_shakes her head_]!
+
+THE YOUTH [_hurrying back to her_] What is the matter?
+
+THE MAIDEN [_tragically pensive_] I dont know.
+
+THE YOUTH. Then there is something the matter. Is that what you mean?
+
+THE MAIDEN. Yes. Something is happening to me. I dont know what.
+
+THE YOUTH. You no longer love me. I have seen it for a month past.
+
+THE MAIDEN. Dont you think all that is rather silly? We cannot go on as
+if this kind of thing, this dancing and sweethearting, were everything.
+
+THE YOUTH. What is there better? What else is there worth living for?
+
+THE MAIDEN. Oh, stuff! Dont be frivolous.
+
+THE YOUTH. Something horrible is happening to you. You are losing all
+heart, all feeling. [_He sits on the altar beside her and buries his
+face in his hands_]. I am bitterly unhappy.
+
+THE MAIDEN. Unhappy! Really, you must have a very empty head if there is
+nothing in it but a dance with one girl who is no better than any of the
+other girls.
+
+THE YOUTH. You did not always think so. You used to be vexed if I as
+much as looked at another girl.
+
+THE MAIDEN. What does it matter what I did when I was a baby? Nothing
+existed for me then except what I tasted and touched and saw; and I
+wanted all that for myself, just as I wanted the moon to play with. Now
+the world is opening out for me. More than the world: the universe. Even
+little things are turning out to be great things, and becoming intensely
+interesting. Have you ever thought about the properties of numbers?
+
+THE YOUTH [_sitting up, markedly disenchanted_] Numbers!!! I cannot
+imagine anything drier or more repulsive.
+
+THE MAIDEN. They are fascinating, just fascinating. I want to get away
+from our eternal dancing and music, and just sit down by myself and
+think about numbers.
+
+THE YOUTH [_rising indignantly_] Oh, this is too much. I have suspected
+you for some time past. We have all suspected you. All the girls
+say that you have deceived us as to your age: that you are getting
+flat-chested: that you are bored with us; that you talk to the ancients
+when you get the chance. Tell me the truth: how old are you?
+
+THE MAIDEN. Just twice your age, my poor boy.
+
+THE YOUTH. Twice my age! Do you mean to say you are four?
+
+THE MAIDEN. Very nearly four.
+
+THE YOUTH [_collapsing on the altar with a groan_] Oh!
+
+THE MAIDEN. My poor Strephon: I pretended I was only two for your sake.
+I was two when you were born. I saw you break from your shell; and
+you were such a charming child! You ran round and talked to us all so
+prettily, and were so handsome and well grown, that I lost my heart to
+you at once. But now I seem to have lost it altogether: bigger things
+are taking possession of me. Still, we were very happy in our childish
+way for the first year, werent we?
+
+STREPHON. I was happy until you began cooling towards me.
+
+THE MAIDEN. Not towards you, but towards all the trivialities of our
+life here. Just think. I have hundreds of years to live: perhaps
+thousands. Do you suppose I can spend centuries dancing; listening to
+flutes ringing changes on a few tunes and a few notes; raving about the
+beauty of a few pillars and arches; making jingles with words; lying
+about with your arms round me, which is really neither comfortable nor
+convenient; everlastingly choosing colors for dresses, and putting them
+on, and washing; making a business of sitting together at fixed hours
+to absorb our nourishment; taking little poisons with it to make us
+delirious enough to imagine we are enjoying ourselves; and then having
+to pass the nights in shelters lying in cots and losing half our lives
+in a state of unconsciousness. Sleep is a shameful thing: I have not
+slept at all for weeks past. I have stolen out at night when you were
+all lying insensible--quite disgusting, I call it--and wandered about
+the woods, thinking, thinking, thinking; grasping the world; taking it
+to pieces; building it up again; devising methods; planning experiments
+to test the methods; and having a glorious time. Every morning I have
+come back here with greater and greater reluctance; and I know that the
+time will soon come--perhaps it has come already--when I shall not come
+back at all.
+
+STREPHON. How horribly cold and uncomfortable!
+
+THE MAIDEN. Oh, don't talk to me of comfort! Life is not worth living if
+you have to bother about comfort. Comfort makes winter a torture,
+spring an illness, summer an oppression, and autumn only a respite. The
+ancients could make life one long frowsty comfort if they chose. But
+they never lift a finger to make themselves comfortable. They will not
+sleep under a roof. They will not clothe themselves: a girdle with a few
+pockets hanging to it to carry things about in is all they wear: they
+will sit down on the wet moss or in a gorse bush when there is dry
+heather within two yards of them. Two years ago, when you were born, I
+did not understand this. Now I feel that I would not put myself to the
+trouble of walking two paces for all the comfort in the world.
+
+STREPHON. But you don't know what this means to me. It means that you
+are dying to me: yes, just dying. Listen to me [_he puts his arm around
+her_].
+
+THE MAIDEN [_extricating herself_] Dont. We can talk quite as well
+without touching one another.
+
+STREPHON [_horrified_] Chloe! Oh, this is the worst symptom of all! The
+ancients never touch one another.
+
+THE MAIDEN. Why should they?
+
+STREPHON. Oh, I don't know. But don't you want to touch me? You used to.
+
+THE MAIDEN. Yes: that is true: I used to. We used to think it would be
+nice to sleep in one another's arms; but we never could go to sleep
+because our weight stopped our circulations just above the elbows. Then
+somehow my feeling began to change bit by bit. I kept a sort of interest
+in your head and arms long after I lost interest in your whole body. And
+now that has gone.
+
+STREPHON. You no longer care for me at all, then?
+
+THE MAIDEN. Nonsense! I care for you much more seriously than before;
+though perhaps not so much for you in particular. I mean I care more for
+everybody. But I don't want to touch you unnecessarily; and I certainly
+don't want you to touch me.
+
+STREPHON [_rising decisively_] That finishes it. You dislike me.
+
+THE MAIDEN [_impatiently_] I tell you again, I do not dislike you; but
+you bore me when you cannot understand; and I think I shall be happier
+by myself in future. You had better get a new companion. What about the
+girl who is to be born today?
+
+STREPHON. I do not want the girl who is to be born today. How do I know
+what she will be like? I want you.
+
+THE MAIDEN. You cannot have me. You must recognize facts and face them.
+It is no use running after a woman twice your age. I cannot make my
+childhood last to please you. The age of love is sweet; but it is short;
+and I must pay nature's debt. You no longer attract me; and I no longer
+care to attract you. Growth is too rapid at my age: I am maturing from
+week to week.
+
+STREPHON. You are maturing, as you call it--I call it ageing--from
+minute to minute. You are going much further than you did when we began
+this conversation.
+
+THE MAIDEN. It is not the ageing that is so rapid. It is the realization
+of it when it has actually happened. Now that I have made up my mind to
+the fact that I have left childhood behind me, it comes home to me in
+leaps and bounds with every word you say.
+
+STREPHON. But your vow. Have you forgotten that? We all swore together
+in that temple: the temple of love. You were more earnest than any of
+us.
+
+THE MAIDEN [_with a grim smile_] Never to let our hearts grow cold!
+Never to become as the ancients! Never to let the sacred lamp be
+extinguished! Never to change or forget! To be remembered for ever as
+the first company of true lovers faithful to this vow so often made and
+broken by past generations! Ha! ha! Oh, dear!
+
+STREPHON. Well, you need not laugh. It is a beautiful and holy compact;
+and I will keep it whilst I live. Are you going to break it?
+
+THE MAIDEN. Dear child: it has broken itself. The change has come in
+spite of my childish vow. [_She rises_]. Do you mind if I go into the
+woods for a walk by myself? This chat of ours seems to me an unbearable
+waste of time. I have so much to think of.
+
+STREPHON [_again collapsing on the altar and covering his eyes with his
+hands_] My heart is broken. [_He weeps_].
+
+THE MAIDEN [_with a shrug_] I have luckily got through my childhood
+without that experience. It shews how wise I was to choose a lover half
+my age. [_She goes towards the grove, and is disappearing among the
+trees, when another youth, older and manlier than Strephon, with crisp
+hair and firm arms, comes from the temple, and calls to her from the
+threshold_].
+
+THE TEMPLE YOUTH. I say, Chloe. Is there any sign of the Ancient yet?
+The hour of birth is overdue. The baby is kicking like mad. She will
+break her shell prematurely.
+
+THE MAIDEN [_looks across to the hill path; then points up it, and
+says_] She is coming, Acis.
+
+_The Maiden turns away through the grove and is lost to sight among the
+trees._
+
+Acis [_coming to Strephon_] Whats the matter? Has Chloe been unkind?
+
+STREPHON. She has grown up in spite of all her promises. She deceived us
+about her age. She is four.
+
+ACIS. Four! I am sorry, Strephon. I am getting on for three myself;
+and I know what old age is. I hate to say 'I told you so'; but she was
+getting a little hard set and flat-chested and thin on the top, wasn't
+she?
+
+STREPHON [_breaking down_] Dont.
+
+ACIS. You must pull yourself together. This is going to be a busy day.
+First the birth. Then the Festival of the Artists.
+
+STREPHON [_rising_] What is the use of being born if we have to decay
+into unnatural, heartless, loveless, joyless monsters in four short
+years? What use are the artists if they cannot bring their beautiful
+creations to life? I have a great mind to die and have done with it
+all. [_He moves away to the corner of the curved seat farthest from the
+theatre, and throws himself moodily into it_].
+
+_An Ancient Woman has descended the hill path during Strephon's lament,
+and has heard most of it. She is like the He-Ancient, equally bald,
+and equally without sexual charm, but intensely interesting and rather
+terrifying. Her sex is discoverable only by her voice, as her breasts
+are manly, and her figure otherwise not very different. She wears no
+clothes, but has draped herself rather perfunctorily with a ceremonial
+robe, and carries two implements like long slender saws. She comes to
+the altar between the two young men._
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT [_to Strephon_] Infant: you are only at the beginning of
+it all. [_To Acis_] Is the child ready to be born?
+
+ACIS. More than ready, Ancient. Shouting and kicking and cursing. We
+have called to her to be quiet and wait until you come; but of course
+she only half understands, and is very impatient.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. Very well. Bring her out into the sun.
+
+ACIS [_going quickly into the temple_] All ready. Come along.
+
+_Joyous processional music strikes up in the temple._
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT [_going close to Strephon_]. Look at me.
+
+STREPHON [_sulkily keeping his face _averted] Thank you; but I don't
+want to be cured. I had rather be miserable in my own way than callous
+in yours.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. You like being miserable? You will soon grow out of
+that. [_She returns to the altar_].
+
+_The procession, headed by Acis, emerges from the temple. Six youths
+carry on their shoulders a burden covered with a gorgeous but light
+pall. Before them certain official maidens carry a new tunic, ewers of
+water, silver dishes pierced with holes, cloths, and immense sponges.
+The rest carry wands with ribbons, and strew flowers. The burden is
+deposited on the altar, and the pall removed. It is a huge egg._
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT [_freeing her arms from her robe, and placing her saws
+on the altar ready to her hand in a businesslike manner_] A girl, I
+think you said?
+
+ACIS. Yes.
+
+THE TUNIC BEARER. It is a shame. Why cant we have more boys?
+
+SEVERAL YOUTHS [_protesting_] Not at all. More girls. We want new girls.
+
+A GIRL'S VOICE FROM THE EGG. Let me out. Let me out. I want to be born.
+I want to be born. [_The egg rocks_].
+
+ACIS [_snatching a wand from one of the others and whacking the egg with
+it_] Be quiet, I tell you. Wait. You will be born presently.
+
+THE EGG. No, no: at once, at once. I want to be born: I want to be born.
+[_Violent kicking within the egg, which rocks so hard that it has to be
+held on the altar by the bearers_].
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. Silence. [_The music stops; and the egg behaves
+itself_].
+
+_The She-Ancient takes her two saws, and with a couple of strokes rips
+the egg open. The Newly Born, a pretty girl who would have been guessed
+as seventeen in our day, sits up in the broken shell, exquisitely fresh
+and rosy, but with filaments of spare albumen clinging to her here and
+there._
+
+THE NEWLY BORN [_as the world bursts on her vision_] Oh! Oh!!
+Oh!!! Oh!!!! [_She continues this ad libitum during the following
+remonstrances_].
+
+ACIS. Hold your noise, will you?
+
+_The washing begins. The Newly Born shrieks and struggles._
+
+A YOUTH. Lie quiet, you clammy little devil.
+
+A MAIDEN. You must be washed, dear. Now quiet, quiet, quiet: be good.
+
+ACIS. Shut your mouth, or I'll shove the sponge in it.
+
+THE MAIDEN. Shut your eyes. Itll hurt if you don't.
+
+ANOTHER MAIDEN. Dont be silly. One would think nobody had ever been born
+before.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN [_yells_]!!!!!!
+
+ACIS. Serve you right! You were told to shut your eyes.
+
+THE YOUTH. Dry her off quick. I can hardly hold her. Shut it, will you;
+or I'll smack you into a pickled cabbage.
+
+_The dressing begins. The Newly Born chuckles with delight._
+
+THE MAIDEN. Your arms go here, dear. Isnt it pretty? Youll look lovely.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN [_rapturously_] Oh! Oh!! Oh!!! Oh!!!!
+
+ANOTHER YOUTH. No: the other arm: youre putting it on back to front. You
+are a silly little beast.
+
+ACIS. Here! Thats it. Now youre clean and decent. Up with you! Oopsh!
+[_He hauls her to her feet. She cannot walk at first, but masters it
+after a few steps_]. Now then: march. Here she is, Ancient: put her
+through the catechism.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. What name have you chosen for her?
+
+ACIS. Amaryllis.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT [_to the Newly Born_] Your name is Amaryllis.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. What does it mean?
+
+A YOUTH. Love.
+
+A MAIDEN. Mother.
+
+ANOTHER YOUTH. Lilies.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN [_to Acis_] What is your name?
+
+ACIS. Acis.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. I love you, Acis. I must have you all to myself. Take me
+in your arms.
+
+ACIS. Steady, young one. I am three years old.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. What has that to do with it? I love you; and I must have
+you or I will go back into my shell again.
+
+ACIS. You cant. It's broken. Look here [_pointing to Strephon, who has
+remained in his seal without looking round at the birth, wrapped up in
+his sorrow_]! Look at this poor fellow!
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. What is the matter with him?
+
+ACIS. When he was born he chose a girl two years old for his sweetheart.
+He is two years old now himself; and already his heart is broken because
+she is four. That means that she has grown up like this Ancient here,
+and has left him. If you choose me, we shall have only a year's
+happiness before I break your heart by growing up. Better choose the
+youngest you can find.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. I will not choose anyone but you. You must not grow up.
+We will love one another for ever. [_They all laugh_]. What are you
+laughing at?
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. Listen, child--
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Do not come near me, you dreadful old creature. You
+frighten me.
+
+ACIS. Just give her another moment. She is not quite reasonable yet.
+What can you expect from a child less than five minutes old?
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. I think I feel a little more reasonable now. Of course I
+was rather young when I said that; but the inside of my head is changing
+very rapidly. I should like to have things explained to me.
+
+ACIS [_to the She-Ancient_] Is she all right, do you think?
+
+_The She-Ancient looks at the Newly Born critically; feels her bumps
+like a phrenologist; grips her muscles and shakes her limbs; examines
+her teeth; looks into her eyes for a moment; and finally relinquishes
+her with an air of having finished her job._
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. She will do. She may live.
+
+_They all wave their hands and shout for joy._
+
+THE NEWLY BORN [_indignant_] I may live! Suppose there had been anything
+wrong with me?
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. Children with anything wrong do not live here, my
+child. Life is not cheap with us. But you would not have felt anything.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. You mean that you would have murdered me!
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. That is one of the funny words the newly born bring
+with them out of the past. You will forget it tomorrow. Now listen. You
+have four years of childhood before you. You will not be very happy; but
+you will be interested and amused by the novelty of the world; and your
+companions here will teach you how to keep up an imitation of happiness
+during your four years by what they call arts and sports and pleasures.
+The worst of your troubles is already over.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. What! In five minutes?
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. No: you have been growing for two years in the egg. You
+began by being several sorts of creatures that no longer exist, though
+we have fossils of them. Then you became human; and you passed in
+fifteen months through a development that once cost human beings twenty
+years of awkward stumbling immaturity after they were born. They had to
+spend fifty years more in the sort of childhood you will complete in
+four years. And then they died of decay. But you need not die until your
+accident comes.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. What is my accident?
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. Sooner or later you will fall and break your neck; or a
+tree will fall on you; or you will be struck by lightning. Something or
+other must make an end of you some day.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. But why should any of these things happen to me?
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. There is no why. They do. Everything happens to
+everybody sooner or later if there is time enough. And with us there is
+eternity.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Nothing need happen. I never heard such nonsense in all
+my life. I shall know how to take care of myself.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. So you think.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. I don't think: I know. I shall enjoy life for ever and
+ever.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. If you should turn out to be a person of infinite
+capacity, you will no doubt find life infinitely interesting. However,
+all you have to do now is to play with your companions. They have many
+pretty toys, as you see: a playhouse, pictures, images, flowers, bright
+fabrics, music: above all, themselves; for the most amusing child's toy
+is another child. At the end of four years, your mind will change: you
+will become wise; and then you will be entrusted with power.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. But I want power now.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. No doubt you do; so that you could play with the world
+by tearing it to pieces.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Only to see how it is made. I should put it all together
+again much better than before.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. There was a time when children were given the world to
+play with because they promised to improve it. They did not improve it;
+and they would have wrecked it had their power been as great as that
+which you will wield when you are no longer a child. Until then your
+young companions will instruct you in whatever is necessary. You are not
+forbidden to speak to the ancients; but you had better not do so, as
+most of them have long ago exhausted all the interest there is in
+observing children and conversing with them. [_She turns to go_].
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Wait. Tell me some things that I ought to do and ought
+not to do. I feel the need of education. They all laugh at her, except
+the She-Ancient.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. You will have grown out of that by tomorrow. Do what
+you please. [_She goes away up the hill path_].
+
+_The officials take their paraphernalia and the fragments of the egg
+back into the temple._
+
+ACIS. Just fancy: that old girl has been going for seven hundred years
+and hasnt had her fatal accident yet; and she is not a bit tired of it
+all.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. How could anyone ever get tired of life?
+
+ACIS. They do. That is, of the same life. They manage to change
+themselves in a wonderful way. You meet them sometimes with a lot of
+extra heads and arms and legs: they make you split laughing at them.
+Most of them have forgotten how to speak: the ones that attend to us
+have to brush up their knowledge of the language once a year or so.
+Nothing makes any difference to them that I can see. They never enjoy
+themselves. I don't know how they can stand it. They don't even come to
+our festivals of the arts. That old one who saw you out of your shell
+has gone off to moodle about doing nothing; though she knows that this
+is Festival Day?
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. What is Festival Day?
+
+ACIS. Two of our greatest sculptors are bringing us their latest
+masterpieces; and we are going to crown them with flowers and sing
+dithyrambs to them and dance round them.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. How jolly! What is a sculptor?
+
+ACIS. Listen here, young one. You must find out things for yourself, and
+not ask questions. For the first day or two you must keep your eyes and
+ears open and your mouth shut. Children should be seen and not heard.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Who are you calling a child? I am fully a quarter of
+an hour old [_She sits down on the curved bench near Strephon with her
+maturest air_].
+
+VOICES IN THE TEMPLE [_all expressing protest, disappointment, disgust_]
+Oh! Oh! Scandalous. Shameful. Disgraceful. What filth! Is this a joke?
+Why, theyre ancients! Ss-s-s-sss! Are you mad, Arjillax? This is an
+outrage. An insult. Yah! etc. etc. etc. [_The malcontents appear on the
+steps, grumbling_].
+
+ACIS. Hullo: whats the matter? [_He goes to the steps of the temple_].
+
+_The two sculptors issue from the temple. One has a beard two feet long:
+the other is beardless. Between them comes a handsome nymph with marked
+features, dark hair richly waved, and authoritative bearing._
+
+THE AUTHORITATIVE NYMPH [_swooping down to the centre of the glade with
+the sculptors, between Acis and the Newly Born_] Do not try to browbeat
+me, Arjillax, merely because you are clever with your hands. Can you
+play the flute?
+
+ARJILLAX [_the bearded sculptor on her right_] No, Ecrasia: I cannot.
+What has that to do with it? [_He is half derisive, half impatient,
+wholly resolved not to take her seriously in spite of her beauty and
+imposing tone_].
+
+ECRASIA. Well, have you ever hesitated to criticize our best flute
+players, and to declare whether their music is good or bad? Pray have I
+not the same right to criticize your busts, though I cannot make images
+anymore than you can play?
+
+ARJILLAX. Any fool can play the flute, or play anything else, if he
+practises enough; but sculpture is a creative art, not a mere business
+of whistling into a pipe. The sculptor must have something of the god
+in him. From his hand comes a form which reflects a spirit. He does not
+make it to please you, nor even to please himself, but because he must.
+You must take what he gives you, or leave it if you are not worthy of
+it.
+
+ECRASIA [_scornfully_] Not worthy of it! Ho! May I not leave it because
+it is not worthy of me?
+
+ARJILLAX. Of you! Hold your silly tongue, you conceited humbug. What do
+you know about it?
+
+ECRASIA. I know what every person of culture knows: that the business of
+the artist is to create beauty. Until today your works have been full of
+beauty; and I have been the first to point that out.
+
+ARJILLAX. Thank you for nothing. People have eyes, havnt they, to see
+what is as plain as the sun in the heavens without your pointing it out?
+
+ECRASIA. You were very glad to have it pointed out. You did not call me
+a conceited humbug then. You stifled me with caresses. You modelled me
+as the genius of art presiding over the infancy of your master here
+[_indicating the other sculptor_], Martellus.
+
+MARTELLUS [_a silent and meditative listener, shudders and shakes his
+head, but says nothing_].
+
+ARJILLAX [_quarrelsomely_] I was taken in by your talk.
+
+ECRASIA. I discovered your genius before anyone else did. Is that true,
+or is it not?
+
+ARJILLAX. Everybody knew I was an extraordinary person. When I was born
+my beard was three feet long.
+
+ECRASIA. Yes; and it has shrunk from three feet to two. Your genius
+seems to have been in the last foot of your beard; for you have lost
+both.
+
+MARTELLUS [_with a short sardonic cachinnation_] Ha! My beard was three
+and a half feet long when I was born; and a flash of lightning burnt it
+off and killed the ancient who was delivering me. Without a hair on my
+chin I became the greatest sculptor in ten generations.
+
+ECRASIA. And yet you come to us today with empty hands. We shall
+actually have to crown Arjillax here because no other sculptor is
+exhibiting.
+
+ACIS [_returning from the temple steps to behind the curved seat on the
+right of the three_] Whats the row, Ecrasia? Why have you fallen out
+with Arjillax?
+
+ECRASIA. He has insulted us! outraged us! profaned his art! You know
+how much we hoped from the twelve busts he placed in the temple to be
+unveiled today. Well, go in and look at them. That is all I have to
+say. [_She sweeps to the curved seat, and sits down just where Acis is
+leaning over it_].
+
+ACIS. I am no great judge of sculpture. Art is not my line. What is
+wrong with the busts?
+
+ECRASIA. Wrong with them! Instead of being ideally beautiful nymphs and
+youths, they are horribly realistic studies of--but I really cannot
+bring my lips to utter it.
+
+_The Newly Born, full of curiosity, runs to the temple, and peeps in._
+
+ACIS. Oh, stow it, Ecrasia. Your lips are not so squeamish as all that.
+Studies of what?
+
+THE NEWLY BORN [_from the temple steps_] Ancients.
+
+ACIS [_surprised but not scandalized_] Ancients!
+
+ECRASIA. Yes, ancients. The one subject that is by the universal consent
+of all connoisseurs absolutely excluded from the fine arts. [_To
+Arjillax_] How can you defend such a proceeding?
+
+ARJILLAX. If you come to that, what interest can you find in the statues
+of smirking nymphs and posturing youths you stick up all over the place?
+
+ECRASIA. You did not ask that when your hand was still skilful enough to
+model them.
+
+ARJILLAX. Skilful! You high-nosed idiot, I could turn such things out by
+the score with my eyes bandaged and one hand tied behind me. But what
+use would they be? They would bore me; and they would bore you if you
+had any sense. Go in and look at my busts. Look at them again and yet
+again until you receive the full impression of the intensity of
+mind that is stamped on them; and then go back to the pretty-pretty
+confectionery you call sculpture, and see whether you can endure its
+vapid emptiness. [_He mounts the altar impetuously_] Listen to me, all
+of you; and do you, Ecrasia, be silent if you are capable of silence.
+
+ECRASIA. Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn. Scorn! That is
+what I feel for your revolting busts.
+
+ARJILLAX. Fool: the busts are only the beginning of a mighty design.
+Listen.
+
+ACIS. Go ahead, old sport. We are listening.
+
+_Martellus stretches himself on the sward beside the altar. The Newly
+Born sits on the temple steps with her chin on her hands, ready to
+devour the first oration she has ever heard. The rest sit or stand at
+ease._
+
+ARJILLAX. In the records which generations of children have rescued from
+the stupid neglect of the ancients, there has come down to us a fable
+which, like many fables, is not a thing that was done in the past, but a
+thing that is to be done in the future. It is a legend of a supernatural
+being called the Archangel Michael.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Is this a story? I want to hear a story. [_She runs down
+the steps and sits on the altar at Arjillax's feet_].
+
+ARJILLAX. The Archangel Michael was a mighty sculptor and painter. He
+found in the centre of the world a temple erected to the goddess of the
+centre, called Mediterranea. This temple was full of silly pictures of
+pretty children, such as Ecrasia approves.
+
+ACIS. Fair play, Arjillax! If she is to keep silent, let her alone.
+
+ECRASIA. I shall not interrupt, Acis. Why should I not prefer youth and
+beauty to age and ugliness?
+
+ARJILLAX. Just so. Well, the Archangel Michael was of my opinion, not
+yours. He began by painting on the ceiling the newly born in all their
+childish beauty. But when he had done this he was not satisfied; for the
+temple was no more impressive than it had been before, except that there
+was a strength and promise of greater things about his newly born ones
+than any other artist had attained to. So he painted all round these
+newly born a company of ancients, who were in those days called prophets
+and sybils, whose majesty was that of the mind alone at its intensest.
+And this painting was acknowledged through ages and ages to be the
+summit and masterpiece of art. Of course we cannot believe such a tale
+literally. It is only a legend. We do not believe in archangels; and the
+notion that thirty thousand years ago sculpture and painting existed,
+and had even reached the glorious perfection they have reached with us,
+is absurd. But what men cannot realize they can at least aspire to. They
+please themselves by pretending that it was realized in a golden age of
+the past. This splendid legend endured because it lived as a desire in
+the hearts of the greatest artists. The temple of Mediterranea never was
+built in the past, nor did Michael the Archangel exist. But today the
+temple is here [_he points to the porch_]; and the man is here [_he
+slaps himself on the chest_]. I, Arjillax, am the man. I will place
+in your theatre such images of the newly born as must satisfy even
+Ecrasia's appetite for beauty; and I will surround them with ancients
+more august than any who walk through our woods.
+
+MARTELLUS [_as before_] Ha!
+
+ARJILLAX [_stung_] Why do you laugh, you who have come empty-handed,
+and, it seems, empty-headed?
+
+ECRASIA [_rising indignantly_] Oh, shame! You dare disparage Martellus,
+twenty times your master.
+
+ACIS. Be quiet, will you [_he seizes her shoulders and thrusts her back
+into her seat_].
+
+MARTELLUS. Let him disparage his fill, Ecrasia. [_Sitting up_] My poor
+Arjillax, I too had this dream. I too found one day that my images of
+loveliness had become vapid, uninteresting, tedious, a waste of time
+and material. I too lost my desire to model limbs, and retained only my
+interest in heads and faces. I, too, made busts of ancients; but I had
+not your courage: I made them in secret, and hid them from you all.
+
+ARJILLAX [_jumping down from the altar behind Martellus in his surprise
+and excitement_] You made busts of ancients! Where are they, man? Will
+you be talked out of your inspiration by Ecrasia and the fools who
+imagine she speaks with authority? Let us have them all set up beside
+mine in the theatre. I have opened the way for you; and you see I am
+none the worse.
+
+MARTELLUS. Impossible. They are all smashed. [_He rises, laughing_].
+
+ALL. Smashed!
+
+ARJILLAX. Who smashed them?
+
+MARTELLUS. I did. That is why I laughed at you just now. You will smash
+yours before you have completed a dozen of them. [_He goes to the end of
+the altar and sits down beside the Newly Born_].
+
+ARJILLAX. But why?
+
+MARTELLUS. Because you cannot give them life. A live ancient is better
+than a dead statue. [_He takes the Newly Born on his knee: she is
+flattered and voluptuously responsive_]. Anything alive is better than
+anything that is only pretending to be alive. [_To Arjillax_] Your
+disillusion with your works of beauty is only the beginning of your
+disillusion with images of all sorts. As your hand became more skilful
+and your chisel cut deeper, you strove to get nearer and nearer to truth
+and reality, discarding the fleeting fleshly lure, and making images of
+the mind that fascinates to the end. But how can so noble an inspiration
+be satisfied with any image, even an image of the truth? In the end the
+intellectual conscience that tore you away from the fleeting in art to
+the eternal must tear you away from art altogether, because art is false
+and life alone is true.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN [_flings her arms round his neck and kisses him
+enthusiastically_].
+
+MARTELLUS [_rises; carries her to the curved bench on his left; deposits
+her beside Strephon as if she were his overcoat; and continues without
+the least change of tone_] Shape it as you will, marble remains marble,
+and the graven image an idol. As I have broken my idols, and cast away
+my chisel and modelling tools, so will you too break these busts of
+yours.
+
+ARJILLAX. Never.
+
+MARTELLUS. Wait, my friend. I do not come empty-handed today, as you
+imagined. On the contrary, I bring with me such a work of art as you
+have never seen, and an artist who has surpassed both you and me further
+than we have surpassed all our competitors.
+
+ECRASIA. Impossible. The greatest things in art can never be surpassed.
+
+ARJILLAX. Who is this paragon whom you declare greater than I?
+
+MARTELLUS. I declare him greater than myself, Arjillax.
+
+ARJILLAX [_frowning_] I understand. Sooner than not drown me, you are
+willing to clasp me round the waist and jump overboard with me.
+
+ACIS. Oh, stop squabbling. That is the worst of you artists. You are
+always in little squabbling cliques; and the worst cliques are those
+which consist of one man. Who is this new fellow you are throwing in one
+another's teeth?
+
+ARJILLAX. Ask Martellus: do not ask me. I know nothing of him. [_He
+leaves Martellus, and sits down beside Ecrasia, on her left_].
+
+MARTELLUS. You know him quite well. Pygmalion.
+
+ECRASIA [_indignantly_] Pygmalion! That soulless creature! A scientist!
+A laboratory person!
+
+ARJILLAX. Pygmalion produce a work of art! You have lost your artistic
+senses. The man is utterly incapable of modelling a thumb nail, let
+alone a human figure.
+
+MARTELLUS. That does not matter: I have done the modelling for him.
+
+ARJILLAX. What on earth do you mean?
+
+MARTELLUS [_calling_] Pygmalion: come forth.
+
+_Pygmalion, a square-fingered youth with his face laid out in horizontal
+blocks, and a perpetual smile of eager benevolent interest in
+everything, and expectation of equal interest from everybody else, comes
+from the temple to the centre of the group, who regard him for the most
+part with dismay, as dreading that he will bore them. Ecrasia is openly
+contemptuous._
+
+MARTELLUS. Friends: it is unfortunate that Pygmalion is constitutionally
+incapable of exhibiting anything without first giving a lecture about
+it to explain it; but I promise you that if you will be patient he will
+shew you the two most wonderful works of art in the world, and that they
+will contain some of my own very best workmanship. Let me add that they
+will inspire a loathing that will cure you of the lunacy of art for
+ever. [_He sits down next the Newly Born, who pouts and turns a very
+cold right shoulder to him, a demonstration utterly lost on him_].
+
+_Pygmalion, with the smile of a simpleton, and the eager confidence of a
+fanatical scientist, climbs awkwardly on to the altar. They prepare for
+the worst._
+
+PYGMALION. My friends: I will omit the algebra--
+
+ACIS. Thank God!
+
+PYGMALION [_continuing_]--because Martellus has made me promise to do
+so. To come to the point, I have succeeded in making artificial human
+beings. Real live ones, I mean.
+
+INCREDULOUS VOICES. Oh, come! Tell us another. Really, Pyg! Get out. You
+havnt. What a lie!
+
+PYGMALION. I tell you I have. I will shew them to you. It has been done
+before. One of the very oldest documents we possess mentions a tradition
+of a biologist who extracted certain unspecified minerals from the earth
+and, as it quaintly expresses it, 'breathed into their nostrils the
+breath of life.' This is the only tradition from the primitive ages
+which we can regard as really scientific. There are later documents
+which specify the minerals with great precision, even to their atomic
+weights; but they are utterly unscientific, because they overlook the
+element of life which makes all the difference between a mere mixture of
+salts and gases and a living organism. These mixtures were made over
+and over again in the crude laboratories of the Silly-Clever Ages; but
+nothing came of them until the ingredient which the old chronicler
+called the breath of life was added by this very remarkable early
+experimenter. In my view he was the founder of biological science.
+
+ARJILLAX. Is that all we know about him? It doesnt amount to very much,
+does it?
+
+PYGMALION. There are some fragments of pictures and documents which
+represent him as walking in a garden and advising people to cultivate
+their gardens. His name has come down to us in several forms. One of
+them is Jove. Another is Voltaire.
+
+ECRASIA. You are boring us to distraction with your Voltaire. What about
+your human beings?
+
+ARJILLAX. Aye: come to them.
+
+PYGMALION. I assure you that these details are intensely interesting.
+[_Cries of_ No! They are not! Come to the human beings! Conspuez
+Voltaire! Cut it short, Pyg! _interrupt him from all sides_]. You will
+see their bearing presently. I promise you I will not detain you long.
+We know, we children of science, that the universe is full of forces and
+powers and energies of one kind and another. The sap rising in a tree,
+the stone holding together in a definite crystalline structure, the
+thought of a philosopher holding his brain in form and operation with an
+inconceivably powerful grip, the urge of evolution: all these forces can
+be used by us. For instance, I use the force of gravitation when I put a
+stone on my tunic to prevent it being blown away when I am bathing. By
+substituting appropriate machines for the stone we have made not only
+gravitation our slave, but also electricity and magnetism, atomic
+attraction, repulsion, polarization, and so forth. But hitherto the
+vital force has eluded us; so it has had to create machinery for itself.
+It has created and developed bony structures of the requisite strength,
+and clothed them with cellular tissue of such amazing sensitiveness that
+the organs it forms will adapt their action to all the normal variations
+in the air they breathe, the food they digest, and the circumstances
+about which they have to think. Yet, as these live bodies, as we call
+them, are only machines after all, it must be possible to construct them
+mechanically.
+
+ARJILLAX. Everything is possible. Have you done it? that is the
+question.
+
+PYGMALION. Yes. But that is a mere fact. What is interesting is the
+explanation of the fact. Forgive my saying so; but it is such a pity
+that you artists have no intellect.
+
+ECRASIA [_sententiously_] I do not admit that. The artist divines by
+inspiration all the truths that the so-called scientist grubs up in his
+laboratory slowly and stupidly long afterwards.
+
+ARJILLAX [_to Ecrasia, quarrelsomely_] What do you know about it? You
+are not an artist.
+
+ACIS. Shut your heads, both of you. Let us have the artificial men. Trot
+them out, Pygmalion.
+
+PYGMALION. It is a man and a woman. But I really must explain first.
+
+ALL [_groaning_]!!!
+
+PYGMALION. Yes: I--
+
+ACIS. We want results, not explanations.
+
+PYGMALION [_hurt_] I see I am boring you. Not one of you takes the least
+interest in science. Goodbye. [_He descends from the altar and makes for
+the temple_].
+
+SEVERAL YOUTHS AND MAIDENS [_rising and rushing to him_] No, no. Dont
+go. Dont be offended. We want to see the artificial pair. We will
+listen. We are tremendously interested. Tell us all about it.
+
+PYGMALION [_relenting_] I shall not detain you two minutes.
+
+ALL. Half an hour if you like. Please go on, Pygmalion. [_They rush him
+back to the altar, and hoist him on to it_]. Up you go.
+
+_They return to their former places._
+
+PYGMALION. As I told you, lots of attempts were made to produce
+protoplasm in the laboratory. Why were these synthetic plasms, as they
+called them, no use?
+
+ECRASIA. We are waiting for you to tell us.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN [_modelling herself on Ecrasia, and trying to outdo her
+intellectually_] Clearly because they were dead.
+
+PYGMALION. Not bad for a baby, my pet. But dead and alive are very loose
+terms. You are not half as much alive as you will be in another month or
+so. What was wrong with the synthetic protoplasm was that it could
+not fix and conduct the Life Force. It was like a wooden magnet or a
+lightning conductor made of silk: it would not take the current.
+
+ACIS. Nobody but a fool would make a wooden magnet, and expect it to
+attract anything.
+
+PYGMALION. He might if he were so ignorant as not to be able to
+distinguish between wood and soft iron. In those days they were very
+ignorant of the differences between things, because their methods of
+analysis were crude. They mixed up messes that were so like protoplasm
+that they could not tell the difference. But the difference was there,
+though their analysis was too superficial and incomplete to detect it.
+You must remember that these poor devils were very little better than
+our idiots: we should never dream of letting one of them survive the day
+of its birth. Why, the Newly Born there already knows by instinct many
+things that their greatest physicists could hardly arrive at by forty
+years of strenuous study. Her simple direct sense of space-time and
+quantity unconsciously solves problems which cost their most famous
+mathematicians years of prolonged and laborious calculations requiring
+such intense mental application that they frequently forgot to breathe
+when engaged in them, and almost suffocated themselves in consequence.
+
+ECRASIA. Leave these obscure prehistoric abortions; and come back to
+your synthetic man and woman.
+
+PYGMALION. When I undertook the task of making synthetic men, I did
+not waste my time on protoplasm. It was evident to me that if it were
+possible to make protoplasm in the laboratory, it must be equally
+possible to begin higher up and make fully evolved muscular and nervous
+tissues, bone, and so forth. Why make the seed when the making of the
+flower would be no greater miracle? I tried thousands of combinations
+before I succeeded in producing anything that would fix high-potential
+Life Force.
+
+ARJILLAX. High what?
+
+PYGMALION. High-po-tential. The Life Force is not so simple as you
+think. A high-potential current of it will turn a bit of dead tissue
+into a philosopher's brain. A low-potential current will reduce the same
+bit of tissue to a mass of corruption. Will you believe me when I tell
+you that, even in man himself, the Life Force used to slip suddenly down
+from its human level to that of a fungus, so that men found their flesh
+no longer growing as flesh, but proliferating horribly in a lower form
+which was called cancer, until the lower form of life killed the higher,
+and both perished together miserably?
+
+MARTELLUS. Keep off the primitive tribes, Pygmalion. They interest you;
+but they bore these young things.
+
+PYGMALION. I am only trying to make you understand. There was the Life
+Force raging all round me: there was I, trying to make organs that would
+capture it as a battery captures electricity, and tissues that would
+conduct it and operate it. It was easy enough to make eyes more perfect
+than our own, and ears with a larger range of sound; but they could
+neither see nor hear, because they were not susceptible to the Life
+Force. But it was far worse when I discovered how to make them
+susceptible; for the first thing that happened was that they ceased to
+be eyes and ears and turned into heaps of maggots.
+
+ECRASIA. Disgusting! Please stop.
+
+ACIS. If you don't want to hear, go away. You go ahead, Pyg.
+
+PYGMALION. I went ahead. You see, the lower potentials of the Life Force
+could make maggots, but not human eyes or ears. I improved the tissue
+until it was susceptible to a higher potential.
+
+ARJILLAX [_intensely interested_] Yes; and then?
+
+PYGMALION. Then the eyes and ears turned into cancers.
+
+ECRASIA. Oh, hideous!
+
+PYGMALION. Not at all. That was a great advance. It encouraged me so
+much that I put aside the eyes and ears, and made a brain. It wouldn't
+take the Life Force at all until I had altered its constitution a dozen
+times; but when it did, it took a much higher potential, and did not
+dissolve; and neither did the eyes and ears when I connected them up
+with the brain. I was able to make a sort of monster: a thing without
+arms or legs; and it really and truly lived for half-an-hour.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Half-an-hour! What good was that? Why did it die?
+
+PYGMALION. Its blood went wrong. But I got that right; and then I went
+ahead with a complete human body: arms and legs and all. He was my first
+man.
+
+ARJILLAX. Who modelled him?
+
+PYGMALION. I did.
+
+MARTELLUS. Do you mean to say you tried your own hand before you sent
+for me?
+
+PYGMALION. Bless you, yes, several times. My first man was the
+ghastliest creature: a more dreadful mixture of horror and absurdity
+than you who have not seen him can conceive.
+
+ARJILLAX. If you modelled him, he must indeed have been a spectacle.
+
+PYGMALION. Oh, it was not his shape. You see I did not invent that. I
+took actual measurements and moulds from my own body. Sculptors do that
+sometimes, you know; though they pretend they don't.
+
+MARTELLUS. Hm!
+
+ARJILLAX. Hah!
+
+PYGMALION. He was all right to look at, at first, or nearly so. But he
+behaved in the most appalling manner; and the subsequent developments
+were so disgusting that I really cannot describe them to you. He seized
+all sorts of things and swallowed them. He drank every fluid in the
+laboratory. I tried to explain to him that he must take nothing that he
+could not digest and assimilate completely; but of course he could not
+understand me. He assimilated a little of what he swallowed; but the
+process left horrible residues which he had no means of getting rid of.
+His blood turned to poison; and he perished in torments, howling. I then
+perceived that I had produced a prehistoric man; for there are certain
+traces in our own bodies of arrangements which enabled the earlier forms
+of mankind to renew their bodies by swallowing flesh and grains and
+vegetables and all sorts of unnatural and hideous foods, and getting rid
+of what they could not digest.
+
+ECRASIA. But what a pity he died! What a glimpse of the past we have
+lost! He could have told us stories of the Golden Age.
+
+PYGMALION. Not he. He was a most dangerous beast. He was afraid of me,
+and actually tried to kill me by snatching up things and striking at me
+with them. I had to give him two or three pretty severe shocks before I
+convinced him that he was at my mercy.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Why did you not make a woman instead of a man? She would
+have known how to behave herself.
+
+MARTELLUS. Why did you not make a man and a woman? Their children would
+have been interesting.
+
+PYGMALION. I intended to make a woman; but after my experience with the
+man it was out of the question.
+
+ECRASIA. Pray why?
+
+PYGMALION. Well, it is difficult to explain if you have not studied
+prehistoric methods of reproduction. You see the only sort of men and
+women I could make were men and women just like us as far as their
+bodies were concerned. That was how I killed the poor beast of a man. I
+hadnt provided for his horrible prehistoric methods of feeding himself.
+Suppose the woman had reproduced in some prehistoric way instead of
+being oviparous as we are? She couldn't have done it with a modern
+female body. Besides, the experiment might have been painful.
+
+ECRASIA. Then you have nothing to shew us at all?
+
+PYGMALION. Oh yes I have. I am not so easily beaten as that. I set to
+work again for months to find out how to make a digestive system that
+would deal with waste products and a reproductive system capable of
+internal nourishment and incubation.
+
+ECRASIA. Why did you not find out how to make them like us?
+
+STREPHON [_crying out in his grief for the first time_] Why did you not
+make a woman whom you could love? That was the secret you needed.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Oh yes. How true! How great of you, darling Strephon!
+[_She kisses him impulsively_].
+
+STREPHON [_passionately_] Let me alone.
+
+MARTELLUS. Control your reflexes, child.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. My what!
+
+MARTELLUS. Your reflexes. The things you do without thinking. Pygmalion
+is going to shew you a pair of human creatures who are all reflexes and
+nothing else. Take warning by them.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. But wont they be alive, like us?
+
+PYGMALION. That is a very difficult question to answer, my dear. I
+confess I thought at first I had created living creatures; but Martellus
+declares they are only automata. But then Martellus is a mystic: _I_
+am a man of science. He draws a line between an automaton and a living
+organism. I cannot draw that line to my own satisfaction.
+
+MARTELLUS. Your artificial men have no self-control. They only respond
+to stimuli from without.
+
+PYGMALION. But they are conscious. I have taught them to talk and read;
+and now they tell lies. That is so very lifelike.
+
+MARTELLUS. Not at all. If they were alive they would tell the truth. You
+can provoke them to tell any silly lie; and you can foresee exactly the
+sort of lie they will tell. Give them a clip below the knee, and they
+will jerk their foot forward. Give them a clip in their appetites or
+vanities or any of their lusts and greeds, and they will boast and lie,
+and affirm and deny, and hate and love without the slightest regard to
+the facts that are staring them in the face, or to their own obvious
+limitations. That proves that they are automata.
+
+PYGMALION [_unconvinced_] I know, dear old chap; but there really is
+some evidence that we are descended from creatures quite as limited
+and absurd as these. After all, the baby there is three-quarters an
+automaton. Look at the way she has been going on!
+
+THE NEWLY BORN [_indignantly_] What do you mean? How have I been going
+on?
+
+ECRASIA. If they have no regard for truth, they can have no real
+vitality.
+
+PYGMALION. Truth is sometimes so artificial: so relative, as we say in
+the scientific world, that it is very hard to feel quite sure that what
+is false and even ridiculous to us may not be true to them.
+
+ECRASIA. I ask you again, why did you not make them like us? Would any
+true artist be content with less than the best?
+
+PYGMALION. I couldnt. I tried. I failed. I am convinced that what I
+am about to shew you is the very highest living organism that can be
+produced in the laboratory. The best tissues we can manufacture will not
+take as high potentials as the natural product: that is where Nature
+beats us. You dont seem to understand, any of you, what an enormous
+triumph it was to produce consciousness at all.
+
+ACIS. Cut the cackle; and come to the synthetic couple.
+
+SEVERAL YOUTHS AND MAIDENS. Yes, yes. No more talking. Let us have them.
+Dry up, Pyg; and fetch them along. Come on: out with them! The synthetic
+couple.
+
+PYGMALION [_waving his hands to appease them_] Very well, very well.
+Will you please whistle for them? They respond to the stimulus of a
+whistle.
+
+_All who can, whistle like streetboys._
+
+ECRASIA [_makes a wry face and puts her fingers in her ears_]!
+
+PYGMALION. Sh-sh-sh! Thats enough: thats enough: thats enough.
+[_Silence_]. Now let us have some music. A dance tune. Not too fast.
+
+_The flutists play a quiet dance._
+
+MARTELLUS. Prepare yourselves for something ghastly.
+
+_Two figures, a man and woman of noble appearance, beautifully modelled
+and splendidly attired, emerge hand in hand from the temple. Seeing
+that all eyes are fixed on them, they halt on the steps, smiling with
+gratified vanity. The woman is on the man's left._
+
+PYGMALION [_rubbing his hands with the purring satisfaction of a
+creator_] This way, please.
+
+_The Figures advance condescendingly and pose themselves centrally
+between the curved seats._
+
+PYGMALION. Now if you will be so good as to oblige us with a little
+something. You dance so beautifully, you know. [_He sits down next
+Martellus, and whispers to him_] It is extraordinary how sensitive they
+are to the stimulus of flattery.
+
+_The Figures, with a gracious air, dance pompously, but very passably.
+At the close they bow to one another._
+
+ON ALL HANDS [_clapping_] Bravo! Thank you. Wonderful! Splendid.
+Perfect.
+
+_The Figures acknowledge the applause in an obvious condition of swelled
+head._
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Can they make love?
+
+PYGMALION. Yes: they can respond to every stimulus. They have all the
+reflexes. Put your arm round the man's neck, and he will put his arm
+round your body. He cannot help it.
+
+THE FEMALE FIGURE [_frowning_] Round mine, you mean.
+
+PYGMALION. Yours, too, of course, if the stimulus comes from you.
+
+ECRASIA. Cannot he do anything original?
+
+PYGMALION. No. But then, you know, I do not admit that any of us can do
+anything really original, though Martellus thinks we can.
+
+ACIS. Can he answer a question?
+
+PYGMALION. Oh yes. A question is a stimulus, you know. Ask him one.
+
+ACIS [_to the Male Figure_] What do you think of what you see around
+you? Of us, for instance, and our ways and doings?
+
+THE MALE FIGURE. I have not seen the newspaper today.
+
+THE FEMALE FIGURE. How can you expect my husband to know what to think
+of you if you give him his breakfast without his paper?
+
+MARTELLUS. You see. He is a mere automaton.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. I don't think I should like him to put his arm round
+my neck. I don't like them. [_The Male Figure looks offended, and the
+Female jealous_]. Oh, I thought they couldn't understand. Have they
+feelings?
+
+PYGMALION. Of course they have. I tell you they have all the reflexes.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. But feelings are not reflexes.
+
+PYGMALION. They are sensations. When the rays of light enter their eyes
+and make a picture on their retinas, their brains become conscious of
+the picture and they act accordingly. When the waves of sound started by
+your speaking enter their ears and record a disparaging remark on their
+keyboards, their brains become conscious of the disparagement and resent
+it accordingly. If you did not disparage them they would not resent it.
+They are merely responding to a stimulus.
+
+THE MALE FIGURE. We are part of a cosmic system. Free will is an
+illusion. We are the children of Cause and Effect. We are the
+Unalterable, the Irresistible, the Irresponsible, the Inevitable.
+
+
+    My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
+    Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.
+
+
+_There is a general stir of curiosity at this._
+
+ACIS. What the dickens does he mean?
+
+THE MALE FIGURE. Silence, base accident of Nature. This [_taking the
+hand of the Female Figure and introducing her_] is Cleopatra-Semiramis,
+consort of the king of kings, and therefore queen of queens. Ye are
+things hatched from eggs by the brainless sun and the blind fire; but
+the king of kings and queen of queens are not accidents of the egg: they
+are thought-out and hand-made to receive the sacred Life Force. There is
+one person of the king and one of the queen; but the Life Force of the
+king and queen is all one: the glory equal, the majesty co-eternal. Such
+as the king is so is the queen, the king thought-out and hand-made, the
+queen thought-out and hand-made. The actions of the king are caused, and
+therefore determined, from the beginning of the world to the end;
+and the actions of the queen are likewise. The king logical and
+predetermined and inevitable, and the queen logical and predetermined
+and inevitable. And yet they are not two logical and predetermined and
+inevitable, but one logical and predetermined and inevitable. Therefore
+confound not the persons, nor divide the substance: but worship us twain
+as one throne, two in one and one in two, lest by error ye fall into
+irretrievable damnation.
+
+THE FEMALE FIGURE. And if any say unto you 'Which one?' remember that
+though there is one person of the king and one of the queen, yet these
+two persons are not alike, but are woman and man, and that as woman was
+created after man, the skill and practice gained in making him were
+added to her, wherefore she is to be exalted above him in all personal
+respects, and--
+
+THE MALE FIGURE. Peace, woman; for this is a damnable heresy. Both Man
+and Woman are what they are and must do what they must according to the
+eternal laws of Cause and Effect. Look to your words; for if they enter
+my ear and jar too repugnantly on my sensorium, who knows that the
+inevitable response to that stimulus may not be a message to my muscles
+to snatch up some heavy object and break you in pieces.
+
+_The Female Figure picks up a stone and is about to throw it at her
+consort._
+
+ARJILLAX [_springing up and shouting to Pygmalion, who is fondly
+watching the Male Figure_] Look out, Pygmalion! Look at the woman!
+
+_Pygmalion, seeing what is happening, hurls himself on the Female Figure
+and wrenches the stone out of her hand. All spring up in consternation._
+
+ARJILLAX. She meant to kill him.
+
+STREPHON. This is horrible.
+
+THE FEMALE FIGURE [_wrestling with Pygmalion_] Let me go. Let me go,
+will you [_she bites his hand_].
+
+PYGMALION [_releasing her and staggering_] Oh!
+
+_A general shriek of horror echoes his exclamation. He turns deadly
+pale, and supports himself against the end of the curved seat._
+
+THE FEMALE FIGURE [_to her consort_] You would stand there and let me be
+treated like this, you unmanly coward.
+
+_Pygmalion falls dead._
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Oh! Whats the matter? Why did he fall! What has happened
+to him?
+
+_They look on anxiously as Martellus kneels down and examines the body
+of Pygmalion._
+
+MARTELLUS. She has bitten a piece out of his hand nearly as large as a
+finger nail: enough to kill ten men. There is no pulse, no breath.
+
+ECRASIA. But his thumb is clinched.
+
+MARTELLUS. No: it has just straightened out. See! He has gone. Poor
+Pygmalion!
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Oh! [_She weeps_].
+
+STREPHON. Hush, dear: thats childish.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN [_subsiding with a sniff_]!!
+
+MARTELLUS [_rising_] Dead in his third year. What a loss to Science!
+
+ARJILLAX. Who cares about Science? Serve him right for making that pair
+of horrors!
+
+THE MALE FIGURE [_glaring_] Ha!
+
+THE FEMALE FIGURE. Keep a civil tongue in your head, you.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Oh, do not be so unkind, Arjillax. You will make water
+come out of my eyes again.
+
+MARTELLUS [_contemplating the Figures_] Just look at these two devils.
+I modelled them out of the stuff Pygmalion made for them. They are
+masterpieces of art. And see what they have done! Does that convince you
+of the value of art, Arjillax!
+
+STREPHON. They look dangerous. Keep away from them.
+
+ECRASIA. No need to tell us that, Strephon. Pf! They poison the air.
+
+THE MALE FIGURE. Beware, woman. The wrath of Ozymandias strikes like the
+lightning.
+
+THE FEMALE FIGURE. You just say that again if you dare, you filthy
+creature.
+
+ACIS. What are you going to do with them, Martellus? You are responsible
+for them, now that Pygmalion has gone.
+
+MARTELLUS. If they were marble it would be simple enough: I could smash
+them. As it is, how am I to kill them without making a horrible mess?
+
+THE MALE FIGURE [_posing heroically_] Ha! [_He declaims_]
+
+
+    Come one: come all: this rock shall fly
+    From its firm base as soon as I.
+
+
+THE FEMALE FIGURE [_fondly_] My man! My hero husband! I am proud of you.
+I love you.
+
+MARTELLUS. We must send out a message for an ancient.
+
+ACIS. Need we bother an ancient about such a trifle? It will take less
+than half a second to reduce our poor Pygmalion to a pinch of dust. Why
+not calcine the two along with him?
+
+MARTELLUS. No: the two automata are trifles; but the use of our powers
+of destruction is never a trifle. I had rather have the case judged.
+
+_The He-Ancient emerges from the grove. The Figures are panic-stricken._
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT [_mildly_] Am I wanted? I feel called. [_Seeing the body
+of Pygmalion, and immediately taking a sterner tone_] What! A child
+lost! A life wasted! How has this happened?
+
+THE FEMALE FIGURE [_frantically_] I didn't do it. It was not me. May
+I be struck dead if I touched him! It was he [_pointing to the Male
+Figure_].
+
+ALL [amazed at the lie] Oh!
+
+THE MALE FIGURE. Liar. You bit him. Everyone here saw you do it.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. Silence. [_Going between the Figures_] Who made these
+two loathsome dolls?
+
+THE MALE FIGURE [_trying to assert himself with his knees knocking_] My
+name is Ozymandias, king of--
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT [_with a contemptuous gesture_] Pooh!
+
+THE MALE FIGURE [_falling on his knees_] Oh dont, sir. Dont. She did it,
+sir: indeed she did.
+
+THE FEMALE FIGURE [_howling lamentably_] Boohoo! oo! ooh!
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. Silence, I say.
+
+_He knocks the Male Automaton upright by a very light flip under
+the chin. The Female Automaton hardly dares to sob. The immortals
+contemplate them with shame and loathing. The She-Ancient comes from the
+trees opposite the temple._
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. Somebody wants me. What is the matter? [_She comes to
+the left hand of the Female Figure, not seeing the body of Pygmalion_].
+Pf! [_Severely_] You have been making dolls. You must not: they are not
+only disgusting: they are dangerous.
+
+THE FEMALE FIGURE [_snivelling piteously_] I'm not a doll, mam. I'm only
+poor Cleopatra-Semiramis, queen of queens. [_Covering her face with her
+hands_] Oh, don't look at me like that, mam. I meant no harm. He hurt
+me: indeed he did.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. The creature has killed that poor youth.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT [_seeing the body of Pygmalion_] What! This clever
+child, who promised so well!
+
+THE FEMALE FIGURE. He made me. I had as much right to kill him as he had
+to make me. And how was I to know that a little thing like that would
+kill him? I shouldn't die if he cut off my arm or leg.
+
+ECRASIA. What nonsense!
+
+MARTELLUS. It may not be nonsense. I daresay if you cut off her leg she
+would grow another, like the lobsters and the little lizards.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. Did this dead boy make these two things?
+
+MARTELLUS. He made them in his laboratory. I moulded their limbs. I am
+sorry. I was thoughtless: I did not foresee that they would kill and
+pretend to be persons they were not, and declare things that were false,
+and wish evil. I thought they would be merely mechanical fools.
+
+THE MALE FIGURE. Do you blame us for our human nature?
+
+THE FEMALE FIGURE. We are flesh and blood and not angels.
+
+THE MALE FIGURE. Have you no hearts?
+
+ARJILLAX. They are mad as well as mischievous. May we not destroy them?
+
+STREPHON. We abhor them.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. We loathe them.
+
+ECRASIA. They are noisome.
+
+ACIS. I don't want to be hard on the poor devils; but they are making me
+feel uneasy in my inside. I never had such a sensation before.
+
+MARTELLUS. I took a lot of trouble with them. But as far as I am
+concerned, destroy them by all means. I loathed them from the beginning.
+
+ALL. Yes, yes: we all loathe them. Let us calcine them.
+
+THE FEMALE FIGURE. Oh, don't be so cruel. I'm not fit to die. I will
+never bite anyone again. I will tell the truth. I will do good. Is it my
+fault if I was not made properly? Kill him; but spare me.
+
+THE MALE FIGURE. No! I have done no harm: she has. Kill her if you like:
+you have no right to kill me.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Do you hear that? They want to have one another killed.
+
+ARJILLAX. Monstrous! Kill them both.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. Silence. These things are mere automata: they cannot
+help shrinking from death at any cost. You see that they have no
+self-control, and are merely shuddering through a series of reflexes.
+Let us see whether we cannot put a little more life into them. [_He
+takes the Male Figure by the hand, and places his disengaged hand on
+its head_]. Now listen. One of you two is to be destroyed. Which of you
+shall it be?
+
+THE MALE FIGURE [_after a slight convulsion during which his eyes are
+fixed on the He-Ancient_] Spare her; and kill me.
+
+STREPHON. Thats better.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Much better.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT [_handling the Female Automaton in the same manner_]
+Which of you shall we kill?
+
+THE FEMALE FIGURE. Kill us both. How could either of us live without the
+other?
+
+ECRASIA. The woman is more sensible than the man.
+
+_The Ancients release the Automata._
+
+THE MALE FIGURE [_sinking to the ground_] I am discouraged. Life is too
+heavy a burden.
+
+THE FEMALE FIGURE [_collapsing_] I am dying. I am glad. I am afraid to
+live.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. I think it would be nice to give the poor things a
+little music.
+
+ARJILLAX. Why?
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. I don't know. But it would.
+
+_The Musicians play._
+
+THE FEMALE FIGURE. Ozymandias: do you hear that? [_She rises on her
+knees and looks raptly into space_] Queen of queens! [_She dies_].
+
+THE MALE FIGURE [_crawling feebly towards her until he reaches her
+hand_] I knew I was really a king of kings. [_To the others_] Illusions,
+farewell: we are going to our thrones. [_He dies_].
+
+_The music stops. There is dead silence for a moment._
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. That was funny.
+
+STREPHON. It was. Even the Ancients are smiling.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Just a little.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT [_quickly recovering her grave and peremptory manner_]
+Take these two abominations away to Pygmalion's laboratory, and destroy
+them with the rest of the laboratory refuse. [_Some of them move to
+_obey]. Take care: do not touch their flesh: it is noxious: lift them by
+their robes. Carry Pygmalion into the temple; and dispose of his remains
+in the usual way.
+
+_The three bodies are carried out as directed, Pygmalion into the temple
+by his bare arms and legs, and the two Figures through the grove by
+their clothes. Martellus superintends the removal of the Figures, Acis
+that of Pygmalion. Ecrasia, Arjillax, Strephon, and the Newly Born sit
+down as before, but on contrary benches; so that Strephon and the Newly
+Born now face the grove, and Ecrasia and Arjillax the temple. The
+Ancients remain standing at the altar._
+
+ECRASIA [_as she sits down_] Oh for a breeze from the hills!
+
+STREPHON. Or the wind from the sea at the turn of the tide!
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. I want some clean air.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. The air will be clean in a moment. This doll flesh that
+children make decomposes quickly at best; but when it is shaken by such
+passions as the creatures are capable of, it breaks up at once and
+becomes horribly tainted.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. Let it be a lesson to you all to be content with
+lifeless toys, and not attempt to make living ones. What would you think
+of us ancients if we made toys of you children?
+
+THE NEWLY BORN [_coaxingly_] Why do you not make toys of us? Then you
+would play with us; and that would be very nice.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. It would not amuse us. When you play with one another
+you play with your bodies, and that makes you supple and strong; but if
+we played with you we should play with your minds, and perhaps deform
+them.
+
+STREPHON. You are a ghastly lot, you ancients. I shall kill myself when
+I am four years old. What do you live for?
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. You will find out when you grow up. You will not kill
+yourself.
+
+STREPHON. If you make me believe that, I shall kill myself now.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Oh no. I want you. I love you.
+
+STREPHON. I love someone else. And she has gone old, old. Lost to me for
+ever.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. How old?
+
+STREPHON. You saw her when you barged into us as we were dancing. She is
+four.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. How I should have hated her twenty minutes ago! But I
+have grown out of that now.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. Good. That hatred is called jealousy, the worst of our
+childish complaints.
+
+_Martellus, dusting his hands and puffing, returns from the grove._
+
+MARTELLUS. Ouf! [_He sits down next the Newly Born_] That job's
+finished.
+
+ARJILLAX. Ancients: I should like to make a few studies of you. Not
+portraits, of course: I shall idealize you a little. I have come to the
+conclusion that you ancients are the most interesting subjects after
+all.
+
+MARTELLUS. What! Have those two horrors, whose ashes I have just
+deposited with peculiar pleasure in poor Pygmalion's dustbin, not cured
+you of this silly image-making!
+
+ARJILLAX. Why did you model them as young things, you fool? If Pygmalion
+had come to me, I should have made ancients of them for him. Not that I
+should have modelled them any better. I have always said that no one
+can beat you at your best as far as handwork is concerned. But this job
+required brains. That is where I should have come in.
+
+MARTELLUS. Well, my brainy boy, you are welcome to try your hand. There
+are two of Pygmalion's pupils at the laboratory who helped him to
+manufacture the bones and tissues and all the rest of it. They can turn
+out a couple of new automatons; and you can model them as ancients if
+this venerable pair will sit for you.
+
+ECRASIA [_decisively_] No. No more automata. They are too disgusting.
+
+ACIS [_returning from the temple_] Well, thats done. Poor old Pyg!
+
+ECRASIA. Only fancy, Acis! Arjillax wants to make more of those
+abominable things, and to destroy even their artistic character by
+making ancients of them.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. You wont sit for them, will you? Please dont.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. Children, listen.
+
+ACIS [_striding down the steps to the bench and seating himself next
+Ecrasia_] What! Even the Ancient wants to make a speech! Give it mouth,
+O Sage.
+
+STREPHON. For heaven's sake don't tell us that the earth was once
+inhabited by Ozymandiases and Cleopatras. Life is hard enough for us as
+it is.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take
+courage: it can be delightful. What I wanted to tell you is that ever
+since men existed, children have played with dolls.
+
+ECRASIA. You keep using that word. What are dolls, pray?
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. What you call works of art. Images. We call them dolls.
+
+ARJILLAX. Just so. You have no sense of art; and you instinctively
+insult it.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. Children have been known to make dolls out of rags, and
+to caress them with the deepest fondness.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. Eight centuries ago, when I was a child, I made a rag
+doll. The rag doll is the dearest of all.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN [_eagerly interested_] Oh! Have you got it still?
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. I kept it a full week.
+
+ECRASIA. Even in your childhood, then, you did not understand high art,
+and adored your own amateur crudities.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. How old are you?
+
+ECRASIA. Eight months.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. When you have lived as long as I have--
+
+ECRASIA [_interrupting rudely_] I shall worship rag dolls, perhaps.
+Thank heaven I am still in my prime.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. You are still capable of thanking, though you do not
+know what you thank. You are a thanking little animal, a blaming little
+animal, a--
+
+ACIS. A gushing little animal.
+
+ARJILLAX. And, as she thinks, an artistic little animal.
+
+ECRASIA [_nettled_] I am an animated being with a reasonable soul and
+human flesh subsisting. If your Automata had been properly animated,
+Martellus, they would have been more successful.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. That is where you are wrong, my child. If those two
+loathsome things had been rag dolls, they would have been amusing and
+lovable. The Newly Born here would have played with them; and you would
+all have laughed and played with them too until you had torn them to
+pieces; and then you would have laughed more than ever.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Of course we should. Isnt that funny?
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. When a thing is funny, search it for a hidden truth.
+
+STREPHON. Yes; and take all the fun out of it.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. Do not be so embittered because your sweetheart has
+outgrown her love for you. The Newly Born will make amends.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Oh yes: I will be more than she could ever have been.
+
+STREPHON. Psha! Jealous!
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Oh no. I have grown out of that. I love her now because
+she loved you, and because you love her.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. That is the next stage. You are getting on very nicely,
+my child.
+
+MARTELLUS. Come! what is the truth that was hidden in the rag doll?
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. Well, consider why you are not content with the rag
+doll, and must have something more closely resembling a real living
+creature. As you grow up you make images and paint pictures. Those of
+you who cannot do that make stories about imaginary dolls. Or you dress
+yourselves up as dolls and act plays about them.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. And, to deceive yourself the more completely, you take
+them so very very seriously that Ecrasia here declares that the making
+of dolls is the holiest work of creation, and the words you put into
+the mouths of dolls the sacredest of scriptures and the noblest of
+utterances.
+
+ECRASIA. Tush!
+
+ARJILLAX. Tosh!
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. Yet the more beautiful they become the further they
+retreat from you. You cannot caress them as you caress the rag doll. You
+cannot cry for them when they are broken or lost, or when you pretend
+they have been unkind to you, as you could when you played with rag
+dolls.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. At last, like Pygmalion, you demand from your dolls the
+final perfection of resemblance to life. They must move and speak.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. They must love and hate.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. They must think that they think.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. They must have soft flesh and warm, blood.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. And then, when you have achieved this as Pygmalion did;
+when the marble masterpiece is dethroned by the automaton and the homo
+by the homunculus; when the body and the brain, the reasonable soul and
+human flesh subsisting, as Ecrasia says, stand before you unmasked as
+mere machinery, and your impulses are shewn to be nothing but reflexes,
+you are filled with horror and loathing, and would give worlds to be
+young enough to play with your rag doll again, since every step away
+from it has been a step away from love and happiness. Is it not true?
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. Speak, Martellus: you who have travelled the whole
+path.
+
+MARTELLUS. It is true. With fierce joy I turned a temperature of a
+million degrees on those two things I had modelled, and saw them vanish
+in an instant into inoffensive dust.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. Speak, Arjillax: you who have advanced from imitating
+the lightly living child to the intensely living ancient. Is it true, so
+far?
+
+ARJILLAX. It is partly true: I cannot pretend to be satisfied now with
+modelling pretty children.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. And you, Ecrasia: you cling to your highly artistic
+dolls as the noblest projections of the Life Force, do you not?
+
+ECRASIA. Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world
+unbearable.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN [_anticipating the She-Ancient, who is evidently going
+to challenge her_] Now you are coming to me, because I am the latest
+arrival. But I don't understand your art and your dolls at all. I want
+to caress my darling Strephon, not to play with dolls.
+
+ACIS. I am in my fourth year; and I have got on very well without your
+dolls. I had rather walk up a mountain and down again than look at all
+the statues Martellus and Arjillax ever made. You prefer a statue to an
+automaton, and a rag doll to a statue. So do I; but I prefer a man to a
+rag doll. Give me friends, not dolls.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. Yet I have seen you walking over the mountains alone.
+Have you not found your best friend in yourself?
+
+ACIS. What are you driving at, old one? What does all this lead to?
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. It leads, young man, to the truth that you can create
+nothing but yourself.
+
+ACIS [_musing_] I can create nothing but myself. Ecrasia: you are
+clever. Do you understand it? I don't.
+
+ECRASIA. It is as easy to understand as any other ignorant error. What
+artist is as great as his own works? He can create masterpieces; but he
+cannot improve the shape of his own nose.
+
+ACIS. There! What have you to say to that, old one?
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. He can alter the shape of his own soul. He could alter
+the shape of his nose if the difference between a turned-up nose and a
+turned-down one were worth the effort. One does not face the throes of
+creation for trifles.
+
+ACIS. What have you to say to that, Ecrasia?
+
+ECRASIA. I say that if the ancients had thoroughly grasped the theory of
+fine art they would understand that the difference between a beautiful
+nose and an ugly one is of supreme importance: that it is indeed the
+only thing that matters.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. That is, they would understand something they could not
+believe, and that you do not believe.
+
+ACIS. Just so, mam. Art is not honest: that is why I never could stand
+much of it. It is all make-believe. Ecrasia never really says things:
+she only rattles her teeth in her mouth.
+
+ECRASIA. Acis: you are rude.
+
+ACIS. You mean that I wont play the game of make-believe. Well, I don't
+ask you to play it with me; so why should you expect me to play it with
+you?
+
+ECRASIA. You have no right to say that I am not sincere. I have found a
+happiness in art that real life has never given me. I am intensely in
+earnest about art. There is a magic and mystery in art that you know
+nothing of.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. Yes, child: art is the magic mirror you make to reflect
+your invisible dreams in visible pictures. You use a glass mirror to see
+your face: you use works of art to see your soul. But we who are older
+use neither glass mirrors nor works of art. We have a direct sense of
+life. When you gain that you will put aside your mirrors and statues,
+your toys and your dolls.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. Yet we too have our toys and our dolls. That is the
+trouble of the ancients.
+
+ARJILLAX. What! The ancients have their troubles! It is the first time I
+ever heard one of them confess it.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. Look at us. Look at me. This is my body, my blood,
+my brain; but it is not me. I am the eternal life, the perpetual
+resurrection; but [_striking his body_] this structure, this organism,
+this makeshift, can be made by a boy in a laboratory, and is held back
+from dissolution only by my use of it. Worse still, it can be broken by
+a slip of the foot, drowned by a cramp in the stomach, destroyed by a
+flash from the clouds. Sooner or later, its destruction is certain.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. Yes: this body is the last doll to be discarded. When I
+was a child, Ecrasia, I, too, was an artist, like your sculptor friends
+there, striving to create perfection in things outside myself. I made
+statues: I painted pictures: I tried to worship them.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. I had no such skill; but I, like Acis, sought perfection
+in friends, in lovers, in nature, in things outside myself. Alas! I
+could not create if. I could only imagine it.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. I, like Arjillax, found out that my statues of bodily
+beauty were no longer even beautiful to me; and I pressed on and made
+statues and pictures of men and women of genius, like those in the old
+fable of Michael Angelo. Like Martellus, I smashed them when I saw that
+there was no life in them: that they were so dead that they would not
+even dissolve as a dead body does.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. And I, like Acis, ceased to walk over the mountains with
+my friends, and walked alone; for I found that I had creative power
+over myself but none over my friends. And then I ceased to walk on the
+mountains; for I saw that the mountains were dead.
+
+ACIS [_protesting vehemently_] No. I grant you about the friends
+perhaps; but the mountains are still the mountains, each with its name,
+its individuality, its upstanding strength and majesty, its beauty--
+
+ECRASIA. What! Acis among the rhapsodists!
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. Mere metaphor, my poor boy: the mountains are corpses.
+
+ALL THE YOUNG [_repelled_] Oh!
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. Yes. In the hardpressed heart of the earth, where the
+inconceivable heat of the sun still glows, the stone lives in fierce
+atomic convulsion, as we live in our slower way. When it is cast out to
+the surface it dies like deep-sea fish: what you see is only its cold
+dead body. We have tapped that central heat as prehistoric man tapped
+water springs; but nothing has come up alive from those flaming depths:
+your landscapes, your mountains, are only the world's cast skins and
+decaying teeth on which we live like microbes.
+
+ECRASIA. Ancient: you blaspheme against Nature and against Man.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. Child, child, how much enthusiasm will you have for man
+when you have endured eight centuries of him, as I have, and seen him
+perish by an empty mischance that is yet a certainty? When I discarded
+my dolls as he discarded his friends and his mountains, it was to myself
+I turned as to the final reality. Here, and here alone, I could shape
+and create. When my arm was weak and I willed it to be strong, I could
+create a roll of muscle on it; and when I understood that, I understood
+that I could without any greater miracle give myself ten arms and three
+heads.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. I also came to understand such miracles. For fifty years
+I sat contemplating this power in myself and concentrating my will.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. So did I; and for five more years I made myself into
+all sorts of fantastic monsters. I walked upon a dozen legs: I worked
+with twenty hands and a hundred fingers: I looked to the four quarters
+of the compass with eight eyes out of four heads. Children fled in
+amazement from me until I had to hide myself from them; and the
+ancients, who had forgotten how to laugh, smiled grimly when they
+passed.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. We have all committed these follies. You will all commit
+them.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Oh, do grow a lot of arms and legs and heads for us. It
+would be so funny.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. My child: I am just as well as I am. I would not lift my
+finger now to have a thousand heads.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. But what would I not give to have no head at all?
+
+ALL THE YOUNG. Whats that? No head at all? Why? How?
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. Can you not understand?
+
+ALL THE YOUNG [_shaking their heads_] No.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. One day, when I was tired of learning to walk forward
+with some of my feet and backwards with others and sideways with the
+rest all at once, I sat on a rock with my four chins resting on four
+of my palms, and four or my elbows resting on four of my knees. And
+suddenly it came into my mind that this monstrous machinery of heads and
+limbs was no more me than my statues had been me, and that it was only
+an automaton that I had enslaved.
+
+MARTELLUS. Enslaved? What does that mean?
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. A thing that must do what you command it is a slave;
+and its commander is its master. These are words you will learn when
+your turn comes.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. You will also learn that when the master has come to do
+everything through the slave, the slave becomes his master, since he
+cannot live without him.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. And so I perceived that I had made myself the slave of
+a slave.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. When we discovered that, we shed our superfluous heads
+and legs and arms until we had our old shapes again, and no longer
+startled the children.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. But still I am the slave of this slave, my body. How am
+I to be delivered from it?
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. That, children, is the trouble of the ancients. For
+whilst we are tied to this tyrannous body we are subject to its death,
+and our destiny is not achieved.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. What is your destiny?
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. To be immortal.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. The day will come when there will be no people, only
+thought.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. And that will be life eternal.
+
+ECRASIA. I trust I shall meet my fatal accident before that day dawns.
+
+ARJILLAX. For once, Ecrasia, I agree with you. A world in which there
+were nothing plastic would be an utterly miserable one.
+
+ECRASIA. No limbs, no contours, no exquisite lines and elegant shapes,
+no worship of beautiful bodies, no poetic embraces in which cultivated
+lovers pretend that their caressing hands are wandering over celestial
+hills and enchanted valleys, no--
+
+ACIS [_interrupting her disgustedly_] What an inhuman mind you have,
+Ecrasia!
+
+ECRASIA. Inhuman!
+
+ACIS. Yes: inhuman. Why don't you fall in love with someone?
+
+ECRASIA. I! I have been in love all my life. I burned with it even in
+the egg.
+
+ACIS. Not a bit of it. You and Arjillax are just as hard as two stones.
+
+ECRASIA. You did not always think so, Acis.
+
+ACIS. Oh, I know. I offered you my love once, and asked for yours.
+
+ECRASIA. And did I deny it to you, Acis?
+
+ACIS. You didn't even know what love was.
+
+ECRASIA. Oh! I adored you, you stupid oaf, until I found that you were a
+mere animal.
+
+ACIS. And I made no end of a fool of myself about you until I discovered
+that you were a mere artist. You appreciated my contours! I was plastic,
+as Arjillax says. I wasn't a man to you: I was a masterpiece appealing
+to your tastes and your senses. Your tastes and senses had overlaid the
+direct impulse of life in you. And because I cared only for our life,
+and went straight to it, and was bored by your calling my limbs fancy
+names and mapping me into mountains and valleys and all the rest of it,
+you called me an animal. Well, I am an animal, if you call a live man an
+animal.
+
+ECRASIA. You need not explain. You refused to be refined. I did my
+best to lift your prehistoric impulses on to the plane of beauty, of
+imagination, of romance, of poetry, of art, of--
+
+ACIS. These things are all very well in their way and in their proper
+places. But they are not love. They are an unnatural adulteration of
+love. Love is a simple thing and a deep thing: it is an act of life and
+not an illusion. Art is an illusion.
+
+ARJILLAX. That is false. The statue comes to life always. The statues of
+today are the men and women of the next incubation. I hold up the marble
+figure before the mother and say, 'This is the model you must copy.' We
+produce what we see. Let no man dare to create in art a thing that he
+would not have exist in life.
+
+MARTELLUS. Yes: I have been through all that. But you yourself are
+making statues of ancients instead of beautiful nymphs and swains. And
+Ecrasia is right about the ancients being inartistic. They are damnably
+inartistic.
+
+ECRASIA [_triumphant_] Ah! Our greatest artist vindicates me. Thanks,
+Martellus.
+
+MARTELLUS. The body always ends by being a bore. Nothing remains
+beautiful and interesting except thought, because the thought is the
+life. Which is just what this old gentleman and this old lady seem to
+think too.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. Quite so.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. Precisely.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN [_to the He-Ancient_] But you cant be nothing. What do
+you want to be?
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. A vortex.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. A what?
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. A vortex. I began as a vortex: why should I not end as
+one?
+
+ECRASIA. Oh! That is what you old people are, Vorticists.
+
+ACIS. But if life is thought, can you live without a head?
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. Not now perhaps. But prehistoric men thought they could
+not live without tails. I can live without a tail. Why should I not live
+without a head?
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. What is a tail?
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT A habit of which your ancestors managed to pure
+themselves.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. None of us now believe that all this machinery of flesh
+and blood is necessary. It dies.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. It imprisons us on this petty planet and forbids us to
+range through the stars.
+
+ACIS. But even a vortex is a vortex in something. You cant have a
+whirlpool without water; and you cant have a vortex without gas, or
+molecules or atoms or ions or electrons or something, not nothing.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. No: the vortex is not the water nor the gas nor the
+atoms: it is a power over these things.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. The body was the slave of the vortex; but the slave has
+become the master; and we must free ourselves from that tyranny. It is
+this stuff [_indicating her body_], this flesh and blood and bone and
+all the rest of it, that is intolerable. Even prehistoric man dreamed of
+what he called an astral body, and asked who would deliver him from the
+body of this death.
+
+ACIS [_evidently out of his depth_] I shouldn't think too much about it
+if I were you. You have to keep sane, you know.
+
+_The two Ancients look at one another; shrug their shoulders; and
+address themselves to their departure._
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. We are staying too long with you, children. We must go.
+
+_All the young people rise rather eagerly._
+
+ARJILLAX. Dont mention it.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. It is tiresome for us, too. You see, children, we have
+to put things very crudely to you to make ourselves intelligible.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. And I am afraid we do not quite succeed.
+
+STREPHON. Very kind of you to come at all and talk to us, I'm sure.
+
+ECRASIA. Why do the other ancients never come and give us a turn?
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. It is difficult for them. They have forgotten how
+to speak; how to read; even how to think in your fashion. We do not
+communicate with one another in that way or apprehend the world as you
+do.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. I find it more and more difficult to keep up your
+language. Another century or two and it will be impossible. I shall have
+to be relieved by a younger shepherd.
+
+ACIS. Of course we are always delighted to see you; but still, if it
+tries you very severely, we could manage pretty well by ourselves, you
+know.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. Tell me, Acis: do you ever think of yourself as having
+to live perhaps for thousands of years?
+
+ACIS. Oh, don't talk about it. Why, I know very well that I have only
+four years of what any reasonable person would call living; and three
+and a half of them are already gone.
+
+ECRASIA. You must not mind our saying so; but really you cannot call
+being an ancient living.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN [_almost in tears_] Oh, this dreadful shortness of our
+lives! I cannot bear it.
+
+STREPHON. I made up my mind on that subject long ago. When I am three
+years and fifty weeks old, I shall have my fatal accident. And it will
+not be an accident.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. We are very tired of this subject. I must leave you.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. What is being tired?
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. The penalty of attending to children. Farewell.
+
+_The two Ancients go away severally, she into the grove, he up to the
+hills behind the temple._
+
+ALL. Ouf! [_A great sigh of relief_].
+
+ECRASIA. Dreadful people!
+
+STREPHON. Bores!
+
+MARTELLUS. Yet one would like to follow them; to enter into their life;
+to grasp their thought; to comprehend the universe as they must.
+
+ARJILLAX. Getting old, Martellus?
+
+MARTELLUS. Well, I have finished with the dolls; and I am no longer
+jealous of you. That looks like the end. Two hours sleep is enough for
+me. I am afraid I am beginning to find you all rather silly.
+
+STREPHON. I know. My girl went off this morning. She hadnt slept for
+weeks. And she found mathematics more interesting than me.
+
+MARTELLUS. There is a prehistoric saying that has come down to us from a
+famous woman teacher. She said: 'Leave women; and study mathematics.'
+It is the only remaining fragment of a lost scripture called The
+Confessions of St Augustin, the English Opium Eater. That primitive
+savage must have been a great woman, to say a thing that still lives
+after three hundred centuries. I too will leave women and study
+mathematics, which I have neglected too long. Farewell, children, my old
+playmates. I almost wish I could feel sentimental about parting from
+you; but the cold truth is that you bore me. Do not be angry with me:
+your turn will come. [_He passes away gravely into the grove_].
+
+ARJILLAX. There goes a great spirit. What a sculptor he was! And now,
+nothing! It is as if he had cut off his hands.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Oh, will you all leave me as he has left you?
+
+ECRASIA. Never. We have sworn it.
+
+STREPHON. What is the use of swearing? She swore. He swore. You have
+sworn. They have sworn.
+
+ECRASIA. You speak like a grammar.
+
+STREPHON. That is how one ought to speak, isnt it? We shall all be
+forsworn.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Do not talk like that. You are saddening us; and you are
+chasing the light away. It is growing dark.
+
+ACIS. Night is falling. The light will come back tomorrow.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. What is tomorrow?
+
+ACIS. The day that never comes. [_He turns towards the temple_].
+
+_All begin trooping into the temple._
+
+THE NEWLY BORN [_holding Acis back_] That is no answer. What--
+
+ARJILLAX. Silence. Little children should be seen and not heard.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN [_putting out her tongue at him_]!
+
+ECRASIA. Ungraceful. You must not do that.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. I will do what I like. But there is something the matter
+with me. I want to lie down. I cannot keep my eyes open.
+
+ECRASIA. You are falling asleep. You will wake up again.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN [_drowsily_] What is sleep?
+
+ACIS. Ask no questions; and you will be told no lies. [_He takes her by
+the ear, and leads her firmly towards the temple_].
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Ai! oi! ai! Dont. I want to be carried. [_She reels into
+the arms of Acts, who carries her into the temple_].
+
+ECRASIA. Come, Arjillax: you at least are still an artist. I adore you.
+
+ARJILLAX. Do you? Unfortunately for you, I am not still a child. I have
+grown out of cuddling. I can only appreciate your figure. Does that
+satisfy you?
+
+ECRASIA. At what distance?
+
+ARJILLAX. Arm's length or more.
+
+ECRASIA. Thank you: not for me. [_She turns away from him_].
+
+ARJILLAX. Ha! ha! [_He strides off into the temple_].
+
+ECRASIA [_calling to Strephon, who is on the threshold of the temple,
+going in_] Strephon.
+
+STREPHON. No. My heart is broken. [_He goes into the temple_].
+
+ECRASIA. Must I pass the night alone? [_She looks round, seeking another
+partner; but they have all gone_]. After all, I can imagine a lover
+nobler than any of you. [_She goes into the temple_].
+
+_It is now quite dark. A vague radiance appears near the temple and
+shapes itself into the ghost of Adam._
+
+A WOMAN'S VOICE [_in the grove_] Who is that?
+
+ADAM. The ghost of Adam, the first father of mankind. Who are you?
+
+THE VOICE. The ghost of Eve, the first mother of mankind.
+
+ADAM. Come forth, wife; and shew yourself to me.
+
+EVE [_appearing near the grove_] Here I am, husband. You are very old.
+
+A VOICE [_in the hills_] Ha! ha! ha!
+
+ADAM. Who laughs? Who dares laugh at Adam?
+
+EVE. Who has the heart to laugh at Eve?
+
+THE VOICE. The ghost of Cain, the first child, and the first murderer.
+[_He appears between them; and as he does so there is a prolonged
+hiss_]. Who dares hiss at Cain, the lord of death?
+
+A VOICE. The ghost of the serpent, that lived before Adam and before
+Eve, and taught them how to bring forth Cain. [_She becomes visible,
+coiled in the trees_].
+
+A VOICE. There is one that came before the serpent.
+
+THE SERPENT. That is the voice of Lilith, in whom the father and mother
+were one. Hail, Lilith!
+
+_Lilith becomes visible between Cain and Adam._
+
+LILITH. I suffered unspeakably; I tore myself asunder; I lost my life,
+to make of my one flesh these twain, man and woman. And this is what has
+come of it. What do you make of it, Adam, my son?
+
+ADAM. I made the earth bring forth by my labor, and the woman bring
+forth by my love. And this is what has come of it. What do you make of
+it, Eve, my wife?
+
+EVE. I nourished the egg in my body and fed it with my blood. And now
+they let it fall as the birds did, and suffer not at all. What do you
+make of it, Cain, my first-born?
+
+CAIN. I invented killing and conquest and mastery and the winnowing out
+of the weak by the strong. And now the strong have slain one another;
+and the weak live for ever; and their deeds do nothing for the doer more
+than for another. What do you make of it, snake?
+
+THE SERPENT. I am justified. For I chose wisdom and the knowledge of
+good and evil; and now there is no evil; and wisdom and good are one. It
+is enough. [_She vanishes_].
+
+CAIN. There is no place for me on earth any longer. You cannot deny
+that mine was a splendid game while it lasted. But now! Out, out, brief
+candle! [_He vanishes_].
+
+EVE. The clever ones were always my favorites. The diggers and the
+fighters have dug themselves in with the worms. My clever ones have
+inherited the earth. All's well. [_She fades away_].
+
+ADAM. I can make nothing of it, neither head nor tail. What is it all
+for? Why? Whither? Whence? We were well enough in the garden. And now
+the fools have killed all the animals; and they are dissatisfied because
+they cannot be bothered with their bodies! Foolishness, I call it. [_He
+disappears_].
+
+LILITH. They have accepted the burden of eternal life. They have taken
+the agony from birth; and their life does not fail them even in the hour
+of their destruction. Their breasts are without milk: their bowels are
+gone: the very shapes of them are only ornaments for their children to
+admire and caress without understanding. Is this enough; or shall I
+labor again? Shall I bring forth something that will sweep them away and
+make an end of them as they have swept away the beasts of the garden,
+and made an end of the crawling things and the flying things and of all
+them that refuse to live for ever? I had patience with them for many
+ages: they tried me very sorely. They did terrible things: they embraced
+death, and said that eternal life was a fable. I stood amazed at the
+malice and destructiveness of the things I had made: Mars blushed as he
+looked down on the shame of his sister planet: cruelty and hypocrisy
+became so hideous that the face of the earth was pitted with the graves
+of little children among which living skeletons crawled in search of
+horrible food. The pangs of another birth were already upon me when one
+man repented and lived three hundred years; and I waited to see what
+would come of that. And so much came of it that the horrors of that time
+seem now but an evil dream. They have redeemed themselves from their
+vileness, and turned away from their sins. Best of all, they are still
+not satisfied: the impulse I gave them in that day when I sundered
+myself in twain and launched Man and Woman on the earth still urges
+them: after passing a million goals they press on to the goal of
+redemption from the flesh, to the vortex freed from matter, to the
+whirlpool in pure intelligence that, when the world began, was a
+whirlpool in pure force. And though all that they have done seems
+but the first hour of the infinite work of creation, yet I will not
+supersede them until they have forded this last stream that lies between
+flesh and spirit, and disentangled their life from the matter that has
+always mocked it. I can wait: waiting and patience mean nothing to the
+eternal. I gave the woman the greatest of gifts: curiosity. By that her
+seed has been saved from my wrath; for I also am curious; and I have
+waited always to see what they will do tomorrow. Let them feed that
+appetite well for me. I say, let them dread, of all things, stagnation;
+for from the moment I, Lilith, lose hope and faith in them, they are
+doomed. In that hope and faith I have let them live for a moment; and in
+that moment I have spared them many times. But mightier creatures than
+they have killed hope and faith, and perished from the earth; and I may
+not spare them for ever. I am Lilith: I brought life into the whirlpool
+of force, and compelled my enemy, Matter, to obey a living soul. But in
+enslaving Life's enemy I made him Life's master; for that is the end
+of all slavery; and now I shall see the slave set free and the enemy
+reconciled, the whirlpool become all life and no matter. And because
+these infants that call themselves ancients are reaching out towards
+that, I will have patience with them still; though I know well that
+when they attain it they shall become one with me and supersede me, and
+Lilith will be only a legend and a lay that has lost its meaning. Of
+Life only is there no end; and though of its million starry mansions
+many are empty and many still unbuilt, and though its vast domain is
+as yet unbearably desert, my seed shall one day fill it and master
+its matter to its uttermost confines. And for what may be beyond, the
+eyesight of Lilith is too short. It is enough that there is a beyond.
+[_She vanishes_].
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BACK TO METHUSELAH ***
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will
+be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
+law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
+so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the
+United States without permission and without paying copyright
+royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
+of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
+and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
+the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
+of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
+copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
+easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
+of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
+Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away--you may
+do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
+by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
+license, especially commercial redistribution.
+
+START: FULL LICENSE
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
+Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at
+www.gutenberg.org/license.
+
+Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+
+1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
+destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your
+possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
+Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
+by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the
+person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph
+1.E.8.
+
+1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
+paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this
+agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the
+Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
+of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual
+works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
+States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
+United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
+claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
+displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
+all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
+that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting
+free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm
+works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
+Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily
+comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
+same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when
+you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
+in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
+check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
+agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
+distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
+other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no
+representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
+country other than the United States.
+
+1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
+immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear
+prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work
+on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed,
+performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
+
+  This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+  most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
+  restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
+  under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
+  eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
+  United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
+  you are located before using this eBook.
+
+1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is
+derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
+contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
+copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
+the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
+redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
+either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
+obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm
+trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
+additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
+will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works
+posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
+beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
+any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
+to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format
+other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official
+version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm website
+(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
+to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
+of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain
+Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the
+full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+provided that:
+
+* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+  the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+  you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
+  to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has
+  agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
+  Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
+  within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
+  legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
+  payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
+  Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
+  Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
+  Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+  you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+  does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+  License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
+  copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
+  all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm
+  works.
+
+* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
+  any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+  electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
+  receipt of the work.
+
+* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+  distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than
+are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
+from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
+the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
+forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
+Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
+contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
+or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
+other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
+cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
+with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
+with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
+lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
+or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
+opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
+the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
+without further opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO
+OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
+damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
+violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
+agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
+limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
+unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
+remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in
+accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
+production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
+including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
+the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
+or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or
+additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any
+Defect you cause.
+
+Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
+computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
+exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
+from people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future
+generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
+Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at
+www.gutenberg.org
+
+Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
+U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,
+Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
+to date contact information can be found at the Foundation's website
+and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
+
+Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without
+widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
+DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular
+state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
+donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be
+freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
+distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of
+volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
+the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
+necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
+edition.
+
+Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
+facility: www.gutenberg.org
+
+This website includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/old/13084-0.zip b/old/13084-0.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f8508d0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/13084-0.zip
diff --git a/old/13084-h.zip b/old/13084-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f92dc8a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/13084-h.zip
diff --git a/old/13084-h/13084-h.htm b/old/13084-h/13084-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..311b6a1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/13084-h/13084-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,17415 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
+  <head>
+  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
+  <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Back to Methuselah, by Bernard Shaw.
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css"> /*<![CDATA[ */
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .75em; margin-bottom: .75em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    td { vertical-align: middle; padding-top: 0.75em; }
+  /* ]]> */ </style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+
+  <div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Back to Methuselah, by George Bernard Shaw</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
+are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Back to Methuselah</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: George Bernard Shaw</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: August 2, 2004 [eBook #13084]<br />
+[Most recently updated: August 4, 2022]</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Produced by: Suzanne Shell and Project Gutenberg Distributed
+Proofreaders. HTML file produced by David Widger</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>EDITORIAL NOTE: The reader is likely to notice the absence of
+apostrophes from contractions in the essay section of this work. The
+author disliked apostrophes and often omitted them. Some of his
+publishers inserted them, others honored his wishes. The policy of
+Project Gutenberg is to treat apostrophes as they were in the source
+text. In this case, apostrophes were omitted in the essay section but
+used in the play.</div>
+
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BACK TO METHUSELAH ***</div>
+
+    <h1>
+      BACK TO METHUSELAH
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      A Metabiological Pentateuch
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      By Bernard Shaw
+    </h3>
+    <h4>
+      1921
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> <b>THE INFIDEL HALF CENTURY</b> </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> THE DAWN OF DARWINISM </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> THE ADVENT OF THE NEO-DARWINIANS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> POLITICAL INADEQUACY OF THE HUMAN ANIMAL </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> COWARDICE OF THE IRRELIGIOUS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> IS THERE ANY HOPE IN EDUCATION? </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> HOMEOPATHIC EDUCATION </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> THE DIABOLICAL EFFICIENCY OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> FLIMSINESS OF CIVILIZATION </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> CREATIVE EVOLUTION </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> VOLUNTARY LONGEVITY </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> THE EARLY EVOLUTIONISTS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> THE ADVENT OF THE NEO-LAMARCKIANS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> HOW ACQUIREMENTS ARE INHERITED </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> THE MIRACLE OF CONDENSED RECAPITULATION </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> HEREDITY AN OLD STORY </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> DISCOVERY ANTICIPATED BY DIVINATION </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> CORRECTED DATES FOR THE DISCOVERY OF EVOLUTION
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> DEFYING THE LIGHTNING: A FRUSTRATED EXPERIMENT
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0021"> IN QUEST OF THE FIRST CAUSE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0022"> PALEY'S WATCH </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0023"> THE IRRESISTIBLE CRY OF ORDER, ORDER! </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0024"> THE MOMENT AND THE MAN </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0025"> THE BRINK OF THE BOTTOMLESS PIT </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0026"> WHY DARWIN CONVERTED THE CROWD </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0027"> HOW WE RUSHED DOWN A STEEP PLACE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0028"> DARWINISM NOT FINALLY REFUTABLE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0029"> THREE BLIND MICE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0030"> THE GREATEST OF THESE IS SELF-CONTROL </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0031"> A SAMPLE OF LAMARCKO-SHAVIAN INVECTIVE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0032"> THE HUMANITARIANS AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0033"> HOW ONE TOUCH OF DARWIN MAKES THE WHOLE WORLD
+      KIN </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0034"> WHY DARWIN PLEASED THE SOCIALISTS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0035"> DARWIN AND KARL MARX </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0036"> WHY DARWIN PLEASED THE PROFITEERS ALSO </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0037"> THE POETRY AND PURITY OF MATERIALISM </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0038"> THE VICEROYS OF THE KING OF KINGS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0039"> POLITICAL OPPORTUNISM IN EXCELSIS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0040"> THE BETRAYAL OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0041"> CIRCUMSTANTIAL SELECTION IN FINANCE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0042"> THE HOMEOPATHIC REACTION AGAINST DARWINISM </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0043"> RELIGION AND ROMANCE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0044"> THE DANGER OF REACTION </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0045"> A TOUCHSTONE FOR DOGMA </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0046"> WHAT TO DO WITH THE LEGENDS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0047"> A LESSON FROM SCIENCE TO THE CHURCHES </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0048"> THE RELIGIOUS ART OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0049"> THE ARTIST-PROPHETS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0050"> EVOLUTION IN THE THEATRE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0051"> MY OWN PART IN THE MATTER </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0052"> <b>BACK TO METHUSELAH.</b> </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_PART"> PART I&mdash;In the Beginning </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0054"> ACT I </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0055"> ACT II </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_PART2"> PART II&mdash;The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_PART3"> PART III&mdash;The Thing Happens </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_PART4"> PART IV&mdash;Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0059"> ACT I </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0060"> ACT II </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0061"> ACT III </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_PART5"> PART V.&mdash;As Far as Thought can Reach </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <div style="font-size: xx-large; text-align: center;">
+      <b>THE INFIDEL HALF CENTURY</b>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE DAWN OF DARWINISM
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      One day early in the eighteen hundred and sixties, I, being then a small
+      boy, was with my nurse, buying something in the shop of a petty newsagent,
+      bookseller, and stationer in Camden Street, Dublin, when there entered an
+      elderly man, weighty and solemn, who advanced to the counter, and said
+      pompously, 'Have you the works of the celebrated Buffoon?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My own works were at that time unwritten, or it is possible that the shop
+      assistant might have misunderstood me so far as to produce a copy of Man
+      and Superman. As it was, she knew quite well what he wanted; for this was
+      before the Education Act of 1870 had produced shop assistants who know how
+      to read and know nothing else. The celebrated Buffoon was not a humorist,
+      but the famous naturalist Buffon. Every literate child at that time knew
+      Buffon's Natural History as well as Esop's Fables. And no living child had
+      heard the name that has since obliterated Buffon's in the popular
+      consciousness: the name of Darwin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ten years elapsed. The celebrated Buffoon was forgotten; I had doubled my
+      years and my length; and I had discarded the religion of my forefathers.
+      One day the richest and consequently most dogmatic of my uncles came into
+      a restaurant where I was dining, and found himself, much against his will,
+      in conversation with the most questionable of his nephews. By way of
+      making myself agreeable, I spoke of modern thought and Darwin. He said,
+      'Oh, thats the fellow who wants to make out that we all have tails like
+      monkeys.' I tried to explain that what Darwin had insisted on in this
+      connection was that some monkeys have no tails. But my uncle was as
+      impervious to what Darwin really said as any Neo-Darwinian nowadays. He
+      died impenitent, and did not mention me in his will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Twenty years elapsed. If my uncle had been alive, he would have known all
+      about Darwin, and known it all wrong. In spite of the efforts of Grant
+      Allen to set him right, he would have accepted Darwin as the discoverer of
+      Evolution, of Heredity, and of modification of species by Selection. For
+      the pre-Darwinian age had come to be regarded as a Dark Age in which men
+      still believed that the book of Genesis was a standard scientific
+      treatise, and that the only additions to it were Galileo's demonstration
+      of Leonardo da Vinci's simple remark that the earth is a moon of the sun,
+      Newton's theory of gravitation, Sir Humphry Davy's invention of the
+      safety-lamp, the discovery of electricity, the application of steam to
+      industrial purposes, and the penny post. It was just the same in other
+      subjects. Thus Nietzsche, by the two or three who had come across his
+      writings, was supposed to have been the first man to whom it occurred that
+      mere morality and legality and urbanity lead nowhere, as if Bunyan had
+      never written Badman. Schopenhauer was credited with inventing the
+      distinction between the Covenant of Grace and the Covenant of Works which
+      troubled Cromwell on his deathbed. People talked as if there had been no
+      dramatic or descriptive music before Wagner; no impressionist painting
+      before Whistler; whilst as to myself, I was finding that the surest way to
+      produce an effect of daring innovation and originality was to revive the
+      ancient attraction of long rhetorical speeches; to stick closely to the
+      methods of Molière; and to lift characters bodily out of the pages of
+      Charles Dickens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE ADVENT OF THE NEO-DARWINIANS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      This particular sort of ignorance does not always or often matter. But in
+      Darwin's case it did matter. If Darwin had really led the world at one
+      bound from the book of Genesis to Heredity, to Modification of Species by
+      Selection, and to Evolution, he would have been a philosopher and a
+      prophet as well as an eminent professional naturalist, with geology as a
+      hobby. The delusion that he had actually achieved this feat did no harm at
+      first, because if people's views are sound, about evolution or anything
+      else, it does not make two straws difference whether they call the
+      revealer of their views Tom or Dick. But later on such apparently
+      negligible errors have awkward consequences. Darwin was given an imposing
+      reputation as not only an Evolutionist, but as <i>the</i> Evolutionist,
+      with the immense majority who never read his books. The few who never read
+      any others were led by them to concentrate exclusively on Circumstantial
+      Selection as the explanation of all the transformations and adaptations
+      which were the evidence for Evolution. And they presently found themselves
+      so cut off by this specialization from the majority who knew Darwin only
+      by his spurious reputation, that they were obliged to distinguish
+      themselves, not as Darwinians, but as Neo-Darwinians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before ten more years had elapsed, the Neo-Darwinians were practically
+      running current Science. It was 1906; I was fifty; I published my own view
+      of evolution in a play called Man and Superman; and I found that most
+      people were unable to understand how I could be an Evolutionist and not a
+      Neo-Darwinian, or why I habitually derided Neo-Darwinism as a ghastly
+      idiocy, and would fall on its professors slaughterously in public
+      discussions. It was in the hope of making me clear the matter up that the
+      Fabian Society, which was then organizing a series of lectures on Prophets
+      of the Nineteenth Century, asked me to deliver a lecture on the prophet
+      Darwin. I did so; and scraps of that lecture, which was never published,
+      variegate these pages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      POLITICAL INADEQUACY OF THE HUMAN ANIMAL
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Ten more years elapsed. Neo-Darwinism in politics had produced a European
+      catastrophe of a magnitude so appalling, and a scope so unpredictable,
+      that as I write these lines in 1920, it is still far from certain whether
+      our civilization will survive it. The circumstances of this catastrophe,
+      the boyish cinema-fed romanticism which made it possible to impose it on
+      the people as a crusade, and especially the ignorance and errors of the
+      victors of Western Europe when its violent phase had passed and the time
+      for reconstruction arrived, confirmed a doubt which had grown steadily in
+      my mind during my forty years public work as a Socialist: namely, whether
+      the human animal, as he exists at present, is capable of solving the
+      social problems raised by his own aggregation, or, as he calls it, his
+      civilization.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      COWARDICE OF THE IRRELIGIOUS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Another observation I had made was that goodnatured unambitious men are
+      cowards when they have no religion. They are dominated and exploited not
+      only by greedy and often half-witted and half-alive weaklings who will do
+      anything for cigars, champagne, motor cars, and the more childish and
+      selfish uses of money, but by able and sound administrators who can do
+      nothing else with them than dominate and exploit them. Government and
+      exploitation become synonymous under such circumstances; and the world is
+      finally ruled by the childish, the brigands, and the blackguards. Those
+      who refuse to stand in with them are persecuted and occasionally executed
+      when they give any trouble to the exploiters. They fall into poverty when
+      they lack lucrative specific talents. At the present moment one half of
+      Europe, having knocked the other half down, is trying to kick it to death,
+      and may succeed: a procedure which is, logically, sound Neo-Darwinism. And
+      the goodnatured majority are looking on in helpless horror, or allowing
+      themselves to be persuaded by the newspapers of their exploiters that the
+      kicking is not only a sound commercial investment, but an act of divine
+      justice of which they are the ardent instruments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But if Man is really incapable of organizing a big civilization, and
+      cannot organize even a village or a tribe any too well, what is the use of
+      giving him a religion? A religion may make him hunger and thirst for
+      righteousness; but will it endow him with the practical capacity to
+      satisfy that appetite? Good intentions do not carry with them a grain of
+      political science, which is a very complicated one. The most devoted and
+      indefatigable, the most able and disinterested students of this science in
+      England, as far as I know, are my friends Sidney and Beatrice Webb. It has
+      taken them forty years of preliminary work, in the course of which they
+      have published several treatises comparable to Adam Smith's Wealth of
+      Nations, to formulate a political constitution adequate to existing needs.
+      If this is the measure of what can be done in a lifetime by extraordinary
+      ability, keen natural aptitude, exceptional opportunities, and freedom
+      from the preoccupations of bread-winning, what are we to expect from the
+      parliament man to whom political science is as remote and distasteful as
+      the differential calculus, and to whom such an elementary but vital point
+      as the law of economic rent is a <i>pons asinorum</i> never to be
+      approached, much less crossed? Or from the common voter who is mostly so
+      hard at work all day earning a living that he cannot keep awake for five
+      minutes over a book?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IS THERE ANY HOPE IN EDUCATION?
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The usual answer is that we must educate our masters: that is, ourselves.
+      We must teach citizenship and political science at school. But must we?
+      There is no must about it, the hard fact being that we must <i>not</i>
+      teach political science or citizenship at school. The schoolmaster who
+      attempted it would soon find himself penniless in the streets without
+      pupils, if not in the dock pleading to a pompously worded indictment for
+      sedition against the exploiters. Our schools teach the morality of
+      feudalism corrupted by commercialism, and hold up the military conqueror,
+      the robber baron, and the profiteer, as models of the illustrious and the
+      successful. In vain do the prophets who see through this imposture preach
+      and teach a better gospel: the individuals whom they convert are doomed to
+      pass away in a few years; and the new generations are dragged back in the
+      schools to the morality of the fifteenth century, and think themselves
+      Liberal when they are defending the ideas of Henry VII, and gentlemanly
+      when they are opposing to them the ideas of Richard III. Thus the educated
+      man is a greater nuisance than the uneducated one: indeed it is the
+      inefficiency and sham of the educational side of our schools (to which,
+      except under compulsion, children would not be sent by their parents at
+      all if they did not act as prisons in which the immature are kept from
+      worrying the mature) that save us from being dashed on the rocks of false
+      doctrine instead of drifting down the midstream of mere ignorance. There
+      is no way out through the schoolmaster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      HOMEOPATHIC EDUCATION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In truth, mankind cannot be saved from without, by schoolmasters or any
+      other sort of masters: it can only be lamed and enslaved by them. It is
+      said that if you wash a cat it will never again wash itself. This may or
+      may not be true: what is certain is that if you teach a man anything he
+      will never learn it; and if you cure him of a disease he will be unable to
+      cure himself the next time it attacks him. Therefore, if you want to see a
+      cat clean, you throw a bucket of mud over it, when it will immediately
+      take extraordinary pains to lick the mud off, and finally be cleaner than
+      it was before. In the same way doctors who are up-to-date (BURGE-LUBIN per
+      cent of all the registered practitioners, and 20 per cent of the
+      unregistered ones), when they want to rid you of a disease or a symptom,
+      inoculate you with that disease or give you a drug that produces that
+      symptom, in order to provoke you to resist it as the mud provokes the cat
+      to wash itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now an acute person will ask me why, if this be so, our false education
+      does not provoke our scholars to find out the truth. My answer is that it
+      sometimes does. Voltaire was a pupil of the Jesuits; Samuel Butler was the
+      pupil of a hopelessly conventional and erroneous country parson. But then
+      Voltaire was Voltaire, and Butler was Butler: that is, their minds were so
+      abnormally strong that they could throw off the doses of poison that
+      paralyse ordinary minds. When the doctors inoculate you and the
+      homeopathists dose you, they give you an infinitesimally attenuated dose.
+      If they gave you the virus at full strength it would overcome your
+      resistance and produce its direct effect. The doses of false doctrine
+      given at public schools and universities are so big that they overwhelm
+      the resistance that a tiny dose would provoke. The normal student is
+      corrupted beyond redemption, and will drive the genius who resists out of
+      the country if he can. Byron and Shelley had to fly to Italy, whilst
+      Castlereagh and Eldon ruled the roost at home. Rousseau was hunted from
+      frontier to frontier; Karl Marx starved in exile in a Soho lodging;
+      Ruskin's articles were refused by the magazines (he was too rich to be
+      otherwise persecuted); whilst mindless forgotten nonentities governed the
+      land; sent men to the prison or the gallows for blasphemy and sedition
+      (meaning the truth about Church and State); and sedulously stored up the
+      social disease and corruption which explode from time to time in gigantic
+      boils that have to be lanced by a million bayonets. This is the result of
+      allopathic education. Homeopathic education has not yet been officially
+      tried, and would obviously be a delicate matter if it were. A body of
+      schoolmasters inciting their pupils to infinitesimal peccadilloes with the
+      object of provoking them to exclaim, 'Get thee behind me, Satan,' or
+      telling them white lies about history for the sake of being contradicted,
+      insulted, and refuted, would certainly do less harm than our present
+      educational allopaths do; but then nobody will advocate homeopathic
+      education. Allopathy has produced the poisonous illusion that it
+      enlightens instead of darkening. The suggestion may, however, explain why,
+      whilst most people's minds succumb to inculcation and environment, a few
+      react vigorously: honest and decent people coming from thievish slums, and
+      sceptics and realists from country parsonages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE DIABOLICAL EFFICIENCY OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      But meanwhile&mdash;and here comes the horror of it&mdash;our technical
+      instruction is honest and efficient. The public schoolboy who is carefully
+      blinded, duped, and corrupted as to the nature of a society based on
+      profiteering, and is taught to honor parasitic idleness and luxury, learns
+      to shoot and ride and keep fit with all the assistance and guidance that
+      can be procured for him by the most anxiously sincere desire that he may
+      do these things well, and if possible superlatively well. In the army he
+      learns to fly; to drop bombs; to use machine-guns to the utmost of his
+      capacity. The discovery of high explosives is rewarded and dignified:
+      instruction in the manufacture of the weapons, battleships, submarines,
+      and land batteries by which they are applied destructively, is quite
+      genuine: the instructors know their business, and really mean the learners
+      to succeed. The result is that powers of destruction that could hardly
+      without uneasiness be entrusted to infinite wisdom and infinite
+      benevolence are placed in the hands of romantic schoolboy patriots who,
+      however generous by nature, are by education ignoramuses, dupes, snobs,
+      and sportsmen to whom fighting is a religion and killing an
+      accomplishment; whilst political power, useless under such circumstances
+      except to militarist imperialists in chronic terror of invasion and
+      subjugation, pompous tufthunting fools, commercial adventurers to whom the
+      organization by the nation of its own industrial services would mean
+      checkmate, financial parasites on the money market, and stupid people who
+      cling to the status quo merely because they are used to it, is obtained by
+      heredity, by simple purchase, by keeping newspapers and pretending that
+      they are organs of public opinion, by the wiles of seductive women, and by
+      prostituting ambitious talent to the service of the profiteers, who call
+      the tune because, having secured all the spare plunder, they alone can
+      afford to pay the piper. Neither the rulers nor the ruled understand high
+      politics. They do not even know that there is such a branch of knowledge
+      as political science; but between them they can coerce and enslave with
+      the deadliest efficiency, even to the wiping out of civilization, because
+      their education as slayers has been honestly and thoroughly carried out.
+      Essentially the rulers are all defectives; and there is nothing worse than
+      government by defectives who wield irresistible powers of physical
+      coercion. The commonplace sound people submit, and compel the rest to
+      submit, because they have been taught to do so as an article of religion
+      and a point of honor. Those in whom natural enlightenment has reacted
+      against artificial education submit because they are compelled; but they
+      would resist, and finally resist effectively, if they were not cowards.
+      And they are cowards because they have neither an officially accredited
+      and established religion nor a generally recognized point of honor, and
+      are all at sixes and sevens with their various private speculations,
+      sending their children perforce to the schools where they will be
+      corrupted for want of any other schools. The rulers are equally
+      intimidated by the immense extension and cheapening of the means of
+      slaughter and destruction. The British Government is more afraid of
+      Ireland now that submarines, bombs, and poison gas are cheap and easily
+      made than it was of the German Empire before the war; consequently the old
+      British custom which maintained a balance of power through command of the
+      sea is intensified into a terror that sees security in nothing short of
+      absolute military mastery of the entire globe: that is, in an
+      impossibility that will yet seem possible in detail to soldiers and to
+      parochial and insular patriotic civilians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      FLIMSINESS OF CIVILIZATION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      This situation has occurred so often before, always with the same result
+      of a collapse of civilization (Professor Flinders Petrie has let out the
+      secret of previous collapses), that the rich are instinctively crying 'Let
+      us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die,' and the poor, 'How long, O Lord,
+      how long?' But the pitiless reply still is that God helps those who help
+      themselves. This does not mean that if Man cannot find the remedy no
+      remedy will be found. The power that produced Man when the monkey was not
+      up to the mark, can produce a higher creature than Man if Man does not
+      come up to the mark. What it means is that if Man is to be saved, Man must
+      save himself. There seems no compelling reason why he should be saved. He
+      is by no means an ideal creature. At his present best many of his ways are
+      so unpleasant that they are unmentionable in polite society, and so
+      painful that he is compelled to pretend that pain is often a good. Nature
+      holds no brief for the human experiment: it must stand or fall by its
+      results. If Man will not serve, Nature will try another experiment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What hope is there then of human improvement? According to the
+      Neo-Darwinists, to the Mechanists, no hope whatever, because improvement
+      can come only through some senseless accident which must, on the
+      statistical average of accidents, be presently wiped out by some other
+      equally senseless accident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CREATIVE EVOLUTION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      But this dismal creed does not discourage those who believe that the
+      impulse that produces evolution is creative. They have observed the simple
+      fact that the will to do anything can and does, at a certain pitch of
+      intensity set up by conviction of its necessity, create and organize new
+      tissue to do it with. To them therefore mankind is by no means played out
+      yet. If the weight lifter, under the trivial stimulus of an athletic
+      competition, can 'put up a muscle,' it seems reasonable to believe that an
+      equally earnest and convinced philosopher could 'put up a brain.' Both are
+      directions of vitality to a certain end. Evolution shews us this direction
+      of vitality doing all sorts of things: providing the centipede with a
+      hundred legs, and ridding the fish of any legs at all; building lungs and
+      arms for the land and gills and fins for the sea; enabling the mammal to
+      gestate its young inside its body, and the fowl to incubate hers outside
+      it; offering us, we may say, our choice of any sort of bodily contrivance
+      to maintain our activity and increase our resources.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VOLUNTARY LONGEVITY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Among other matters apparently changeable at will is the duration of
+      individual life. Weismann, a very clever and suggestive biologist who was
+      unhappily reduced to idiocy by Neo-Darwinism, pointed out that death is
+      not an eternal condition of life, but an expedient introduced to provide
+      for continual renewal without overcrowding. Now Circumstantial Selection
+      does not account for natural death: it accounts only for the survival of
+      species in which the individuals have sense enough to decay and die on
+      purpose. But the individuals do not seem to have calculated very
+      reasonably: nobody can explain why a parrot should live ten times as long
+      as a dog, and a turtle be almost immortal. In the case of man, the
+      operation has overshot its mark: men do not live long enough: they are,
+      for all the purposes of high civilization, mere children when they die;
+      and our Prime Ministers, though rated as mature, divide their time between
+      the golf course and the Treasury Bench in parliament. Presumably, however,
+      the same power that made this mistake can remedy it. If on opportunist
+      grounds Man now fixes the term of his life at three score and ten years,
+      he can equally fix it at three hundred, or three thousand, or even at the
+      genuine Circumstantial Selection limit, which would be until a
+      sooner-or-later-inevitable fatal accident makes an end of the individual.
+      All that is necessary to make him extend his present span is that
+      tremendous catastrophes such as the late war shall convince him of the
+      necessity of at least outliving his taste for golf and cigars if the race
+      is to be saved. This is not fantastic speculation: it is deductive
+      biology, if there is such a science as biology. Here, then, is a stone
+      that we have left unturned, and that may be worth turning. To make the
+      suggestion more entertaining than it would be to most people in the form
+      of a biological treatise, I have written Back to Methuselah as a
+      contribution to the modern Bible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Many people, however, can read treatises and cannot read Bibles. Darwin
+      could not read Shakespear. Some who can read both, like to learn the
+      history of their ideas. Some are so entangled in the current confusion of
+      Creative Evolution with Circumstantial Selection by their historical
+      ignorance that they are puzzled by any distinction between the two. For
+      all their sakes I must give here a little history of the conflict between
+      the view of Evolution taken by the Darwinians (though not altogether by
+      Darwin himself) and called Natural Selection, and that which is emerging,
+      under the title of Creative Evolution, as the genuinely scientific
+      religion for which all wise men are now anxiously looking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE EARLY EVOLUTIONISTS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The idea of Evolution, or Transformation as it is now sometimes called,
+      was not first conceived by Charles Darwin, nor by Alfred Russel Wallace,
+      who observed the operation of Circumstantial Selection simultaneously with
+      Charles. The celebrated Buffoon was a better Evolutionist than either of
+      them; and two thousand years before Buffon was born, the Greek philosopher
+      Empedocles opined that all forms of life are transformations of four
+      elements, Fire, Air, Earth, and Water, effected by the two innate forces
+      of attraction and repulsion, or love and hate. As lately as 1860 I myself
+      was taught as a child that everything was made out of these four elements.
+      Both the Empedocleans and the Evolutionists were opposed to those who
+      believed in the separate creation of all forms of life as described in the
+      book of Genesis. This 'conflict between religion and science', as the
+      phrase went then, did not perplex my infant mind in the least: I knew
+      perfectly well, without knowing that I knew it, that the validity of a
+      story is not the same as the occurrence of a fact. But as I grew up I
+      found that I had to choose between Evolution and Genesis. If you believed
+      that dogs and cats and snakes and birds and beetles and oysters and whales
+      and men and women were all separately designed and made and named in Eden
+      garden at the beginning of things, and have since survived simply by
+      reproducing their kind, then you were not an Evolutionist. If you
+      believed, on the contrary, that all the different species are
+      modifications, variations, and elaborations of one primal stock, or even
+      of a few primal stocks, then you were an Evolutionist. But you were not
+      necessarily a Darwinian; for you might have been a modern Evolutionist
+      twenty years before Charles Darwin was born, and a whole lifetime before
+      he published his Origin of Species. For that matter, when Aristotle
+      grouped animals with backbones as blood relations, he began the sort of
+      classification which, when extended by Darwin to monkeys and men, so
+      shocked my uncle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Genesis had held the field until the time (1707-1778) of Linnaeus the
+      famous botanist. In the meantime the microscope had been invented. It
+      revealed a new world of hitherto invisible creatures called Infusorians,
+      as common water was found to be an infusion of them. In the eighteenth
+      century naturalists were very keen on the Infusorian Amoebas, and were
+      much struck by the way in which the members of this old family behaved and
+      developed. But it was still possible for Linnaeus to begin a treatise by
+      saying 'There are just so many species as there were forms created in the
+      beginning,' though there were hundreds of commonplace Scotch gardeners,
+      pigeon fanciers, and stock breeders then living who knew better. Linnaeus
+      himself knew better before he died. In the last edition of his System of
+      Nature, he began to wonder whether the transmutation of species by
+      variation might not be possible. Then came the great poet who jumped over
+      the facts to the conclusion. Goethe said that all the shapes of creation
+      were cousins; that there must be some common stock from which all the
+      species had sprung; that it was the environment of air that had produced
+      the eagle, of water the seal, and of earth the mole. He could not say how
+      this happened; but he divined that it did happen. Erasmus Darwin, the
+      grandfather of Charles, carried the environment theory much further,
+      pointing out instance after instance of modifications made in species
+      apparently to adapt it to circumstances and environment: for instance,
+      that the brilliant colors of the leopard, which make it so conspicuous in
+      Regent's Park, conceal it in a tropical jungle. Finally he wrote, as his
+      declaration of faith, 'The world has been evolved, not created: it has
+      arisen little by little from a small beginning, and has increased through
+      the activity of the elemental forces embodied in itself, and so has rather
+      grown than come into being at an almighty word. What a sublime idea of the
+      infinite might of the great Architect, the Cause of all causes, the Father
+      of all fathers, the Ens Entium! For if we would compare the Infinite, it
+      would surely require a greater Infinite to cause the causes of effects
+      than to produce the effects themselves.' In this, published in the year
+      1794, you have nineteenth-century Evolution precisely defined. And Erasmus
+      Darwin was by no means its only apostle. It was in the air then. A German
+      biologist named Treviranus, whose book was published in 1802, wrote, 'In
+      every living being there exists a capacity for endless diversity of form.
+      Each possesses the power of adapting its organization to the variations of
+      the external world; and it is this power, called into activity by cosmic
+      changes, which has enabled the simple zoophytes of the primitive world to
+      climb to higher and higher stages of organization, and has brought endless
+      variety into nature.' There you have your evolution of Man from the amoeba
+      all complete whilst Nelson was still alive on the seas. And in 1809,
+      before the battle of Waterloo, a French soldier named Lamarck, who had
+      beaten his musket into a microscope and turned zoologist, declared that
+      species were an illusion produced by the shortness of our individual
+      lives, and that they were constantly changing and melting into one another
+      and into new forms as surely as the hand of a clock is continually moving,
+      though it moves so slowly that it looks stationary to us. We have since
+      come to think that its industry is less continuous: that the clock stops
+      for a long time, and then is suddenly 'put on' by a mysterious finger. But
+      never mind that just at present.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE ADVENT OF THE NEO-LAMARCKIANS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I call your special attention to Lamarck, because later on there were
+      Neo-Lamarckians as well as Neo-Darwinians. I was a Neo-Lamarckian. Lamarck
+      passed on from the conception of Evolution as a general law to Charles
+      Darwin's department of it, which was the method of Evolution. Lamarck,
+      whilst making many ingenious suggestions as to the reaction of external
+      causes on life and habit, such as changes of climate, food supply,
+      geological upheavals and so forth, really held as his fundamental
+      proposition that living organisms changed because they wanted to. As he
+      stated it, the great factor in Evolution is use and disuse. If you have no
+      eyes, and want to see, and keep trying to see, you will finally get eyes.
+      If, like a mole or a subterranean fish, you have eyes and dont want to
+      see, you will lose your eyes. If you like eating the tender tops of trees
+      enough to make you concentrate all your energies on the stretching of your
+      neck, you will finally get a long neck, like the giraffe. This seems
+      absurd to inconsiderate people at the first blush; but it is within the
+      personal experience of all of us that it is just by this process that a
+      child tumbling about the floor becomes a boy walking erect; and that a man
+      sprawling on the road with a bruised chin, or supine on the ice with a
+      bashed occiput, becomes a bicyclist and a skater. The process is not
+      continuous, as it would be if mere practice had anything to do with it;
+      for though you may improve at each bicycling lesson <i>during</i> the
+      lesson, when you begin your next lesson you do not begin at the point at
+      which you left off: you relapse apparently to the beginning. Finally, you
+      succeed quite suddenly, and do not relapse again. More miraculous still,
+      you at once exercise the new power unconsciously. Although you are
+      adapting your front wheel to your balance so elaborately and actively that
+      the accidental locking of your handle bars for a second will throw you
+      off; though five minutes before you could not do it at all, yet now you do
+      it as unconsciously as you grow your finger nails. You have a new faculty,
+      and must have created some new bodily tissue as its organ. And you have
+      done it solely by willing. For here there can be no question of
+      Circumstantial Selection, or the survival of the fittest. The man who is
+      learning how to ride a bicycle has no advantage over the non-cyclist in
+      the struggle for existence: quite the contrary. He has acquired a new
+      habit, an automatic unconscious habit, solely because he wanted to, and
+      kept trying until it was added unto him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      HOW ACQUIREMENTS ARE INHERITED
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      But when your son tries to skate or bicycle in his turn, he does not pick
+      up the accomplishment where you left it, any more than he is born six feet
+      high with a beard and a tall hat. The set-back that occurred between your
+      lessons occurs again. The race learns exactly as the individual learns.
+      Your son relapses, not to the very beginning, but to a point which no
+      mortal method of measurement can distinguish from the beginning. Now this
+      is odd; for certain other habits of yours, equally acquired (to the
+      Evolutionist, of course, all habits are acquired), equally unconscious,
+      equally automatic, are transmitted without any perceptible relapse. For
+      instance, the very first act of your son when he enters the world as a
+      separate individual is to yell with indignation: that yell which
+      Shakespear thought the most tragic and piteous of all sounds. In the act
+      of yelling he begins to breathe: another habit, and not even a necessary
+      one, as the object of breathing can be achieved in other ways, as by deep
+      sea fishes. He circulates his blood by pumping it with his heart. He
+      demands a meal, and proceeds at once to perform the most elaborate
+      chemical operations on the food he swallows. He manufactures teeth;
+      discards them; and replaces them with fresh ones. Compared to these
+      habitual feats, walking, standing upright, and bicycling are the merest
+      trifles; yet it is only by going through the wanting, trying process that
+      he can stand, walk, or cycle, whereas in the other and far more difficult
+      and complex habits he not only does not consciously want nor consciously
+      try, but actually consciously objects very strongly. Take that early habit
+      of cutting the teeth: would he do that if he could help it? Take that
+      later habit of decaying and eliminating himself by death&mdash;equally an
+      acquired habit, remember&mdash;how he abhors it! Yet the habit has become
+      so rooted, so automatic, that he must do it in spite of himself, even to
+      his own destruction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have here a routine which, given time enough for it to operate, will
+      finally produce the most elaborate forms of organized life on Lamarckian
+      lines without the intervention of Circumstantial Selection at all. If you
+      can turn a pedestrian into a cyclist, and a cyclist into a pianist or
+      violinist, without the intervention of Circumstantial Selection, you can
+      turn an amoeba into a man, or a man into a superman, without it. All of
+      which is rank heresy to the Neo-Darwinian, who imagines that if you stop
+      Circumstantial Selection, you not only stop development but inaugurate a
+      rapid and disastrous degeneration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us fix the Lamarckian evolutionary process well in our minds. You are
+      alive; and you want to be more alive. You want an extension of
+      consciousness and of power. You want, consequently, additional organs, or
+      additional uses of your existing organs: that is, additional habits. You
+      get them because you want them badly enough to keep trying for them until
+      they come. Nobody knows how: nobody knows why: all we know is that the
+      thing actually takes place. We relapse miserably from effort to effort
+      until the old organ is modified or the new one created, when suddenly the
+      impossible becomes possible and the habit is formed. The moment we form it
+      we want to get rid of the consciousness of it so as to economize our
+      consciousness for fresh conquests of life; as all consciousness means
+      preoccupation and obstruction. If we had to think about breathing or
+      digesting or circulating our blood we should have no attention to spare
+      for anything else, as we find to our cost when anything goes wrong with
+      these operations. We want to be unconscious of them just as we wanted to
+      acquire them; and we finally win what we want. But we win unconsciousness
+      of our habits at the cost of losing our control of them; and we also build
+      one habit and its corresponding functional modification of our organs on
+      another, and so become dependent on our old habits. Consequently we have
+      to persist in them even when they hurt us. We cannot stop breathing to
+      avoid an attack of asthma, or to escape drowning. We can lose a habit and
+      discard an organ when we no longer need them, just as we acquired them;
+      but this process is slow and broken by relapses; and relics of the organ
+      and the habit long survive its utility. And if other and still
+      indispensable habits and modifications have been built on the ones we wish
+      to discard, we must provide a new foundation for them before we demolish
+      the old one. This is also a slow process and a very curious one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE MIRACLE OF CONDENSED RECAPITULATION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The relapses between the efforts to acquire a habit are important because,
+      as we have seen, they recur not only from effort to effort in the case of
+      the individual, but from generation to generation in the case of the race.
+      This relapsing from generation to generation is an invariable
+      characteristic of the evolutionary process. For instance, Raphael, though
+      descended from eight uninterrupted generations of painters, had to learn
+      to paint apparently as if no Sanzio had ever handled a brush before. But
+      he had also to learn to breathe, and digest, and circulate his blood.
+      Although his father and mother were fully grown adults when he was
+      conceived, he was not conceived or even born fully grown: he had to go
+      back and begin as a speck of protoplasm, and to struggle through an
+      embryonic lifetime, during part of which he was indistinguishable from an
+      embryonic dog, and had neither a skull nor a backbone. When he at last
+      acquired these articles, he was for some time doubtful whether he was a
+      bird or a fish. He had to compress untold centuries of development into
+      nine months before he was human enough to break loose as an independent
+      being. And even then he was still so incomplete that his parents might
+      well have exclaimed 'Good Heavens! have you learnt nothing from our
+      experience that you come into the world in this ridiculously elementary
+      state? Why cant you talk and walk and paint and behave decently?' To that
+      question Baby Raphael had no answer. All he could have said was that this
+      is how evolution or transformation happens. The time may come when the
+      same force that compressed the development of millions of years into nine
+      months may pack many more millions into even a shorter space; so that
+      Raphaels may be born painters as they are now born breathers and blood
+      circulators. But they will still begin as specks of protoplasm, and
+      acquire the faculty of painting in their mother's womb at quite a late
+      stage of their embryonic life. They must recapitulate the history of
+      mankind in their own persons, however briefly they may condense it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing was so astonishing and significant in the discoveries of the
+      embryologists, nor anything so absurdly little appreciated, as this
+      recapitulation, as it is now called: this power of hurrying up into months
+      a process which was once so long and tedious that the mere contemplation
+      of it is unendurable by men whose span of life is three-score-and-ten. It
+      widened human possibilities to the extent of enabling us to hope that the
+      most prolonged and difficult operation of our minds may yet become
+      instantaneous, or, as we call it, instinctive. It also directed our
+      attention to examples of this packing up of centuries into seconds which
+      were staring us in the face in all directions. As I write these lines the
+      newspapers are occupied by the exploits of a child of eight, who has just
+      defeated twenty adult chess players in twenty games played simultaneously,
+      and has been able afterwards to reconstruct all the twenty games without
+      any apparent effort of memory. Most people, including myself, play chess
+      (when they play it at all) from hand to mouth, and can hardly recall the
+      last move but one, or foresee the next but two. Also, when I have to make
+      an arithmetical calculation, I have to do it step by step with pencil and
+      paper, slowly, reluctantly, and with so little confidence in the result
+      that I dare not act on it without 'proving' the sum by a further
+      calculation involving more ciphering. But there are men who can neither
+      read, write, nor cipher, to whom the answer to such sums as I can do is
+      instantly obvious without any conscious calculation at all; and the result
+      is infallible. Yet some of these natural arithmeticians have but a small
+      vocabulary; are at a loss when they have to find words for any but the
+      simplest everyday occasions; and cannot for the life of them describe
+      mechanical operations which they perform daily in the course of their
+      trade; whereas to me the whole vocabulary of English literature, from
+      Shakespear to the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, is so
+      completely and instantaneously at my call that I have never had to consult
+      even a thesaurus except once or twice when for some reason I wanted a
+      third or fourth synonym. Again, though I have tried and failed to draw
+      recognizable portraits of persons I have seen every day for years, Mr
+      Bernard Partridge, having seen a man once, will, without more strain than
+      is involved in eating a sandwich, draw him to the life. The keyboard of a
+      piano is a device I have never been able to master; yet Mr Cyril Scott
+      uses it exactly as I use my own fingers; and to Sir Edward Elgar an
+      orchestral score is as instantaneously intelligible at sight as a page of
+      Shakespear is to me. One man cannot, after trying for years, finger the
+      flute fluently. Another will take up a flute with a newly invented
+      arrangement of keys on it, and play it at once with hardly a mistake. We
+      find people to whom writing is so difficult that they prefer to sign their
+      name with a mark, and beside them men who master systems of shorthand and
+      improvise new systems of their own as easily as they learnt the alphabet.
+      These contrasts are to be seen on all hands, and have nothing to do with
+      variations in general intelligence, nor even in the specialized
+      intelligence proper to the faculty in question: for example, no composer
+      or dramatic poet has ever pretended to be able to perform all the parts he
+      writes for the singers, actors, and players who are his executants. One
+      might as well expect Napoleon to be a fencer, or the Astronomer Royal to
+      know how many beans make five any better than his bookkeeper. Even
+      exceptional command of language does not imply the possession of ideas to
+      express; Mezzofanti, the master of fifty-eight languages, had less to say
+      in them than Shakespear with his little Latin and less Greek; and public
+      life is the paradise of voluble windbags.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All these examples, which might be multiplied by millions, are cases in
+      which a long, laborious, conscious, detailed process of acquirement has
+      been condensed into an instinctive and unconscious inborn one. Factors
+      which formerly had to be considered one by one in succession are
+      integrated into what seems a single simple factor. Chains of hardly
+      soluble problems have coalesced in one problem which solves itself the
+      moment it is raised. What is more, they have been pushed back (or forward,
+      if you like) from post-natal to pre-natal ones. The child in the womb may
+      take some time over them; but it is a miraculously shortened time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The time phenomena involved are curious, and suggest that we are either
+      wrong about our history or else that we enormously exaggerate the periods
+      required for the pre-natal acquirement of habits. In the nineteenth
+      century we talked very glibly about geological periods, and flung millions
+      of eons about in the most lordly manner in our reaction against Archbishop
+      Ussher's chronology. We had a craze for big figures, and positively liked
+      to believe that the progress made by the child in the womb in a month was
+      represented in prehistoric time by ages and ages. We insisted that
+      Evolution advanced more slowly than any snail ever crawled, and that
+      Nature does not proceed by leaps and bounds. This was all very well as
+      long as we were dealing with such acquired habits as breathing or
+      digestion. It was possible to believe that dozens of epochs had gone to
+      the slow building up of these habits. But when we have to consider the
+      case of a man born not only as an accomplished metabolist, but with such
+      an aptitude for shorthand and keyboard manipulation that he is a
+      stenographer or pianist at least five sixths ready-made as soon as he can
+      control his hands intelligently, we are forced to suspect either that
+      keyboards and shorthand are older inventions than we suppose, or else that
+      acquirements can be assimilated and stored as congenital qualifications in
+      a shorter time than we think; so that, as between Lyell and Archbishop
+      Ussher, the laugh may not be with Lyell quite so uproariously as it seemed
+      fifty years ago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      HEREDITY AN OLD STORY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It is evident that the evolutionary process is a hereditary one, or, to
+      put it less drily, that human life is continuous and immortal. The
+      Evolutionists took heredity for granted. So did everybody. The human mind
+      has been soaked in heredity as long back as we can trace its thought.
+      Hereditary peers, hereditary monarchs, hereditary castes and trades and
+      classes were the best known of social institutions, and in some cases of
+      public nuisances. Pedigree men counted pedigree dogs and pedigree horses
+      among their most cherished possessions. Far from being unconscious of
+      heredity, or sceptical, men were insanely credulous about it: they not
+      only believed in the transmission of qualities and habits from generation
+      to generation, but expected the son to begin mentally where the father
+      left off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This belief in heredity led naturally to the practice of Intentional
+      Selection. Good blood and breeding were eagerly sought after in human
+      marriage. In dealing with plants and animals, selection with a view to the
+      production of new varieties and the improvement and modification of
+      species had been practised ever since men began to cultivate them. My
+      pre-Darwinian uncle knew as well as Darwin that the race-horse and the
+      dray-horse are not separate creations from the Garden of Eden, but
+      adaptations by deliberate human selection of the medieval war-horse to
+      modern racing and industrial haulage. He knew that there are nearly two
+      hundred different sorts of dogs, all capable of breeding with one another
+      and of producing cross varieties unknown to Adam. He knew that the same
+      thing is true of pigeons. He knew that gardeners had spent their lives
+      trying to breed black tulips and green carnations and unheard-of orchids,
+      and had actually produced flowers just as strange to Eve. His quarrel with
+      the Evolutionists was not a quarrel with the evidence for Evolution: he
+      had accepted enough of it to prove Evolution ten times over before he ever
+      heard of it. What he repudiated was cousinship with the ape, and the
+      implied suspicion of a rudimentary tail, because it was offensive to his
+      sense of his own dignity, and because he thought that apes were
+      ridiculous, and tails diabolical when associated with the erect posture.
+      Also he believed that Evolution was a heresy which involved the
+      destruction of Christianity, of which, as a member of the Irish Church
+      (the pseudo-Protestant one), he conceived himself a pillar. But this was
+      only his ignorance; for man may deny his descent from an ape and be
+      eligible as a churchwarden without being any the less a convinced
+      Evolutionist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      DISCOVERY ANTICIPATED BY DIVINATION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      What is more, the religious folk can claim to be among the pioneers of
+      Evolutionism. Weismann, Neo-Darwinist though he was, devoted a long
+      passage in his History of Evolution to the Nature Philosophy of Lorenz
+      Oken, published in 1809. Oken defined natural science as 'the science of
+      the everlasting transmutations of the Holy Ghost in the world.' His
+      religion had started him on the right track, and not only led him to think
+      out a whole scheme of Evolution in abstract terms, but guided his aim in a
+      significantly good scientific shot which brought him within the scope of
+      Weismann. He not only defined the original substance from which all forms
+      of life have developed as protoplasm, or, as he called it, primitive slime
+      (<i>Urschleim</i>), but actually declared that this slime took the form of
+      vesicles out of which the universe was built. Here was the modern cell
+      morphology guessed by a religious thinker long before the microscope and
+      the scalpel forced it on the vision of mere laboratory workers who could
+      not think and had no religion. They worked hard to discover the vital
+      secrets of the glands by opening up dogs and cutting out the glands, or
+      tying up their ducts, or severing their nerves, thereby learning,
+      negatively, that the governors of our vital forces do not hold their
+      incessant conversations through the nerves, and, positively, how miserably
+      a horribly injured dog can die, leaving us to infer that we shall probably
+      perish likewise if we grudge our guineas to Harley Street. Lorenz Oken <i>thought</i>
+      very hard to find out what was happening to the Holy Ghost, and thereby
+      made a contribution of extraordinary importance to our understanding of
+      uninjured creatures. The man who was scientific enough to see that the
+      Holy Ghost is a scientific fact got easily in front of the blockheads who
+      could only sin against it. Hence my uncle was turning his back on very
+      respectable company when he derided Evolution, and would probably have
+      recanted and apologized at once had anybody pointed out to him what a
+      solecism he was committing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The metaphysical side of Evolution was thus no novelty when Darwin
+      arrived. Had Oken never lived, there would still have been millions of
+      persons trained from their childhood to believe that we are continually
+      urged upwards by a force called the Will of God. In 1819 Schopenhauer
+      published his treatise on The World as Will, which is the metaphysical
+      complement to Lamarck's natural history, as it demonstrates that the
+      driving force behind Evolution is a will-to-live, and to live, as Christ
+      said long before, more abundantly. And the earlier philosophers, from
+      Plato to Leibniz, had kept the human mind open for the thought of the
+      universe as one idea behind all its physically apprehensible
+      transformations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CORRECTED DATES FOR THE DISCOVERY OF EVOLUTION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      All this, remember, is the state of things in the pre-Darwin period, which
+      so many of us still think of as a pre-evolutionary period. Evolutionism
+      was the rage before Queen Victoria came to the throne. To fix this
+      chronology, let me repeat the story told by Weismann of the July
+      revolution in Paris in 1830, when the French got rid of Charles the Tenth.
+      Goethe was then still living; and a French friend of his called on him and
+      found him wildly excited. 'What do you think of the great event?' said
+      Goethe. 'The volcano is in eruption; and all is in flames. There can no
+      longer be discussion with closed doors.' The Frenchman replied that no
+      doubt it was a terrible business; but what could they expect with such a
+      ministry and such a king? 'Stuff!' said Goethe: 'I am not thinking of
+      these people at all, but of the open rupture in the French Academy between
+      Cuvier and St Hilaire. It is of the utmost importance to science,' The
+      rupture Goethe meant was about Evolution, Cuvier contending that there
+      were four species, and St Hilaire that there was only one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From 1830, when Darwin was an apparently unpromising lad of twenty-one,
+      until 1859, when he turned the world upside down by his Origin of Species,
+      there was a slump in Evolutionism. The first generation of its enthusiasts
+      was ageing and dying out; and their successors were being taught from the
+      Book of Genesis, just as Edward VI was (and Edward VII too, for that
+      matter). Nobody who knew the theory was adding anything to it. This slump
+      not only heightened the impression of entire novelty when Darwin brought
+      the subject to the front again: it probably prevented him from realizing
+      how much had been done before, even by his own grandfather, to whom he was
+      accused of being unjust. Besides, he was not really carrying on the family
+      business. He was an entirely original worker; and he was on a new tack, as
+      we shall see presently. And he would not in any case have thought much, as
+      a practical naturalist, of the more or less mystical intellectual
+      speculations of the Deists of 1790-1830. Scientific workers were very
+      tired of Deism just then. They had given up the riddle of the Great First
+      Cause as insoluble, and were calling themselves, accordingly, Agnostics.
+      They had turned from the inscrutable question of Why things existed, to
+      the spade work of discovering What was really occurring in the world and
+      How it really occurred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With all his attention bent in this new direction, Darwin soon noticed
+      that a good deal was occurring in an entirely unmystical and even
+      unmeaning way of which the older speculative Deist-Evolutionists had taken
+      little or no account. Nowadays, when we are turning in weary disgust and
+      disillusion from Neo-Darwinism and Mechanism to Vitalism and Creative
+      Evolution, it is difficult to imagine how this new departure of Darwin's
+      could possibly have appealed to his contemporaries as exciting, agreeable,
+      above all as hopeful. Let me therefore try to bring back something of the
+      atmosphere of that time by describing a scene, very characteristic of its
+      superstitions, in which I took what was then considered an unspeakably
+      shocking part.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      DEFYING THE LIGHTNING: A FRUSTRATED EXPERIMENT
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      One evening in 1878 or thereabouts, I, being then in my earliest twenties,
+      was at a bachelor party of young men of the professional class in the
+      house of a doctor in the Kensingtonian quarter of London. They fell to
+      talking about religious revivals; and an anecdote was related of a man
+      who, having incautiously scoffed at the mission of Messrs Moody and
+      Sankey, a then famous firm of American evangelists, was subsequently
+      carried home on a shutter, slain by divine vengeance as a blasphemer. A
+      timid minority, without quite venturing to question the truth of the
+      incident&mdash;for they naturally did not care to run the risk of going
+      home on shutters themselves&mdash;nevertheless shewed a certain
+      disposition to cavil at those who exulted in it; and something approaching
+      to an argument began. At last it was alleged by the most evangelical of
+      the disputants that Charles Bradlaugh, the most formidable atheist on the
+      Secularist platform, had taken out his watch publicly and challenged the
+      Almighty to strike him dead in five minutes if he really existed and
+      disapproved of atheism. The leader of the cavillers, with great heat,
+      repudiated this as a gross calumny, declaring that Bradlaugh had
+      repeatedly and indignantly contradicted it, and implying that the atheist
+      champion was far too pious a man to commit such a blasphemy. This
+      exquisite confusion of ideas roused my sense of comedy. It was clear to me
+      that the challenge attributed to Charles Bradlaugh was a scientific
+      experiment of a quite simple, straightforward, and proper kind to
+      ascertain whether the expression of atheistic opinions really did involve
+      any personal risk. It was certainly the method taught in the Bible, Elijah
+      having confuted the prophets of Baal in precisely that way, with every
+      circumstance of bitter mockery of their god when he failed to send down
+      fire from heaven. Accordingly I said that if the question at issue were
+      whether the penalty of questioning the theology of Messrs Moody and Sankey
+      was to be struck dead on the spot by an incensed deity, nothing could
+      effect a more convincing settlement of it than the very obvious experiment
+      attributed to Mr Bradlaugh, and that consequently if he had not tried it,
+      he ought to have tried it. The omission, I added, was one which could
+      easily be remedied there and then, as I happened to share Mr Bradlaugh's
+      views as to the absurdity of the belief in these violent interferences
+      with the order of nature by a short-tempered and thin-skinned supernatural
+      deity. Therefore&mdash;and at that point I took out my watch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The effect was electrical. Neither sceptics nor devotees were prepared to
+      abide the result of the experiment. In vain did I urge the pious to trust
+      in the accuracy of their deity's aim with a thunderbolt, and the justice
+      of his discrimination between the innocent and the guilty. In vain did I
+      appeal to the sceptics to accept the logical outcome of their scepticism:
+      it soon appeared that when thunderbolts were in question there were no
+      sceptics. Our host, seeing that his guests would vanish precipitately if
+      the impious challenge were uttered, leaving him alone with a solitary
+      infidel under sentence of extermination in five minutes, interposed and
+      forbade the experiment, pleading at the same time for a change of subject.
+      I of course complied, but could not refrain from remarking that though the
+      dreadful words had not been uttered, yet, as the thought had been
+      formulated in my mind, it was very doubtful whether the consequences could
+      be averted by sealing my lips. However, the rest appeared to feel that the
+      game would be played according to the rules, and that it mattered very
+      little what I thought so long as I said nothing. Only the leader of the
+      evangelical party, I thought, was a little preoccupied until five minutes
+      had elapsed and the weather was still calm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0021" id="link2H_4_0021"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IN QUEST OF THE FIRST CAUSE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Another reminiscence. In those days we thought in terms of time and space,
+      of cause and effect, as we still do; but we do not now demand from a
+      religion that it shall explain the universe completely in terms of cause
+      and effect, and present the world to us as a manufactured article and as
+      the private property of its Manufacturer. We did then. We were invited to
+      pity the delusion of certain heathens who held that the world is supported
+      by an elephant who is supported by a tortoise. Mahomet decided that the
+      mountains are great weights to keep the world from being blown away into
+      space. But we refuted these orientals by asking triumphantly what the
+      tortoise stands on? Freethinkers asked which came first: the owl or the
+      egg. Nobody thought of saying that the ultimate problem of existence,
+      being clearly insoluble and even unthinkable on causation lines, could not
+      be a causation problem. To pious people this would have been flat atheism,
+      because they assumed that God must be a Cause, and sometimes called him
+      The Great First Cause, or, in still choicer language, The Primal Cause. To
+      the Rationalists it would have been a renunciation of reason. Here and
+      there a man would confess that he stood as with a dim lantern in a dense
+      fog, and could see but a little way in any direction into infinity. But he
+      did not really believe that infinity was infinite or that the eternal was
+      also sempiternal: he assumed that all things, known and unknown, were
+      caused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hence it was that I found myself one day towards the end of the
+      eighteen-seventies in a cell in the old Brompton Oratory arguing with
+      Father Addis, who had been called by one of his flock to attempt my
+      conversion to Roman Catholicism. The universe exists, said the father:
+      somebody must have made it. If that somebody exists, said I, somebody must
+      have made him. I grant that for the sake of argument, said the Oratorian.
+      I grant you a maker of God. I grant you a maker of the maker of God. I
+      grant you as long a line of makers as you please; but an infinity of
+      makers is unthinkable and extravagant: it is no harder to believe in
+      number one than in number fifty thousand or fifty million; so why not
+      accept number one and stop there, since no attempt to get behind him will
+      remove your logical difficulty? By your leave, said I, it is as easy for
+      me to believe that the universe made itself as that a maker of the
+      universe made himself: in fact much easier; for the universe visibly
+      exists and makes itself as it goes along, whereas a maker for it is a
+      hypothesis. Of course we could get no further on these lines. He rose and
+      said that we were like two men working a saw, he pushing it forward and I
+      pushing it back, and cutting nothing; but when we had dropped the subject
+      and were walking through the refectory, he returned to it for a moment to
+      say that he should go mad if he lost his belief. I, glorying in the robust
+      callousness of youth and the comedic spirit, felt quite comfortable and
+      said so; though I was touched, too, by his evident sincerity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These two anecdotes are superficially trivial and even comic; but there is
+      an abyss of horror beneath them. They reveal a condition so utterly
+      irreligious that religion means nothing but belief in a nursery bogey, and
+      its inadequacy is demonstrated by a toy logical dilemma, neither the bogey
+      nor the dilemma having anything to do with religion, or being serious
+      enough to impose on or confuse any properly educated child over the age of
+      six. One hardly knows which is the more appalling: the abjectness of the
+      credulity or the flippancy of the scepticism. The result was inevitable.
+      All who were strong-minded enough not to be terrified by the bogey were
+      left stranded in empty contemptuous negation, and argued, when they argued
+      at all, as I argued with Father Addis. But their position was not
+      intellectually comfortable. A member of parliament expressed their
+      discomfort when, objecting to the admission of Charles Bradlaugh into
+      parliament, he said 'Hang it all, a man should believe in something or
+      somebody.' It was easy to throw the bogey into the dustbin; but none the
+      less the world, our corner of the universe, did not look like a pure
+      accident: it presented evidences of design in every direction. There was
+      mind and purpose behind it. As the anti-Bradlaugh member would have put
+      it, there must be somebody behind the something: no atheist could get over
+      that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0022" id="link2H_4_0022"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PALEY'S WATCH
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Paley had put the argument in an apparently unanswerable form. If you
+      found a watch, full of mechanism exquisitely adapted to produce a series
+      of operations all leading to the fulfilment of one central purpose of
+      measuring for mankind the march of the day and night, could you believe
+      that it was not the work of a cunning artificer who had designed and
+      contrived it all to that end? And here was a far more wonderful thing than
+      a watch, a man with all his organs ingeniously contrived, cords and
+      levers, girders and kingposts, circulating systems of pipes and valves,
+      dialysing membranes, chemical retorts, carburettors, ventilators, inlets
+      and outlets, telephone transmitters in his ears, light recorders and
+      lenses in his eye: was it conceivable that this was the work of chance?
+      that no artificer had wrought here? that there was no purpose in this, no
+      design, no guiding intelligence? The thing was incredible. In vain did
+      Helmholtz declare that 'the eye has every possible defect that can be
+      found in an optical instrument, and even some peculiar to itself,' and
+      that 'if an optician tried to sell me an instrument which had all these
+      defects I should think myself quite justified in blaming his carelessness
+      in the strongest terms, and sending him back his instrument.' To discredit
+      the optician's skill was not to get rid of the optician. The eye might not
+      be so cleverly made as Paley thought, but it was made somehow, by
+      somebody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then my argument with Father Addis began all over again. It was easy
+      enough to say that every man makes his own eyes: indeed the embryologists
+      had actually caught him doing it. But what about the very evident purpose
+      that prompted him to do it? Why did he want to see, if not to extend his
+      consciousness and his knowledge and his power? That purpose was at work
+      everywhere, and must be something bigger than the individual eye-making
+      man. Only the stupidest muckrakers could fail to see this, and even to
+      know it as part of their own consciousness. Yet to admit it seemed to
+      involve letting the bogey come back, so inextricably had we managed to mix
+      up belief in the bogey's existence with belief in the existence of design
+      in the universe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0023" id="link2H_4_0023"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE IRRESISTIBLE CRY OF ORDER, ORDER!
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Our scornful young scientific and philosophic lions of today must not
+      blame the Church of England for this confusion of thought. In 1562 the
+      Church, in convocation in London 'for the avoiding of diversities of
+      opinions and for the establishment of consent touching true religion,'
+      proclaimed in their first utterance, and as an Article of Religion, that
+      God is 'without body, parts, or passions,' or, as we say, an <i>Elan Vital</i>
+      or Life Force. Unfortunately neither parents, parsons, nor pedagogues
+      could be induced to adopt that article. St John might say that 'God is
+      spirit' as pointedly as he pleased; our Sovereign Lady Elizabeth might
+      ratify the Article again and again; serious divines might feel as deeply
+      as they could that a God with body, parts, and passions could be nothing
+      but an anthropomorphic idol: no matter: people at large could not conceive
+      a God who was not anthropomorphic: they stood by the Old Testament legends
+      of a God whose parts had been seen by one of the patriarchs, and finally
+      set up as against the Church a God who, far from being without body,
+      parts, or passions, was composed of nothing else, and of very evil
+      passions too. They imposed this idol in practice on the Church itself, in
+      spite of the First Article, and thereby homeopathically produced the
+      atheist, whose denial of God was simply a denial of the idol and a
+      demonstration against an unbearable and most unchristian idolatry. The
+      idol was, as Shelley had been expelled from Oxford for pointing out, an
+      almighty fiend, with a petty character and unlimited power, spiteful,
+      cruel, jealous, vindictive, and physically violent. The most villainous
+      schoolmasters, the most tyrannical parents, fell far short in their
+      attempts to imitate it. But it was not its social vices that brought it
+      low. What made it scientifically intolerable was that it was ready at a
+      moment's notice to upset the whole order of the universe on the most
+      trumpery provocation, whether by stopping the sun in the valley of Ajalon
+      or sending an atheist home dead on a shutter (the shutter was
+      indispensable because it marked the utter unpreparedness of the atheist,
+      who, unable to save himself by a deathbed repentance, was subsequently
+      roasted through all eternity in blazing brimstone). It was this
+      disorderliness, this refusal to obey its own laws of nature, that created
+      a scientific need for its destruction. Science could stand a cruel and
+      unjust god; for nature was full of suffering and injustice. But a
+      disorderly god was impossible. In the Middle Ages a compromise had been
+      made by which two different orders of truth, religious and scientific, had
+      been recognized, in order that a schoolman might say that two and two make
+      four without being burnt for heresy. But the nineteenth century, steeped
+      in a meddling, presumptuous, reading-and-writing, socially and politically
+      powerful ignorance inconceivable by Thomas Aquinas or even Roger Bacon,
+      was incapable of so convenient an arrangement; and science was strangled
+      by bigoted ignoramuses claiming infallibility for their interpretation of
+      the Bible, which was regarded, not as a literature nor even as a book, but
+      partly as an oracle which answered and settled all questions, and partly
+      as a talisman to be carried by soldiers in their breast pockets or placed
+      under the pillows of persons who were afraid of ghosts. The tract shops
+      exhibited in their windows bullet-dinted testaments, mothers' gifts to
+      their soldier sons whose lives had been saved by it; for the
+      muzzle-loaders of those days could not drive a projectile through so many
+      pages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0024" id="link2H_4_0024"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE MOMENT AND THE MAN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      This superstition of a continual capricious disorder in nature, of a
+      lawgiver who was also a lawbreaker, made atheists in all directions among
+      clever and lightminded people. But atheism did not account for Paley's
+      watch. Atheism accounted for nothing; and it was the business of science
+      to account for everything that was plainly accountable. Science had no use
+      for mere negation: what was desired by it above all things just then was a
+      demonstration that the evidences of design could be explained without
+      resort to the hypothesis of a personal designer. If only some genius,
+      whilst admitting Paley's facts, could knock the brains out of Paley by the
+      discovery of a method whereby watches could happen without watchmakers,
+      that genius was assured of such a welcome from the thought of his day as
+      no natural philosopher had ever enjoyed before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The time being thus ripe, the genius appeared; and his name was Charles
+      Darwin. And now, what did Darwin really discover?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here, I am afraid, I shall require once more the assistance of the
+      giraffe, or, as he was called in the days of the celebrated Buffoon, the
+      camelopard (by children, cammyleopard). I do not remember how this animal
+      imposed himself illustratively on the Evolution controversy; but there was
+      no getting away from him then; and I am old-fashioned enough to be unable
+      to get away from him now. How did he come by his long neck? Lamarck would
+      have said, by wanting to get at the tender leaves high up on the tree, and
+      trying until he succeeded in wishing the necessary length of neck into
+      existence. Another answer was also possible: namely, that some prehistoric
+      stockbreeder, wishing to produce a natural curiosity, selected the
+      longest-necked animals he could find, and bred from them until at last an
+      animal with an abnormally long neck was evolved by intentional selection,
+      just as the race-horse or the fantail pigeon has been evolved. Both these
+      explanations, you will observe, involve consciousness, will, design,
+      purpose, either on the part of the animal itself or on the part of a
+      superior intelligence controlling its destiny. Darwin pointed out&mdash;and
+      this and no more was Darwin's famous discovery&mdash;that a third
+      explanation, involving neither will nor purpose nor design either in the
+      animal or anyone else, was on the cards. If your neck is too short to
+      reach your food, you die. That may be the simple explanation of the fact
+      that all the surviving animals that feed on foliage have necks or trunks
+      long enough to reach it. So bang goes your belief that the necks must have
+      been designed to reach the food. But Lamarck did not believe that the
+      necks were so designed in the beginning: he believed that the long necks
+      were evolved by wanting and trying. Not necessarily, said Darwin. Consider
+      the effect on the giraffes of the natural multiplication of their numbers,
+      as insisted on by Malthus. Suppose the average height of the
+      foliage-eating animals is four feet, and that they increase in numbers
+      until a time comes when all the trees are eaten away to within four feet
+      of the ground. Then the animals who happen to be an inch or two short of
+      the average will die of starvation. All the animals who happen to be an
+      inch or so above the average will be better fed and stronger than the
+      others. They will secure the strongest and tallest mates; and their
+      progeny will survive whilst the average ones and the sub-average ones will
+      die out. This process, by which the species gains, say, an inch in reach,
+      will repeat itself until the giraffe's neck is so long that he can always
+      find food enough within his reach, at which point, of course, the
+      selective process stops and the length of the giraffe's neck stops with
+      it. Otherwise, he would grow until he could browse off the trees in the
+      moon. And this, mark you, without the intervention of any stockbreeder,
+      human or divine, and without will, purpose, design, or even consciousness
+      beyond the blind will to satisfy hunger. It is true that this blind will,
+      being in effect a will to live, gives away the whole case; but still, as
+      compared to the open-eyed intelligent wanting and trying of Lamarck, the
+      Darwinian process may be described as a chapter of accidents. As such, it
+      seems simple, because you do not at first realize all that it involves.
+      But when its whole significance dawns on you, your heart sinks into a heap
+      of sand within you. There is a hideous fatalism about it, a ghastly and
+      damnable reduction of beauty and intelligence, of strength and purpose, of
+      honor and aspiration, to such casually picturesque changes as an avalanche
+      may make in a mountain landscape, or a railway accident in a human figure.
+      To call this Natural Selection is a blasphemy, possible to many for whom
+      Nature is nothing but a casual aggregation of inert and dead matter, but
+      eternally impossible to the spirits and souls of the righteous. If it be
+      no blasphemy, but a truth of science, then the stars of heaven, the
+      showers and dew, the winter and summer, the fire and heat, the mountains
+      and hills, may no longer be called to exalt the Lord with us by praise;
+      their work is to modify all things by blindly starving and murdering
+      everything that is not lucky enough to survive in the universal struggle
+      for hogwash.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0025" id="link2H_4_0025"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE BRINK OF THE BOTTOMLESS PIT
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Thus did the neck of the giraffe reach out across the whole heavens and
+      make men believe that what they saw there was a gloaming of the gods. For
+      if this sort of selection could turn an antelope into a giraffe, it could
+      conceivably turn a pond full of amoebas into the French Academy. Though
+      Lamarck's way, the way of life, will, aspiration, and achievement,
+      remained still possible, this newly shewn way of hunger, death, stupidity,
+      delusion, chance, and bare survival was also possible: was indeed most
+      certainly the way in which many apparently intelligently designed
+      transformations had actually come to pass. Had I not preluded with the
+      apparently idle story of my revival of the controversial methods of
+      Elijah, I should be asked how it was that the explorer who opened up this
+      gulf of despair, far from being stoned or crucified as the destroyer of
+      the honor of the race and the purpose of the world, was hailed as
+      Deliverer, Savior, Prophet, Redeemer, Enlightener, Rescuer, Hope Giver,
+      and Epoch Maker; whilst poor Lamarck was swept aside as a crude and
+      exploded guesser hardly worthy to be named as his erroneous forerunner. In
+      the light of my anecdote, the explanation is obvious. The first thing the
+      gulf did was to swallow up Paley, and the Disorderly Designer, and
+      Shelley's Almighty Fiend, and all the rest of the pseudo-religious rubbish
+      that had blocked every upward and onward path since the hopes of men had
+      turned to Science as their true Savior. It seemed such a convenient grave
+      that nobody at first noticed that it was nothing less than the bottomless
+      pit, now become a very real terror. For though Darwin left a path round it
+      for his soul, his followers presently dug it right across the whole width
+      of the way. Yet for the moment, there was nothing but wild rejoicing: a
+      sort of scientific mafficking. We had been so oppressed by the notion that
+      everything that happened in the world was the arbitrary personal act of an
+      arbitrary personal god of dangerously jealous and cruel personal
+      character, so that even the relief of the pains of childbirth and the
+      operating table by chloroform was objected to as an interference with his
+      arrangements which he would probably resent, that we just jumped at
+      Darwin. When Napoleon was asked what would happen when he died, he said
+      that Europe would express its intense relief with a great 'Ouf!': Well,
+      when Darwin killed the god who objected to chloroform, everybody who had
+      ever thought about it said 'Ouf!' Paley was buried fathoms deep with his
+      watch, now fully accounted for without any divine artificer at all. We
+      were so glad to be rid of both that we never gave a thought to the
+      consequences. When a prisoner sees the door of his dungeon open, he dashes
+      for it without stopping to think where he shall get his dinner outside.
+      The moment we found that we could do without Shelley's almighty fiend
+      intellectually, he went into the gulf that seemed only a dustbin with a
+      suddenness that made our own lives one of the most astonishing periods in
+      history. If I had told that uncle of mine that within thirty years from
+      the date of our conversation I should be exposing myself to suspicions of
+      the grossest superstition by questioning the sufficiency of Darwin;
+      maintaining the reality of the Holy Ghost; declaring that the phenomenon
+      of the Word becoming Flesh was occurring daily, he would have regarded me
+      as the most extravagant madman our family had ever produced. Yet it was
+      so. In 1906 I might have vituperated Jehovah more heartily than ever
+      Shelley did without eliciting a protest in any circle of thinkers, or
+      shocking any public audience accustomed to modern discussion; but when I
+      described Darwin as 'an intelligent and industrious pigeon fancier,' that
+      blasphemous levity, as it seemed, was received with horror and
+      indignation. The tide has now turned; and every puny whipster may say what
+      he likes about Darwin; but anyone who wants to know what it was to be a
+      Lamarckian during the last quarter of the nineteenth century has only to
+      read Mr Festing Jones's memoir of Samuel Butler to learn how completely
+      even a man of genius could isolate himself by antagonizing Darwin on the
+      one hand and the Church on the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0026" id="link2H_4_0026"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      WHY DARWIN CONVERTED THE CROWD
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I am well aware that in describing the effect of Darwin's discovery on
+      naturalists and on persons capable of serious reflection on the nature and
+      attributes of God, I am leaving the vast mass of the British public out of
+      account. I have pointed out elsewhere that the British nation does not
+      consist of atheists and Plymouth Brothers; and I am not now going to
+      pretend that it ever consisted of Darwinians and Lamarckians. The average
+      citizen is irreligious and unscientific: you talk to him about cricket and
+      golf, market prices and party politics, not about evolution and
+      relativity, transubstantiation and predestination. Nothing will knock into
+      his head the fateful distinction between Evolution as promulgated by
+      Erasmus Darwin, and Circumstantial (so-called Natural) Selection as
+      revealed by his grandson. Yet the doctrine of Charles reached him, though
+      the doctrine of Erasmus had passed over his head. Why did not Erasmus
+      Darwin popularize the word Evolution as effectively as Charles?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reason was, I think, that Circumstantial Selection is easier to
+      understand, more visible and concrete, than Lamarckian evolution.
+      Evolution as a philosophy and physiology of the will is a mystical
+      process, which can be apprehended only by a trained, apt, and
+      comprehensive thinker. Though the phenomena of use and disuse, of wanting
+      and trying, of the manufacture of weight lifters and wrestlers from men of
+      ordinary strength, are familiar enough as facts, they are extremely
+      puzzling as subjects of thought, and lead you into metaphysics the moment
+      you try to account for them. But pigeon fanciers, dog fanciers, gardeners,
+      stock breeders, or stud grooms, can understand Circumstantial Selection,
+      because it is their business to produce transformation by imposing on
+      flowers and animals a Selection From Without. All that Darwin had to say
+      to them was that the mere chapter of accidents is always doing on a huge
+      scale what they themselves are doing on a very small scale. There is
+      hardly a laborer attached to an English country house who has not taken a
+      litter of kittens or puppies to the bucket, and drowned all of them except
+      the one he thinks the most promising. Such a man has nothing to learn
+      about the survival of the fittest except that it acts in more ways than he
+      has yet noticed; for he knows quite well, as you will find if you are not
+      too proud to talk to him, that this sort of selection occurs naturally (in
+      Darwin's sense) too: that, for instance, a hard winter will kill off a
+      weakly child as the bucket kills off a weakly puppy. Then there is the
+      farm laborer. Shakespear's Touchstone, a court-bred fool, was shocked to
+      find in the shepherd a natural philosopher, and opined that he would be
+      damned for the part he took in the sexual selection of sheep. As to the
+      production of new species by the selection of variations, that is no news
+      to your gardener. Now if you are familiar with these three processes: the
+      survival of the fittest, sexual selection, and variation leading to new
+      kinds, there is nothing to puzzle you in Darwinism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was the secret of Darwin's popularity. He never puzzled anybody. If
+      very few of us have read The Origin of Species from end to end, it is not
+      because it overtaxes our mind, but because we take in the whole case and
+      are prepared to accept it long before we have come to the end of the
+      innumerable instances and illustrations of which the book mainly consists.
+      Darwin becomes tedious in the manner of a man who insists on continuing to
+      prove his innocence after he has been acquitted. You assure him that there
+      is not a stain on his character, and beg him to leave the court; but he
+      will not be content with enough evidence: he will have you listen to all
+      the evidence that exists in the world. Darwin's industry was enormous. His
+      patience, his perseverance, his conscientiousness reached the human limit.
+      But he never got deeper beneath or higher above his facts than an ordinary
+      man could follow him. He was not conscious of having raised a stupendous
+      issue, because, though it arose instantly, it was not his business. He was
+      conscious of having discovered a process of transformation and
+      modification which accounted for a great deal of natural history. But he
+      did not put it forward as accounting for the whole of natural history. He
+      included it under the heading of Evolution, though it was only
+      pseudo-evolution at best; but he revealed it as <i>a</i> method of
+      evolution, not as <i>the</i> method of evolution. He did not pretend that
+      it excluded other methods, or that it was the chief method. Though he
+      demonstrated that many transformations which had been taken as functional
+      adaptations (the current phrase for Lamarckian evolution) either certainly
+      were or conceivably might be due to Circumstantial Selection, he was
+      careful not to claim that he had superseded Lamarck or disproved
+      Functional Adaptation. In short, he was not a Darwinian, but an honest
+      naturalist working away at his job with so little preoccupation with
+      theological speculation that he never quarrelled with the theistic
+      Unitarianism into which he was born, and remained to the end the
+      engagingly simple and socially easy-going soul he had been in his boyhood,
+      when his elders doubted whether he would ever be of much use in the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0027" id="link2H_4_0027"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      HOW WE RUSHED DOWN A STEEP PLACE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Not so the rest of us intellectuals. We all began going to the devil with
+      the utmost cheerfulness. Everyone who had a mind to change, changed it.
+      Only Samuel Butler, on whom Darwin had acted homeopathically, reacted
+      against him furiously; ran up the Lamarckian flag to the top-gallant peak;
+      declared with penetrating accuracy that Darwin had 'banished mind from the
+      universe'; and even attacked Darwin's personal character, unable to bear
+      the fact that the author of so abhorrent a doctrine was an amiable and
+      upright man. Nobody would listen to him. He was so completely submerged by
+      the flowing tide of Darwinism that when Darwin wanted to clear up the
+      misunderstanding on which Butler was basing his personal attacks, Darwin's
+      friends, very foolishly and snobbishly, persuaded him that Butler was too
+      ill-conditioned and negligible to be answered. That they could not
+      recognize in Butler a man of genius mattered little: what did matter was
+      that they could not understand the provocation under which he was raging.
+      They actually regarded the banishment of mind from the universe as a
+      glorious enlightenment and emancipation for which he was ignorantly
+      ungrateful. Even now, when Butler's eminence is unchallenged, and his
+      biographer, Mr Festing Jones, is enjoying a vogue like that of Boswell or
+      Lockhart, his memoirs shew him rather as a shocking example of the bad
+      controversial manners of our country parsonages than as a prophet who
+      tried to head us back when we were gaily dancing to our damnation across
+      the rainbow bridge which Darwinism had thrown over the gulf which
+      separates life and hope from death and despair. We were intellectually
+      intoxicated with the idea that the world could make itself without design,
+      purpose, skill, or intelligence: in short, without life. We completely
+      overlooked the difference between the modification of species by
+      adaptation to their environment and the appearance of new species: we just
+      threw in the word 'variations' or the word 'sports' (fancy a man of
+      science talking of an unknown factor as a sport instead of as <i>x</i>!)
+      and left them to 'accumulate' and account for the difference between a
+      cockatoo and a hippopotamus. Such phrases set us free to revel in
+      demonstrating to the Vitalists and Bible worshippers that if we once admit
+      the existence of any kind of force, however unintelligent, and stretch out
+      the past to unlimited time for such force to operate accidentally in, that
+      force may conceivably, by the action of Circumstantial Selection, produce
+      a world in which every function has an organ perfectly adapted to perform
+      it, and therefore presents every appearance of having been designed, like
+      Paley's watch, by a conscious and intelligent artificer for the purpose.
+      We took a perverse pleasure in arguing, without the least suspicion that
+      we were reducing ourselves to absurdity, that all the books in the British
+      Museum library might have been written word for word as they stand on the
+      shelves if no human being had ever been conscious, just as the trees stand
+      in the forest doing wonderful things without consciousness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the Darwinians went far beyond denying consciousness to trees.
+      Weismann insisted that the chick breaks out of its eggshell automatically;
+      that the butterfly, springing into the air to avoid the pounce of the
+      lizard, 'does not wish to avoid death; knows nothing about death,' what
+      has happened being simply that a flight instinct evolved by Circumstantial
+      Selection reacts promptly to a visual impression produced by the lizard's
+      movement. His proof is that the butterfly immediately settles again on the
+      flower, and repeats the performance every time the lizard springs, thus
+      shewing that it learns nothing from experience, and&mdash;Weismann
+      concludes&mdash;is not conscious of what it does.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It should hardly have escaped so curious an observer that when the cat
+      jumps up on the dinner table, and you put it down, it instantly jumps up
+      again, and finally establishes its right to a place on the cloth by
+      convincing you that if you put it down a hundred times it will jump up a
+      hundred and one times; so that if you desire its company at dinner you can
+      have it only on its own terms. If Weismann really thought that cats act
+      thus without any consciousness or any purpose, immediate or ulterior, he
+      must have known very little about cats. But a thoroughgoing Weismannite,
+      if any such still survive from those mad days, would contend that I am not
+      at present necessarily conscious of what I am doing; that my writing of
+      these lines, and your reading of them, are effects of Circumstantial
+      Selection; that I heed know no more about Darwinism than a butterfly knows
+      of a lizard's appetite; and that the proof that I actually am doing it
+      unconsciously is that as I have spent forty years in writing in this
+      fashion without, as far as I can see, producing any visible effect on
+      public opinion, I must be incapable of learning from experience, and am
+      therefore a mere automaton. And the Weismannite demonstration of this
+      would of course be an equally unconscious effect of Circumstantial
+      Selection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0028" id="link2H_4_0028"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      DARWINISM NOT FINALLY REFUTABLE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Do not too hastily say that this is inconceivable. To Circumstantial
+      Selection all mechanical and chemical reactions are possible, provided you
+      accept the geologists' estimates of the great age of the earth, and
+      therefore allow time enough for the circumstances to operate. It is true
+      that mere survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence plus
+      sexual selection fail as hopelessly to account for Darwin's own life work
+      as for my conquest of the bicycle; but who can prove that there are not
+      other soulless factors, unnoticed or undiscovered, which only require
+      imagination enough to fit them to the evolution of an automatic Jesus or
+      Shakespear? When a man tells you that you are a product of Circumstantial
+      Selection solely, you cannot finally disprove it. You can only tell him
+      out of the depths of your inner conviction that he is a fool and a liar.
+      But as this, though British, is uncivil, it is wiser to offer him the
+      counter-assurance that you are the product of Lamarckian evolution,
+      formerly called Functional Adaptation and now Creative Evolution, and
+      challenge him to disprove <i>that</i>, which he can no more do than you
+      can disprove Circumstantial Selection, both forces being conceivably able
+      to produce anything if you only give them rope enough. You may also defy
+      him to act for a single hour on the assumption that he may safely cross
+      Oxford Street in a state of unconsciousness, trusting to his dodging
+      reflexes to react automatically and promptly enough to the visual
+      impression produced by a motor bus, and the audible impression produced by
+      its hooter. But if you allow yourself to defy him to explain any
+      particular action of yours by Circumstantial Selection, he should always
+      be able to find some explanation that will fit the case if only he is
+      ingenious enough and goes far enough to find it. Darwin found several such
+      explanations in his controversies. Anybody who really wants to believe
+      that the universe has been produced by Circumstantial Selection
+      co-operating with a force as inhuman as we conceive magnetism to be can
+      find a logical excuse for his belief if he tries hard enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0029" id="link2H_4_0029"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THREE BLIND MICE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The stultification and damnation which ensued are illustrated by a
+      comparison of the ease and certainty with which Butler's mind moved to
+      humane and inspiring conclusions with the grotesque stupidities and
+      cruelties of the idle and silly controversy which arose among the
+      Darwinians as to whether acquired habits can be transmitted from parents
+      to offspring. Consider, for example, how Weismann set to work on that
+      subject. An Evolutionist with a live mind would first have dropped the
+      popular expression 'acquired habits,' because to an Evolutionist there are
+      no other habits and can be no others, a man being only an amoeba with
+      acquirements. He would then have considered carefully the process by which
+      he himself had acquired his habits. He would have assumed that the habits
+      with which he was born must have been acquired by a similar process. He
+      would have known what a habit is: that is, an Action voluntarily attempted
+      until it has become more or less automatic and involuntary; and it would
+      never have occurred to him that injuries or accidents coming from external
+      sources against the will of the victim could possibly establish a habit;
+      that, for instance, a family could acquire a habit of being killed in
+      railway accidents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet Weismann began to investigate the point by behaving like the
+      butcher's wife in the old catch. He got a colony of mice, and cut off
+      their tails. Then he waited to see whether their children would be born
+      without tails. They were not, as Butler could have told him beforehand. He
+      then cut off the children's tails, and waited to see whether the
+      grandchildren would be born with at least rather short tails. They were
+      not, as I could have told him beforehand. So with the patience and
+      industry on which men of science pride themselves, he cut off the
+      grandchildren's tails too, and waited, full of hope, for the birth of
+      curtailed great-grandchildren. But their tails were quite up to the mark,
+      as any fool could have told him beforehand. Weismann then gravely drew the
+      inference that acquired habits cannot be transmitted. And yet Weismann was
+      not a born imbecile. He was an exceptionally clever and studious man, not
+      without roots of imagination and philosophy in him which Darwinism killed
+      as weeds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How was it that he did not see that he was not experimenting with habits
+      or characteristics at all? How had he overlooked the glaring fact that his
+      experiment had been tried for many generations in China on the feet of
+      Chinese women without producing the smallest tendency on their part to be
+      born with abnormally small feet? He must have known about the bound feet
+      even if he knew nothing of the mutilations, the clipped ears and docked
+      tails, practised by dog fanciers and horse breeders on many generations of
+      the unfortunate animals they deal in. Such amazing blindness and stupidity
+      on the part of a man who was naturally neither blind nor stupid is a
+      telling illustration of what Darwin unintentionally did to the minds of
+      his disciples by turning their attention so exclusively towards the part
+      played in Evolution by accident and violence operating with entire
+      callousness to suffering and sentiment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A vital conception of Evolution would have taught Weismann that biological
+      problems are not to be solved by assaults on mice. The scientific form of
+      his experiment would have been something like this. First, he should have
+      procured a colony of mice highly susceptible to hypnotic suggestion. He
+      should then have hypnotized them into an urgent conviction that the fate
+      of the musque world depended on the disappearance of its tail, just as
+      some ancient and forgotten experimenter seems to have convinced the cats
+      of the Isle of Man. Having thus made the mice desire to lose their tails
+      with a life-or-death intensity, he would very soon have seen a few mice
+      born with little or no tail. These would be recognized by the other mice
+      as superior beings, and privileged in the division of food and in sexual
+      selection. Ultimately the tailed mice would be put to death as monsters by
+      their fellows, and the miracle of the tailless mouse completely achieved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The objection to this experiment is not that it seems too funny to be
+      taken seriously, and is not cruel enough to overawe the mob, but simply
+      that it is impossible because the human experimenter cannot get at the
+      mouse's mind. And that is what is wrong with all the barren cruelties of
+      the laboratories. Darwin's followers did not think of this. Their only
+      idea of investigation was to imitate 'Nature' by perpetrating violent and
+      senseless cruelties, and watch the effect of them with a paralyzing
+      fatalism which forbade the smallest effort to use their minds instead of
+      their knives and eyes, and established an abominable tradition that the
+      man who hesitates to be as cruel as Circumstantial Selection itself is a
+      traitor to science. For Weismann's experiment upon the mice was a mere
+      joke compared to the atrocities committed by other Darwinians in their
+      attempts to prove that mutilations could not be transmitted. No doubt the
+      worst of these experiments were not really experiments at all, but
+      cruelties committed by cruel men who were attracted to the laboratory by
+      the fact that it was a secret refuge left by law and public superstition
+      for the amateur of passionate torture. But there is no reason to suspect
+      Weismann of Sadism. Cutting off the tails of several generations of mice
+      is not voluptuous enough to tempt a scientific Nero. It was a mere piece
+      of one-eyedness; and it was Darwin who put out Weismann's humane and
+      sensible eye. He blinded many another eye and paralyzed many another will
+      also. Ever since he set up Circumstantial Selection as the creator and
+      ruler of the universe, the scientific world has been the very citadel of
+      stupidity and cruelty. Fearful as the tribal god of the Hebrews was,
+      nobody ever shuddered as they passed even his meanest and narrowest Little
+      Bethel or his proudest war-consecrating cathedral as we shudder now when
+      we pass a physiological laboratory. If we dreaded and mistrusted the
+      priest, we could at least keep him out of the house; but what of the
+      modern Darwinist surgeon whom we dread and mistrust ten times more, but
+      into whose hands we must all give ourselves from time to time? Miserably
+      as religion had been debased, it did at least still proclaim that our
+      relation to one another was that of a fellowship in which we were all
+      equal and members one of another before the judgment-seat of our common
+      father. Darwinism proclaimed that our true relation is that of competitors
+      and combatants in a struggle for mere survival, and that every act of pity
+      or loyalty to the old fellowship is a vain and mischievous attempt to
+      lessen the severity of the struggle and preserve inferior varieties from
+      the efforts of Nature to weed them out. Even in Socialist Societies which
+      existed solely to substitute the law of fellowship for the law of
+      competition, and the method of providence and wisdom for the method of
+      rushing violently down a steep place into the sea, I found myself regarded
+      as a blasphemer and an ignorant sentimentalist because whenever the
+      Neo-Darwinian doctrine was preached there I made no attempt to conceal my
+      intellectual contempt for its blind coarseness and shallow logic, or my
+      natural abhorrence of its sickening inhumanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0030" id="link2H_4_0030"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE GREATEST OF THESE IS SELF-CONTROL
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      As there is no place in Darwinism for free will, or any other sort of
+      will, the Neo-Darwinists held that there is no such thing as self-control.
+      Yet self-control is just the one quality of survival value which
+      Circumstantial Selection must invariably and inevitably develop in the
+      long run. Uncontrolled qualities may be selected for survival and
+      development for certain periods and under certain circumstances. For
+      instance, since it is the ungovernable gluttons who strive the hardest to
+      get food and drink, their efforts would develop their strength and cunning
+      in a period of such scarcity that the utmost they could do would not
+      enable them to over-eat themselves. But a change of circumstances
+      involving a plentiful supply of food would destroy them. We see this very
+      thing happening often enough in the case of the healthy and vigorous poor
+      man who becomes a millionaire by one of the accidents of our competitive
+      commerce, and immediately proceeds to dig his grave with his teeth. But
+      the self-controlled man survives all such changes of circumstance, because
+      he adapts himself to them, and eats neither as much as he can hold nor as
+      little as he can scrape along on, but as much as is good for him. What is
+      self-control? It is nothing but a highly developed vital sense, dominating
+      and regulating the mere appetites. To overlook the very existence of this
+      supreme sense; to miss the obvious inference that it is the quality that
+      distinguishes the fittest to survive; to omit, in short, the highest moral
+      claim of Evolutionary Selection: all this, which the Neo-Darwinians did in
+      the name of Natural Selection, shewed the most pitiable want of mastery of
+      their own subject, the dullest lack of observation of the forces upon
+      which Natural Selection works.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0031" id="link2H_4_0031"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A SAMPLE OF LAMARCKO-SHAVIAN INVECTIVE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The Vitalist philosophers made no such mistakes. Nietzsche, for example,
+      thinking out the great central truth of the Will to Power instead of
+      cutting off mouse-tails, had no difficulty in concluding that the final
+      objective of this Will was power over self, and that the seekers after
+      power over others and material possessions were on a false scent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stultification naturally became much worse as the first Darwinians
+      died out. The prestige of these pioneers, who had the older evolutionary
+      culture to build on, and were in fact no more Darwinian in the modern
+      sense than Darwin himself, ceased to dazzle us when Huxley and Tyndall and
+      Spencer and Darwin passed away, and we were left with the smaller people
+      who began with Darwin and took in nothing else. Accordingly, I find that
+      in the year 1906 I indulged my temper by hurling invectives at the
+      Neo-Darwinians in the following terms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      'I really do not wish to be abusive; but when I think of these poor little
+      dullards, with their precarious hold of just that corner of evolution that
+      a blackbeetle can understand&mdash;with their retinue of
+      twopenny-halfpenny Torquemadas wallowing in the infamies of the
+      vivisector's laboratory, and solemnly offering us as epoch-making
+      discoveries their demonstrations that dogs get weaker and die if you give
+      them no food; that intense pain makes mice sweat; and that if you cut off
+      a dog's leg the three-legged dog will have a four-legged puppy, I ask
+      myself what spell has fallen on intelligent and humane men that they allow
+      themselves to be imposed on by this rabble of dolts, blackguards,
+      impostors, quacks, liars, and, worst of all, credulous conscientious
+      fools. Better a thousand times Moses and Spurgeon [a then famous preacher]
+      back again. After all, you cannot understand Moses without imagination nor
+      Spurgeon without metaphysics; but you can be a thorough-going
+      Neo-Darwinian without imagination, metaphysics, poetry, conscience, or
+      decency. For "Natural Selection" has no moral significance: it deals with
+      that part of evolution which has no purpose, no intelligence, and might
+      more appropriately be called accidental selection, or better still,
+      Unnatural Selection, since nothing is more unnatural than an accident. If
+      it could be proved that the whole universe had been produced by such
+      Selection, only fools and rascals could bear to live.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0032" id="link2H_4_0032"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE HUMANITARIANS AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Yet the humanitarians were as delighted as anybody with Darwinism at
+      first. They had been perplexed by the Problem of Evil and the Cruelty of
+      Nature. They were Shelleyists, but not atheists. Those who believed in God
+      were at a terrible disadvantage with the atheist. They could not deny the
+      existence of natural facts so cruel that to attribute them to the will of
+      God is to make God a demon. Belief in God was impossible to any thoughtful
+      person without belief in the Devil as well. The painted Devil, with his
+      horns, his barbed tail, and his abode of burning brimstone, was an
+      incredible bogey; but the evil attributed to him was real enough; and the
+      atheists argued that the author of evil, if he exists, must be strong
+      enough to overcome God, else God is morally responsible for everything he
+      permits the Devil to do. Neither conclusion delivered us from the horror
+      of attributing the cruelty of nature to the workings of an evil will, or
+      could reconcile it with our impulses towards justice, mercy, and a higher
+      life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A complete deliverance was offered by the discovery of Circumstantial
+      Selection: that is to say, of a method by which horrors having every
+      appearance of being elaborately planned by some intelligent contriver are
+      only accidents without any moral significance at all. Suppose a watcher
+      from the stars saw a frightful accident produced by two crowded trains at
+      full speed crashing into one another! How could he conceive that a
+      catastrophe brought about by such elaborate machinery, such ingenious
+      preparation, such skilled direction, such vigilant industry, was quite
+      unintentional? Would he not conclude that the signal-men were devils?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, Circumstantial Selection is largely a theory of collisions: that is,
+      a theory of the innocence of much apparently designed devilry. In this way
+      Darwin brought intense relief as well as an enlarged knowledge of facts to
+      the humanitarians. He destroyed the omnipotence of God for them; but he
+      also exonerated God from a hideous charge of cruelty. Granted that the
+      comfort was shallow, and that deeper reflection was bound to shew that
+      worse than all conceivable devil-deities is a blind, deaf, dumb,
+      heartless, senseless mob of forces that strike as a tree does when it is
+      blown down by the wind, or as the tree itself is struck by lightning. That
+      did not occur to the humanitarians at the moment: people do not reflect
+      deeply when they are in the first happiness of escape from an intolerably
+      oppressive situation. Like Bunyan's pilgrim they could not see the wicket
+      gate, nor the Slough of Despond, nor the castle of Giant Despair; but they
+      saw the shining light at the end of the path, and so started gaily towards
+      it as Evolutionists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And they were right; for the problem of evil yields very easily to
+      Creative Evolution. If the driving power behind Evolution is omnipotent
+      only in the sense that there seems no limit to its final achievement; and
+      if it must meanwhile struggle with matter and circumstance by the method
+      of trial and error, then the world must be full of its unsuccessful
+      experiments. Christ may meet a tiger, or a High Priest arm-in-arm with a
+      Roman Governor, and be the unfittest to survive under the circumstances.
+      Mozart may have a genius that prevails against Emperors and Archbishops,
+      and a lung that succumbs to some obscure and noxious property of foul air.
+      If all our calamities are either accidents or sincerely repented mistakes,
+      there is no malice in the Cruelty of Nature and no Problem of Evil in the
+      Victorian sense at all. The theology of the women who told us that they
+      became atheists when they sat by the cradles of their children and saw
+      them strangled by the hand of God is succeeded by the theology of Blanco
+      Posnet, with his 'It was early days when He made the croup, I guess. It
+      was the best He could think of then; but when it turned out wrong on His
+      hands He made you and me to fight the croup for Him.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0033" id="link2H_4_0033"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      HOW ONE TOUCH OF DARWIN MAKES THE WHOLE WORLD KIN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Another humanitarian interest in Darwinism was that Darwin popularized
+      Evolution generally, as well as making his own special contribution to it.
+      Now the general conception of Evolution provides the humanitarian with a
+      scientific basis, because it establishes the fundamental equality of all
+      living things. It makes the killing of an animal murder in exactly the
+      same sense as the killing of a man is murder. It is sometimes necessary to
+      kill men as it is always necessary to kill tigers; but the old theoretic
+      distinction between the two acts has been obliterated by Evolution. When I
+      was a child and was told that our dog and our parrot, with whom I was on
+      intimate terms, were not creatures like myself, but were brutal whilst I
+      was reasonable, I not only did not believe it, but quite consciously and
+      intellectually formed the opinion that the distinction was false; so that
+      afterwards, when Darwin's views were first unfolded to me, I promptly said
+      that I had found out all that for myself before I was ten years old; and I
+      am far from sure that my youthful arrogance was not justified; for this
+      sense of the kinship of all forms of life is all that is needed to make
+      Evolution not only a conceivable theory, but an inspiring one. St Anthony
+      was ripe for the Evolution theory when he preached to the fishes, and St
+      Francis when he called the birds his little brothers. Our vanity, and our
+      snobbish conception of Godhead as being, like earthly kingship, a supreme
+      class distinction instead of the rock on which Equality is built, had led
+      us to insist on God offering us special terms by placing us apart from and
+      above all the rest of his creatures. Evolution took that conceit out of
+      us; and now, though we may kill a flea without the smallest remorse, we at
+      all events know that we are killing our cousin. No doubt it shocks the
+      flea when the creature that an almighty Celestial Flea created expressly
+      for the food of fleas, destroys the jumping lord of creation with his
+      sharp and enormous thumbnail; but no flea will ever be so foolish as to
+      preach that in slaying fleas Man is applying a method of Natural Selection
+      which will finally evolve a flea so swift that no man can catch him, and
+      so hardy of constitution that Insect Powder will have no more effect on
+      him than strychnine on an elephant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0034" id="link2H_4_0034"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      WHY DARWIN PLEASED THE SOCIALISTS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The Humanitarians were not alone among the agitators in their welcome to
+      Darwin. He had the luck to please everybody who had an axe to grind. The
+      Militarists were as enthusiastic as the Humanitarians, the Socialists as
+      the Capitalists. The Socialists were specially encouraged by Darwin's
+      insistence on the influence of environment. Perhaps the strongest moral
+      bulwark of Capitalism is the belief in the efficacy of individual
+      righteousness. Robert Owen made desperate efforts to convince England that
+      her criminals, her drunkards, her ignorant and stupid masses, were the
+      victims of circumstance: that if we would only establish his new moral
+      world we should find that the masses born into an educated and moralized
+      community would be themselves educated and moralized. The stock reply to
+      this is to be found in Lewes's Life of Goethe. Lewes scorned the notion
+      that circumstances govern character. He pointed to the variety of
+      character in the governing rich class to prove the contrary. Similarity of
+      circumstance can hardly be carried to a more desolating dead level than in
+      the case of the individuals who are born and bred in English country
+      houses, and sent first to Eton or Harrow, and then to Oxford or Cambridge,
+      to have their minds and habits formed. Such a routine would destroy
+      individuality if anything could. Yet individuals come out from it as
+      different as Pitt from Fox, as Lord Russell from Lord Gurzon, as Mr
+      Winston Churchill from Lord Robert Cecil. This acceptance of the
+      congenital character of the individual as the determining factor in his
+      destiny had been reinforced by the Lamarckian view of Evolution. If the
+      giraffe can develop his neck by wanting and trying, a man can develop his
+      character in the same way. The old saying, 'Where there is a will, there
+      is a way,' condenses Lamarck's theory of functional adaptation into a
+      proverb. This felt bracingly moral to strong minds, and reassuringly pious
+      to feeble ones. There was no more effective retort to the Socialist than
+      to tell him to reform himself before he pretends to reform society. If you
+      were rich, how pleasant it was to feel that you owed your riches to the
+      superiority of your own character! The industrial revolution had turned
+      numbers of greedy dullards into monstrously rich men. Nothing could be
+      more humiliating and threatening to them than the view that the falling of
+      a shower of gold into their pockets was as pure an accident as the falling
+      of a shower of hail on their umbrellas, and happened alike to the just and
+      unjust. Nothing could be more flattering and fortifying to them than the
+      assumption that they were rich because they were virtuous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now Darwinism made a clean sweep of all such self-righteousness. It more
+      than justified Robert Owen by discovering in the environment of an
+      organism an influence on it more potent than Owen had ever claimed. It
+      implied that street arabs are produced by slums and not by original sin:
+      that prostitutes are produced by starvation wages and not by feminine
+      concupiscence. It threw the authority of science on the side of the
+      Socialist who said that he who would reform himself must first reform
+      society. It suggested that if we want healthy and wealthy citizens we must
+      have healthy and wealthy towns; and that these can exist only in healthy
+      and wealthy countries. It could be led to the conclusion that the type of
+      character which remains indifferent to the welfare of its neighbors as
+      long as its own personal appetite is satisfied is the disastrous type, and
+      the type which is deeply concerned about its environment the only possible
+      type for a permanently prosperous community. It shewed that the surprising
+      changes which Robert Owen had produced in factory children by a change in
+      their circumstances which does not seem any too generous to us nowadays
+      were as nothing to the changes&mdash;changes not only of habits but of
+      species, not only of species but of orders&mdash;which might conceivably
+      be the work of environment acting on individuals without any character or
+      intellectual consciousness whatever. No wonder the Socialists received
+      Darwin with open arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0035" id="link2H_4_0035"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      DARWIN AND KARL MARX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Besides, the Socialists had an evolutionary prophet of their own, who had
+      discredited Manchester as Darwin discredited the Garden of Eden. Karl Marx
+      had proclaimed in his Communist Manifesto of 1848 (now enjoying Scriptural
+      authority in Russia) that civilization is an organism evolving
+      irresistibly by circumstantial selection; and he published the first
+      volume of his Das Kapital in 1867. The revolt against anthropomorphic
+      idolatry, which was, as we have seen, the secret of Darwin's success, had
+      been accompanied by a revolt against the conventional respectability which
+      covered not only the brigandage and piracy of the feudal barons, but the
+      hypocrisy, inhumanity, snobbery, and greed of the bourgeoisie, who were
+      utterly corrupted by an essentially diabolical identification of success
+      in life with big profits. The moment Marx shewed that the relation of the
+      bourgeoisie to society was grossly immoral and disastrous, and that the
+      whited wall of starched shirt fronts concealed and defended the most
+      infamous of all tyrannies and the basest of all robberies, he became an
+      inspired prophet in the mind of every generous soul whom his book reached.
+      He had said and proved what they wanted to have proved; and they would
+      hear nothing against him. Now Marx was by no means infallible: his
+      economics, half borrowed, and half home-made by a literary amateur, were
+      not, when strictly followed up, even favorable to Socialism. His theory of
+      civilisation had been promulgated already in Buckle's History of
+      Civilization, a book as epoch-making in the minds of its readers as Das
+      Kapital. There was nothing about Socialism in the widely read first volume
+      of Das Kapital: every reference it made to workers and capitalists shewed
+      that Marx had never breathed industrial air, and had dug his case out of
+      bluebooks in the British Museum. Compared to Darwin, he seemed to have no
+      power of observation: there was not a fact in Das Kapital that had not
+      been taken out of a book, nor a discussion that had not been opened by
+      somebody else's pamphlet. No matter: he exposed the bourgeoisie and made
+      an end of its moral prestige. That was enough: like Darwin he had for the
+      moment the World Will by the ear. Marx had, too, what Darwin had not:
+      implacability and a fine Jewish literary gift, with terrible powers of
+      hatred, invective, irony, and all the bitter qualities bred, first in the
+      oppression of a rather pampered young genius (Marx was the spoilt child of
+      a well-to-do family) by a social system utterly uncongenial to him, and
+      later on by exile and poverty. Thus Marx and Darwin between them toppled
+      over two closely related idols, and became the prophets of two new creeds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0036" id="link2H_4_0036"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      WHY DARWIN PLEASED THE PROFITEERS ALSO
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      But how, at this rate, did Darwin succeed with the capitalists too? It is
+      not easy to make the best of both worlds when one of the worlds is
+      preaching a Class War, and the other vigorously practising it. The
+      explanation is that Darwinism was so closely related to Capitalism that
+      Marx regarded it as an economic product rather than as a biological
+      theory. Darwin got his main postulate, the pressure of population on the
+      available means of subsistence, from the treatise of Malthus on
+      Population, just as he got his other postulate of a practically unlimited
+      time for that pressure to operate from the geologist Lyell, who made an
+      end of Archbishop Ussher's Biblical estimate of the age of the earth as
+      4004 B.C. plus A.D. The treatises of the Ricardian economists on the Law
+      of Diminishing Return, which was only the Manchester School's version of
+      the giraffe and the trees, were all very fiercely discussed when Darwin
+      was a young man. In fact the discovery in the eighteenth century by the
+      French Physiocrats of the economic effects of Commercial Selection in
+      soils and sites, and by Malthus of a competition for subsistence which he
+      attributed to pressure of population on available subsistence, had already
+      brought political science into that unbreathable atmosphere of fatalism
+      which is the characteristic blight of Darwinism. Long before Darwin
+      published a line, the Ricardo-Malthusian economists were preaching the
+      fatalistic Wages Fund doctrine, and assuring the workers that Trade
+      Unionism is a vain defiance of the inexorable laws of political economy,
+      just as the Neo-Darwinians were presently assuring us that Temperance
+      Legislation is a vain defiance of Natural Selection, and that the true way
+      to deal with drunkenness is to flood the country with cheap gin and let
+      the fittest survive. Cobdenism is, after all, nothing but the abandonment
+      of trade to Circumstantial Selection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is hardly possible to exaggerate the importance of this preparation for
+      Darwinism by a vast political and clerical propaganda of its moral
+      atmosphere. Never in history, as far as we know, had there been such a
+      determined, richly subsidized, politically organized attempt to persuade
+      the human race that all progress, all prosperity, all salvation,
+      individual and social, depend on an unrestrained conflict for food and
+      money, on the suppression and elimination of the weak by the strong, on
+      Free Trade, Free Contract, Free Competition, Natural Liberty,
+      Laisser-faire: in short, on 'doing the other fellow down' with impunity,
+      all interference by a guiding government, all organization except police
+      organization to protect legalized fraud against fisticuffs, all attempt to
+      introduce human purpose and design and forethought into the industrial
+      welter, being 'contrary to the laws of political economy.' Even the
+      proletariat sympathized, though to them Capitalist liberty meant only wage
+      slavery without the legal safeguards of chattel slavery. People were tired
+      of governments and kings and priests and providences, and wanted to find
+      out how Nature would arrange matters if she were let alone. And they found
+      it out to their cost in the days when Lancashire used up nine generations
+      of wage slaves in one generation of their masters. But their masters,
+      becoming richer and richer, were very well satisfied, and Bastiat proved
+      convincingly that Nature had arranged Economic Harmonies which would
+      settle social questions far better than theocracies or aristocracies or
+      mobocracies, the real <i>deus ex machina</i> being unrestrained
+      plutocracy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0037" id="link2H_4_0037"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE POETRY AND PURITY OF MATERIALISM
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Thus the stars in their courses fought for Darwin. Every faction drew a
+      moral from him; every catholic hater of faction founded a hope on him;
+      every blackguard felt justified by him; and every saint felt encouraged by
+      him. The notion that any harm could come of so splendid an enlightenment
+      seemed as silly as the notion that the atheists would steal all our
+      spoons. The physicists went further than the Darwinians. Tyndall declared
+      that he saw in Matter the promise and potency of all forms of life, and
+      with his Irish graphic lucidity made a picture of a world of magnetic
+      atoms, each atom with a positive and a negative pole, arranging itself by
+      attraction and repulsion in orderly crystalline structure. Such a picture
+      is dangerously fascinating to thinkers oppressed by the bloody disorders
+      of the living world. Craving for purer subjects of thought, they find in
+      the contemplation of crystals and magnets a happiness more dramatic and
+      less childish than the happiness found by the mathematicians in abstract
+      numbers, because they see in the crystals beauty and movement without the
+      corrupting appetites of fleshly vitality. In such Materialism as that of
+      Lucretius and Tyndall there is a nobility which produces poetry: John
+      Davidson found his highest inspiration in it. Even its pessimism as it
+      faces the cooling of the sun and the return of the ice-caps does not
+      degrade the pessimist: for example, the Quincy Adamses, with their
+      insistence on modern democratic degradation as an inevitable result of
+      solar shrinkage, are not dehumanized as the vivisectionists are. Perhaps
+      nobody is at heart fool enough to believe that life is at the mercy of
+      temperature: Dante was not troubled by the objection that Brunetto could
+      not have lived in the fire nor Ugolino in the ice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the physicists found their intellectual vision of the world
+      incommunicable to those who were not born with it. It came to the public
+      simply as Materialism; and Materialism lost its peculiar purity and
+      dignity when it entered into the Darwinian reaction against Bible
+      fetichism. Between the two of them religion was knocked to pieces; and
+      where there had been a god, a cause, a faith that the universe was ordered
+      however inexplicable by us its order might be, and therefore a sense of
+      moral responsibility as part of that order, there was now an utter void.
+      Chaos had come again. The first effect was exhilarating: we had the
+      runaway child's sense of freedom before it gets hungry and lonely and
+      frightened. In this phase we did not desire our God back again. We printed
+      the verses in which William Blake, the most religious of our great poets,
+      called the anthropomorphic idol Old Nobodaddy, and gibed at him in terms
+      which the printer had to leave us to guess from his blank spaces. We had
+      heard the parson droning that God is not mocked; and it was great fun to
+      mock Him to our hearts' content and not be a penny the worse. It did not
+      occur to us that Old Nobodaddy, instead of being a ridiculous fiction,
+      might be only an impostor, and that the exposure of this Koepenik Captain
+      of the heavens, far from proving that there was no real captain, rather
+      proved the contrary: that, in short, Nobodaddy could not have impersonated
+      anybody if there had not been Somebodaddy to impersonate. We did not see
+      the significance of the fact that on the last occasion on which God had
+      been 'expelled with a pitchfork,' men so different as Voltaire and
+      Robespierre had said, the one that if God did not exist it would be
+      necessary to invent him, and the other that after an honest attempt to
+      dispense with a Supreme Being in practical politics, some such hypothesis
+      had been found quite indispensable, and could not be replaced by a mere
+      Goddess of Reason. If these two opinions were quoted at all, they were
+      quoted as jokes at the expense of Nobodaddy. We were quite sure for the
+      moment that whatever lingering superstition might have daunted these men
+      of the eighteenth century, we Darwinians could do without God, and had
+      made a good riddance of Him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0038" id="link2H_4_0038"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE VICEROYS OF THE KING OF KINGS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Now in politics it is much easier to do without God than to do without his
+      viceroys and vicars and lieutenants; and we begin to miss the lieutenants
+      long before we begin to miss their principal. Roman Catholics do what
+      their confessors advise without troubling God; and Royalists are content
+      to worship the King and ask the policeman. But God's trustiest lieutenants
+      often lack official credentials. They may be professed atheists who are
+      also men of honor and high public spirit. The old belief that it matters
+      dreadfully to God whether a man thinks himself an atheist or not, and that
+      the extent to which it matters can be stated with exactness as one single
+      damn, was an error: for the divinity is in the honor and public spirit,
+      not in the mouthed <i>credo</i> or <i>non credo</i>. The consequences of
+      this error became grave when the fitness of a man for public trust was
+      tested, not by his honor and public spirit, but by asking him whether he
+      believed in Nobodaddy or not. If he said yes, he was held fit to be a
+      Prime Minister, though, as our ablest Churchman has said, the real
+      implication was that he was either a fool, a bigot, or a liar. Darwin
+      destroyed this test; but when it was only thoughtlessly dropped, there was
+      no test at all; and the door to public trust was open to the man who had
+      no sense of God because he had no sense of anything beyond his own
+      business interests and personal appetites and ambitions. As a result, the
+      people who did not feel in the least inconvenienced by being no longer
+      governed by Nobodaddy soon found themselves very acutely inconvenienced by
+      being governed by fools and commercial adventurers. They had forgotten not
+      only God but Goldsmith, who had warned them that 'honor sinks where
+      commerce long prevails.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lieutenants of God are not always persons: some of them are legal and
+      parliamentary fictions. One of them is Public Opinion. The pre-Darwinian
+      statesmen and publicists were not restrained directly by God; but they
+      restrained themselves by setting up an image of a Public Opinion which
+      would not tolerate any attempt to tamper with British liberties. Their
+      favorite way of putting it was that any Government which proposed such and
+      such an infringement of such and such a British liberty would be hurled
+      from office in a week. This was not true: there was no such public
+      opinion, no limit to what the British people would put up with in the
+      abstract, and no hardship short of immediate and sudden starvation that it
+      would not and did not put up with in the concrete. But this very
+      helplessness of the people had forced their rulers to pretend that they
+      were not helpless, and that the certainty of a sturdy and unconquerable
+      popular resistance forbade any trifling with Magna Carta or the Petition
+      of Rights or the authority of parliament. Now the reality behind this
+      fiction was the divine sense that liberty is a need vital to human growth.
+      Accordingly, though it was difficult enough to effect a political reform,
+      yet, once parliament had passed it, its wildest opponent had no hope that
+      the Government would cancel it, or shelve it, or be bought off from
+      executing it. From Walpole to Campbell-Bannerman there was no Prime
+      Minister to whom such renagueing or trafficking would ever have occurred,
+      though there were plenty who employed corruption unsparingly to procure
+      the votes of members of parliament for their policy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0039" id="link2H_4_0039"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      POLITICAL OPPORTUNISM IN EXCELSIS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The moment Nobodaddy was slain by Darwin, Public Opinion, as divine
+      deputy, lost its sanctity. Politicians no longer told themselves that the
+      British public would never suffer this or that: they allowed themselves to
+      know that for their own personal purposes, which are limited to their ten
+      or twenty years on the front benches in parliament, the British public can
+      be humbugged and coerced into believing and suffering everything that it
+      pays to impose on them, and that any false excuse for an unpopular step
+      will serve if it can be kept in countenance for a fortnight: that is,
+      until the terms of the excuse are forgotten. The people, untaught or
+      mistaught, are so ignorant and incapable politically that this in itself
+      would not greatly matter; for a statesman who told them the truth would
+      not be understood, and would in effect mislead them more completely than
+      if he dealt with them according to their blindness instead of to his own
+      wisdom. But though there is no difference in this respect between the best
+      demagogue and the worst, both of them having to present their cases
+      equally in terms of melodrama, there is all the difference in the world
+      between the statesman who is humbugging the people into allowing him to do
+      the will of God, in whatever disguise it may come to him, and one who is
+      humbugging them into furthering his personal ambition and the commercial
+      interests of the plutocrats who own the newspapers and support him on
+      reciprocal terms. And there is almost as great a difference between the
+      statesman who does this naively and automatically, or even does it telling
+      himself that he is ambitious and selfish and unscrupulous, and the one who
+      does it on principle, believing that if everyone takes the line of least
+      material resistance the result will be the survival of the fittest in a
+      perfectly harmonious universe. Once produce an atmosphere of fatalism on
+      principle, and it matters little what the opinions or superstitions of the
+      individual statesmen concerned may be. A Kaiser who is a devout reader of
+      sermons, a Prime Minister who is an emotional singer of hymns, and a
+      General who is a bigoted Roman Catholic may be the executants of the
+      policy; but the policy itself will be one of unprincipled opportunism; and
+      all the Governments will be like the tramp who walks always with the wind
+      and ends as a pauper, or the stone that rolls down the hill and ends as an
+      avalanche: their way is the way to destruction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0040" id="link2H_4_0040"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE BETRAYAL OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Within sixty years from the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species
+      political opportunism had brought parliaments into contempt; created a
+      popular demand for direct action by the organized industries
+      ('Syndicalism'); and wrecked the centre of Europe in a paroxysm of that
+      chronic terror of one another, that cowardice of the irreligious, which,
+      masked in the bravado of militarist patriotism, had ridden the Powers like
+      a nightmare since the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71. The sturdy old
+      cosmopolitan Liberalism vanished almost unnoticed. At the present moment
+      all the new ordinances for the government of our Grown Colonies contain,
+      as a matter of course, prohibitions of all criticism, spoken or written,
+      of their ruling officials, which would have scandalized George III and
+      elicited Liberal pamphlets from Catherine II. Statesmen are afraid of the
+      suburbs, of the newspapers, of the profiteers, of the diplomatists, of the
+      militarists, of the country houses, of the trade unions, of everything
+      ephemeral on earth except the revolutions they are provoking; and they
+      would be afraid of these if they were not too ignorant of society and
+      history to appreciate the risk, and to know that a revolution always seems
+      hopeless and impossible the day before it breaks out, and indeed never
+      does break out until it seems hopeless and impossible; for rulers who
+      think it possible take care to insure the risk by ruling reasonably. This
+      brings about a condition fatal to all political stability: namely, that
+      you never know where to have the politicians. If the fear of God was in
+      them it might be possible to come to some general understanding as to what
+      God disapproves of; and Europe might pull together on that basis. But the
+      present panic, in which Prime Ministers drift from election to election,
+      either fighting or running away from everybody who shakes a fist at them,
+      makes a European civilization impossible. Such peace and prosperity as we
+      enjoyed before the war depended on the loyalty of the Western States to
+      their own civilization. That loyalty could find practical expression only
+      in an alliance of the highly civilized Western Powers against the
+      primitive tyrannies of the East. Britain, Germany, France, and the United
+      States of America could have imposed peace on the world, and nursed modern
+      civilization in Russia, Turkey, and the Balkans. Every meaner
+      consideration should have given way to this need for the solidarity of the
+      higher civilization. What actually happened was that France and England,
+      through their clerks the diplomatists, made an alliance with Russia to
+      defend themselves against Germany; Germany made an alliance with Turkey to
+      defend herself against the three; and the two unnatural and suicidal
+      combinations fell on one another in a war that came nearer to being a war
+      of extermination than any wars since those of Timur the Tartar; whilst the
+      United States held aloof as long as they could, and the other States
+      either did the same or joined in the fray through compulsion, bribery, or
+      their judgment as to which side their bread was buttered. And at the
+      present moment, though the main fighting has ceased through the surrender
+      of Germany on terms which the victors have never dreamt of observing, the
+      extermination by blockade and famine, which was what forced Germany to
+      surrender, still continues, although it is certain that if the vanquished
+      starve the victors will starve too, and Europe will liquidate its affairs
+      by going, not into bankruptcy, but into chaos.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now all this, it will be noticed, was fundamentally nothing but an idiotic
+      attempt on the part of each belligerent State to secure for itself the
+      advantage of the survival of the fittest through Circumstantial Selection.
+      If the Western Powers had selected their allies in the Lamarckian manner
+      intelligently, purposely, and vitally, <i>ad majorem Dei gloriam</i>, as
+      what Nietzsche called good Europeans, there would have been a League of
+      Nations and no war. But because the selection relied on was purely
+      circumstantial opportunist selection, so that the alliances were mere
+      marriages of convenience, they have turned out, not merely as badly as
+      might have been expected, but far worse than the blackest pessimist had
+      ever imagined possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0041" id="link2H_4_0041"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CIRCUMSTANTIAL SELECTION IN FINANCE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      How it will all end we do not yet know. When wolves combine to kill a
+      horse, the death of the horse only sets them fighting one another for the
+      choicest morsels. Men are no better than wolves if they have no better
+      principles: accordingly, we find that the Armistice and the Treaty have
+      not extricated us from the war. A handful of Serbian regicides flung us
+      into it as a sporting navvy throws a bull pup at a cat; but the Supreme
+      Council, with all its victorious legions and all its prestige, cannot get
+      us out of it, though we are heartily sick and tired of the whole business,
+      and know now very well that it should never have been allowed to happen.
+      But we are helpless before a slate scrawled with figures of National
+      Debts. As there is no money to pay them because it was all spent on the
+      war (wars have to be paid for on the nail) the sensible thing to do is to
+      wipe the slate and let the wrangling States distribute what they can
+      spare, on the sound communist principle of from each according to his
+      ability, to each according to his need. But no: we have no principles
+      left, not even commercial ones; for what sane commercialist would decree
+      that France must not pay for her failure to defend her own soil; that
+      Germany must pay for her success in carrying the war into the enemy's
+      country; and that as Germany has not the money to pay, and under our
+      commercial system can make it only by becoming once more a commercial
+      competitor of England and France, which neither of them will allow, she
+      must borrow the money from England, or America, or even from France: an
+      arrangement by which the victorious creditors will pay one another, and
+      wait to get their money back until Germany is either strong enough to
+      refuse to pay or ruined beyond the possibility of paying? Meanwhile
+      Russia, reduced to a scrap of fish and a pint of cabbage soup a day, has
+      fallen into the hands of rulers who perceive that Materialist Communism is
+      at all events more effective than Materialist Nihilism, and are attempting
+      to move in an intelligent and ordered manner, practising a very strenuous
+      Intentional Selection of workers as fitter to survive than idlers; whilst
+      the Western Powers are drifting and colliding and running on the rocks, in
+      the hope that if they continue to do their worst they will get Naturally
+      Selected for survival without the trouble of thinking about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0042" id="link2H_4_0042"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE HOMEOPATHIC REACTION AGAINST DARWINISM
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When, like the Russians, our Nihilists have it urgently borne in on them,
+      by the brute force of rising wages that never overtake rising prices, that
+      they are being Naturally Selected for destruction, they will perhaps
+      remember that 'Dont Care came to a bad end,' and begin to look round for a
+      religion. And the whole purpose of this book is to shew them where to
+      look. For, throughout all the godless welter of the infidel half-century,
+      Darwinism has been acting not only directly but homeopathically, its
+      poison rallying our vital forces not only to resist it and cast it out,
+      but to achieve a new Reformation and put a credible and healthy religion
+      in its place. Samuel Butler was the pioneer of the reaction as far as the
+      casting out was concerned; but the issue was confused by the
+      physiologists, who were divided on the question into Mechanists and
+      Vitalists. The Mechanists said that life is nothing but physical and
+      chemical action; that they have demonstrated this in many cases of
+      so-called vital phenomena; and that there is no reason to doubt that with
+      improved methods they will presently be able to demonstrate it in all of
+      them. The Vitalists said that a dead body and a live one are physically
+      and chemically identical, and that the difference can be accounted for
+      only by the existence of a Vital Force. This seems simple; but the
+      Anti-Mechanists objected to be called Vitalists (obviously the right name
+      for them) on two contradictory grounds. First, that vitality is
+      scientifically inadmissible, because it cannot be isolated and
+      experimented with in the laboratory. Second, that force, being by
+      definition anything that can alter the speed or direction of matter in
+      motion (briefly, that can overcome inertia), is essentially a mechanistic
+      conception. Here we had the New Vitalist only half extricated from the Old
+      Mechanist, objecting to be called either, and unable to give a clear lead
+      in the new direction. And there was a deeper antagonism. The Old
+      Vitalists, in postulating a Vital Force, were setting up a comparatively
+      mechanical conception as against the divine idea of the life breathed into
+      the clay nostrils of Adam, whereby he became a living soul. The New
+      Vitalists, filled by their laboratory researches with a sense of the
+      miraculousness of life that went far beyond the comparatively uninformed
+      imaginations of the authors of the Book of Genesis, regarded the Old
+      Vitalists as Mechanists who had tried to fill up the gulf between life and
+      death with an empty phrase denoting an imaginary physical force.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These professional faction fights are ephemeral, and need not trouble us
+      here. The Old Vitalist, who was essentially a Materialist, has evolved
+      into the New Vitalist, who is, as every genuine scientist must be, finally
+      a metaphysician. And as the New Vitalist turns from the disputes of his
+      youth to the future of his science, he will cease to boggle at the name
+      Vitalist, or at the inevitable, ancient, popular, and quite correct use of
+      the term Force to denote metaphysical as well as physical overcomers of
+      inertia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Since the discovery of Evolution as the method of the Life Force the
+      religion of metaphysical Vitalism has been gaining the definiteness and
+      concreteness needed to make it assimilable by the educated critical man.
+      But it has always been with us. The popular religions, disgraced by their
+      Opportunist cardinals and bishops, have been kept in credit by canonized
+      saints whose secret was their conception of themselves as the instruments
+      and vehicles of divine power and aspiration: a conception which at moments
+      becomes an actual experience of ecstatic possession by that power. And
+      above and below all have been millions of humble and obscure persons,
+      sometimes totally illiterate, sometimes unconscious of having any religion
+      at all, sometimes believing in their simplicity that the gods and temples
+      and priests of their district stood for their instinctive righteousness,
+      who have kept sweet the tradition that good people follow a light that
+      shines within and above and ahead of them, that bad people care only for
+      themselves, and that the good are saved and blessed and the bad damned and
+      miserable. Protestantism was a movement towards the pursuit of a light
+      called an inner light because every man must see it with his own eyes and
+      not take any priest's word for it or any Church's account of it. In short,
+      there is no question of a new religion, but rather of redistilling the
+      eternal spirit of religion and thus extricating it from the sludgy residue
+      of temporalities and legends that are making belief impossible, though
+      they are the stock-in-trade of all the Churches and all the Schools.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0043" id="link2H_4_0043"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      RELIGION AND ROMANCE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It is the adulteration of religion by the romance of miracles and
+      paradises and torture chambers that makes it reel at the impact of every
+      advance in science, instead of being clarified by it. If you take an
+      English village lad, and teach him that religion means believing that the
+      stories of Noah's Ark and the Garden of Eden are literally true on the
+      authority of God himself, and if that boy becomes an artisan and goes into
+      the town among the sceptical city proletariat, then, when the jibes of his
+      mates set him thinking, and he sees that these stories cannot be literally
+      true, and learns that no candid prelate now pretends to believe them, he
+      does not make any fine distinctions: he declares at once that religion is
+      a fraud, and parsons and teachers hypocrites and liars. He becomes
+      indifferent to religion if he has little conscience, and indignantly
+      hostile to it if he has a good deal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The same revolt against wantonly false teaching is happening daily in the
+      professional classes whose recreation is reading and whose intellectual
+      sport is controversy. They banish the Bible from their houses, and
+      sometimes put into the hands of their unfortunate children Ethical and
+      Rationalist tracts of the deadliest dullness, compelling these wretched
+      infants to sit out the discourses of Secularist lecturers (I have
+      delivered some of them myself), who bore them at a length now forbidden by
+      custom in the established pulpit. Our minds have reacted so violently
+      towards provable logical theorems and demonstrable mechanical or chemical
+      facts that we have become incapable of metaphysical truth, and try to cast
+      out incredible and silly lies by credible and clever ones, calling in
+      Satan to cast out Satan, and getting more into his clutches than ever in
+      the process. Thus the world is kept sane less by the saints than by the
+      vast mass of the indifferent, who neither act nor react in the matter.
+      Butler's preaching of the gospel of Laodicea was a piece of common sense
+      founded on his observation of this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But indifference will not guide nations through civilization to the
+      establishment of the perfect city of God. An indifferent statesman is a
+      contradiction in terms; and a statesman who is indifferent on principle, a
+      Laisser-faire or Muddle-Through doctrinaire, plays the deuce with us in
+      the long run. Our statesmen must get a religion by hook or crook; and as
+      we are committed to Adult Suffrage it must be a religion capable of
+      vulgarization. The thought first put into words by the Mills when they
+      said 'There is no God; but this is a family secret,' and long held
+      unspoken by aristocratic statesmen and diplomatists, will not serve now;
+      for the revival of civilization after the war cannot be effected by
+      artificial breathing: the driving force of an undeluded popular consent is
+      indispensable, and will be impossible until the statesman can appeal to
+      the vital instincts of the people in terms of a common religion. The
+      success of the Hang the Kaiser cry at the last General Election shews us
+      very terrifyingly how a common irreligion can be used by myopic demagogy;
+      and common irreligion will destroy civilization unless it is countered by
+      common religion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0044" id="link2H_4_0044"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE DANGER OF REACTION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      And here arises the danger that when we realize this we shall do just what
+      we did half a century ago, and what Pliable did in The Pilgrim's Progress
+      when Christian landed him in the Slough of Despond: that is, run back in
+      terror to our old superstitions. We jumped out of the frying-pan into the
+      fire; and we are just as likely to jump back again, now that we feel
+      hotter than ever. History records very little in the way of mental
+      activity on the part of the mass of mankind except a series of stampedes
+      from affirmative errors into negative ones and back again. It must
+      therefore be said very precisely and clearly that the bankruptcy of
+      Darwinism does not mean that Nobodaddy was Somebodaddy <i>with</i> 'body,
+      parts, and passions' after all; that the world was made in the year 4004
+      B.C.; that damnation means a eternity of blazing brimstone; that the
+      Immaculate Conception means that sex is sinful and that Christ was
+      parthenogenetically brought forth by a virgin descended in like manner
+      from a line of virgins right back to Eve; that the Trinity is an
+      anthropomorphic monster with three heads which are yet only one head; that
+      in Rome the bread and wine on the altar become flesh and blood, and in
+      England, in a still more mystical manner, they do and they do not; that
+      the Bible is an infallible scientific manual, an accurate historical
+      chronicle, and a complete guide to conduct; that we may lie and cheat and
+      murder and then wash ourselves innocent in the blood of the lamb on Sunday
+      at the cost of a <i>credo</i> and a penny in the plate, and so on and so
+      forth. Civilization cannot be saved by people not only crude enough to
+      believe these things, but irreligious enough to believe that such belief
+      constitutes a religion. The education of children cannot safely be left in
+      their hands. If dwindling sects like the Church of England, the Church of
+      Rome, the Greek Church, and the rest, persist in trying to cramp the human
+      mind within the limits of these grotesque perversions of natural truths
+      and poetic metaphors, then they must be ruthlessly banished from the
+      schools until they either perish in general contempt or discover the soul
+      that is hidden in every dogma. The real Class War will be a war of
+      intellectual classes; and its conquest will be the souls of the children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0045" id="link2H_4_0045"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A TOUCHSTONE FOR DOGMA
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The test of a dogma is its universality. As long as the Church of England
+      preaches a single doctrine that the Brahman, the Buddhist, the Mussulman,
+      the Parsee, and all the other sectarians who are British subjects cannot
+      accept, it has no legitimate place in the counsels of the British
+      Commonwealth, and will remain what it is at present, a corrupter of youth,
+      a danger to the State, and an obstruction to the Fellowship of the Holy
+      Ghost. This has never been more strongly felt than at present, after a war
+      in which the Church failed grossly in the courage of its profession, and
+      sold its lilies for the laurels of the soldiers of the Victoria Cross. All
+      the cocks in Christendom have been crowing shame on it ever since; and it
+      will not be spared for the sake of the two or three faithful who were
+      found even among the bishops. Let the Church take it on authority, even my
+      authority (as a professional legend maker) if it cannot see the truth by
+      its own light: no dogma can be a legend. A legend can pass an ethnical
+      frontier as a legend, but not as a truth; whilst the only frontier to the
+      currency of a sound dogma as such is the frontier of capacity for
+      understanding it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This does not mean that we should throw away legend and parable and drama:
+      they are the natural vehicles of dogma; but woe to the Churches and rulers
+      who substitute the legend for the dogma, the parable for the history, the
+      drama for the religion! Better by far declare the throne of God empty than
+      set a liar and a fool on it. What are called wars of religion are always
+      wars to destroy religion by affirming the historical truth or material
+      substantiality of some legend, and killing those who refuse to accept it
+      as historical or substantial. But who has ever refused to accept a good
+      legend with delight as a legend? The legends, the parables, the dramas,
+      are among the choicest treasures of mankind. No one is ever tired of
+      stories of miracles. In vain did Mahomet repudiate the miracles ascribed
+      to him: in vain did Christ furiously scold those who asked him to give
+      them an exhibition as a conjurer: in vain did the saints declare that God
+      chose them not for their powers but for their weaknesses; that the humble
+      might be exalted, and the proud rebuked. People will have their miracles,
+      their stories, their heroes and heroines and saints and martyrs and
+      divinities to exercise their gifts of affection, admiration, wonder, and
+      worship, and their Judases and devils to enable them to be angry and yet
+      feel that they do well to be angry. Every one of these legends is the
+      common heritage of the human race; and there is only one inexorable
+      condition attached to their healthy enjoyment, which is that no one shall
+      believe them literally. The reading of stories and delighting in them made
+      Don Quixote a gentleman: the believing them literally made him a madman
+      who slew lambs instead of feeding them. In England today good books of
+      Eastern religious legends are read eagerly; and Protestants and Atheists
+      read Roman Catholic legends of the Saints with pleasure. But such fare is
+      shirked by Indians and Roman Catholics. Freethinkers read the Bible:
+      indeed they seem to be its only readers now except the reluctant parsons
+      at the church lecterns, who communicate their discomfort to the
+      congregation by gargling the words in their throats in an unnatural manner
+      that is as repulsive as it is unintelligible. And this is because the
+      imposition of the legends as literal truths at once changes them from
+      parables into falsehoods. The feeling against the Bible has become so
+      strong at last that educated people not only refuse to outrage their
+      intellectual consciences by reading the legend of Noah's Ark, with its
+      funny beginning about the animals and its exquisite end about the birds:
+      they will not read even the chronicles of King David, which may very well
+      be true, and are certainly more candid than the official biographies of
+      our contemporary monarchs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0046" id="link2H_4_0046"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      WHAT TO DO WITH THE LEGENDS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      What we should do, then, is to pool our legends and make a delightful
+      stock of religious folk-lore on an honest basis for all mankind. With our
+      minds freed from pretence and falsehood we could enter into the heritage
+      of all the faiths. China would share her sages with Spain, and Spain her
+      saints with China. The Ulster man who now gives his son an unmerciful
+      thrashing if the boy is so tactless as to ask how the evening and the
+      morning could be the first day before the sun was created, or to betray an
+      innocent calf-love for the Virgin Mary, would buy him a bookful of legends
+      of the creation and of mothers of God from all parts of the world, and be
+      very glad to find his laddie as interested in such things as in marbles or
+      Police and Robbers. That would be better than beating all good feeling
+      towards religion out of the child, and blackening his mind by teaching him
+      that the worshippers of the holy virgins, whether of the Parthenon or St
+      Peter's, are fire-doomed heathens and idolaters. All the sweetness of
+      religion is conveyed to the world by the hands of storytellers and
+      image-makers. Without their fictions the truths of religion would for the
+      multitude be neither intelligible nor even apprehensible; and the prophets
+      would prophesy and the teachers teach in vain. And nothing stands between
+      the people and the fictions except the silly falsehood that the fictions
+      are literal truths, and that there is nothing in religion but fiction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0047" id="link2H_4_0047"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A LESSON FROM SCIENCE TO THE CHURCHES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Let the Churches ask themselves why there is no revolt against the dogmas
+      of mathematics though there is one against the dogmas of religion. It is
+      not that the mathematical dogmas are more comprehensible. The law of
+      inverse squares is as incomprehensible to the common man as the Athanasian
+      creed. It is not that science is free from legends, witchcraft, miracles,
+      biographic boostings of quacks as heroes and saints, and of barren
+      scoundrels as explorers and discoverers. On the contrary, the iconography
+      and hagiology of Scientism are as copious as they are mostly squalid. But
+      no student of science has yet been taught that specific gravity consists
+      in the belief that Archimedes jumped out of his bath and ran naked through
+      the streets of Syracuse shouting Eureka, Eureka, or that the law of
+      inverse squares must be discarded if anyone can prove that Newton was
+      never in an orchard in his life. When some unusually conscientious or
+      enterprising bacteriologist reads the pamphlets of Jenner, and discovers
+      that they might have been written by an ignorant but curious and observant
+      nurserymaid, and could not possibly have been written by any person with a
+      scientifically trained mind, he does not feel that the whole edifice of
+      science has collapsed and crumbled, and that there is no such thing as
+      smallpox. It may come to that yet; for hygiene, as it forces its way into
+      our schools, is being taught as falsely as religion is taught there; but
+      in mathematics and physics the faith is still kept pure, and you may take
+      the law and leave the legends without suspicion of heresy. Accordingly,
+      the tower of the mathematician stands unshaken whilst the temple of the
+      priest rocks to its foundation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0048" id="link2H_4_0048"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE RELIGIOUS ART OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Creative Evolution is already a religion, and is indeed now unmistakeably
+      the religion of the twentieth century, newly arisen from the ashes of
+      pseudo-Christianity, of mere scepticism, and of the soulless affirmations
+      and blind negations of the Mechanists and Neo-Darwinians. But it cannot
+      become a popular religion until it has its legends, its parables, its
+      miracles. And when I say popular I do not mean apprehensible by villagers
+      only. I mean apprehensible by Cabinet Ministers as well. It is
+      unreasonable to look to the professional politician and administrator for
+      light and leading in religion. He is neither a philosopher nor a prophet:
+      if he were, he would be philosophizing and prophesying, and not neglecting
+      both for the drudgery of practical government. Socrates and Coleridge did
+      not remain soldiers, nor could John Stuart Mill remain the representative
+      of Westminster in the House of Commons even when he was willing. The
+      Westminster electors admired Mill for telling them that much of the
+      difficulty of dealing with them arose from their being inveterate liars.
+      But they would not vote a second time for the man who was not afraid to
+      break the crust of mendacity on which they were all dancing; for it seemed
+      to them that there was a volcanic abyss beneath, not having his
+      philosophic conviction that the truth is the solidest standing ground in
+      the end. Your front bench man will always be an exploiter of the popular
+      religion or irreligion. Not being an expert, he must take it as he finds
+      it; and before he can take it, he must have been told stories about it in
+      his childhood and had before him all his life an elaborate iconography of
+      it produced by writers, painters, sculptors, temple architects, and
+      artists of all the higher sorts. Even if, as sometimes happens, he is a
+      bit of an amateur in metaphysics as well as a professional politician, he
+      must still govern according to the popular iconography, and not according
+      to his own personal interpretations if these happen to be heterodox.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It will be seen then that the revival of religion on a scientific basis
+      does not mean the death of art, but a glorious rebirth of it. Indeed art
+      has never been great when it was not providing an iconography for a live
+      religion. And it has never been quite contemptible except when imitating
+      the iconography after the religion had become a superstition. Italian
+      painting from Giotto to Carpaccio is all religious painting; and it moves
+      us deeply and has real greatness. Compare with it the attempts of our
+      painters a century ago to achieve the effects of the old masters by
+      imitation when they should have been illustrating a faith of their own.
+      Contemplate, if you can bear it, the dull daubs of Hilton and Haydon, who
+      knew so much more about drawing and scumbling and glazing and perspective
+      and anatomy and 'marvellous foreshortening' than Giotto, the latchet of
+      whose shoe they were nevertheless not worthy to unloose. Compare Mozart's
+      Magic Flute, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Wagner's Ring, all of them
+      reachings-forward to the new Vitalist art, with the dreary pseudo-sacred
+      oratorios and cantatas which were produced for no better reason than that
+      Handel had formerly made splendid thunder in that way, and with the stale
+      confectionery, mostly too would-be pious to be even cheerfully toothsome,
+      of Spohr and Mendelssohn, Stainer and Parry, which spread indigestion at
+      our musical festivals until I publicly told Parry the bludgeoning truth
+      about his Job and woke him to conviction of sin. Compare Flaxman and
+      Thorwaldsen and Gibson with Phidias and Praxiteles, Stevens with Michael
+      Angelo, Bouguereau's Virgin with Cimabue's, or the best operatic Christs
+      of Scheffer and Müller with the worst Christs that the worst painters
+      could paint before the end of the fifteenth century, and you must feel
+      that until we have a great religious movement we cannot hope for a great
+      artistic one. The disillusioned Raphael could paint a mother and child,
+      but not a queen of Heaven as much less skilful men had done in the days of
+      his great-grandfather; yet he could reach forward to the twentieth century
+      and paint a Transfiguration of the Son of Man as they could not. Also,
+      please note, he could decorate a house of pleasure for a cardinal very
+      beautifully with voluptuous pictures of Cupid and Psyche; for this simple
+      sort of Vitalism is always with us, and, like portrait painting, keeps the
+      artist supplied with subject-matter in the intervals between the ages of
+      faith; so that your sceptical Rembrandts and Velasquezs are at least not
+      compelled to paint shop fronts for want of anything else to paint in which
+      they can really believe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0049" id="link2H_4_0049"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE ARTIST-PROPHETS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      And there are always certain rare but intensely interesting anticipations.
+      Michael Angelo could not very well believe in Julius II or Leo X, or in
+      much that they believed in; but he could paint the Superman three hundred
+      years before Nietzsche wrote Also Sprach Zarathustra and Strauss set it to
+      music. Michael Angelo won the primacy among all modern painters and
+      sculptors solely by his power of shewing us superhuman persons. On the
+      strength of his decoration and color alone he would hardly have survived
+      his own death twenty years; and even his design would have had only an
+      academic interest; but as a painter of prophets and sibyls he is greatest
+      among the very greatest in his craft, because we aspire to a world of
+      prophets and sibyls. Beethoven never heard of radioactivity nor of
+      electrons dancing in vortices of inconceivable energy; but pray can anyone
+      explain the last movement of his Hammerklavier Sonata, Opus 106, otherwise
+      than as a musical picture of these whirling electrons? His contemporaries
+      said he was mad, partly perhaps because the movement was so hard to play;
+      but we, who can make a pianola play it to us over and over until it is as
+      familiar as Pop Goes the Weasel, know that it is sane and methodical. As
+      such, it must represent something; and as all Beethoven's serious
+      compositions represent some process within himself, some nerve storm or
+      soul storm, and the storm here is clearly one of physical movement, I
+      should much like to know what other storm than the atomic storm could have
+      driven him to this oddest of all those many expressions of cyclonic energy
+      which have given him the same distinction among musicians that Michael
+      Angelo has among draughtsmen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Beethoven's day the business of art was held to be 'the sublime and
+      beautiful.' In our day it has fallen to be the imitative and voluptuous.
+      In both periods the word passionate has been freely employed; but in the
+      eighteenth century passion meant irresistible impulse of the loftiest
+      kind: for example, a passion for astronomy or for truth. For us it has
+      come to mean concupiscence and nothing else. One might say to the art of
+      Europe what Antony said to the corpse of Caesar: 'Are all thy conquests,
+      glories, triumphs, spoils, shrunk to this little measure?' But in fact it
+      is the mind of Europe that has shrunk, being, as we have seen, wholly
+      preoccupied with a busy spring-cleaning to get rid of its superstitions
+      before readjusting itself to the new conception of Evolution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0050" id="link2H_4_0050"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      EVOLUTION IN THE THEATRE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      On the stage (and here I come at last to my own particular function in the
+      matter), Comedy, as a destructive, derisory, critical, negative art, kept
+      the theatre open when sublime tragedy perished. From Molière to Oscar
+      Wilde we had a line of comedic playwrights who, if they had nothing
+      fundamentally positive to say, were at least in revolt against falsehood
+      and imposture, and were not only, as they claimed, 'chastening morals by
+      ridicule,' but, in Johnson's phrase, clearing our minds of cant, and
+      thereby shewing an uneasiness in the presence of error which is the surest
+      symptom of intellectual vitality. Meanwhile the name of Tragedy was
+      assumed by plays in which everyone was killed in the last act, just as, in
+      spite of Molière, plays in which everyone was married in the last act
+      called themselves comedies. Now neither tragedies nor comedies can be
+      produced according to a prescription which gives only the last moments of
+      the last act. Shakespear did not make Hamlet out of its final butchery,
+      nor Twelfth Night out of its final matrimony. And he could not become the
+      conscious iconographer of a religion because he had no conscious religion.
+      He had therefore to exercise his extraordinary natural gifts in the very
+      entertaining art of mimicry, giving us the famous 'delineation of
+      character' which makes his plays, like the novels of Scott, Dumas, and
+      Dickens, so delightful. Also, he developed that curious and questionable
+      art of building us a refuge from despair by disguising the cruelties of
+      Nature as jokes. But with all his gifts, the fact remains that he never
+      found the inspiration to write an original play. He furbished up old
+      plays, and adapted popular stories, and chapters of history from
+      Holinshed's Chronicle and Plutarch's biographies, to the stage. All this
+      he did (or did not; for there are minus quantities in the algebra of art)
+      with a recklessness which shewed that his trade lay far from his
+      conscience. It is true that he never takes his characters from the
+      borrowed story, because it was less trouble and more fun to him to create
+      them afresh; but none the less he heaps the murders and villainies of the
+      borrowed story on his own essentially gentle creations without scruple, no
+      matter how incongruous they may be. And all the time his vital need for a
+      philosophy drives him to seek one by the quaint professional method of
+      introducing philosophers as characters into his plays, and even of making
+      his heroes philosophers; but when they come on the stage they have no
+      philosophy to expound: they are only pessimists and railers; and their
+      occasional would-be philosophic speeches, such as The Seven Ages of Man
+      and The Soliloquy on Suicide, shew how deeply in the dark Shakespear was
+      as to what philosophy means. He forced himself in among the greatest of
+      playwrights without having once entered that region in which Michael
+      Angelo, Beethoven, Goethe, and the antique Athenian stage poets are great.
+      He would really not be great at all if it were not that he had religion
+      enough to be aware that his religionless condition was one of despair. His
+      towering King Lear would be only a melodrama were it not for its express
+      admission that if there is nothing more to be said of the universe than
+      Hamlet has to say, then 'as flies to wanton boys are we to the gods: they
+      kill us for their sport.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ever since Shakespear, playwrights have been struggling with the same lack
+      of religion; and many of them were forced to become mere panders and
+      sensation-mongers because, though they had higher ambitions, they could
+      find no better subject-matter. From Congreve to Sheridan they were so
+      sterile in spite of their wit that they did not achieve between them the
+      output of Molière's single lifetime; and they were all (not without
+      reason) ashamed of their profession, and preferred to be regarded as mere
+      men of fashion with a rakish hobby. Goldsmith's was the only saved soul in
+      that pandemonium.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The leaders among my own contemporaries (now veterans) snatched at minor
+      social problems rather than write entirely without any wider purpose than
+      to win money and fame. One of them expressed to me his envy of the ancient
+      Greek playwrights because the Athenians asked them, not for some 'new and
+      original' disguise of the half-dozen threadbare plots of the modern
+      theatre, but for the deepest lesson they could draw from the familiar and
+      sacred legends of their country. 'Let us all,' he said, 'write an Electra,
+      an Antigone, an Agamemnon, and shew what we can do with it.' But he did
+      not write any of them, because these legends are no longer religious:
+      Aphrodite and Artemis and Poseidon are deader than their statues. Another,
+      with a commanding position and every trick of British farce and Parisian
+      drama at his fingers' ends, finally could not write without a sermon to
+      preach, and yet could not find texts more fundamental than the hypocrisies
+      of sham Puritanism, or the matrimonial speculation which makes our young
+      actresses as careful of their reputations as of their complexions. A
+      third, too tenderhearted to break our spirits with the realities of a
+      bitter experience, coaxed a wistful pathos and a dainty fun out of the
+      fairy cloudland that lay between him and the empty heavens. The giants of
+      the theatre of our time, Ibsen and Strindberg, had no greater comfort for
+      the world than we: indeed much less; for they refused us even the
+      Shakespearian-Dickensian consolation of laughter at mischief, accurately
+      called comic relief. Our emancipated young successors scorn us, very
+      properly. But they will be able to do no better whilst the drama remains
+      pre-Evolutionist. Let them consider the great exception of Goethe. He, no
+      richer than Shakespear, Ibsen, or Strindberg in specific talent as a
+      playwright, is in the empyrean whilst they are gnashing their teeth in
+      impotent fury in the mud, or at best finding an acid enjoyment in the
+      irony of their predicament. Goethe is Olympian: the other giants are
+      infernal in everything but their veracity and their repudiation of the
+      irreligion of their time: that is, they are bitter and hopeless. It is not
+      a question of mere dates. Goethe was an Evolutionist in 1830: many
+      playwrights, even young ones, are still untouched by Creative Evolution in
+      1920. Ibsen was Darwinized to the extent of exploiting heredity on the
+      stage much as the ancient Athenian playwrights exploited the Eumenides;
+      but there is no trace in his plays of any faith in or knowledge of
+      Creative Evolution as a modern scientific fact. True, the poetic
+      aspiration is plain enough in his Emperor or Galilean; but it is one of
+      Ibsen's distinctions that nothing was valid for him but science; and he
+      left that vision of the future which his Roman seer calls 'the third
+      Empire' behind him as a Utopian dream when he settled down to his serious
+      grapple with realities in those plays of modern life with which he
+      overcame Europe, and broke the dusty windows of every dry-rotten theatre
+      in it from Moscow to Manchester.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0051" id="link2H_4_0051"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      MY OWN PART IN THE MATTER
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In my own activities as a playwright I found this state of things
+      intolerable. The fashionable theatre prescribed one serious subject:
+      clandestine adultery: the dullest of all subjects for a serious author,
+      whatever it may be for audiences who read the police intelligence and skip
+      the reviews and leading articles. I tried slum-landlordism, doctrinaire
+      Free Love (pseudo-Ibsenism), prostitution, militarism, marriage, history,
+      current politics, natural Christianity, national and individual character,
+      paradoxes of conventional society, husband hunting, questions of
+      conscience, professional delusions and impostures, all worked into a
+      series of comedies of manners in the classic fashion, which was then very
+      much out of fashion, the mechanical tricks of Parisian 'construction'
+      being <i>de rigueur</i> in the theatre. But this, though it occupied me
+      and established me professionally, did not constitute me an iconographer
+      of the religion of my time, and thus fulfil my natural function as an
+      artist. I was quite conscious of this; for I had always known that
+      civilization needs a religion as a matter of life or death; and as the
+      conception of Creative Evolution developed I saw that we were at last
+      within reach of a faith which complied with the first condition of all the
+      religions that have ever taken hold of humanity: namely, that it must be,
+      first and fundamentally, a science of metabiology. This was a crucial
+      point with me; for I had seen Bible fetichism, after standing up to all
+      the rationalistic batteries of Hume, Voltaire, and the rest, collapse
+      before the onslaught of much less gifted Evolutionists, solely because
+      they discredited it as a biological document; so that from that moment it
+      lost its hold, and left literate Christendom faithless. My own Irish
+      eighteenth-centuryism made it impossible for me to believe anything until
+      I could conceive it as a scientific hypothesis, even though the
+      abominations, quackeries, impostures, venalities, credulities, and
+      delusions of the camp followers of science, and the brazen lies and
+      priestly pretensions of the pseudo-scientific cure-mongers, all sedulously
+      inculcated by modern 'secondary education,' were so monstrous that I was
+      sometimes forced to make a verbal distinction between science and
+      knowledge lest I should mislead my readers. But I never forgot that
+      without knowledge even wisdom is more dangerous than mere opportunist
+      ignorance, and that somebody must take the Garden of Eden in hand and weed
+      it properly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Accordingly, in 1901, I took the legend of Don Juan in its Mozartian form
+      and made it a dramatic parable of Creative Evolution. But being then at
+      the height of my invention and comedic talent, I decorated it too
+      brilliantly and lavishly. I surrounded it with a comedy of which it formed
+      only one act, and that act was so completely episodical (it was a dream
+      which did not affect the action of the piece) that the comedy could be
+      detached and played by itself: indeed it could hardly be played at full
+      length owing to the enormous length of the entire work, though that feat
+      has been performed a few times in Scotland by Mr Esme Percy, who led one
+      of the forlorn hopes of the advanced drama at that time. Also I supplied
+      the published work with an imposing framework consisting of a preface, an
+      appendix called The Revolutionist's Handbook, and a final display of
+      aphoristic fireworks. The effect was so vertiginous, apparently, that
+      nobody noticed the new religion in the centre of the intellectual
+      whirlpool. Now I protest I did not cut these cerebral capers in mere
+      inconsiderate exuberance. I did it because the worst convention of the
+      criticism of the theatre current at that time was that intellectual
+      seriousness is out of place on the stage; that the theatre is a place of
+      shallow amusement; that people go there to be soothed after the enormous
+      intellectual strain of a day in the city: in short, that a playwright is a
+      person whose business it is to make unwholesome confectionery out of cheap
+      emotions. My answer to this was to put all my intellectual goods in the
+      shop window under the sign of Man and Superman. That part of my design
+      succeeded. By good luck and acting, the comedy triumphed on the stage; and
+      the book was a good deal discussed. Since then the sweet-shop view of the
+      theatre has been out of countenance; and its critical exponents have been
+      driven to take an intellectual pose which, though often more trying than
+      their old intellectually nihilistic vulgarity, at least concedes the
+      dignity of the theatre, not to mention the usefulness of those who live by
+      criticizing it. And the younger playwrights are not only taking their art
+      seriously, but being taken seriously themselves. The critic who ought to
+      be a newsboy is now comparatively rare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I now find myself inspired to make a second legend of Creative Evolution
+      without distractions and embellishments. My sands are running out; the
+      exuberance of 1901 has aged into the garrulity of 1930; and the war has
+      been a stern intimation that the matter is not one to be trifled with. I
+      abandon the legend of Don Juan with its erotic associations, and go back
+      to the legend of the Garden of Eden. I exploit the eternal interest of the
+      philosopher's stone which enables men to live for ever. I am not, I hope,
+      under more illusion than is humanly inevitable as to the crudity of this
+      my beginning of a Bible for Creative Evolution. I am doing the best I can
+      at my age. My powers are waning; but so much the better for those who
+      found me unbearably brilliant when I was in my prime. It is my hope that a
+      hundred apter and more elegant parables by younger hands will soon leave
+      mine as far behind as the religious pictures of the fifteenth century left
+      behind the first attempts of the early Christians at iconography. In that
+      hope I withdraw and ring up the curtain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0052" id="link2H_4_0052"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BACK TO METHUSELAH.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART" id="link2H_PART"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART I&mdash;In the Beginning
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0054" id="link2H_4_0054"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      ACT I
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Garden of Eden. Afternoon. An immense serpent is sleeping with her
+      head buried in a thick bed of Johnswort, and her body coiled in apparently
+      endless rings through the branches of a tree, which is already well grown;
+      for the days of creation have been longer than our reckoning. She is not
+      yet visible to anyone unaware of her presence, as her colors of green and
+      brown make a perfect camouflage. Near her head a low rock shows above the
+      Johnswort. </i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rock and tree are on the border of a glade in which lies a dead fawn
+      all awry, its neck being broken. Adam, crouching with one hand on the
+      rock, is staring in consternation at the dead body. He has not noticed the
+      serpent on his left hand. He turns his face to his right and calls
+      excitedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Eve! Eve!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE'S VOICE. What is it, Adam?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Come here. Quick. Something has happened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>running in</i>] What? Where? [<i>Adam points to the fawn</i>]. Oh!
+      [<i>She goes to it; and he is emboldened to go with her</i>]. What is the
+      matter with its eyes?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. It is not only its eyes. Look. [<i>He kicks it.</i>]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Oh don't! Why doesn't it wake?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. I don't know. It is not asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Not asleep?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Try.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>trying to shake it and roll it over</i>] It is stiff and cold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Nothing will wake it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. It has a queer smell. Pah! [<i>She dusts her hands, and draws away
+      from it</i>]. Did you find it like that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. No. It was playing about; and it tripped and went head over heels.
+      It never stirred again. Its neck is wrong [<i>he stoops to lift the neck
+      and shew her</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Dont touch it. Come away from it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>They both retreat, and contemplate it from a few steps' distance with
+      growing repulsion.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Adam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Yes?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Suppose you were to trip and fall, would you go like that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Ugh! [<i>He shudders and sits down on the rock</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>throwing herself on the ground beside him, and grasping his knee</i>]
+      You must be careful. Promise me you will be careful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. What is the good of being careful? We have to live here for ever.
+      Think of what for ever means! Sooner or later I shall trip and fall. It
+      may be tomorrow; it may be after as many days as there are leaves in the
+      garden and grains of sand by the river. No matter: some day I shall forget
+      and stumble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. I too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>horrified</i>] Oh no, no. I should be alone. Alone for ever. You
+      must never put yourself in danger of stumbling. You must not move about.
+      You must sit still. I will take care of you and bring you what you want.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>turning away from him with a shrug, and hugging her ankles</i>] I
+      should soon get tired of that. Besides, if it happened to you, <i>I</i>
+      should be alone. I could not sit still then. And at last it would happen
+      to me too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. And then?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Then we should be no more. There would be only the things on all
+      fours, and the birds, and the snakes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. That must not be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Yes: that must not be. But it might be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. No. I tell you it must not be. I know that it must not be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. We both know it. How do we know it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. There is a voice in the garden that tells me things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. The garden is full of voices sometimes. They put all sorts of
+      thoughts into my head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. To me there is only one voice. It is very low; but it is so near
+      that it is like a whisper from within myself. There is no mistaking it for
+      any voice of the birds or beasts, or for your voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. It is strange that I should hear voices from all sides and you only
+      one from within. But I have some thoughts that come from within me and not
+      from the voices. The thought that we must not cease to be comes from
+      within.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>despairingly</i>] But we shall cease to be. We shall fall like
+      the fawn and be broken. [<i>Rising and moving about in his agitation</i>].
+      I cannot bear this knowledge. I will not have it. It must not be, I tell
+      you. Yet I do not know how to prevent it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. That is just what I feel; but it is very strange that you should say
+      so: there is no pleasing you. You change your mind so often.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>scolding her</i>] Why do you say that? How have I changed my
+      mind?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. You say we must not cease to exist. But you used to complain of
+      having to exist always and for ever. You sometimes sit for hours brooding
+      and silent, hating me in your heart. When I ask you what I have done to
+      you, you say you are not thinking of me, but of the horror of having to be
+      here for ever. But I know very well that what you mean is the horror of
+      having to be here with me for ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Oh! That is what you think, is it? Well, you are wrong. [<i>He sits
+      down again, sulkily</i>]. It is the horror of having to be with myself for
+      ever. I like you; but I do not like myself. I want to be different; to be
+      better, to begin again and again; to shed myself as a snake sheds its
+      skin. I am tired of myself. And yet I must endure myself, not for a day or
+      for many days, but for ever. That is a dreadful thought. That is what
+      makes me sit brooding and silent and hateful. Do you never think of that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. No: I do not think about myself: what is the use? I am what I am:
+      nothing can alter that. I think about you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. You should not. You are always spying on me. I can never be alone.
+      You always want to know what I have been doing. It is a burden. You should
+      try to have an existence of your own, instead of occupying yourself with
+      my existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. I <i>have</i> to think about you. You are lazy: you are dirty: you
+      neglect yourself: you are always dreaming: you would eat bad food and
+      become disgusting if I did not watch you and occupy myself with you. And
+      now some day, in spite of all my care, you will fall on your head and
+      become dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Dead? What word is that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>pointing to the fawn</i>] Like that. I call it dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>rising and approaching it slowly</i>] There is something uncanny
+      about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>joining him</i>] Oh! It is changing into little white worms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Throw it into the river. It is unbearable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. I dare not touch it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Then I must, though I loathe it. It is poisoning the air. [<i>He
+      gathers its hooves in his hand and carries it away in the direction from
+      which Eve came, holding it as far from him as possible</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eve looks after them for a moment; then, with a shiver of disgust, sits
+      down on the rock, brooding. The body of the serpent becomes visible,
+      glowing with wonderful new colors. She rears her head slowly from the bed
+      of Johnswort, and speaks into Eve's ear in a strange seductively musical
+      whisper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Eve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>startled</i>] Who is that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. It is I. I have come to shew you my beautiful new hood. See [<i>she
+      spreads a magnificent amethystine hood</i>]!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>admiring it</i>] Oh! But who taught you to speak?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. You and Adam. I have crept through the grass, and hidden, and
+      listened to you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. That was wonderfully clever of you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. I am the most subtle of all the creatures of the field.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Your hood is most lovely. [<i>She strokes it and pets the serpent</i>].
+      Pretty thing! Do you love your godmother Eve?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. I adore her. [<i>She licks Eve's neck with her double tongue</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>petting her</i>] Eve's wonderful darling snake. Eve will never be
+      lonely now that her snake can talk to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SNAKE. I can talk of many things. I am very wise. It was I who
+      whispered the word to you that you did not know. Dead. Death. Die.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>shuddering</i>] Why do you remind me of it? I forgot it when I saw
+      your beautiful hood. You must not remind me of unhappy things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Death is not an unhappy thing when you have learnt how to
+      conquer it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. How can I conquer it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. By another thing, called birth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. What? [<i>Trying to pronounce it</i>] B-birth?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Yes, birth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. What is birth?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. The serpent never dies. Some day you shall see me come out of
+      this beautiful skin, a new snake with a new and lovelier skin. That is
+      birth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. I have seen that. It is wonderful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. If I can do that, what can I not do? I tell you I am very
+      subtle. When you and Adam talk, I hear you say 'Why?' Always 'Why?' You
+      see things; and you say 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I
+      say 'Why not?' I made the word dead to describe my old skin that I cast
+      when I am renewed. I call that renewal being born.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Born is a beautiful word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Why not be born again and again as I am, new and beautiful
+      every time?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. I! It does not happen: that is why.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. That is how; but it is not why. Why not?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. But I should not like it. It would be nice to be new again; but my
+      old skin would lie on the ground looking just like me; and Adam would see
+      it shrivel up and&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. No. He need not. There is a second birth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. A second birth?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Listen. I will tell you a great secret. I am very subtle; and
+      I have thought and thought and thought. And I am very wilful, and must
+      have what I want; and I have willed and willed and willed. And I have
+      eaten strange things: stones and apples that you are afraid to eat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. You dared!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. I dared everything. And at last I found a way of gathering
+      together a part of the life in my body&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. What is the life?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. That which makes the difference between the dead fawn and the
+      live one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. What a beautiful word! And what a wonderful thing! Life is the
+      loveliest of all the new words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Yes: it was by meditating on Life that I gained the power to
+      do miracles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Miracles? Another new word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. A miracle is an impossible thing that is nevertheless
+      possible. Something that never could happen, and yet does happen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Tell me some miracle that you have done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. I gathered a part of the life in my body, and shut it into a
+      tiny white case made of the stones I had eaten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. And what good was that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. I shewed the little case to the sun, and left it in its
+      warmth. And it burst; and a little snake came out; and it became bigger
+      and bigger from day to day until it was as big as I. That was the second
+      birth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Oh! That is too wonderful. It stirs inside me. It hurts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. It nearly tore me asunder. Yet I am alive, and can burst my
+      skin and renew myself as before. Soon there will be as many snakes in Eden
+      as there are scales on my body. Then death will not matter: this snake and
+      that snake will die; but the snakes will live.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. But the rest of us will die sooner or later, like the fawn. And then
+      there will be nothing but snakes, snakes, snakes everywhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. That must not be. I worship you, Eve. I must have something
+      to worship. Something quite different to myself, like you. There must be
+      something greater than the snake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Yes: it must not be. Adam must not perish. You are very subtle: tell
+      me what to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Think. Will. Eat the dust. Lick the white stone: bite the
+      apple you dread. The sun will give life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. I do not trust the sun. I will give life myself. I will tear. another
+      Adam from my body if I tear my body to pieces in the act.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Do. Dare it. Everything is possible: everything. Listen. I am
+      old. I am the old serpent, older than Adam, older than Eve. I remember
+      Lilith, who came before Adam and Eve. I was her darling as I am yours. She
+      was alone: there was no man with her. She saw death as you saw it when the
+      fawn fell; and she knew then that she must find out how to renew herself
+      and cast the skin like me. She had a mighty will: she strove and strove
+      and willed and willed for more moons than there are leaves on all the
+      trees of the garden. Her pangs were terrible: her groans drove sleep from
+      Eden. She said it must never be again: that the burden of renewing life
+      was past bearing: that it was too much for one. And when she cast the
+      skin, lo! there was not one new Lilith but two: one like herself, the
+      other like Adam. You were the one: Adam was the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. But why did she divide into two, and make us different?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. I tell you the labor is too much for one. Two must share it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Do you mean that Adam must share it with me? He will not. He cannot
+      bear pain, nor take trouble with his body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. He need not. There will be no pain for him. He will implore
+      you to let him do his share. He will be in your power through his desire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Then I will do it. But how? How did Lilith work this miracle?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. She imagined it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. What is imagined?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. She told it to me as a marvellous story of something that
+      never happened to a Lilith that never was. She did not know then that
+      imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire; you
+      will what you imagine; and at last you create what you will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. How can I create out of nothing?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Everything must have been created out of nothing. Look at
+      that thick roll of hard flesh on your strong arm! That was not always
+      there: you could not climb a tree when I first saw you. But you willed and
+      tried and willed and tried; and your will created out of nothing the roll
+      on your arm until you had your desire, and could draw yourself up with one
+      hand and seat yourself on the bough that was above your head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. That was practice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Things wear out by practice: they do not grow by it. Your
+      hair streams in the wind as if it were trying to stretch itself further
+      and further. But it does not grow longer for all its practice in
+      streaming, because you have not willed it so. When Lilith told me what she
+      had imagined in our silent language (for there were no words then) I bade
+      her desire it and will it; and then, to our great wonder, the thing she
+      had desired and willed created itself in her under the urging of her will.
+      Then I too willed to renew myself as two instead of one; and after many
+      days the miracle happened, and I burst from my skin another snake
+      interlaced with me; and now there are two imaginations, two desires, two
+      wills to create with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. To desire, to imagine, to will, to create. That is too long a story.
+      Find me one word for it all: you, who are so clever at words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. In one word, to conceive. That is the word that means both
+      the beginning in imagination and the end in creation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Find me a word for the story Lilith imagined and told you in your
+      silent language: the story that was too wonderful to be true, and yet came
+      true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. A poem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Find me another word for what Lilith was to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. She was your mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. And Adam's mother?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>about to rise</i>] I will go and tell Adam to conceive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT [<i>laughs</i>]!!!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>jarred and startled</i>] What a hateful noise! What is the matter
+      with you? No one has ever uttered such a sound before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Adam cannot conceive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Why?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Lilith did not imagine him so. He can imagine: he can will:
+      he can desire: he can gather his life together for a great spring towards
+      creation: he can create all things except one; and that one is his own
+      kind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Why did Lilith keep this from him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Because if he could do that he could do without Eve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. That is true. It is I who must conceive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Yes. By that he is tied to you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. And I to him!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Yes, until you create another Adam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. I had not thought of that. You are very subtle. But if I create
+      another Eve he may turn to her and do without me. I will not create any
+      Eves, only Adams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. They cannot renew themselves without Eves. Sooner or later
+      you will die like the fawn; and the new Adams will be unable to create
+      without new Eves. You can imagine such an end; but you cannot desire it,
+      therefore cannot will it, therefore cannot create Adams only.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. If I am to die like the fawn, why should not the rest die too? What
+      do I care?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Life must not cease. That comes before everything. It is
+      silly to say you do not care. You do care. It is that care that will
+      prompt your imagination; inflame your desires; make your will
+      irresistible; and create out of nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>thoughtfully</i>] There can be no such thing as nothing. The
+      garden is full, not empty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. I had not thought of that. That is a great thought. Yes:
+      there is no such thing as nothing, only things we cannot see. The
+      chameleon eats the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. I have another thought: I must tell it to Adam. [<i>Calling</i>]
+      Adam! Adam! Coo-ee!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM'S VOICE. Coo-ee!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. This will please him, and cure his fits of melancholy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Do not tell him yet. I have not told you the great secret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. What more is there to tell? It is I who have to do the miracle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. No: he, too, must desire and will. But he must give his
+      desire and his will to you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. How?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. That is the great secret. Hush! he is coming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>returning</i>] Is there another voice in the garden besides our
+      voices and the Voice? I heard a new voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>rising and running to him</i>] Only think, Adam! Our snake has
+      learnt to speak by listening to us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>delighted</i>] Is it so? [<i>He goes past her to the stone, and
+      fondles the serpent</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT [<i>responding affectionately</i>] It is so, dear Adam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. But I have more wonderful news than that. Adam: we need not live for
+      ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>dropping the snake's head in his excitement</i>] What! Eve: do
+      not play with me about this. If only there may be an end some day, and yet
+      no end! If only I can be relieved of the horror of having to endure myself
+      for ever! If only the care of this terrible garden may pass on to some
+      other gardener! If only the sentinel set by the Voice can be relieved! If
+      only the rest and sleep that enable me to bear it from day to day could
+      grow after many days into an eternal rest, an eternal sleep, then I could
+      face my days, however long they may last. Only, there must be some end,
+      some end: I am not strong enough to bear eternity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. You need not live to see another summer; and yet there shall
+      be no end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. That cannot be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. It can be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. It shall be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. It is. Kill me; and you will find another snake in the garden
+      tomorrow. You will find more snakes than there are fingers on your hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. I will make other Adams, other Eves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. I tell you you must not make up stories about this. It cannot
+      happen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. I can remember when you were yourself a thing that could not
+      happen. Yet you are.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>struck</i>] That must be true. [<i>He sits down on the stone</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. I will tell Eve the secret; and she will tell it to you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. The secret! [<i>He turns quickly towards the serpent, and in doing
+      so puts his foot on something sharp</i>]. Oh!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. What is it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>rubbing his foot</i>] A thistle. And there, next to it, a briar.
+      And nettles, too! I am tired of pulling these things up to keep the garden
+      pleasant for us for ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. They do not grow very fast. They will not overrun the whole
+      garden for a long time: not until you have laid down your burden and gone
+      to sleep for ever. Why should you trouble yourself? Let the new Adams
+      clear a place for themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. That is very true. You must tell us your secret. You see, Eve, what
+      a splendid thing it is not to have to live for ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>throwing herself down discontentedly and plucking at the grass</i>]
+      That is so like a man. The moment you find we need not last for ever, you
+      talk as if we were going to end today. You must clear away some of those
+      horrid things, or we shall be scratched and stung whenever we forget to
+      look where we are stepping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Oh yes, some of them, of course. But only some. I will clear them
+      away tomorrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT [<i>laughs</i>]!!!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. That is a funny noise to make. I like it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. I do not. Why do you make it again?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Adam has invented something new. He has invented tomorrow.
+      You will invent things every day now that the burden of immortality is
+      lifted from you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Immortality? What is that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. My new word for having to live for ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. The serpent has made a beautiful word for being. Living.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Make me a beautiful word for doing things tomorrow; for that surely
+      is a great and blessed invention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Procrastination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. That is a sweet word. I wish I had a serpent's tongue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. That may come too. Everything is possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>springing up in sudden terror</i>] Oh!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. What is the matter now?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. My rest! My escape from life!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Death. That is the word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. There is a terrible danger in this procrastination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. What danger?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. If I put off death until tomorrow, I shall never die. There is no
+      such day as tomorrow, and never can be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. I am very subtle; but Man is deeper in his thought than I am.
+      The woman knows that there is no such thing as nothing: the man knows that
+      there is no such day as tomorrow. I do well to worship them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. If I am to overtake death, I must appoint a real day, not a
+      tomorrow. When shall I die?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. You may die when I have made another Adam. Not before. But then, as
+      soon as you like. [<i>She rises, and passing behind him, strolls off
+      carelessly to the tree and leans against it, stroking a ring of the snake</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. There need be no hurry even then.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. I see you will put it off until tomorrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. And you? Will you die the moment you have made a new Eve?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Why should I? Are you eager to be rid of me? Only just now you wanted
+      me to sit still and never move lest I should stumble and die like the
+      fawn. Now you no longer care.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. It does not matter so much now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>angrily to the snake</i>] This death that you have brought into
+      the garden is an evil thing. He wants me to die.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT [<i>to Adam</i>] Do you want her to die?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. No. It is I who am to die. Eve must not die before me. I should be
+      lonely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. You could get one of the new Eves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. That is true. But they might not be quite the same. They could not:
+      I feel sure of that. They would not have the same memories. They would be&mdash;I
+      want a word for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Strangers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Yes: that is a good hard word. Strangers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. When there are new Adams and new Eves we shall live in a garden of
+      strangers. We shall need each other. [<i>She comes quickly behind him and
+      turns up his face to her</i>]. Do not forget that, Adam. Never forget it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Why should I forget it? It is I who have thought of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. I, too, have thought of something. The fawn stumbled and fell and
+      died. But you could come softly up behind me and [<i>she suddenly pounces
+      on his shoulders and throws him forward on his face</i>] throw me down so
+      that I should die. I should not dare to sleep if there were no reason why
+      you should not make me die.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>scrambling up in horror</i>] Make you die!!! What a frightful
+      thought!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Kill, kill, kill, kill. That is the word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. The new Adams and Eves might kill us. I shall not make them. [<i>She
+      sits on the rock and pulls him down beside her, clasping him to her with
+      her right arm</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. You must. For if you do not there will be an end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. No: they will not kill us: they will feel as I do. There is
+      something against it. The Voice in the garden will tell them that they
+      must not kill, as it tells me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. The voice in the garden is your own voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. It is; and it is not. It is something greater than me: I am only a
+      part of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. The Voice does not tell me not to kill you. Yet I do not want you to
+      die before me. No voice is needed to make me feel that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>throwing his arm round her shoulder with an expression of anguish</i>]
+      Oh no: that is plain without any voice. There is something that holds us
+      together, something that has no word&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Love. Love. Love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. That is too short a word for so long a thing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT [<i>laughs</i>]!!!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>turning impatiently to the snake</i>] That heart-biting sound
+      again! Do not do it. Why do you do it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Love may be too long a word for so short a thing soon. But
+      when it is short it will be very sweet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>ruminating</i>] You puzzle me. My old trouble was heavy; but it
+      was simple. These wonders that you promise to do may tangle up my being
+      before they bring me the gift of death. I was troubled with the burden of
+      eternal being; but I was not confused in my mind. If I did not know that I
+      loved Eve, at least I did not know that she might cease to love me, and
+      come to love some other Adam and desire my death. Can you find a name for
+      that knowledge?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Jealousy. Jealousy. Jealousy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. A hideous word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>shaking him</i>] Adam: you must not brood. You think too much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>angrily</i>] How can I help brooding when the future has become
+      uncertain? Anything is better than uncertainty. Life has become uncertain.
+      Love is uncertain. Have you a word for this new misery?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Fear. Fear. Fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Have you a remedy for it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Yes. Hope. Hope. Hope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. What is hope?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. As long as you do not know the future you do not know that it
+      will not be happier than the past. That is hope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. It does not console me. Fear is stronger in me than hope. I must
+      have certainty. [<i>He rises threateningly</i>]. Give it to me; or I will
+      kill you when next I catch you asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>throwing her arms round the serpent</i>] My beautiful snake. Oh
+      no. How can you even think such a horror?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Fear will drive me to anything. The serpent gave me fear. Let it now
+      give me certainty or go in fear of me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Bind the future by your will. Make a vow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. What is a vow?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Choose a day for your death; and resolve to die on that day.
+      Then death is no longer uncertain but certain. Let Eve vow to love you
+      until your death. Then love will be no longer uncertain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Yes: that is splendid: that will bind the future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>displeased, turning away from the serpent</i>] But it will destroy
+      hope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>angrily</i>] Be silent, woman. Hope is wicked. Happiness is
+      wicked. Certainty is blessed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. What is wicked? You have invented a word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Whatever I fear to do is wicked. Listen to me, Eve; and you, snake,
+      listen too, that your memory may hold my vow. I will live a thousand sets
+      of the four seasons&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Years. Years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. I will live a thousand years; and then I will endure no more: I will
+      die and take my rest. And I will love Eve all that time and no other
+      woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. And if Adam keeps his vow I will love no other man until he dies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. You have both invented marriage. And what he will be to you
+      and not to any other woman is husband; and what you will be to him and not
+      to any other man is wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>instinctively moving his hand towards her</i>] Husband and wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>slipping her hand into his</i>] Wife and husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT [<i>laughs</i>]!!!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>snatching herself loose from Adam</i>] Do not make that odious
+      noise, I tell you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Do not listen to her: the noise is good: it lightens my heart. You
+      are a jolly snake. But you have not made a vow yet. What vow do you make?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. I make no vows. I take my chance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Chance? What does that mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. It means that I fear certainty as you fear uncertainty. It
+      means that nothing is certain but uncertainty. If I bind the future I bind
+      my will. If I bind my will I strangle creation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Creation must not be strangled. I tell you I will create, though I
+      tear myself to pieces in the act.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Be silent, both of you. I <i>will</i> bind the future. I will be
+      delivered from fear. [<i>To Eve</i>] We have made our vows; and if you
+      must create, you shall create within the bounds of those vows. You shall
+      not listen to that snake any more. Come [<i>he seizes her by the hair to
+      drag her away</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Let me go, you fool. It has not yet told me the secret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>releasing her</i>] That is true. What is a fool?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. I do not know: the word came to me. It is what you are when you
+      forget and brood and are filled with fear. Let us listen to the snake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. No: I am afraid of it. I feel as if the ground were giving way under
+      my feet when it speaks. Do you stay and listen to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT [<i>laughs</i>]!!!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>brightening</i>] That noise takes away fear. Funny. The snake and
+      the woman are going to whisper secrets. [<i>He chuckles and goes away
+      slowly, laughing his first laugh</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Now the secret. The secret. [<i>She sits on the rock and throws her
+      arms round the serpent, who begins whispering to her</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Eve's face lights up with intense interest, which increases until an
+      expression of overwhelming repugnance takes its place. She buries her face
+      in her hands</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0055" id="link2H_4_0055"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      ACT II
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>A few centuries later. Morning. An oasis in Mesopotamia. Close at hand
+      the end of a log house abuts on a kitchen garden. Adam is digging in the
+      middle of the garden. On his right, Eve sits on a stool in the shadow of a
+      tree by the doorway, spinning flax. Her wheel, which she turns by hand, is
+      a large disc of heavy wood, practically a flywheel. At the opposite side
+      of the garden is a thorn brake with a passage through it barred by a
+      hurdle. </i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two are scantily and carelessly dressed in rough linen and leaves.
+      They have lost their youth and grace; and Adam has an unkempt beard and
+      jaggedly cut hair; but they are strong and in the prime of life. Adam
+      looks worried, like a farmer. Eve, better humored (having given up
+      worrying), sits and spins and thinks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A MAN'S VOICE. Hallo, mother!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>looking across the garden towards the hurdle</i>] Here is Cain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>uttering a grunt of disgust</i>]!!! [<i>He goes on digging
+      without raising his head</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Cain kicks the hurdle out of his way, and strides into the garden. In
+      pose, voice, and dress he is insistently warlike. He is equipped with huge
+      spear and broad brass-bound leather shield; his casque is a tiger's head
+      with bull's horns; he wears a scarlet cloak with gold brooch over a lion's
+      skin with the claws dangling; his feet are in sandals with brass
+      ornaments; his shins are in brass greaves; and his bristling military
+      moustache glistens with oil. To his parents he has the self-assertive,
+      not-quite-at-ease manner of a revolted son who knows that he is not
+      forgiven nor approved of.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN [<i>to Adam</i>] Still digging? Always dig, dig, dig. Sticking in the
+      old furrow. No progress! no advanced ideas! no adventures! What should I
+      be if I had stuck to the digging you taught me?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. What are you now, with your shield and spear, and your brother's
+      blood crying from the ground against you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. I am the first murderer: you are only the first man. Anybody could
+      be the first man: it is as easy as to be the first cabbage. To be the
+      first murderer one must be a man of spirit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Begone. Leave us in peace. The world is wide enough to keep us
+      apart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Why do you want to drive him away? He is mine. I made him out of my
+      own body. I want to see my work sometimes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. You made Abel also. He killed Abel. Can you bear to look at him
+      after that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. Whose fault was it that I killed Abel? Who invented killing? Did I?
+      No: he invented it himself. I followed your teaching. I dug and dug and
+      dug. I cleared away the thistles and briars. I ate the fruits of the
+      earth. I lived in the sweat of my brow, as you do. I was a fool. But Abel
+      was a discoverer, a man of ideas, of spirit: a true Progressive. He was
+      the discoverer of blood. He was the inventor of killing. He found out that
+      the fire of the sun could be brought down by a dewdrop. He invented the
+      altar to keep the fire alive. He changed the beasts he killed into meat by
+      the fire on the altar. He kept himself alive by eating meat. His meal cost
+      him a day's glorious health-giving sport and an hour's amusing play with
+      the fire. You learnt nothing from him: you drudged and drudged and
+      drudged, and dug and dug and dug, and made me do the same. I envied his
+      happiness, his freedom. I despised myself for not doing as he did instead
+      of what you did. He became so happy that he shared his meal with the Voice
+      that had whispered all his inventions to him. He said that the Voice was
+      the voice of the fire that cooked his food, and that the fire that could
+      cook could also eat. It was true: I saw the fire consume the food on his
+      altar. Then I, too, made an altar, and offered my food on it, my grains,
+      my roots, my fruit. Useless: nothing happened. He laughed at me; and then
+      came my great idea: why not kill him as he killed the beasts? I struck;
+      and he died, just as they did. Then I gave up your old silly drudging
+      ways, and lived as he had lived, by the chase, by the killing, and by the
+      fire. Am I not better than you? stronger, happier, freer?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. You are not stronger: you are shorter in the wind: you cannot
+      endure. You have made the beasts afraid of us; and the snake has invented
+      poison to protect herself against you. I fear you myself. If you take a
+      step towards your mother with that spear of yours I will strike you with
+      my spade as you struck Abel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. He will not strike me. He loves me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. He loved his brother. But he killed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. I do not want to kill women. I do not want to kill my mother. And
+      for her sake I will not kill you, though I could send this spear through
+      you without coming within reach of your spade. But for her, I could not
+      resist the sport of trying to kill you, in spite of my fear that you would
+      kill me. I have striven with a boar and with a lion as to which of us
+      should kill the other. I have striven with a man: spear to spear and
+      shield to shield. It is terrible; but there is no joy like it. I call it
+      fighting. He who has never fought has never lived. That is what has
+      brought me to my mother today.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. What have you to do with one another now? She is the creator, you
+      the destroyer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. How can I destroy unless she creates? I want her to create more and
+      more men: aye, and more and more women, that they may in turn create more
+      men. I have imagined a glorious poem of many men, of more men than there
+      are leaves on a thousand trees. I will divide them into two great hosts.
+      One of them I will lead; and the other will be led by the man I fear most
+      and desire to fight and kill most. And each host shall try to kill the
+      other host. Think of that! all those multitudes of men fighting, fighting,
+      killing, killing! The four rivers running with blood! The shouts of
+      triumph! the howls of rage! the curses of despair! the shrieks of torment!
+      That will be life indeed: life lived to the very marrow: burning,
+      overwhelming life. Every man who has not seen it, heard it, felt it,
+      risked it, will feel a humbled fool in the presence of the man who has.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. And I! I am to be a mere convenience to make men for you to kill!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Or to kill you, you fool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. Mother: the making of men is your right, your risk, your agony, your
+      glory, your triumph. You make my father here your mere convenience, as you
+      call it, for that. He has to dig for you, sweat for you, plod for you,
+      like the ox who helps him to tear up the ground or the ass who carries his
+      burdens for him. No woman shall make me live my father's life. I will
+      hunt: I will fight and strive to the very bursting of my sinews. When I
+      have slain the boar at the risk of my life, I will throw it to my woman to
+      cook, and give her a morsel of it for her pains. She shall have no other
+      food; and that will make her my slave. And the man that slays me shall
+      have her for his booty. Man shall be the master of Woman, not her baby and
+      her drudge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Adam throws down his spade, and stands looking darkly at Eve.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Are you tempted, Adam? Does this seem a better thing to you than love
+      between us?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. What does he know of love? Only when he has fought, when he has
+      faced terror and death, when he has striven to the spending of the last
+      rally of his strength, can he know what it is to rest in love in the arms
+      of a woman. Ask that woman whom you made, who is also my wife, whether she
+      would have me as I was in the days when I followed the ways of Adam, and
+      was a digger and a drudge?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>angrily throwing down her distaff</i>] What! You dare come here
+      boasting about that good-for-nothing Lua, the worst of daughters and the
+      worst of wives! You her master! You are more her slave than Adam's ox or
+      your own sheepdog. Forsooth, when you have slain the boar at the risk of
+      your life, you will throw her a morsel of it for her pains! Ha! Poor
+      wretch: do you think I do not know her, and know you, better than that? Do
+      you risk your life when you trap the ermine and the sable and the blue fox
+      to hang on her lazy shoulders and make her look more like an animal than a
+      woman? When you have to snare the little tender birds because it is too
+      much trouble for her to chew honest food, how much of a great warrior do
+      you feel then? You slay the tiger at the risk of your life; but who gets
+      the striped skin you have run that risk for? She takes it to lie on, and
+      flings you the carrion flesh you cannot eat. You fight because you think
+      that your fighting makes her admire and desire you. Fool: she makes you
+      fight because you bring her the ornaments and the treasures of those you
+      have slain, and because she is courted and propitiated with power and gold
+      by the people who fear you. You say that I make a mere convenience of
+      Adam: I who spin and keep the house, and bear and rear children, and am a
+      woman and not a pet animal to please men and prey on them! What are you,
+      you poor slave of a painted face and a bundle of skunk's fur? You were a
+      man-child when I bore you. Lua was a woman-child when I bore her. What
+      have you made of yourselves?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN [<i>letting his spear fall into the crook of his shield arm, and
+      twirling his moustache</i>] There is something higher than man. There is
+      hero and superman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Superman! You are no superman: you are Anti-Man: you are to other men
+      what the stoat is to the rabbit; and she is to you what the leech is to
+      the stoat. You despise your father; but when he dies the world will be the
+      richer because he lived. When you die, men will say, 'He was a great
+      warrior; but it would have been better for the world if he had never been
+      born.' And of Lua they will say nothing; but when they think of her they
+      will spit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. She is a better sort of woman to live with than you. If Lua nagged
+      at me as you are nagging, and as you nag at Adam, I would beat her black
+      and blue from head to foot. I have done it too, slave as you say I am.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Yes, because she looked at another man. And then you grovelled at her
+      feet, and cried, and begged her to forgive you, and were ten times more
+      her slave than ever; and she, when she had finished screaming and the pain
+      went off a little, she forgave you, did she not?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. She loved me more than ever. That is the true nature of woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>now pitying him maternally</i>] Love! You call that love! You call
+      that the nature of woman! My boy: this is neither man nor woman nor love
+      nor life. You have no real strength in your bones nor sap in your flesh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. Ha! [<i>he seizes his spear and swings it muscularly</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Yes: you have to twirl a stick to feel your strength: you cannot
+      taste life without making it bitter and boiling hot: you cannot love Lua
+      until her face is painted, nor feel the natural warmth of her flesh until
+      you have stuck a squirrel's fur on it. You can feel nothing but a torment,
+      and believe nothing but a lie. You will not raise your head to look at all
+      the miracles of life that surround you; but you will run ten miles to see
+      a fight or a death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Enough said. Let the boy alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. Boy! Ha! ha!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>to Adam</i>] You think, perhaps, that his way of life may be
+      better than yours after all. You are still tempted. Well, will you pamper
+      me as he pampers his woman? Will you kill tigers and bears until I have a
+      heap of their skins to lounge on? Shall I paint my face and let my arms
+      waste into pretty softness, and eat partridges and doves, and the flesh of
+      kids whose milk you will steal for me?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. You are hard enough to bear with as you are. Stay as you are; and I
+      will stay as I am.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. You neither of you know anything about life. You are simple country
+      folk. You are the nurses and valets of the oxen and dogs and asses you
+      have tamed to work for you. I can raise you out of that. I have a plan.
+      Why not tame men and women to work for us? Why not bring them up from
+      childhood never to know any other lot, so that they may believe that we
+      are gods, and that they are here only to make life glorious for us?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>impressed</i>] That is a great thought, certainly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>contemptuously</i>] Great thought!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Well, as the serpent used to say, why not?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Because I would not have such wretches in my house. Because I hate
+      creatures with two heads, or with withered limbs, or that are distorted
+      and perverted and unnatural. I have told Cain already that he is not a man
+      and that Lua is not a woman: they are monsters. And now you want to make
+      still more unnatural monsters, so that you may be utterly lazy and
+      worthless, and that your tamed human animals may find work a blasting
+      curse. A fine dream, truly! [<i>To Cain</i>] Your father is a fool skin
+      deep; but you are a fool to your very marrow; and your baggage of a wife
+      is worse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Why am I a fool? How am I a greater fool than you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. You said there would be no killing because the Voice would tell our
+      children that they must not kill. Why did it not tell Cain that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. It did; but I am not a child to be afraid of a Voice. The Voice
+      thought I was nothing but my brother's keeper. It found that I was myself,
+      and that it was for Abel to be himself also, and look to himself. He was
+      not my keeper any more than I was his: why did he not kill me? There was
+      no more to prevent him than there was to prevent me: it was man to man;
+      and I won. I was the first conqueror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. What did the Voice say to you when you thought all that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. Why, it gave me right. It said that my deed was as a mark on me, a
+      burnt-in mark such as Abel put on his sheep, that no man should slay me.
+      And here I stand unslain, whilst the cowards who have never slain, the men
+      who are content to be their brothers' keepers instead of their masters,
+      are despised and rejected, and slain like rabbits. He who bears the brand
+      of Cain shall rule the earth. When he falls, he shall be avenged
+      sevenfold: the Voice has said it; so beware how you plot against me, you
+      and all the rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Cease your boasting and bullying, and tell the truth. Does not the
+      Voice tell you that as no man dare slay you for murdering your brother,
+      you ought to slay yourself?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. No.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Then there is no such thing as divine justice, unless you are lying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. I am not lying: I dare all truths. There is divine justice. For the
+      Voice tells me that I must offer myself to every man to be killed if he
+      can kill me. Without danger I cannot be great. That is how I pay for
+      Abel's blood. Danger and fear follow my steps everywhere. Without them
+      courage would have no sense. And it is courage, courage, courage, that
+      raises the blood of life to crimson splendor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>picking up his spade and preparing to dig again</i>] Take
+      yourself off then. This splendid life of yours does not last for a
+      thousand years; and I must last for a thousand years. When you fighters do
+      not get killed in fighting one another or fighting the beasts, you die
+      from mere evil in yourselves. Your flesh ceases to grow like man's flesh:
+      it grows like a fungus on a tree. Instead of breathing you sneeze, or
+      cough up your insides, and wither and perish. Your bowels become rotten;
+      your hair falls from you; your teeth blacken and drop out; and you die
+      before your time, not because you will, but because you must. I will dig,
+      and live.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. And pray, what use is this thousand years of life to you, you old
+      vegetable? Do you dig any better because you have been digging for
+      hundreds of years? I have not lived as long as you; but I know all there
+      is to be known of the craft of digging. By quitting it I have set myself
+      free to learn nobler crafts of which you know nothing. I know the craft of
+      fighting and of hunting: in a word, the craft of killing. What certainty
+      have you of your thousand years? I could kill both of you; and you could
+      no more defend yourselves than a couple of sheep. I spare you; but others
+      may kill you. Why not live bravely, and die early and make room for
+      others? Why, I&mdash;I! that know many more crafts than either of you, am
+      tired of myself when I am not fighting or hunting. Sooner than face a
+      thousand years of it I should kill myself, as the Voice sometimes tempts
+      me to do already.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Liar: you denied just now that it called on you to pay for Abel's
+      life with your own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. The Voice does not speak to me as it does to you. I am a man: you
+      are only a grown-up child. One does not speak to a child as to a man. And
+      a man does not listen and tremble in silence. He replies: he makes the
+      Voice respect him: in the end he dictates what the Voice shall say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. May your tongue be accurst for such blasphemy!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Keep a guard on your own tongue; and do not curse my son. It was
+      Lilith who did wrong when she shared the labor of creation so unequally
+      between man and wife. If you, Cain, had had the trouble of making Abel, or
+      had had to make another man to replace him when he was gone, you would not
+      have killed him: you would have risked your own life to save his. That is
+      why all this empty talk of yours, which tempted Adam just now when he
+      threw down his spade and listened to you for a while, went by me like foul
+      wind that has passed over a dead body. That is why there is enmity between
+      Woman the creator and Man the destroyer. I know you: I am your mother. You
+      are idle: you are selfish. It is long and hard and painful to create life:
+      it is short and easy to steal the life others have made. When you dug, you
+      made the earth live and bring forth as I live and bring forth. It was for
+      that that Lilith set you free from the travail of women, not for theft and
+      murder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. The Devil thank her for it! I can make better use of my time than to
+      play the husband to the clay beneath my feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Devil? What new word is that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. Hearken to me, old fool. I have never in my soul listened willingly
+      when you have told me of the Voice that whispers to you. There must be two
+      Voices: one that gulls and despises you, and another that trusts and
+      respects me. I call yours the Devil. Mine I call the Voice of God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Mine is the Voice of Life: yours the Voice of Death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. Be it so. For it whispers to me that death is not really death: that
+      it is the gate of another life: a life infinitely splendid and intense: a
+      life of the soul alone: a life without clods or spades, hunger or fatigue&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Selfish and idle, Cain. I know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. Selfish, yes: a life in which no man is his brother's keeper,
+      because his brother can keep himself. But am I idle? In rejecting your
+      drudgery, have I not embraced evils and agonies of which you know nothing?
+      The arrow is lighter in the hand than the spade; but the energy that
+      drives it through the breast of a fighter is as fire to water compared
+      with the strength that drives the spade into the harmless dirty clay. My
+      strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. What is that word? What is pure?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. Turned from the clay. Turned upward to the sun, to the clear clean
+      heavens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. The heavens are empty, child. The earth is fruitful. The earth feeds
+      us. It gives us the strength by which we made you and all mankind. Cut off
+      from the clay which you despise, you would perish miserably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. I revolt against the clay. I revolt against the food. You say it
+      gives us strength: does it not also turn into filth and smite us with
+      diseases? I revolt against these births that you and mother are so proud
+      of. They drag us down to the level of the beasts. If that is to be the
+      last thing as it has been the first, let mankind perish. If I am to eat
+      like a bear, if Lua is to bring forth cubs like a bear, then I had rather
+      be a bear than a man; for the bear is not ashamed: he knows no better. If
+      you are content, like the bear, I am not. Stay with the woman who gives
+      you children: I will go to the woman who gives me dreams. Grope in the
+      ground for your food: I will bring it from the skies with my arrows, or
+      strike it down as it roams the earth in the pride of its life. If I must
+      have food or die, I will at least have it at as far a remove from the
+      earth as I can. The ox shall make it something nobler than grass before it
+      comes to me. And as the man is nobler than the ox, I shall some day let my
+      enemy eat the ox; and then I will slay and eat him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Monster! You hear this, Eve?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. So that is what comes of turning your face to the clean clear
+      heavens! Man-eating! Child-eating! For that is what it would come to, just
+      as it came to lambs and kids when Abel began with sheep and goats. You are
+      a poor silly creature after all. Do you think I never have these thoughts:
+      I! who have the labor of the child-bearing: I! who have the drudgery of
+      preparing the food? I thought for a moment that perhaps this strong brave
+      son of mine, who could imagine something better, and could desire what he
+      imagined, might also be able to will what he desired until he created it.
+      And all that comes of it is that he wants to be a bear and eat children.
+      Even a bear would not eat a man if it could get honey instead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. I do not want to be a bear. I do not want to eat children. I do not
+      know what I want, except that I want to be something higher and nobler
+      than this stupid old digger whom Lilith made to help you to bring me into
+      the world, and whom you despise now that he has served your turn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>in sullen rage</i>] I have half a mind to shew you that my spade
+      can split your undutiful head open, in spite of your spear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. Undutiful! Ha! ha! [<i>Flourishing his spear</i>] Try it, old
+      everybody's father. Try a taste of fighting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Peace, peace, you two fools. Sit down and be quiet; and listen to me.
+      [<i>Adam, with a weary shrug, throws down his spade. Cain, with a laughing
+      one, throws down his shield and spear. Both sit on the ground</i>]. I
+      hardly know which of you satisfies me least, you with your dirty digging,
+      or he with his dirty killing. I cannot think it was for either of these
+      cheap ways of life that Lilith set you free. [<i>To Adam</i>] You dig
+      roots and coax grains out of the earth: why do you not draw down a divine
+      sustenance from the skies? He steals and kills for his food; and makes up
+      idle poems of life after death; and dresses up his terror-ridden life with
+      fine words and his disease-ridden body with fine clothes, so that men may
+      glorify and honor him instead of cursing him as murderer and thief. All
+      you men, except only Adam, are my sons, or my sons' sons, or my sons'
+      sons' sons: you all come to see me: you all shew off before me: all your
+      little wisdoms and accomplishments are trotted out before mother Eve. The
+      diggers come: the fighters and killers come: they are both very dull; for
+      they either complain to me of the last harvest, or boast to me of the last
+      fight; and one harvest is just like another, and the last fight only a
+      repetition of the first. Oh, I have heard it all a thousand times. They
+      tell me too of their last-born: the clever thing the darling child said
+      yesterday, and how much more wonderful or witty or quaint it is than any
+      child that ever was born before. And I have to pretend to be surprised,
+      delighted, interested; though the last child is like the first, and has
+      said and done nothing that did not delight Adam and me when you and Abel
+      said it. For you were the first children in the world, and filled us with
+      such wonder and delight as no couple can ever again feel while the world
+      lasts. When I can bear no more, I go to our old garden, that is now a mass
+      of nettles and thistles, in the hope of finding the serpent to talk to.
+      But you have made the serpent our enemy: she has left the garden, or is
+      dead: I never see her now. So I have to come back and listen to Adam
+      saying the same thing for the ten-thousandth time, or to receive a visit
+      from the last great-great-grandson who has grown up and wants to impress
+      me with his importance. Oh, it is dreary, dreary! And there is yet nearly
+      seven hundred years of it to endure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. Poor mother! You see, life is too long. One tires of everything.
+      There is nothing new under the sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>to Eve, grumpily</i>] Why do you live on, if you can find nothing
+      better to do than complain?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Because there is still hope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. Of what?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Of the coming true of your dreams and mine. Of newly created things.
+      Of better things. My sons and my son's sons are not all diggers and
+      fighters. Some of them will neither dig nor fight: they are more useless
+      than either of you: they are weaklings and cowards: they are vain; yet
+      they are dirty and will not take the trouble to cut their hair. They
+      borrow and never pay; but one gives them what they want, because they tell
+      beautiful lies in beautiful words. They can remember their dreams. They
+      can dream without sleeping. They have not will enough to create instead of
+      dreaming; but the serpent said that every dream could be willed into
+      creation by those strong enough to believe in it. There are others who cut
+      reeds of different lengths and blow through them, making lovely patterns
+      of sound in the air; and some of them can weave the patterns together,
+      sounding three reeds at the same time, and raising my soul to things for
+      which I have no words. And others make little mammoths out of clay, or
+      make faces appear on flat stones, and ask me to create women for them with
+      such faces. I have watched those faces and willed; and then I have made a
+      woman-child that has grown up quite like them. And others think of numbers
+      without having to count on their fingers, and watch the sky at night, and
+      give names to the stars, and can foretell when the sun will be covered
+      with a black saucepan lid. And there is Tubal, who made this wheel for me
+      which has saved me so much labor. And there is Enoch, who walks on the
+      hills, and hears the Voice continually, and has given up his will to do
+      the will of the Voice, and has some of the Voice's greatness. When they
+      come, there is always some new wonder, or some new hope: something to live
+      for. They never want to die, because they are always learning and always
+      creating either things or wisdom, or at least dreaming of them. And then
+      you, Cain, come to me with your stupid fighting and destroying, and your
+      foolish boasting; and you want me to tell you that it is all splendid, and
+      that you are heroic, and that nothing but death or the dread of death
+      makes life worth living. Away with you, naughty child; and do you, Adam,
+      go on with your work and not waste your time listening to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. I am not, perhaps, very clever; but&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>interrupting him</i>] Perhaps not; but do not begin to boast of
+      that. It is no credit to you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. For all that, mother, I have an instinct which tells me that death
+      plays its part in life. Tell me this: who invented death?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Adam springs to his feet. Eve drops her distaff. Both shew the greatest
+      consternation.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. What is the matter with you both?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Boy: you have asked us a terrible question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. You invented murder. Let that be enough for you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. Murder is not death. You know what I mean. Those whom I slay would
+      die if I spared them. If I am not slain, yet I shall die. Who put this
+      upon me? I say, who invented death?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Be reasonable, boy. Could you bear to live for ever? You think you
+      could, because you know that you will never have to make your thought
+      good. But I have known what it is to sit and brood under the terror of
+      eternity, of immortality. Think of it, man: to have no escape! to be Adam,
+      Adam, Adam through more days than there are grains of sand by the two
+      rivers, and then be as far from the end as ever! I, who have so much in me
+      that I hate and long to cast off! Be thankful to your parents, who enabled
+      you to hand on your burden to new and better men, and won for you an
+      eternal rest; for it was we who invented death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN [<i>rising</i>] You did well: I, too, do not want to live for ever.
+      But if you invented death, why do you blame me, who am a minister of
+      death?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. I do not blame you. Go in peace. Leave me to my digging, and your
+      mother to her spinning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. Well, I will leave you to it, though I have shewn you a better way.
+      [<i>He picks up his shield and spear</i>]. I will go back to my brave
+      warrior friends and their splendid women. [<i>He strides to the thorn
+      brake</i>]. When Adam delved and Eve span, where was then the gentleman? [<i>He
+      goes away roaring with laughter, which ceases as he cries from the
+      distance</i>] Goodbye, mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>grumbling</i>] He might have put the hurdle back, lazy hound! [<i>He
+      replaces the hurdle across the passage</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Through him and his like, death is gaining on life. Already most of
+      our grandchildren die before they have sense enough to know how to live.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. No matter. [<i>He spits on his hands, and takes up the spade again</i>].
+      Life is still long enough to learn to dig, short as they are making it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>musing</i>] Yes, to dig. And to fight. But is it long enough for
+      the other things, the great things? Will they live long enough to eat
+      manna?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. What is manna?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Food drawn down from heaven, made out of the air, not dug dirtily
+      from the earth. Will they learn all the ways of all the stars in their
+      little time? It took Enoch two hundred years to learn to interpret the
+      will of the Voice. When he was a mere child of eighty, his babyish
+      attempts to understand the Voice were more dangerous than the wrath of
+      Cain. If they shorten their lives, they will dig and fight and kill and
+      die; and their baby Enochs will tell them that it is the will of the Voice
+      that they should dig and fight and kill and die for ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. If they are lazy and have a will towards death I cannot help it. I
+      will live my thousand years: if they will not, let them die and be damned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Damned? What is that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. The state of them that love death more than life. Go on with your
+      spinning; and do not sit there idle while I am straining my muscles for
+      you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>slowly taking up her distaff</i>] If you were not a fool you would
+      find something better for both of us to live by than this spinning and
+      digging.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Go on with your work, I tell you; or you shall go without bread.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Man need not always live by bread alone. There is something else. We
+      do not yet know what it is; but some day we shall find out; and then we
+      will live on that alone; and there shall be no more digging nor spinning,
+      nor fighting nor killing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>She spins resignedly; he digs impatiently.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART2" id="link2H_PART2"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART II&mdash;The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>In the first years after the war an impressive-looking gentleman of 50
+      is seated writing in a well-furnished spacious study. He is dressed in
+      black. His coat is a frock-coat; his tie is white; and his waistcoat,
+      though it is not quite a clergyman's waistcoat, and his collar, though it
+      buttons in front instead of behind, combine with the prosperity indicated
+      by his surroundings, and his air of personal distinction, to suggest the
+      clerical dignitary. Still, he is clearly neither dean nor bishop; he is
+      rather too starkly intellectual for a popular Free Church enthusiast; and
+      he is not careworn enough to be a great headmaster. </i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The study windows, which have broad comfortable window seats, overlook
+      Hampstead Heath towards London. Consequently, it being a fine afternoon in
+      spring, the room is sunny. As you face these windows, you have on your
+      right the fireplace, with a few logs smouldering in it, and a couple of
+      comfortable library chairs on the hearthrug; beyond it and beside it the
+      door; before you the writing-table, at which the clerical gentleman sits a
+      little to your left facing the door with his right profile presented to
+      you; on your left a settee; and on your right a couple of Chippendale
+      chairs. There is also an upholstered square stool in the middle of the
+      room, against the writing-table. The walls are covered with bookshelves
+      above and lockers beneath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door opens; and another gentleman, shorter than the clerical one,
+      within a year or two of the same age, dressed in a well-worn tweed lounge
+      suit, with a short beard and much less style in his bearing and carriage,
+      looks in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE CLERICAL GENTLEMAN [<i>familiar and by no means cordial</i>] Hallo! I
+      didn't expect you until the five o'clock train.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE TWEEDED GENTLEMAN [<i>coming in very slowly</i>] I have something on
+      my mind. I thought I'd come early.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE CLERICAL GENTLEMAN [<i>throwing down his pen</i>] What is on your
+      mind?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE TWEEDED GENTLEMAN [<i>sitting down on the stool, heavily preoccupied
+      with his thought</i>] I have made up my mind at last about the time. I
+      make it three hundred years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE CLERICAL GENTLEMAN [<i>sitting up energetically</i>] Now that is
+      extraordinary. Most extraordinary. The very last words I wrote when you
+      interrupted me were 'at least three centuries.' [<i>He snatches up his
+      manuscript, and points to it</i>]. Here it is: [<i>reading</i>] 'the term
+      of human life must be extended to at least three centuries.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE TWEEDED GENTLEMAN. How did you arrive at it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>A parlor maid opens the door, ushering in a young clergyman.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE PARLOR MAID. Mr Haslam. [<i>She withdraws</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The visitor is so very unwelcome that his host forgets to rise; and the
+      two brothers stare at the intruder, quite unable to conceal their dismay.
+      Haslam, who has nothing clerical about him except his collar, and wears a
+      snuff-colored suit, smiles with a frank school-boyishness that makes it
+      impossible to be unkind to him, and explodes into obviously unpremeditated
+      speech.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. I'm afraid I'm an awful nuisance. I'm the rector; and I suppose
+      one ought to call on people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE TWEEDED GENTLEMAN [<i>in ghostly tones</i>] We're not Church people,
+      you know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Oh, I don't mind that, if you don't. The Church people here are
+      mostly as dull as ditch-water. I have heard such a lot about you; and
+      there are so jolly few people to talk to. I thought you perhaps wouldn't
+      mind. <i>Do</i> you mind? for of course I'll go like a shot if I'm in the
+      way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE CLERICAL GENTLEMAN [<i>rising, disarmed</i>] Sit down, Mr&mdash;er?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Haslam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE CLERICAL GENTLEMAN. Mr Haslam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE TWEEDED GENTLEMAN [<i>rising and offering him the stool</i>] Sit down.
+      [<i>He retreats towards the Chippendale chairs</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM [<i>sitting down on the stool</i>] Thanks awfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE CLERICAL GENTLEMAN [<i>resuming his seat</i>] This is my brother
+      Conrad, Professor of Biology at Jarrowfields University: Dr. Conrad
+      Barnabas. My name is Franklyn: Franklyn Barnabas. I was in the Church
+      myself for some years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM [<i>sympathizing</i>] Yes: one cant help it. If theres a living in
+      the family, or one's Governor knows a patron, one gets shoved into the
+      Church by one's parents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>sitting down on the furthest Chippendale with a snort of
+      amusement</i>] Mp!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. One gets shoved out of it, sometimes, by one's conscience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Oh yes; but where is a chap like me to go? I'm afraid I'm not
+      intellectual enough to split straws when theres a job in front of me, and
+      nothing better for me to do. I daresay the Church was a bit thick for you;
+      but it's good enough for me. It will last my time, anyhow [<i>he laughs
+      good-humoredly</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN [<i>with renewed energy</i>] There again! You see, Con. It will
+      last his time. Life is too short for men to take it seriously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Thats a way of looking at it, certainly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. I was not shoved into the Church, Mr Haslam: I felt it to be my
+      vocation to walk with God, like Enoch. After twenty years of it I realized
+      that I was walking with my own ignorance and self-conceit, and that I was
+      not within a hundred and fifty years of the experience and wisdom I was
+      pretending to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Now I come to think of it, old Methuselah must have had to think
+      twice before he took on anything for life. If I thought I was going to
+      live nine hundred and sixty years, I don't think I should stay in the
+      Church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. If men lived even a third of that time, the Church would be very
+      different from the thing it is.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. If I could count on nine hundred and sixty years I could make
+      myself a real biologist, instead of what I am now: a child trying to walk.
+      Are you sure you might not become a good clergyman if you had a few
+      centuries to do it in?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Oh, theres nothing much the matter with <i>me</i>: it's quite easy
+      to be a decent parson. It's the Church that chokes me off. I couldnt stick
+      it for nine hundred years. I should chuck it. You know, sometimes, when
+      the bishop, who is the most priceless of fossils, lets off something more
+      than usually out-of-date, the bird starts in my garden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. The bird?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Oh yes. Theres a bird there that keeps on singing 'Stick it or
+      chuck it: stick it or chuck it'&mdash;just like that&mdash;for an hour on
+      end in the spring. I wish my father had found some other shop for me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The parlor maid comes back.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE PARLOR MAID. Any letters for the post, sir?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. These. [<i>He proffers a basket of letters. She comes to the
+      table and takes them</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM [<i>to the maid</i>] Have you told Mr Barnabas yet?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE PARLOR MAID [<i>flinching a little</i>] No, sir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Told me what?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. She is going to leave you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Indeed? I'm sorry. Is it our fault, Mr Haslam?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Not a bit. She is jolly well off here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE PARLOR MAID [<i>reddening</i>] I have never denied it, sir: I couldnt
+      ask for a better place. But I have only one life to live; and I maynt get
+      a second chance. Excuse me, sir; but the letters must go to catch the
+      post. [<i>She goes out with the letters.</i>]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The two brothers look inquiringly at Haslam.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Silly girl! Going to marry a village woodman and live in a hovel
+      with him and a lot of kids tumbling over one another, just because the
+      fellow has poetic-looking eyes and a moustache.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>demurring</i>] She said it was because she had only one life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Same thing, poor girl! The fellow persuaded her to chuck it; and
+      when she marries him she'll have to stick it. Rotten state of things, I
+      call it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. You see, she hasnt time to find out what life really means. She
+      has to die before she knows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM [<i>agreeably</i>] Thats it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. She hasnt time to form a well-instructed conscience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM [<i>still more cheerfully</i>] Quite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. It goes deeper. She hasnt time to form a genuine conscience at
+      all. Some romantic points of honor and a few conventions. A world without
+      conscience: that is the horror of our condition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM [<i>beaming</i>] Simply fatuous. [<i>Rising</i>] Well, I suppose
+      I'd better be going. It's most awfully good of you to put up with my
+      calling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>in his former low ghostly tone</i>] You neednt go, you know, if
+      you are really interested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM [<i>fed up</i>] Well, I'm afraid I ought to&mdash;I really must get
+      back&mdash;I have something to do in the&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN [<i>smiling benignly and rising to proffer his hand</i>] Goodbye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>gruffly, giving him up as a bad job</i>] Goodbye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Goodbye. Sorry&mdash;er&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>As the rector moves to shake hands with Franklyn, feeling that he is
+      making a frightful mess of his departure, a vigorous sunburnt young lady
+      with hazel hair cut to the level of her neck, like an Italian youth in a
+      Gozzoli picture, comes in impetuously. She seems to have nothing on but
+      her short skirt, her blouse, her stockings, and a pair of Norwegian shoes:
+      in short, she is a Simple-Lifer.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SIMPLE-LIFER [<i>swooping on Conrad and kissing him</i>] Hallo, Nunk.
+      Youre before your time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Behave yourself. Theres a visitor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>She turns quickly and sees the rector. She instinctively switches at
+      her Gozzoli fringe with her fingers, but gives it up as hopeless.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Mr Haslam, our new rector. [<i>To Haslam</i>] My daughter
+      Cynthia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Usually called Savvy, short for Savage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. I usually call Mr Haslam Bill, short for William. [<i>She strolls
+      to the hearthrug, and surveys them calmly from that commanding position</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. You know him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Rather. Sit down, Bill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Mr Haslam is going, Savvy. He has an engagement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. I know. I'm the engagement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. In that case, would you mind taking him into the garden while I
+      talk to your father?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY [<i>to Haslam</i>] Tennis?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Rather!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Come on. [<i>She dances out. He runs boyishly after her</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN [<i>leaving his table and beginning to walk up and down the room
+      discontentedly</i>] Savvy's manners jar on me. They would have horrified
+      her grandmother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>obstinately</i>] They are happier manners than Mother's
+      manners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Yes: they are franker, wholesomer, better in a hundred ways. And
+      yet I squirm at them. I cannot get it out of my head that Mother was a
+      well-mannered woman, and that Savvy has no manners at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. There wasnt any pleasure in Mother's fine manners. That makes a
+      biological difference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. But there was beauty in Mother's manners, grace in them, style
+      in them: above all, decision in them. Savvy is such a cub.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. So she ought to be, at her age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. There it comes again! Her age! her age!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. You want her to be fully grown at eighteen. You want to force her
+      into a stuck-up, artificial, premature self-possession before she has any
+      self to possess. You just let her alone: she is right enough for her
+      years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. I have let her alone; and look at the result! Like all the other
+      young people who have been let alone, she becomes a Socialist. That is,
+      she becomes hopelessly demoralized.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Well, arnt you a Socialist?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Yes; but that is not the same thing. You and I were brought up
+      in the old bourgeois morality. We were taught bourgeois manners and
+      bourgeois points of honor. Bourgeois manners may be snobbish manners:
+      there may be no pleasure in them, as you say; but they are better than no
+      manners. Many bourgeois points of honor may be false; but at least they
+      exist. The women know what to expect and what is expected of them. Savvy
+      doesn't. She is a Bolshevist and nothing else. She has to improvise her
+      manners and her conduct as she goes along. It's often charming, no doubt;
+      but sometimes she puts her foot in it frightfully; and then I feel that
+      she is blaming me for not teaching her better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Well, you have something better to teach her now, at all events.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Yes: but it is too late. She doesn't trust me now. She doesn't
+      talk about such things to me. She doesnt read anything I write. She never
+      comes to hear me lecture. I am out of it as far as Savvy is concerned. [<i>He
+      resumes his seat at the writing-table</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. I must have a talk to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Perhaps she will listen to you. You are not her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. I sent her my last book. I can break the ice by asking her what
+      she made of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. When she heard you were coming, she asked me whether all the
+      leaves were cut, in case it fell into your hands. She hasnt read a word of
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>rising indignantly</i>] What!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN [<i>inexorably</i>] Not a word of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>beaten</i>] Well, I suppose it's only natural. Biology is a dry
+      subject for a girl; and I am a pretty dry old codger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      [<i>He sits down again resignedly</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Brother: if that is so; if biology as you have worked at it, and
+      religion as I have worked at it, are dry subjects like the old stuff they
+      taught under these names, and we two are dry old codgers, like the old
+      preachers and professors, then the Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas is a
+      delusion. Unless this withered thing religion, and this dry thing science,
+      have come alive in our hands, alive and intensely interesting, we may just
+      as well go out and dig the garden until it is time to dig our graves. [<i>The
+      parlor maid returns. Franklyn is impatient at the interruption</i>]. Well?
+      what is it now?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE PARLOR MAID. Mr Joyce Burge on the telephone, sir. He wants to speak
+      to you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN [<i>astonished</i>] Mr Joyce Burge!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE PARLOR MAID. Yes, sir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN [<i>to Conrad</i>] What on earth does this mean? I havnt heard
+      from him nor exchanged a word with him for years. I resigned the
+      chairmanship of the Liberal Association and shook the dust of party
+      politics from my feet before he was Prime Minister in the Coalition. Of
+      course, he dropped me like a hot potato.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Well, now that the Coalition has chucked him out, and he is only
+      one of the half-dozen leaders of the Opposition, perhaps he wants to pick
+      you up again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE PARLOR MAID [<i>warningly</i>] He is holding the line, sir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Yes: all right [<i>he hurries out</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The parlor maid goes to the hearthrug to make up the fire. Conrad rises
+      and strolls to the middle of the room, where he stops and looks
+      quizzically down at her.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. So you have only one life to live, eh?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE PARLOR MAID [<i>dropping on her knees in consternation</i>] I meant no
+      offence, sir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. You didn't give any. But you know you could live a devil of a long
+      life if you really wanted to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE PARLOR MAID [<i>sitting down on her heels</i>] Oh, dont say that, sir.
+      It's so unsettling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Why? Have you been thinking about it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE PARLOR MAID. It would never have come into my head if you hadnt put it
+      there, sir. Me and cook had a look at your book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. What!
+    </p>
+<div style="margin-left: 10%;">
+   <i>You and cook<br />
+   Had a look<br />
+   At my book!</i>
+</div>
+    <p>
+      And my niece wouldn't open it! The prophet is without honor in his own
+      family. Well, what do you think of living for several hundred years? Are
+      you going to have a try for it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE PARLOR MAID. Well, of course youre not in earnest, sir. But it does
+      set one thinking, especially when one is going to be married.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. What has that to do with it? He may live as long as you, you know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE PARLOR MAID. Thats just it, sir. You see, he must take me for better
+      for worse, til death do us part. Do you think he would be so ready to do
+      that, sir, if he thought it might be for several hundred years?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Thats true. And what about yourself?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE PARLOR MAID. Oh, I tell you straight out, sir, I'd never promise to
+      live with the same man as long as that. I wouldnt put up with my own
+      children as long as that. Why, cook figured it out, sir, that when you
+      were only 200, you might marry your own
+      great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson and not even know who he was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Well, why not? For all you know, the man you are going to marry
+      may be your great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother's
+      great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE PARLOR MAID. But do you think it would ever be thought respectable,
+      sir?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. My good girl, all biological necessities have to be made
+      respectable whether we like it or not; so you neednt worry yourself about
+      that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Franklyn returns and crosses the room to his chair, but does not sit
+      down. The parlor maid goes out.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Well, what does Joyce Burge want?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Oh, a silly misunderstanding. I have promised to address a
+      meeting in Middlesborough; and some fool has put it into the papers that I
+      am 'coming to Middlesborough,' without any explanation. Of course, now
+      that we are on the eve of a general election, political people think I am
+      coming there to contest the parliamentary seat. Burge knows that I have a
+      following, and thinks I could get into the House of Commons and head a
+      group there. So he insists on coming to see me. He is staying with some
+      people at Dollis Hill, and can be here in five or ten minutes, he says.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. But didn't you tell him that it's a false alarm?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Of course I did; but he wont believe me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Called you a liar, in fact?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. No: I wish he had: any sort of plain speaking is better than the
+      nauseous sham good fellowship our democratic public men get up for shop
+      use. He pretends to believe me, and assures me his visit is quite
+      disinterested; but why should he come if he has no axe to grind? These
+      chaps never believe anything they say themselves; and naturally they
+      cannot believe anything anyone else says.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>rising</i>] Well, I shall clear out. It was hard enough to
+      stand the party politicians before the war; but now that they have managed
+      to half kill Europe between them, I cant be civil to them, and I dont see
+      why I should be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Wait a bit. We have to find out how the world will take our new
+      gospel. [<i>Conrad sits down again</i>]. Party politicians are still
+      unfortunately an important part of the world. Suppose we try it on Joyce
+      Burge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. How can you? You can tell things only to people who can listen.
+      Joyce Burge has talked so much that he has lost the power of listening. He
+      doesnt listen even in the House of Commons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Savvy rushes in breathless, followed by Haslam, who remains timidly
+      just inside the door.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY [<i>running to Franklyn</i>] I say! Who do you think has just driven
+      up in a big car?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Mr Joyce Burge, perhaps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY [<i>disappointed</i>] Oh, they know, Bill. Why didnt you tell us he
+      was coming? I have nothing on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. I'd better go, hadnt I?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. You just wait here, both of you. When you start yawning, Joyce
+      Burge will take the hint, perhaps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY [<i>to Franklyn</i>] May we?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Yes, if you promise to behave yourself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY [<i>making a wry face</i>] That will be a treat, wont it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE PARLOR MAID [<i>entering and announcing</i>] Mr Joyce Burge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Haslam hastily moves to the fireplace; and the parlor maid goes out and
+      shuts the door when the visitor has passed in.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN [<i>hurrying past Savvy to his guest with the false cordiality he
+      has just been denouncing</i>] Oh! Here you are. Delighted to see you. [<i>He
+      shakes Burge's hand, and introduces Savvy</i>] My daughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY [<i>not daring to approach</i>] Very kind of you to come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Joyce Burge stands fast and says nothing; but he screws up his cheeks
+      into a smile at each introduction, and makes his eyes shine in a very
+      winning manner. He is a well-fed man turned fifty, with broad forehead,
+      and grey hair which, his neck being short, falls almost to his collar.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Mr Haslam, our rector.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Burge conveys an impression of shining like a church window; and Haslam
+      seizes the nearest library chair on the hearth, and swings it round for
+      Burge between the stool and Conrad. He then retires to the window seat at
+      the other side of the room, and is joined by Savvy. They sit there, side
+      by side, hunched up with their elbows on their knees and their chins on
+      their hands, providing Burge with a sort of Stranger's Gallery during the
+      ensuing sitting.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. I forget whether you know my brother Conrad. He is a biologist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>suddenly bursting into energetic action and shaking hands
+      heartily with Conrad</i>] By reputation only, but very well, of course.
+      How I wish I could have devoted myself to biology! I have always been
+      interested in rocks and strata and volcanoes and so forth: they throw such
+      a light on the age of the earth. [<i>With conviction</i>] There is nothing
+      like biology. 'The cloud-capped towers, the solemn binnacles, the gorgeous
+      temples, the great globe itself: yea, all that it inherit shall dissolve,
+      and, like this influential pageant faded, leave not a rack behind.' Thats
+      biology, you know: good sound biology. [<i>He sits down. So do the others,
+      Franklyn on the stool, and Conrad on his Chippendale</i>]. Well, my dear
+      Barnabas, what do you think of the situation? Dont you think the time has
+      come for us to make a move?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. The time has always come to make a move.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. How true! But what is the move to be? You are a man of enormous
+      influence. We know that. Weve always known it. We have to consult you
+      whether we like it or not. We&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN [<i>interrupting firmly</i>] I never meddle in party politics
+      now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. It's no use saying you have no influence, daddy. Heaps of people
+      swear by you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>shining at her</i>] Of course they do. Come! let me prove to you
+      what we think of you. Shall we find you a first-rate constituency to
+      contest at the next election? One that wont cost you a penny. A
+      metropolitan seat. What do you say to the Strand?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. My dear Burge, I am not a child. Why do you go on wasting your
+      party funds on the Strand? You know you cannot win it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. We cannot win it; but you&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Oh, please!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. The Strand's no use, Mr Burge. I once canvassed for a Socialist
+      there. Cheese it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Cheese it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM [<i>spluttering with suppressed laughter</i>] Priceless!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Well, I suppose I shouldnt say cheese it to a Right Honorable. But
+      the Strand, you know! Do come off it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. You must excuse my daughter's shocking manners, Burge; but I
+      agree with her that popular democratic statesmen soon come to believe that
+      everyone they speak to is an ignorant dupe and a born fool into the
+      bargain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>laughing genially</i>] You old aristocrat, you! But believe me,
+      the instinct of the people is sound&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>cutting in sharply</i>] Then why are you in the Opposition
+      instead of in the Government?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>shewing signs of temper under this heckling</i>] I deny that I
+      am in the Opposition <i>morally</i>. The Government does not represent the
+      country. I was chucked out of the Coalition by a Tory conspiracy. The
+      people want me back. I dont want to go back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN [<i>gently remonstrant</i>] My dear Burge: of course you do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>turning on him</i>] Not a bit of it. I want to cultivate my
+      garden. I am not interested in politics: I am interested in roses. I havnt
+      a scrap of ambition. I went into politics because my wife shoved me into
+      them, bless her! But I want to serve my country. What else am I for? I
+      want to save my country from the Tories. They dont represent the people.
+      The man they have made Prime Minister has never represented the people;
+      and you know it. Lord Dunreen is the bitterest old Tory left alive. What
+      has he to offer to the people?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN [<i>cutting in before Burge can proceed&mdash;as he evidently
+      intends&mdash;to answer his own question</i>] I will tell you. He has
+      ascertainable beliefs and principles to offer. The people know where they
+      are with Lord Dunreen. They know what he thinks right and what he thinks
+      wrong. With your followers they never know where they are. With you they
+      never know where they are.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>amazed</i>] With me!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Well, where are you? What are you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Barnabas: you must be mad. You ask me what I am?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. I do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. I am, if I mistake not, Joyce Burge, pretty well known throughout
+      Europe, and indeed throughout the world, as the man who&mdash;unworthily
+      perhaps, but not quite unsuccessfully&mdash;held the helm when the ship of
+      State weathered the mightiest hurricane that has ever burst with
+      earth-shaking violence on the land of our fathers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. I know that. I know who you are. And the earth-shaking part of
+      it to me is that though you were placed in that enormously responsible
+      position, neither I nor anyone else knows what your beliefs are, or even
+      whether you have either beliefs or principles. What we did know was that
+      your Government was formed largely of men who regarded you as a robber of
+      henroosts, and whom you regarded as enemies of the people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>adroitly, as he thinks</i>] I agree with you. I agree with you
+      absolutely. I dont believe in coalition governments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Precisely. Yet you formed two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Why? Because we were at war. That is what you fellows never would
+      realize. The Hun was at the gate. Our country, our lives, the honor of our
+      wives and mothers and daughters, the tender flesh of our innocent babes,
+      were at stake. Was that a time to argue about principles?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. I should say it was the time of all others to confirm the
+      resolution of our own men and gain the confidence and support of public
+      opinion throughout the world by a declaration of principle. Do you think
+      the Hun would ever have come to the gate if he had known that it would be
+      shut in his face on principle? Did he not hold his own against you until
+      America boldly affirmed the democratic principle and came to our rescue?
+      Why did you let America snatch that honor from England?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Barnabas: America was carried away by words, and had to eat them at
+      the Peace Conference. Beware of eloquence: it is the bane of popular
+      speakers like you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN} [<i>exclaiming</i>]{Well!!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY} [<i>all</i>]{I like that!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM} [<i>together</i>]{Priceless!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>continuing remorselessly</i>] Come down to facts. It wasn't
+      principle that won the war: it was the British fleet and the blockade.
+      America found the talk: I found the shells. You cannot win wars by
+      principles; but you <i>can</i> win elections by them. There I am with you.
+      You want the next election to be fought on principles: that is what it
+      comes to, doesnt it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. I dont want it to be fought at all! An election is a moral
+      horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood: a mud bath for every soul
+      concerned in it. You know very well that it will not be fought on
+      principle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. On the contrary it will be fought on nothing else. I believe a
+      program is a mistake. I agree with you that principle is what we want.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Principle without program, eh?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Exactly. There it is in three words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Why not in one word? Platitudes. That is what principle without
+      program means.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>puzzled but patient, trying to get at Franklyn's drift in order
+      to ascertain his price</i>] I have not made myself clear. Listen. I am
+      agreeing with you. I am on your side. I am accepting your proposal. There
+      isnt going to be any more coalition. This time there wont be a Tory in the
+      Cabinet. Every candidate will have to pledge himself to Free Trade,
+      slightly modified by consideration for our Overseas Dominions; to
+      Disestablishment; to Reform of the House of Lords; to a revised scheme of
+      Taxation of Land Values; and to doing something or other to keep the Irish
+      quiet. Does that satisfy you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. It does not even interest me. Suppose your friends do commit
+      themselves to all this! What does it prove about them except that they are
+      hopelessly out of date even in party politics? that they have learnt
+      nothing and forgotten nothing since 1885? What is it to me that they hate
+      the Church and hate the landed gentry; that they are jealous of the
+      nobility, and have shipping shares instead of manufacturing businesses in
+      the Midlands? I can find you hundreds of the most sordid rascals, or the
+      most densely stupid reactionaries, with all these qualifications.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Personal abuse proves nothing. Do you suppose the Tories are all
+      angels because they are all members of the Church of England?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. No; but they stand together as members of the Church of England,
+      whereas your people, in attacking the Church, are all over the shop. The
+      supporters of the Church are of one mind about religion: its enemies are
+      of a dozen minds. The Churchmen are a phalanx: your people are a mob in
+      which atheists are jostled by Plymouth Brethren, and Positivists by
+      Pillars of Fire. You have with you all the crudest unbelievers and all the
+      crudest fanatics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. We stand, as Cromwell did, for liberty of conscience, if that is
+      what you mean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. How can you talk such rubbish over the graves of your
+      conscientious objectors? All law limits liberty of conscience: if a man's
+      conscience allows him to steal your watch or to shirk military service,
+      how much liberty do you allow it? Liberty of conscience is not my point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>testily</i>] I wish you would come to your point. Half the time
+      you are saying that you must have principles; and when I offer you
+      principles you say they wont work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. You have not offered me any principles. Your party shibboleths
+      are not principles. If you get into power again you will find yourself at
+      the head of a rabble of Socialists and anti-Socialists, of Jingo
+      Imperialists and Little Englanders, of cast-iron Materialists and ecstatic
+      Quakers, of Christian Scientists and Compulsory Inoculationists, of
+      Syndicalists and Bureaucrats: in short, of men differing fiercely and
+      irreconcilably on every principle that goes to the root of human society
+      and destiny; and the impossibility of keeping such a team together will
+      force you to sell the pass again to the solid Conservative Opposition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>rising in wrath</i>] Sell the pass again! You accuse me of
+      having sold the pass!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. When the terrible impact of real warfare swept your
+      parliamentary sham warfare into the dustbin, you had to go behind the
+      backs of your followers and make a secret agreement with the leaders of
+      the Opposition to keep you in power on condition that you dropped all
+      legislation of which they did not approve. And you could not even hold
+      them to their bargain; for they presently betrayed the secret and forced
+      the coalition on you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. I solemnly declare that this is a false and monstrous accusation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Do you deny that the thing occurred? Were the uncontradicted
+      reports false? Were the published letters forgeries?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Certainly not. But <i>I</i> did not do it. I was not Prime Minister
+      then. It was that old dotard, that played-out old humbug Lubin. He was
+      Prime Minister then, not I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Do you mean to say you did not know?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>sitting down again with a shrug</i>] Oh, I had to be told. But
+      what could I do? If we had refused we might have had to go out of office.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Precisely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Well, could we desert the country at such a crisis? The Hun was at
+      the gate. Everyone has to make sacrifices for the sake of the country at
+      such moments. We had to rise above party; and I am proud to say we never
+      gave party a second thought. We stuck to&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Office?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE [<i>turning on him</i>] Yes, sir, to office: that is, to
+      responsibility, to danger, to heart-sickening toil, to abuse and
+      misunderstanding, to a martyrdom that made us envy the very soldiers in
+      the trenches. If you had had to live for months on aspirin and bromide of
+      potassium to get a wink of sleep, you wouldn't talk about office as if it
+      were a catch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Still, you admit that under our parliamentary system Lubin could
+      not have helped himself?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. On that subject my lips are closed. Nothing will induce me to say
+      one word against the old man. I never have; and I never will. Lubin is
+      old: he has never been a real statesman: he is as lazy as a cat on a
+      hearthrug: you cant get him to attend to anything: he is good for nothing
+      but getting up and making speeches with a peroration that goes down with
+      the back benches. But I say nothing against him. I gather that you do not
+      think much of me as a statesman; but at all events I can get things done.
+      I can hustle: even you will admit that. But Lubin! Oh my stars, Lubin!! If
+      you only knew&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The parlor maid opens the door and announces a visitor.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE PARLOR MAID. Mr Lubin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE [<i>bounding from his chair</i>] Lubin! Is this a conspiracy?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>They all rise in amazement, staring at the door. Lubin enters: a man at
+      the end of his sixties, a Yorkshireman with the last traces of
+      Scandinavian flax still in his white hair, undistinguished in stature,
+      unassuming in his manner, and taking his simple dignity for granted, but
+      wonderfully comfortable and quite self-assured in contrast to the
+      intellectual restlessness of Franklyn and the mesmeric self-assertiveness
+      of Burge. His presence suddenly brings out the fact that they are unhappy
+      men, ill at ease, square pegs in round holes, whilst he flourishes like a
+      primrose. </i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The parlor maid withdraws.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>coming to Franklyn</i>] How do you do, Mr Barnabas? [<i>He
+      speaks very comfortably and kindly, much as if he were the host, and
+      Franklyn an embarrassed but welcome guest</i>]. I had the pleasure of
+      meeting you once at the Mansion House. I think it was to celebrate the
+      conclusion of the hundred years peace with America.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN [<i>shaking hands</i>] It was long before that: a meeting about
+      Venezuela, when we were on the point of going to war with America.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>not at all put out</i>] Yes: you are quite right. I knew it was
+      something about America. [<i>He pats Franklyn's hand</i>]. And how have
+      you been all this time? Well, eh?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN [<i>smiling to soften the sarcasm</i>] A few vicissitudes of
+      health naturally in so long a time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Just so. Just so. [<i>Looking round at Savvy</i>] The young lady is&mdash;?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. My daughter, Savvy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Savvy comes from the window between her father and Lubin.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>taking her hand affectionately in both his</i>] And why has she
+      never come to see us?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. I don't know whether you have noticed, Lubin, that I am present.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Savvy takes advantage of this diversion to slip away to the settee,
+      where she is stealthily joined by Haslam, who sits down on her left.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>seating himself in Burge's chair with ineffable comfortableness</i>]
+      My dear Burge: if you imagine that it is possible to be within ten miles
+      of your energetic presence without being acutely aware of it, you do
+      yourself the greatest injustice. How are you? And how are your good
+      newspaper friends? [<i>Burge makes an explosive movement; but Lubin goes
+      on calmly and sweetly</i>] And what are you doing here with my old friend
+      Barnabas, if I may ask?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>sitting down in Conrad's chair, leaving him standing uneasily in
+      the corner</i>] Well, just what you are doing, if you want to know. I am
+      trying to enlist Mr Barnabas's valuable support for my party.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Your party, eh? The newspaper party?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. The Liberal Party. The party of which I have the honor to be
+      leader.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Have you now? Thats very interesting; for I thought <i>I</i> was
+      the leader of the Liberal Party. However, it is very kind of you to take
+      it off my hands, if the party will let you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Do you suggest that I have not the support and confidence of the
+      party?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. I dont suggest anything, my dear Burge. Mr Barnabas will tell you
+      that we all think very highly of you. The country owes you a great deal.
+      During the war, you did very creditably over the munitions; and if you
+      were not quite so successful with the peace, nobody doubted that you meant
+      well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Very kind of you, Lubin. Let me remark that you cannot lead a
+      progressive party without getting a move on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. You mean you cannot. I did it for ten years without the least
+      difficulty. And very comfortable, prosperous, pleasant years they were.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Yes; but what did they end in?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. In you, Burge. You don't complain of that, do you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>fiercely</i>] In plague, pestilence, and famine; battle, murder,
+      and sudden death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>with an appreciative chuckle</i>] The Nonconformist can quote
+      the prayer-book for his own purposes, I see. How you enjoyed yourself over
+      that business, Burge! Do you remember the Knock-Out Blow?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. It came off: don't forget that. Do <i>you</i> remember fighting to
+      the last drop of your blood?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>unruffled, to Franklyn</i>] By the way, I remember your brother
+      Conrad&mdash;a wonderful brain and a dear good fellow&mdash;explaining to
+      me that I couldn't fight to the last drop of my blood, because I should be
+      dead long before I came to it. Most interesting, and quite true. He was
+      introduced to me at a meeting where the suffragettes kept disturbing me.
+      They had to be carried out kicking and making a horrid disturbance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. No: it was later, at a meeting to support the Franchise Bill which
+      gave them the vote.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>discovering Conrad's presence for the first time</i>] Youre
+      right: it was. I knew it had something to do with women. My memory never
+      deceives me. Thank you. Will you introduce me to this gentleman, Barnabas?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>not at all affably</i>] I am the Conrad in question. [<i>He
+      sits down in dudgeon on the vacant Chippendale</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Are you? [<i>Looking at him pleasantly</i>] Yes: of course you are.
+      I never forget a face. But [<i>with an arch turn of his eyes to Savvy</i>]
+      your pretty niece engaged all my powers of vision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. I wish youd be serious, Lubin. God knows we have passed through
+      times terrible enough to make any man serious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. I do not think I need to be reminded of that. In peace time I used
+      to keep myself fresh for my work by banishing all worldly considerations
+      from my mind on Sundays; but war has no respect for the Sabbath; and there
+      have been Sundays within the last few years on which I have had to play as
+      many as sixty-six games of bridge to keep my mind off the news from the
+      front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>scandalized</i>] Sixty-six games of bridge on Sunday!!!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. You probably sang sixty-six hymns. But as I cannot boast either
+      your admirable voice or your spiritual fervor, I had to fall back on
+      bridge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. If I may go back to the subject of your visit, it seems to me
+      that you may both be completely superseded by the Labor Party.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. But I am in the truest sense myself a Labor leader. I&mdash;[<i>he
+      stops, as Lubin has risen with a half-suppressed yawn, and is already
+      talking calmly, but without a pretence of interest</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. The Labor Party! Oh no, Mr Barnabas. No, no, no, no, no. [<i>He
+      moves in Savvy's direction</i>]. There will be no trouble about that. Of
+      course we must give them a few seats: more, I quite admit, than we should
+      have dreamt of leaving to them before the war; but&mdash;[<i>by this time
+      he has reached the sofa where Savvy and Haslam are seated. He sits down
+      between them; takes her hand; and drops the subject of Labor</i>]. Well,
+      my dear young lady? What is the latest news? Whats going on? Have you seen
+      Shoddy's new play? Tell me all about it, and all about the latest books,
+      and all about everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. You have not met Mr Haslam. Our Rector.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>who has quite overlooked Haslam</i>] Never heard of him. Is he
+      any good?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. I was introducing him. This is Mr Haslam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. How d'ye do?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. I beg your pardon, Mr Haslam. Delighted to meet you. [<i>To Savvy</i>]
+      Well, now, how many books have you written?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY [<i>rather overwhelmed but attracted</i>] None. I don't write.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. You dont say so; Well, what do you do? Music? Skirt-dancing?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. I dont do anything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Thank God! You and I were born for one another. Who is your
+      favorite poet, Sally?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Savvy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Savvy! I never heard of him. Tell me all about him. Keep me up to
+      date.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. It's not a poet. <i>I</i> am Savvy, not Sally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Savvy! Thats a funny name, and very pretty. Savvy. It sounds
+      Chinese. What does it mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Short for Savage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>patting her hand</i>] La belle Sauvage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM [<i>rising and surrendering Savvy to Lubin by crossing to the
+      fireplace</i>] I suppose the Church is out of it as far as progressive
+      politics are concerned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Nonsense! That notion about the Church being unprogressive is one
+      of those shibboleths that our party must drop. The Church is all right
+      essentially. Get rid of the establishment; get rid of the bishops; get rid
+      of the candlesticks; get rid of the 39 articles; and the Church of England
+      is just as good as any other Church; and I don't care who hears me say so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. It doesn't matter a bit who hears you say so, my dear Burge. [<i>To
+      Savvy</i>] Who did you say your favorite poet was?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. I dont make pets of poets. Who's yours?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Horace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Horace who?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Quintus Horatius Flaccus: the noblest Roman of them all, my dear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Oh, if he is dead, that explains it. I have a theory that all the
+      dead people we feel especially interested in must have been ourselves. You
+      must be Horace's reincarnation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>delighted</i>] That is the very most charming and penetrating
+      and intelligent thing that has ever been said to me. Barnabas: will you
+      exchange daughters with me? I can give you your choice of two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Man proposes. Savvy disposes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. What does Savvy say?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Lubin: I came here to talk politics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Yes: you have only one subject, Burge. I came here to talk to
+      Savvy. Take Burge into the next room, Barnabas; and let him rip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>half-angry, half-indulgent</i>] No; but really, Lubin, we are at
+      a crisis&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. My dear Burge, life is a disease; and the only difference between
+      one man and another is the stage of the disease at which he lives. You are
+      always at the crisis; I am always in the convalescent stage. I enjoy
+      convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worth while.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY [<i>half-rising</i>] Perhaps I'd better run away. I am distracting
+      you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>making her sit down again</i>] Not at all, my dear. You are only
+      distracting Burge. Jolly good thing for him to be distracted by a pretty
+      girl. Just what he needs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. I sometimes envy you, Lubin. The great movement of mankind, the
+      giant sweep of the ages, passes you by and leaves you standing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. It leaves me sitting, and quite comfortable, thank you. Go on
+      sweeping. When you are tired of it, come back; and you will find England
+      where it was, and me in my accustomed place, with Miss Savvy telling me
+      all sorts of interesting things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY [<i>who has been growing more and more restless</i>] Dont let him
+      shut you up, Mr Burge. You know, Mr Lubin, I am frightfully interested in
+      the Labor movement, and in Theosophy, and in reconstruction after the war,
+      and all sorts of things. I daresay the flappers in your smart set are
+      tremendously flattered when you sit beside them and are nice to them as
+      you are being nice to me; but I am not smart; and I am no use as a
+      flapper. I am dowdy and serious. I want you to be serious. If you refuse,
+      I shall go and sit beside Mr Burge, and ask him to hold my hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. He wouldnt know how to do it, my dear. Burge has a reputation as a
+      profligate&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>starting</i>] Lubin: this is monstrous. I&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>continuing</i>]&mdash;but he is really a model of domesticity.
+      His name is coupled with all the most celebrated beauties; but for him
+      there is only one woman; and that is not you, my dear, but his very
+      charming wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. You are destroying my character in the act of pretending to save
+      it. Have the goodness to confine yourself to your own character and your
+      own wife. Both of them need all your attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. I have the privilege of my age and of my transparent innocence. I
+      have not to struggle with your volcanic energy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>with an immense sense of power</i>] No, by George!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. I think I shall speak both for my brother and myself, and
+      possibly also for my daughter, if I say that since the object of your
+      visit and Mr Joyce Burge's is to some extent political, we should hear
+      with great interest something about your political aims, Mr Lubin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>assenting with complete good humor, and becoming attentive,
+      clear, and businesslike in his tone</i>] By all means, Mr Barnabas. What
+      we have to consider first, I take it, is what prospect there is of our
+      finding you beside us in the House after the next election.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. When I speak of politics, Mr Lubin, I am not thinking of
+      elections, or available seats, or party funds, or the registers, or even,
+      I am sorry to have to add, of parliament as it exists at present. I had
+      much rather you talked about bridge than about electioneering: it is the
+      more interesting game of the two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. He wants to discuss principles, Lubin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>very cool and clear</i>] I understand Mr Barnabas quite well.
+      But elections are unsettled things; principles are settled things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>impatiently</i>] Great Heavens!&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>interrupting him with quiet authority</i>] One moment, Dr
+      Barnabas. The main principles on which modern civilized society is founded
+      are pretty well understood among educated people. That is what our
+      dangerously half-educated masses and their pet demagogues&mdash;if Burge
+      will excuse that expression&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Dont mind me. Go on. I shall have something to say presently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN.&mdash;that is what our dangerously half-educated people do not
+      realize. Take all this fuss about the Labor Party, with its imaginary new
+      principles and new politics. The Labor members will find that the
+      immutable laws of political economy take no more notice of their ambitions
+      and aspirations than the law of gravitation. I speak, if I may say so,
+      with knowledge; for I have made a special, study of the Labor question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN [<i>with interest and some surprise</i>] Indeed?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Yes. It occurred quite at the beginning of my career. I was asked
+      to deliver an address to the students at the Working Men's College; and I
+      was strongly advised to comply, as Gladstone and Morley and others were
+      doing that sort of thing at the moment. It was rather a troublesome job,
+      because I had not gone into political economy at the time. As you know, at
+      the university I was a classical scholar; and my profession was the Law.
+      But I looked up the text-books, and got up the case most carefully. I
+      found that the correct view is that all this Trade Unionism and Socialism
+      and so forth is founded on the ignorant delusion that wages and the
+      production and distribution of wealth can be controlled by legislation or
+      by any human action whatever. They obey fixed scientific laws, which have
+      been ascertained and settled finally by the highest economic authorities.
+      Naturally I do not at this distance of time remember the exact process of
+      reasoning; but I can get up the case again at any time in a couple of
+      days; and you may rely on me absolutely, should the occasion arise, to
+      deal with all these ignorant and unpractical people in a conclusive and
+      convincing way, except, of course, as far as it may be advisable to
+      indulge and flatter them a little so as to let them down without creating
+      ill feeling in the working-class electorate. In short, I can get that
+      lecture up again almost at a moment's notice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. But, Mr Lubin, I have had a university education too; and all this
+      about wages and distribution being fixed by immutable laws of political
+      economy is obsolete rot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN [<i>shocked</i>] Oh, my dear! That is not polite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. No, no, no. Dont scold her. She mustnt be scolded. [<i>To Savvy</i>]
+      I understand. You are a disciple of Karl Marx.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. No, no. Karl Marx's economics are all rot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>at last a little taken aback</i>] Dear me!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. You must excuse me, Mr Lubin; but it's like hearing a man talk
+      about the Garden of Eden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Why shouldnt he talk about the Garden of Eden? It was a first
+      attempt at biology anyhow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>recovering his self-possession</i>] I am sound on the Garden of
+      Eden. I have heard of Darwin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. But Darwin is all rot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. What! Already!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. It's no good your smiling at me like a Cheshire cat, Mr Lubin; and
+      I am not going to sit here mumchance like an old-fashioned goody goody
+      wife while you men monopolize the conversation and pay out the very
+      ghastliest exploded drivel as the latest thing in politics. I am not
+      giving you my own ideas, Mr Lubin, but just the regular orthodox science
+      of today. Only the most awful old fossils think that Socialism is bad
+      economics and that Darwin invented Evolution. Ask Papa. Ask Uncle. Ask the
+      first person you meet in the street. [<i>She rises and crosses to Haslam</i>].
+      Give me a cigaret, Bill, will you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Priceless. [<i>He complies</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Savvy has not lived long enough to have any manners, Mr Lubin;
+      but that is where you stand with the younger generation. Dont smoke, dear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Savvy, with a shrug of rather mutinous resignation, throws the cigaret
+      into the fire. Haslam, on the point of lighting one for himself, changes
+      his mind.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>shrewd and serious</i>] Mr Barnabas: I confess I am surprised;
+      and I will not pretend that I am convinced. But I am open to conviction. I
+      may be wrong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>in a burst of irony</i>] Oh no. Impossible! Impossible!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Yes, Mr Barnabas, though I do not possess Burge's genius for being
+      always wrong, I have been in that position once or twice. I could not
+      conceal from you, even if I wished to, that my time has been so completely
+      filled by my professional work as a lawyer, and later on by my duties as
+      leader of the House of Commons in the days when Prime Ministers were also
+      leaders&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>stung</i>] Not to mention bridge and smart society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN.&mdash;not to mention the continual and trying effort to make Burge
+      behave himself, that I have not been able to keep my academic reading up
+      to date. I have kept my classics brushed up out of sheer love for them;
+      but my economics and my science, such as they were, may possibly be a
+      little rusty. Yet I think I may say that if you and your brother will be
+      so good as to put me on the track of the necessary documents, I will
+      undertake to put the case to the House or to the country to your entire
+      satisfaction. You see, as long as you can shew these troublesome
+      half-educated people who want to turn the world upside down that they are
+      talking nonsense, it really does not matter very much whether you do it in
+      terms of what Miss Barnabas calls obsolete rot or in terms of what her
+      granddaughter will probably call unmitigated tosh. I have no objection
+      whatever to denounce Karl Marx. Anything I can say against Darwin will
+      please a large body of sincerely pious voters. If it will be easier to
+      carry on the business of the country on the understanding that the present
+      state of things is to be called Socialism, I have no objection in the
+      world to call it Socialism. There is the precedent of the Emperor
+      Constantine, who saved the society of his own day by agreeing to call his
+      Imperialism Christianity. Mind: I must not go ahead of the electorate. You
+      must not call a voter a Socialist until&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Until he is a Socialist. Agreed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Oh, not at all. You need not wait for that. You must not call him a
+      Socialist until he wishes to be called a Socialist: that is all. Surely
+      you would not say that I must not address my constituents as gentlemen
+      until they are gentlemen. I address them as gentlemen because they wish to
+      be so addressed. [<i>He rises from the sofa and goes to Franklyn, placing
+      a reassuring hand on his shoulder</i>]. Do not be afraid of Socialism, Mr
+      Barnabas. You need not tremble for your property or your position or your
+      dignity. England will remain what England is, no matter what new political
+      names may come into vogue. I do not intend to resist the transition to
+      Socialism. You may depend on me to guide it, to lead it, to give suitable
+      expression to its aspirations, and to steer it clear of Utopian
+      absurdities. I can honestly ask for your support on the most advanced
+      Socialist grounds no less than on the soundest Liberal ones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. In short, Lubin, youre incorrigible. You dont believe anything is
+      going to change. The millions are still to toil&mdash;the people&mdash;my
+      people&mdash;for I am a man of the people&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>interrupting him contemptuously</i>] Dont be ridiculous, Burge.
+      You are a country solicitor, further removed from the people, more foreign
+      to them, more jealous of letting them up to your level, than any duke or
+      any archbishop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>hotly</i>] I deny it. You think I have never been poor. You
+      think I have never cleaned my own boots. You think my fingers have never
+      come out through the soles when I was cleaning them. You think&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. I think you fall into the very common mistake of supposing that it
+      is poverty that makes the proletarian and money that makes the gentleman.
+      You are quite wrong. You never belonged to the people: you belonged to the
+      impecunious. Impecuniosity and broken boots are the lot of the
+      unsuccessful middle class, and the commonplaces of the early struggles of
+      the professional and younger son class. I defy you to find a farm laborer
+      in England with broken boots. Call a mechanic one of the poor, and he'll
+      punch your head. When you talk to your constituents about the toiling
+      millions, they don't consider that you are referring to them. They are all
+      third cousins of somebody with a title or a park. I am a Yorkshireman, my
+      friend. I know England; and you don't. If you did you would know&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE. What do you know that I don't know?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. I know that we are taking up too much of Mr Barnabas's time. [<i>Franklyn
+      rises</i>]. May I take it, my dear Barnabas, that I may count on your
+      support if we succeed in forcing an election before the new register is in
+      full working order?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE [<i>rising also</i>] May the party count on your support? I say
+      nothing about myself. Can the party depend on you? Is there any question
+      of yours that I have left unanswered?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. We havnt asked you any, you know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. May I take that as a mark of confidence?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. If I were a laborer in your constituency, I should ask you a
+      biological question?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. No you wouldnt, my dear Doctor. Laborers never ask questions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Ask it now. I have never flinched from being heckled. Out with it.
+      Is it about the land?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. No.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE. Is it about the Church?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. No.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Is it about the House of Lords?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. No.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Is it about Proportional Representation?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. No.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE. Is it about Free Trade?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. No.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE. Is it about the priest in the school?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. No.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Is it about Ireland?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. No.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Is it about Germany?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. No.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Well, is it about Republicanism? Come! I wont flinch. Is it about
+      the Monarchy?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. No.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE. Well, what the devil is it about, then?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. You understand that I am asking the question in the character of a
+      laborer who earned thirteen shillings a week before the war and earns
+      thirty now, when he can get it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Yes: I understand that. I am ready for you. Out with it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. And whom you propose to represent n parliament?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE. Yes, yes, yes. Come on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. The question is this. Would you allow your son to marry my
+      daughter, or your daughter to marry my son?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>taken aback</i>] Oh, come! Thats not a political question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Then, as a biologist, I don't take the slightest interest in your
+      politics; and I shall not walk across the street to vote for you or anyone
+      else at the election. Good evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Serve you right, Burge! Dr Barnabas: you have my assurance that my
+      daughter shall marry the man of her choice, whether he be lord or laborer.
+      May <i>I</i> count on your support?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE [<i>hurling the epithet at him</i>] Humbug!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Stop. [<i>They all stop short in the movement of leave-taking to
+      look at her</i>]. Daddy: are you going to let them off like this? How are
+      they to know anything if nobody ever tells them? If you don't, I will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. You cant. You didn't read my book; and you know nothing about it.
+      You just hold your tongue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. I just wont, Nunk. I shall have a vote when I am thirty; and I
+      ought to have it now. Why are these two ridiculous people to be allowed to
+      come in and walk over us as if the world existed only to play their silly
+      parliamentary game?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN [<i>severely</i>] Savvy: you really must not be uncivil to our
+      guests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. I'm sorry. But Mr Lubin didn't stand on much ceremony with me, did
+      he? And Mr Burge hasnt addressed a single word to me. I'm not going to
+      stand it. You and Nunk have a much better program than either of them.
+      It's the only one we are going to vote for; and they ought to be told
+      about it for the credit of the family and the good of their own souls. You
+      just tip them a chapter from the gospel of the brothers Barnabas, Daddy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Lubin and Burge turn inquiringly to Franklyn, suspecting a move to form
+      a new party.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. It is quite true, Mr Lubin, that I and my brother have a little
+      program of our own which&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>interrupting</i>] It's not a little program: it's an almighty
+      big one. It's not our own: it's the program of the whole of civilization.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Then why split the party before you have put it to us? For God's
+      sake let us have no more splits. I am here to learn. I am here to gather
+      your opinions and represent them. I invite you to put your views before
+      me. I offer myself to be heckled. You have asked me only an absurd
+      non-political question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Candidly, I fear our program will be thrown away on you. It
+      would not interest you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>with challenging audacity</i>] Try. Lubin can go if he likes;
+      but I am still open to new ideas, if only I can find them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN [<i>to Lubin</i>] Are you prepared to listen, Mr Lubin; or shall
+      I thank you for your very kind and welcome visit, and say good evening?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>sitting down resignedly on the settee, but involuntarily making
+      a movement which looks like the stifling of a yawn</i>] With pleasure, Mr
+      Barnabas. Of course you know that before I can adopt any new plank in the
+      party platform, it will have to reach me through the National Liberal
+      Federation, which you can approach through your local Liberal and Radical
+      Association.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. I could recall to you several instances of the addition to your
+      party program of measures of which no local branch of your Federation had
+      ever dreamt. But I understand that you are not really interested. I will
+      spare you, and drop the subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>waking up a little</i>] You quite misunderstand me. Please do
+      not take it in that way. I only&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>talking him down</i>] Never mind the Federation: <i>I</i> will
+      answer for the Federation. Go on, Barnabas: go on. Never mind Lubin [<i>he
+      sits down in the chair from which Lubin first displaced him</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Our program is only that the term of human life shall be
+      extended to three hundred years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>softly</i>] Eh?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>explosively</i>] What!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Our election cry is 'Back to Methuselah!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Priceless!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Lubin and Surge look at one another.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. No. We are not mad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Theyre not joking either. They mean it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>cautiously</i>] Assuming that, in some sense which I am for the
+      moment unable to fathom, you are in earnest, Mr Barnabas, may I ask what
+      this has to do with politics?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. The connection is very evident. You are now, Mr Lubin, within
+      immediate reach of your seventieth year. Mr Joyce Surge is your junior by
+      about eleven years. You will go down to posterity as one of a European
+      group of immature statesmen and monarchs who, doing the very best for your
+      respective countries of which you were capable, succeeded in
+      all-but-wrecking the civilization of Europe, and did, in effect, wipe out
+      of existence many millions of its inhabitants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Less than a million.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. That was our loss alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Oh, if you count foreigners&mdash;!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HAS LAM. God counts foreigners, you know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY [<i>with intense satisfaction</i>] Well said, Bill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. I am not blaming you. Your task was beyond human capacity. What
+      with our huge armaments, our terrible engines of destruction, our systems
+      of coercion manned by an irresistible police, you were called on to
+      control powers so gigantic that one shudders at the thought of their being
+      entrusted even to an infinitely experienced and benevolent God, much less
+      to mortal men whose whole life does not last a hundred years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. We won the war: don't forget that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. No: the soldiers and sailors won it, and left you to finish it.
+      And you were so utterly incompetent that the multitudes of children slain
+      by hunger in the first years of peace made us all wish we were at war
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. It's no use arguing about it. It is now absolutely certain that
+      the political and social problems raised by our civilization cannot be
+      solved by mere human mushrooms who decay and die when they are just
+      beginning to have a glimmer of the wisdom and knowledge needed for their
+      own government.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Quite an interesting idea, Doctor. Extravagant. Fantastic. But
+      quite interesting. When I was young I used to feel my human limitations
+      very acutely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. God knows I have often felt that I could not go on if it had not
+      been for the sense that I was only an instrument in the hands of a Power
+      above us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. I'm glad you both agree with us, and with one another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. I have not gone so far as that, I think. After all, we have had
+      many very able political leaders even within your recollection and mine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Have you read the recent biographies&mdash;Dilke's, for instance&mdash;which
+      revealed the truth about them?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. I did not discover any new truth revealed in these books, Mr
+      Barnabas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. What! Not the truth that England was governed all that time by a
+      little woman who knew her own mind?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Hear, hear!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. That often happens. Which woman do you mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Queen Victoria, to whom your Prime Ministers stood in the
+      relation of naughty children whose heads she knocked together when their
+      tempers and quarrels became intolerable. Within thirteen years of her
+      death Europe became a hell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE. Quite true. That was because she was piously brought up, and
+      regarded herself as an instrument. If a statesman remembers that he is
+      only an instrument, and feels quite sure that he is rightly interpreting
+      the divine purpose, he will come out all right, you know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. The Kaiser felt like that. Did he come out all right?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE. Well, let us be fair, even to the Kaiser. Let us be fair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Were you fair to him when you won an election on the program of
+      hanging him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE. Stuff! I am the last man alive to hang anybody; but the people
+      wouldnt listen to reason. Besides, I knew the Dutch wouldnt give him up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Oh, don't start arguing about poor old Bill. Stick to our point.
+      Let these two gentlemen settle the question for themselves. Mr Burge: do
+      you think Mr Lubin is fit to govern England?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE. No. Frankly, I dont.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>remonstrant</i>] Really!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Why?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Because he has no conscience: thats why.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>shocked and amazed</i>] Oh!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Mr Lubin: do you consider Joyce Burge qualified to govern
+      England?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>with dignified emotion, wounded, but without bitterness</i>]
+      Excuse me, Mr Barnabas; but before I answer that question I want to say
+      this. Burge: we have had differences of opinion; and your newspaper
+      friends have said hard things of me. But we worked together for years; and
+      I hope I have done nothing to justify you in the amazing accusation you
+      have just brought against me. Do you realize that you said that I have no
+      conscience?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Lubin: I am very accessible to an appeal to my emotions; and you
+      are very cunning in making such appeals. I will meet you to this extent. I
+      dont mean that you are a bad man. I dont mean that I dislike you, in spite
+      of your continual attempts to discourage and depress me. But you have a
+      mind like a looking-glass. You are very clear and smooth and lucid as to
+      what is standing in front of you. But you have no foresight and no
+      hindsight. You have no vision and no memory. You have no continuity; and a
+      man without continuity can have neither conscience nor honor from one day
+      to another. The result is that you have always been a damned bad minister;
+      and you have sometimes been a damned bad friend. Now you can answer
+      Barnabas's question and take it out of me to your heart's content. He
+      asked you was I fit to govern England.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>recovering himself</i>] After what has just passed I sincerely
+      wish I could honestly say yes, Burge. But it seems to me that you have
+      condemned yourself out of your own mouth. You represent something which
+      has had far too much influence and popularity in this country since Joseph
+      Chamberlain set the fashion; and that is mere energy without intellect and
+      without knowledge. Your mind is not a trained mind: it has not been stored
+      with the best information, nor cultivated by intercourse with educated
+      minds at any of our great seats of learning. As I happen to have enjoyed
+      that advantage, it follows that you do not understand my mind. Candidly, I
+      think that disqualifies you. The peace found out your weaknesses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Oh! What did it find out in you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. You and your newspaper confederates took the peace out of my hands.
+      The peace did not find me out because it did not find me in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Come! Confess, both of you! You were only flies on the wheel.
+      The war went England's way; but the peace went its own way, and not
+      England's way nor any of the ways you had so glibly appointed for it. Your
+      peace treaty was a scrap of paper before the ink dried on it. The
+      statesmen of Europe were incapable of governing Europe. What they needed
+      was a couple of hundred years training and experience: what they had
+      actually had was a few years at the bar or in a counting-house or on the
+      grouse moors and golf courses. And now we are waiting, with monster
+      cannons trained on every city and seaport, and huge aeroplanes ready to
+      spring into the air and drop bombs every one of which will obliterate a
+      whole street, and poison gases that will strike multitudes dead with a
+      breath, until one of you gentlemen rises in his helplessness to tell us,
+      who are as helpless as himself, that we are at war again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Aha! What consolation will it be for us then that you two are able
+      to tell off one another's defects so cleverly in your afternoon chat?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>angrily</i>] If you come to that, what consolation will it be
+      that you two can sit there and tell both of us off? you, who have had no
+      responsibility! you, who havnt lifted a finger, as far as I know, to help
+      us through this awful crisis which has left me ten years older than my
+      proper age! Can you tell me a single thing you did to help us during the
+      whole infernal business?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. We're not blaming you: you hadnt lived long enough. No more had
+      we. Cant you see that three-score-and-ten, though it may be long enough
+      for a very crude sort of village life, isnt long enough for a complicated
+      civilization like ours? Flinders Petrie has counted nine attempts at
+      civilization made by people exactly like us; and every one of them failed
+      just as ours is failing. They failed because the citizens and statesmen
+      died of old age or over-eating before they had grown out of schoolboy
+      games and savage sports and cigars and champagne. The signs of the end are
+      always the same: Democracy, Socialism, and Votes for Women. We shall go to
+      smash within the lifetime of men now living unless we recognize that we
+      must live longer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. I am glad you agree with me that Socialism and Votes for Women are
+      signs of decay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Not at all: they are only the difficulties that overtax your
+      capacity. If you cannot organize Socialism you cannot organize civilized
+      life; and you will relapse into barbarism accordingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Hear, hear!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE. A useful point. We cannot put back the clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. <i>I</i> can. Ive often done it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Tut tut! My dear Burge: what are you dreaming of? Mr Barnabas: I am
+      a very patient man. But will you tell me what earthly use or interest
+      there is in a conclusion that cannot be realized? I grant you that if we
+      could live three hundred years we should all be, perhaps wiser, certainly
+      older. You will grant me in return, I hope, that if the sky fell we should
+      all catch larks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Your turn now, Conrad. Go ahead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. I don't think it's any good. I don't think they want to live
+      longer than usual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Although I am a mere child of 69, I am old enough to have lost, the
+      habit of crying for the moon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Have you discovered the elixir of life or have you not? If not, I
+      agree with Lubin that you are wasting our time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Is your time of any value?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE [<i>unable to believe his ears</i>] My time of any value! What do
+      you mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>smiling comfortably</i>] From your high scientific point of
+      view, I daresay, none whatever, Professor. In any case I think a little
+      perfectly idle discussion would do Burge good. After all, we might as well
+      hear about the elixir of life as read novels, or whatever Burge does when
+      he is not playing golf on Walton Heath. What is your elixir, Dr Barnabas?
+      Lemons? Sour milk? Or what is the latest?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE. We were just beginning to talk seriously; and now you snatch at the
+      chance of talking rot. [<i>He rises</i>]. Good evening. [<i>He turns to
+      the door</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>rudely</i>] Die as soon as you like. Good evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>hesitating</i>] Look here. I took sour milk twice a day until
+      Metchnikoff died. He thought it would keep him alive for ever; and he died
+      of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. You might as well have taken sour beer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. You believe in lemons?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. I wouldn't eat a lemon for ten pounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>sitting down again</i>] What do you recommend?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>rising with a gesture of despair</i>] Whats the use of going
+      on, Frank? Because I am a doctor, and because they think I have a bottle
+      to give them that will make them live for ever, they are listening to me
+      for the first time with their mouths open and their eyes shut. Thats their
+      notion of science.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Steady, Nunk! Hold the fort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>growls and sits down</i>]!!!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. You volunteered the consultation, Doctor. I may tell you that, far
+      from sharing the credulity as to science which is now the fashion, I am
+      prepared to demonstrate that during the last fifty years, though the
+      Church has often been wrong, and even the Liberal Party has not been
+      infallible, the men of science have always been wrong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Yes: the fellows you call men of science. The people who make
+      money by it, and their medical hangers-on. But has anybody been right?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. The poets and story tellers, especially the classical poets and
+      story tellers, have been, in the main, right. I will ask you not to repeat
+      this as my opinion outside; for the vote of the medical profession and its
+      worshippers is not to be trifled with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. You are quite right: the poem is our real clue to biological
+      science. The most scientific document we possess at present is, as your
+      grandmother would have told you quite truly, the story of the Garden of
+      Eden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>pricking up his ears</i>] Whats that? If you can establish that,
+      Barnabas, I am prepared to hear you out with my very best attention. I am
+      listening. Go on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Well, you remember, don't you, that in the Garden of Eden Adam
+      and Eve were not created mortal, and that natural death, as we call it,
+      was not a part of life, but a later and quite separate invention?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE. Now you mention it, thats true. Death came afterwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. What about accidental death? That was always possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Precisely. Adam and Eve were hung up between two frightful
+      possibilities. One was the extinction of mankind by their accidental
+      death. The other was the prospect of living for ever. They could bear
+      neither. They decided that they would just take a short turn of a thousand
+      years, and meanwhile hand on their work to a new pair. Consequently, they
+      had to invent natural birth and natural death, which are, after all, only
+      modes of perpetuating life without putting on any single creature the
+      terrible burden of immortality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. I see. The old must make room for the new.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE. Death is nothing but making room. Thats all there is in it or ever
+      has been in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Yes; but the old must not desert their posts until the new are
+      ripe for them. They desert them now two hundred years too soon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. I believe the old people are the new people reincarnated, Nunk. I
+      suspect I am Eve. I am very fond of apples; and they always disagree with
+      me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. You are Eve, in a sense. The Eternal Life persists; only It wears
+      out Its bodies and minds and gets new ones, like new clothes. You are only
+      a new hat and frock on Eve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Yes. Bodies and minds ever better and better fitted to carry out
+      Its eternal pursuit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>with quiet scepticism</i>] What pursuit, may one ask, Mr
+      Barnabas?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. The pursuit of omnipotence and omniscience. Greater power and
+      greater knowledge: these are what we are all pursuing even at the risk of
+      our lives and the sacrifice of our pleasures. Evolution is that pursuit
+      and nothing else. It is the path to godhead. A man differs from a microbe
+      only in being further on the path.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. And how soon do you expect this modest end to be reached?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Never, thank God! As there is no limit to power and knowledge
+      there can be no end. 'The power and the glory, world without end': have
+      those words meant nothing to you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>pulling out an old envelope</i>] I should like to make a note of
+      that. [<i>He does so</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. There will always be something to live for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE [<i>pocketing his envelope and becoming more and more businesslike</i>]
+      Right: I have got that. Now what about sin? What about the Fall? How do
+      you work them in?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. I don't work in the Fall. The Fall is outside Science. But I
+      daresay Frank can work it in for you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE [<i>to Franklyn</i>] I wish you would, you know. It's important.
+      Very important.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Well, consider it this way. It is clear that when Adam and Eve
+      were immortal it was necessary that they should make the earth an
+      extremely comfortable place to live in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. True. If you take a house on a ninety-nine years lease, you spend a
+      good deal of money on it. If you take it for three months you generally
+      have a bill for dilapidations to pay at the end of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Just so. Consequently, when Adam had the Garden of Eden on a
+      lease for ever, he took care to make it what the house agents call a
+      highly desirable country residence. But the moment he invented death, and
+      became a tenant for life only, the place was no longer worth the trouble.
+      It was then that he let the thistles grow. Life was so short that it was
+      no longer worth his while to do anything thoroughly well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Do you think that is enough to constitute what an average elector
+      would consider a Fall? Is it tragic enough?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. That is only the first step of the Fall. Adam did not fall down
+      that step only: he fell down a whole flight. For instance, before he
+      invented birth he dared not have lost his temper; for if he had killed Eve
+      he would have been lonely and barren to all eternity. But when he invented
+      birth, and anyone who was killed could be replaced, he could afford to let
+      himself go. He undoubtedly invented wife-beating; and that was another
+      step down. One of his sons invented meat-eating. The other was horrified
+      at the innovation. With the ferocity which is still characteristic of
+      bulls and other vegetarians, he slew his beefsteak-eating brother, and
+      thus invented murder. That was a very steep step. It was so exciting that
+      all the others began to kill one another for sport, and thus invented war,
+      the steepest step of all. They even took to killing animals as a means of
+      killing time, and then, of course, ate them to save the long and difficult
+      labor of agriculture. I ask you to contemplate our fathers as they came
+      crashing down all the steps of this Jacob's ladder that reached from
+      paradise to a hell on earth in which they had multiplied the chances of
+      death from violence, accident, and disease until they could hardly count
+      on three score and ten years of life, much less the thousand that Adam had
+      been ready to face! With that picture before you, will you now ask me
+      where was the Fall? You might as well stand at the foot of Snowdon and ask
+      me where is the mountain. The very children see it so plainly that they
+      compress its history into a two line epic:
+    </p>
+<div style="margin-left: 10%;">
+    <i>Old Daddy Long Legs wouldn't say his prayers:<br />
+    Take him by the hind legs and throw him downstairs.</i>
+</div>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>still immovably sceptical</i>] And what does Science say to this
+      fairy tale, Doctor Barnabas? Surely Science knows nothing of Genesis, or
+      of Adam and Eve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Then it isnt Science: thats all. Science has to account for
+      everything; and everything includes the Bible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. The Book of Genesis is a part of nature like any other part of
+      nature. The fact that the tale of the Garden of Eden has survived and held
+      the imagination of men spellbound for centuries, whilst hundreds of much
+      more plausible and amusing stories have gone out of fashion and perished
+      like last year's popular song, is a scientific fact; and Science is bound
+      to explain it. You tell me that Science knows nothing of it. Then Science
+      is more ignorant than the children at any village school.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Of course if you think it more scientific to say that what we are
+      discussing is not Adam and Eve and Eden, but the phylogeny of the
+      blastoderm&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. You neednt swear, Nunk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Shut up, you: I am not swearing. [<i>To Lubin</i>] If you want the
+      professional humbug of rewriting the Bible in words of four syllables, and
+      pretending it's something new, I can humbug you to your heart's content. I
+      can call Genesis Phylogenesis. Let the Creator say, if you like, 'I will
+      establish an antipathetic symbiosis between thee and the female, and
+      between thy blastoderm and her blastoderm.' Nobody will understand you;
+      and Savvy will think you are swearing. The meaning is the same.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Priceless. But it's quite simple. The one version is poetry: the
+      other is science.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. The one is classroom jargon: the other is inspired human
+      language.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>calmly reminiscent</i>] One of the few modern authors into whom
+      I have occasionally glanced is Rousseau, who was a sort of Deist like
+      Burge&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>interrupting him forcibly</i>] Lubin: has this stupendously
+      important communication which Professor Barnabas has just made to us: a
+      communication for which I shall be indebted to him all my life long: has
+      this, I say, no deeper effect on you than to set you pulling my leg by
+      trying to make out that I am an infidel?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. It's very interesting and amusing, Burge; and I think I see a case
+      in it. I think I could undertake to argue it in an ecclesiastical court.
+      But important is hardly a word I should attach to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Good God! Here is this professor: a man utterly removed from the
+      turmoil of our political life: devoted to pure learning in its most
+      abstract phases; and I solemnly declare he is the greatest politician, the
+      most inspired party leader, in the kingdom. I take off my hat to him. I,
+      Joyce Burge, give him best. And you sit there purring like an Angora cat,
+      and can see nothing in it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>opening his eyes widely</i>] Hallo! What have I done to deserve
+      this tribute?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE. Done! You have put the Liberal Party into power for the next thirty
+      years, Doctor: thats what you've done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. God forbid!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. It's all up with the Church now. Thanks to you, we go to the
+      country with one cry and one only. Back to the Bible! Think of the effect
+      on the Nonconformist vote. You gather that in with one hand; and you
+      gather in the modern scientific sceptical professional vote with the
+      other. The village atheist and the first cornet in the local Salvation
+      Army band meet on the village green and shake hands. You take your school
+      children, your Bible class under the Cowper-Temple clause, into the
+      museum. You shew the kids the Piltdown skull; and you say, 'Thats Adam.
+      Thats Eve's husband.' You take the spectacled science student from the
+      laboratory in Owens College; and when he asks you for a truly scientific
+      history of Evolution, you put into his hand The Pilgrim's Progress. You&mdash;[<i>Savvy
+      and Haslam explode into shrieks of merriment</i>]. What are you two
+      laughing at?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Oh, go on, Mr Burge. Dont stop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Priceless!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Would thirty years of office for the Liberal Party seem so
+      important to you, Mr Burge, if you had another two and a half centuries to
+      live?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>decisively</i>] No. You will have to drop that part of it. The
+      constituencies wont swallow it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>seriously</i>] I am not so sure of that, Burge. I am not sure
+      that it may not prove the only point they will swallow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. It will be no use to us even if they do. It's not a party point.
+      It's as good for the other side as for us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Not necessarily. If we get in first with it, it will be associated
+      in the public mind with our party. Suppose I put it forward as a plank in
+      our program that we advocate the extension of human life to three hundred
+      years! Dunreen, as leader of the opposite party, will be bound to oppose
+      me: to denounce me as a visionary and so forth. By doing so he will place
+      himself in the position of wanting to rob the people of two hundred and
+      thirty years of their natural life. The Unionists will become the party of
+      Premature Death; and we shall become the Longevity party.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>shaken</i>] You really think the electorate would swallow it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. My dear Burge: is there anything the electorate will not swallow if
+      it is judiciously put to them? But we must make sure of our ground. We
+      must have the support of the men of science. Is there serious agreement
+      among them, Doctor, as to the possibility of such an evolution as you have
+      described?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Yes. Ever since the reaction against Darwin set in at the
+      beginning of the present century, all scientific opinion worth counting
+      has been converging rapidly upon Creative Evolution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Poetry has been converging on it: philosophy has been converging
+      on it: religion has been converging on it. It is going to be the religion
+      of the twentieth century: a religion that has its intellectual roots in
+      philosophy and science just as medieval Christianity had its intellectual
+      roots in Aristotle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. But surely any change would be so extremely gradual that&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Dont deceive yourself. It's only the politicians who improve the
+      world so gradually that nobody can see the improvement. The notion that
+      Nature does not proceed by jumps is only one of the budget of plausible
+      lies that we call classical education. Nature always proceeds by jumps.
+      She may spend twenty thousand years making up her mind to jump; but when
+      she makes it up at last, the jump is big enough to take us into a new age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>impressed</i>] Fancy my being leader of the party for the next
+      three hundred years!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. What!!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Perhaps hard on some of the younger men. I think in fairness I
+      shall have to step aside to make room after another century or so: that
+      is, if Mimi can be persuaded to give up Downing Street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. This is too much. Your colossal conceit blinds you to the most
+      obvious necessity of the political situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. You mean my retirement. I really cannot see that it is a necessity.
+      I could not see it when I was almost an old man&mdash;or at least an
+      elderly one. Now that it appears that I am a young man, the case for it
+      breaks down completely. [<i>To Conrad</i>] May I ask are there any
+      alternative theories? Is there a scientific Opposition?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Well, some authorities hold that the human race is a failure, and
+      that a new form of life, better adapted to high civilization, will
+      supersede us as we have superseded the ape and the elephant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. The superman: eh!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. No. Some being quite different from us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Is that altogether desirable?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. I fear so. However that may be, we may be quite sure of one
+      thing. We shall not be let alone. The force behind evolution, call it what
+      you will, is determined to solve the problem of civilization; and if it
+      cannot do it through us, it will produce some more capable agents. Man is
+      not God's last word: God can still create. If you cannot do His work He
+      will produce some being who can.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>with zealous reverence</i>] What do we know about Him, Barnabas?
+      What does anyone know about Him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. We know this about Him with absolute certainty. The power my
+      brother calls God proceeds by the method of Trial and Error; and if we
+      turn out to be one of the errors, we shall go the way of the mastodon and
+      the megatherium and all the other scrapped experiments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>rising and beginning to walk up and down the room with his
+      considering cap on</i>] I admit that I am impressed, gentlemen. I will go
+      so far as to say that your theory is likely to prove more interesting than
+      ever Welsh Disestablishment was. But as a practical politician&mdash;hm!
+      Eh, Burge?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. We are not practical politicians. We are out to get something
+      done. Practical politicians are people who have mastered the art of using
+      parliament to prevent anything being done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. When we get matured statesmen and citizens&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>stopping short</i>] Citizens! Oh! Are the citizens to live three
+      hundred years as well as the statesmen?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Of course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. I confess that had not occurred to me [<i>he sits down abruptly,
+      evidently very unfavorably affected by this new light</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Savvy and Haslam look at one another with unspeakable feelings.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Do you think it would be wise to go quite so far at first? Surely
+      it would be more prudent to begin with the best men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. You need not be anxious about that. It will begin with the best
+      men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. I am glad to hear you say so. You see, we must put this into a
+      practical parliamentary shape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. We shall have to draft a Bill: that is the long and the short of
+      it. Until you have your Bill drafted you don't know what you are really
+      doing: that is my experience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Quite so. My idea is that whilst we should interest the electorate
+      in this as a sort of religious aspiration and personal hope, using it at
+      the same time to remove their prejudices against those of us who are
+      getting on in years, it would be in the last degree upsetting and even
+      dangerous to enable everyone to live longer than usual. Take the mere
+      question of the manufacture of the specific, whatever it may be! There are
+      forty millions of people in the country. Let me assume for the sake of
+      illustration that each person would have to consume, say, five ounces a
+      day of the elixir. That would be&mdash;let me see&mdash;five times three
+      hundred and sixty-five is&mdash;um&mdash;twenty-five&mdash;thirty-two&mdash;eighteen&mdash;eighteen
+      hundred and twenty-five ounces a year: just two ounces over the
+      hundredweight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Two million tons a year, in round numbers, of stuff that everyone
+      would clamor for: that men would trample down women and children in the
+      streets to get at. You couldnt produce it. There would be blue murder.
+      It's out of the question. We must keep the actual secret to ourselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>staring at them</i>] The actual secret! What on earth is the
+      man talking about?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. The stuff. The powder. The bottle. The tabloid. Whatever it is. You
+      said it wasnt lemons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. My good sir: I have no powder, no bottle, no tabloid. I am not a
+      quack: I am a biologist. This is a thing thats going to happen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>completely let down</i>] Going to happen! Oh! Is that all? [<i>He
+      looks at his watch</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Going to happen! What do you mean? Do you mean that you cant make
+      it happen?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. No more than I could have made you happen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. We can put it into men's heads that there is nothing to prevent
+      its happening but their own will to die before their work is done, and
+      their own ignorance of the splendid work there is for them to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Spread that knowledge and that conviction; and as surely as the
+      sun will rise tomorrow, the thing will happen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. We don't know where or when or to whom it will happen. It may
+      happen first to someone in this room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. It wont happen to me: thats jolly sure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. It might happen to anyone. It might happen to the parlor maid. How
+      do we know?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. The parlor maid! Oh, thats nonsense, Nunk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>once more quite comfortable</i>] I think Miss Savvy has
+      delivered the final verdict.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Do you mean to say that you have nothing more practical to offer
+      than the mere wish to live longer? Why, if people could live by merely
+      wishing to, we should all be living for ever already! Everybody would like
+      to live for ever. Why don't they?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Pshaw! Everybody would like to have a million of money. Why havnt
+      they? Because the men who would like to be millionaires wont save sixpence
+      even with the chance of starvation staring them in the face. The men who
+      want to live for ever wont cut off a glass of beer or a pipe of tobacco,
+      though they believe the teetotallers and non-smokers live longer. That
+      sort of liking is not willing. See what they do when they know they must.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Do not mistake mere idle fancies for the tremendous
+      miracle-working force of Will nerved to creation by a conviction of
+      Necessity. I tell you men capable of such willing, and realizing its
+      necessity, will do it reluctantly, under inner compulsion, as all great
+      efforts are made. They will hide what they are doing from themselves: they
+      will take care not to know what they are doing. They will live three
+      hundred years, not because they would like to, but because the soul deep
+      down in them will know that they must, if the world is to be saved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>turning to Franklyn and patting him almost paternally</i>] Well,
+      my dear Barnabas, for the last thirty years the post has brought me at
+      least once a week a plan from some crank or other for the establishment of
+      the millennium. I think you are the maddest of all the cranks; but you are
+      much the most interesting. I am conscious of a very curious mixture of
+      relief and disappointment in finding that your plan is all moonshine, and
+      that you have nothing practical to offer us. But what a pity! It is such a
+      fascinating idea! I think you are too hard on us practical men; but there
+      are men in every Government, even on the Front Bench, who deserve all you
+      say. And now, before dropping the subject, may I put just one question to
+      you? An idle question, since nothing can come of it; but still&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Ask your question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Why do you fix three hundred years as the exact figure?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Because we must fix some figure. Less would not be enough; and
+      more would be more than we dare as yet face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Pooh! I am quite prepared to face three thousand, not to say three
+      million.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Yes, because you don't believe you Will be called on to make good
+      your word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN [<i>gently</i>] Also, perhaps, because you have never been
+      troubled much by vision of the future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>with intense conviction</i>] The future does not exist for Henry
+      Hopkins Lubin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. If by the future you mean the millennial delusions which you use as
+      a bunch of carrots to lure the uneducated British donkey to the polling
+      booth to vote for you, it certainly does not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE. I can see the future not only because, if I may say so in all
+      humility, I have been gifted with a certain power of spiritual vision, but
+      because I have practised as a solicitor. A solicitor has to advise
+      families. He has to think of the future and know the past. His office is
+      the real modern confessional. Among other things he has to make people's
+      wills for them. He has to shew them how to provide for their daughters
+      after their deaths. Has it occurred to you, Lubin, that if you live three
+      hundred years, your daughters will have to wait a devilish long time for
+      their money?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. The money may not wait for them. Few investments flourish for
+      three hundred years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. And what about before your death? Suppose they didn't get married!
+      Imagine a girl living at home with her mother and on her father for three
+      hundred years! Theyd murder her if she didn't murder them first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. By the way, Barnabas, is your daughter to keep her good looks all
+      the time?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Will it matter? Can you conceive the most hardened flirt going
+      on flirting for three centuries? At the end of half the time we shall
+      hardly notice whether it is a woman or a man we are speaking to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>not quite relishing this ascetic prospect</i>] Hm! [<i>He rises</i>].
+      Ah, well: you must come and tell my wife and my young people all about it;
+      and you will bring your daughter with you, of course. [<i>He shakes hands
+      with Savvy</i>]. Goodbye. [<i>He shakes hands with Franklyn</i>]. Goodbye,
+      Doctor. [<i>He shakes hands with Conrad</i>]. Come on, Burge: you must
+      really tell me what line you are going to take about the Church at the
+      election?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Havnt you heard? Havnt you taken in the revelation that has been
+      vouchsafed to us? The line I am going to take is Back to Methuselah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>decisively</i>] Dont be ridiculous, Burge. You don't suppose, do
+      you, that our friends here are in earnest, or that our very pleasant
+      conversation has had anything to do with practical politics! They have
+      just been pulling our legs very wittily. Come along. [<i>He goes out,
+      Franklyn politely going with him, but shaking his head in mute protest</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>shaking Conrad's hand</i>] It's beyond the old man, Doctor. No
+      spiritual side to him: only a sort of classical side that goes down with
+      his own set. Besides, he's done, gone, past, burnt out, burst up; thinks
+      he is our leader and is only our rag and bottle department. But you may
+      depend on me. I will work this stunt of yours in. I see its value. [<i>He
+      begins moving towards the door with Conrad</i>]. Of course I cant put it
+      exactly in your way; but you are quite right about our needing something
+      fresh; and I believe an election can be fought on the death rate and on
+      Adam and Eve as scientific facts. It will take the Opposition right out of
+      its depth. And if we win there will be an O.M. for somebody when the first
+      honors list comes round [<i>by this time he has talked himself out of the
+      room and out of earshot, Conrad accompanying him</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Savvy and Haslam, left alone, seize each other in an ecstasy of
+      amusement, and jazz to the settee, where they sit down again side by side.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM [<i>caressing her</i>] Darling! what a priceless humbug old Lubin
+      is!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Oh, sweet old thing! I love him. Burge is a flaming fraud if you
+      like.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Did you notice one thing? It struck me as rather curious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. What?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Lubin and your father have both survived the war. But their sons
+      were killed in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY [<i>sobered</i>] Yes. Jim's death killed mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. And they never said a word about it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Well, why should they? The subject didn't come up. <i>I</i> forgot
+      about it too; and I was very fond of Jim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. <i>I</i> didn't forget it, because I'm of military age; and if I
+      hadnt been a parson I'd have had to go out and be killed too. To me the
+      awful thing about their political incompetence was that they had to kill
+      their own sons. It was the war casualty lists and the starvation
+      afterwards that finished me up with politics and the Church and everything
+      else except you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Oh, I was just as bad as any of them. I sold flags in the streets
+      in my best clothes; and&mdash;hsh! [<i>she jumps up and pretends to be
+      looking for a book on the shelves behind the settee</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Franklyn and Conrad return, looking weary and glum.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Well, thats how the gospel of the brothers Barnabas is going to be
+      received! [<i>He drops into Burge's chair</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN [<i>going back to his seat at the table</i>] It's no use. Were
+      you convinced, Mr Haslam?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. About our being able to live three hundred years? Frankly no.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>to Savvy</i>] Nor you, I suppose?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Oh, I don't know. I thought I was for a moment. I can believe, in a
+      sort of way, that people might live for three hundred years. But when you
+      came down to tin tacks, and said that the parlor maid might, then I saw
+      how absurd it was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Just so. We had better hold our tongues about it, Con. We should
+      only be laughed at, and lose the little credit we earned on false
+      pretences in the days of our ignorance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. I daresay. But Creative Evolution doesnt stop while people are
+      laughing. Laughing may even lubricate its job.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. What does that mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. It means that the first man to live three hundred years maynt have
+      the slightest notion that he is going to do it, and may be the loudest
+      laugher of the lot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Or the first woman?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>assenting</i>] Or the first woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Well, it wont be one of us, anyhow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. How do you know?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>This is unanswerable. None of them have anything more to say.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART3" id="link2H_PART3"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART III&mdash;The Thing Happens
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>A summer afternoon in the year 2170 A.D. The official parlor of the
+      President of the British Islands. A board table, long enough for three
+      chairs at each side besides the presidential chair at the head and an
+      ordinary chair at the foot, occupies the breadth of the room. On the
+      table, opposite every chair, a small switchboard with a dial. There is no
+      fireplace. The end wall is a silvery screen nearly as large as a pair of
+      folding doors. The door is on your left as you face the screen; and there
+      is a row of thick pegs, padded and covered with velvet, beside it. </i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A stoutish middle-aged man, good-looking and breezily genial, dressed in a
+      silk smock, stockings, handsomely ornamented sandals, and a gold fillet
+      round his brows, comes in. He is like Joyce Burge, yet also like Lubin, as
+      if Nature had made a composite photograph of the two men. He takes off the
+      fillet and hangs it on a peg; then sits down in the presidential chair at
+      the head of the table, which is at the end farthest from the door. He puts
+      a peg into his switchboard; turns the pointer on the dial; puts another
+      peg in; and presses a button. Immediately the silvery screen vanishes; and
+      in its place appears, in reverse from right to left, another office
+      similarly furnished, with a thin, unamiable man similarly dressed, but in
+      duller colors, turning over some documents at the table. His gold fillet
+      is hanging up on a similar peg beside the door. He is rather like Conrad
+      Barnabas, but younger, and much more commonplace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Hallo, Barnabas!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS [<i>without looking round</i>] What number?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Five double x three two gamma. Burge-Lubin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Barnabas puts a plug in number five; turns his pointer to double x; and
+      another plug in 32; presses a button and looks round at Burge-Lubin, who
+      is now visible to him as well as audible.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS [<i>curtly</i>] Oh! That you, President?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Yes. They told me you wanted me to ring you up. Anything
+      wrong?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS [<i>harsh and querulous</i>] I wish to make a protest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>good-humored and mocking</i>] What! Another protest! Whats
+      wrong now?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. If you only knew all the protests I havnt made, you would be
+      surprised at my patience. It is you who are always treating me with the
+      grossest want of consideration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. What have I done now?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. You have put me down to go to the Record Office today to receive
+      that American fellow, and do the honors of a ridiculous cinema show. That
+      is not the business of the Accountant General: it is the business of the
+      President. It is an outrageous waste of my time, and an unjustifiable
+      shirking of your duty at my expense. I refuse to go. You must go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. My dear boy, nothing would give me greater pleasure than to
+      take the job off your hands&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Then do it. Thats all I want [<i>he is about to switch off</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Dont switch off. Listen. This American has invented a method
+      of breathing under water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. What do I care? I don't want to breathe under water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. You may, my dear Barnabas, at any time. You know you never
+      look where you are going when you are immersed in your calculations. Some
+      day you will walk into the Serpentine. This man's invention may save your
+      life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS [<i>angrily</i>] Will you tell me what that has to do with your
+      putting your ceremonial duties on to my shoulders? I will not be trifled [<i>he
+      vanishes and is replaced by the blank screen</i>]&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>indignantly holding down his button</i>] Dont cut us off,
+      please: we have not finished. I am the President, speaking to the
+      Accountant General. What are you dreaming of?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A WOMAN'S VOICE. Sorry. [<i>The screen shews Barnabas as before</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Since you take it that way, I will go in your place. It's a
+      pity, because, you see, this American thinks you are the greatest living
+      authority on the duration of human life; and&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS [<i>interrupting</i>] The American thinks! What do you mean? I am
+      the greatest living authority on the duration of human life. Who dares
+      dispute it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Nobody, dear lad, nobody. Dont fly out at me. It is evident
+      that you have not read the American's book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Dont tell me that you have, or that you have read any book
+      except a novel for the last twenty years; for I wont believe you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Quite right, dear old fellow: I havnt read it. But I have
+      read what The Times Literary Supplement says about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. I don't care two straws what it says about it. Does it say
+      anything about me?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Oh, does it? What?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. It points out that an extraordinary number of first-rate
+      persons like you and me have died by drowning during the last two
+      centuries, and that when this invention of breathing under water takes
+      effect, your estimate of the average duration of human life will be upset.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS [<i>alarmed</i>] Upset my estimate! Gracious Heavens! Does the
+      fool realize what that means? Do you realize what that means?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. I suppose it means that we shall have to amend the Act.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Amend my Act! Monstrous!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. But we must. We cant ask people to go on working until they
+      are forty-three unless our figures are unchallengeable. You know what a
+      row there was over those last three years, and how nearly the
+      too-old-at-forty people won.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. They would have made the British Islands bankrupt if theyd won.
+      But you dont care for that; you care for nothing but being popular.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Oh, well: I shouldn't worry if I were you; for most people
+      complain that there is not enough work for them, and would be only too
+      glad to stick on instead of retiring at forty-three, if only they were
+      asked as a favor instead of having to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Thank you: I need no consolation. [<i>He rises determinedly and
+      puts on his fillet</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Are you off? Where are you going to?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. To that cinema tomfoolery, of course. I shall put this American
+      impostor in his place. [<i>He goes out</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>calling after him</i>] God bless you, dear old chap! [<i>With
+      a chuckle, he switches off; and the screen becomes blank. He presses a
+      button and holds it down while he calls</i>] Hallo!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A WOMAN'S VOICE. Hallo!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>formally</i>] The President respectfully solicits the
+      privilege of an interview with the Chief Secretary, and holds himself
+      entirely at his honor's august disposal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A CHINESE VOICE. He is coming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Oh! That you, Confucius? So good of you. Come along [<i>he
+      releases the button</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>A man in a yellow gown, presenting the general appearance of a Chinese
+      sage, enters.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>jocularly</i>] Well, illustrious Sage-&amp;-Onions, how
+      are your poor sore feet?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS [<i>gravely</i>] I thank you for your kind inquiries. I am well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Thats right. Sit down and make yourself comfortable. Any
+      business for me today?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS [<i>sitting down on the first chair round the corner of the
+      table to the President's right</i>] None.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Have you heard the result of the bye-election?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. A walk-over. Only one candidate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Any good?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. He was released from the County Lunatic Asylum a fortnight ago.
+      Not mad enough for the lethal chamber: not sane enough for any place but
+      the division lobby. A very popular speaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. I wish the people would take a serious interest in politics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. I do not agree. The Englishman is not fitted by nature to
+      understand politics. Ever since the public services have been manned by
+      Chinese, the country has been well and honestly governed. What more is
+      needed?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. What I cant make out is that China is one of the worst
+      governed countries on earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. No. It was badly governed twenty years ago; but since we
+      forbade any Chinaman to take part in our public services, and imported
+      natives of Scotland for that purpose, we have done well. Your information
+      here is always twenty years out of date.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. People don't seem to be able to govern themselves. I cant
+      understand it. Why should it be so?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Justice is impartiality. Only strangers are impartial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. It ends in the public services being so good that the
+      Government has nothing to do but think.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Were it otherwise, the Government would have too much to do to
+      think.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Is that any excuse for the English people electing a
+      parliament of lunatics?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. The English people always did elect parliaments of lunatics.
+      What does it matter if your permanent officials are honest and competent?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. You do not know the history of this country. What would my
+      ancestors have said to the menagerie of degenerates that is still called
+      the House of Commons? Confucius: you will not believe me; and I do not
+      blame you for it; but England once saved the liberties of the world by
+      inventing parliamentary government, which was her peculiar and supreme
+      glory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. I know the history of your country perfectly well. It proves
+      the exact contrary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. How do you make that out?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. The only power your parliament ever had was the power of
+      withholding supplies from the king.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Precisely. That great Englishman Simon de Montfort&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. He was not an Englishman: he was a Frenchman. He imported
+      parliaments from France.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>surprised</i>] You dont say so!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. The king and his loyal subjects killed Simon for forcing his
+      French parliament on them. The first thing British parliaments always did
+      was to grant supplies to the king for life with enthusiastic expressions
+      of loyalty, lest they should have any real power, and be expected to do
+      something.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Look here, Confucius: you know more history than I do, of
+      course; but democracy&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. An institution peculiar to China. And it was never really a
+      success there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. But the Habeas Corpus Act!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. The English always suspended it when it threatened to be of the
+      slightest use.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Well, trial by jury: you cant deny that we established that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. All cases that were dangerous to the governing classes were
+      tried in the Star Chamber or by Court Martial, except when the prisoner
+      was not tried at all, but executed after calling him names enough to make
+      him unpopular.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Oh, bother! You may be right in these little details; but in
+      the large we have managed to hold our own as a great race. Well, people
+      who could do nothing couldnt have done that, you know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. I did not say you could do nothing. You could fight. You could
+      eat. You could drink. Until the twentieth century you could produce
+      children. You could play games. You could work when you were forced to.
+      But you could not govern yourselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Then how did we get our reputation as the pioneers of
+      liberty?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. By your steadfast refusal to be governed at all. A horse that
+      kicks everyone who tries to harness and guide him may be a pioneer of
+      liberty; but he is not a pioneer of government. In China he would be shot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Stuff! Do you imply that the administration of which I am
+      president is no Government?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. I do. <i>I</i> am the Government.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. You! You!! You fat yellow lump of conceit!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Only an Englishman could be so ignorant of the nature of
+      government as to suppose that a capable statesman cannot be fat, yellow,
+      and conceited. Many Englishmen are slim, red-nosed, and modest. Put them
+      in my place, and within a year you will be back in the anarchy and chaos
+      of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Oh, if you go back to the dark ages, I have nothing more to
+      say. But we did not perish. We extricated ourselves from that chaos. We
+      are now the best governed country in the world. How did we manage that if
+      we are such fools as you pretend?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. You did not do it until the slaughter and ruin produced by your
+      anarchy forced you at last to recognize two inexorable facts. First, that
+      government is absolutely necessary to civilization, and that you could not
+      maintain civilization by merely doing down your neighbor, as you called
+      it, and cutting off the head of your king whenever he happened to be a
+      logical Scot and tried to take his position seriously. Second, that
+      government is an art of which you are congenitally incapable. Accordingly,
+      you imported educated negresses and Chinese to govern you. Since then you
+      have done very well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. So have you, you old humbug. All the same, I don't know how
+      you stand the work you do. You seem to me positively to like public
+      business. Why wont you let me take you down to the coast some week-end and
+      teach you marine golf?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. It does not interest me. I am not a barbarian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. You mean that I am?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. That is evident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. How?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. People like you. They like cheerful goodnatured barbarians.
+      They have elected you President five times in succession. They will elect
+      you five times more. <i>I</i> like you. You are better company than a dog
+      or a horse because you can speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Am I a barbarian because you like me?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Surely. Nobody likes me: I am held in awe. Capable persons are
+      never liked. I am not likeable; but I am indispensable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Oh, cheer up, old man: theres nothing so disagreeable about
+      you as all that. I don't dislike you; and if you think I'm afraid of you,
+      you jolly well don't know Burge-Lubin: thats all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. You are brave: yes. It is a form of stupidity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. You may not be brave: one doesn't expect it from a Chink. But
+      you have the devil's own cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. I have the assured certainty of the man who sees and knows.
+      Your genial bluster, your cheery self-confidence, are pleasant, like the
+      open air. But they are blind: they are vain. I seem to see a great dog wag
+      his tail and bark joyously. But if he leaves my heel he is lost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Thank you for a handsome compliment. I have a big dog; and he
+      is the best fellow I know. If you knew how much uglier you are than a
+      chow, you wouldn't start those comparisons, though. [<i>Rising</i>] Well,
+      if you have nothing for me to do, I am going to leave your heel for the
+      rest of the day and enjoy myself. What would you recommend me to do with
+      myself?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Give yourself up to contemplation; and great thoughts will come
+      to you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Will they? If you think I am going to sit here on a fine day
+      like this with my legs crossed waiting for great thoughts, you exaggerate
+      my taste for them. I prefer marine golf. [<i>Stopping short</i>] Oh, by
+      the way, I forgot something. I have a word or two to say to the Minister
+      of health. [<i>He goes back to his chair</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Her number is&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. I know it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS [<i>rising</i>] I cannot understand her attraction for you. For
+      me a woman who is not yellow does not exist, save as an official. [<i>He
+      goes out</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Burge-Lubin operates his switchboard as before. The screen vanishes:
+      and a dainty room with a bed, a wardrobe, and a dressing-table with a
+      mirror and a switch on it, appears. Seated at it a handsome negress is
+      trying on a brilliant head scarf. Her dressing-gown is thrown back from
+      her shoulders to her chair. She is in corset, knickers, and silk
+      stockings.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>horrified</i>] I beg your pardon a thousand times&mdash;[<i>The
+      startled negress snatches the peg out of her switchboard and vanishes</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEGRESS'S VOICE. Who is it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Me. The President. Burge-Lubin. I had no idea your bedroom
+      switch was in. I beg your pardon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The negress reappears. She has pulled the dressing-gown perfunctorily
+      over her shoulders, and continues her experiments with the scarf, not at
+      all put out, and rather amused by Surge's prudery.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEGRESS. Stupid of me. I was talking to another lady this morning; and
+      I left the peg in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. But I am so sorry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEGRESS [<i>sunnily: still busy with the scarf</i>] Why? It was my
+      fault.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>embarrassed</i>] Well&mdash;er&mdash;But I suppose you
+      were used to it in Africa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEGRESS. Your delicacy is very touching, Mr President. It would be
+      funny if it were not so unpleasant, because, like all white delicacy, it
+      is in the wrong place. How do you think this suits my complexion?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. How can any really vivid color go wrong with a black satin
+      skin? It is our women's wretched pale faces that have to be matched and
+      lighted. Yours is always right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEGRESS. Yes: it is a pity your white beauties have all the same ashy
+      faces, the same colorless drab, the same age. But look at their beautiful
+      noses and little lips! They are physically insipid: they have no beauty:
+      you cannot love them; but how elegant!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Cant you find an official pretext for coming to see me? Isnt
+      it ridiculous that we have never met? It's so tantalizing to see you and
+      talk to you, and to know all the time that you are two hundred miles away,
+      and that I cant touch you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEGRESS. I cannot live on the East Coast: it is hard enough to keep my
+      blood warm here. Besides, my friend, it would not be safe. These distant
+      flirtations are very charming; and they teach self-control.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Damn self-control! I want to hold you in my arms&mdash;to&mdash;[<i>the
+      negress snatches out the peg from the switchboard and vanishes. She is
+      still heard laughing</i>]. Black devil! [<i>He snatches out his peg
+      furiously: her laugh is no longer heard</i>]. Oh, these sex episodes! Why
+      can I not resist them? Disgraceful!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Confucius returns.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. I forgot. There is something for you to do this morning. You
+      have to go to the Record Office to receive the American barbarian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Confucius: once for all, I object to this Chinese habit of
+      describing white men as barbarians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS [<i>standing formally at the end of the table with his hands
+      palm to palm</i>] I make a mental note that you do not wish the Americans
+      to be described as barbarians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Not at all. The Americans are barbarians. But we are not. I
+      suppose the particular barbarian you are speaking of is the American who
+      has invented a means of breathing under water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. He says he has invented such a method. For some reason which is
+      not intelligible in China, Englishmen always believe any statement made by
+      an American inventor, especially one who has never invented anything.
+      Therefore you believe this person and have given him a public reception.
+      Today the Record Office is entertaining him with a display of the
+      cinematographic records of all the eminent Englishmen who have lost their
+      lives by drowning since the cinema was invented. Why not go to see it if
+      you are at a loss for something to do?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. What earthly interest is there in looking at a moving picture
+      of a lot of people merely because they were drowned? If they had had any
+      sense, they would not have been drowned, probably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. That is not so. It has never been noticed before; but the
+      Record Office has just made two remarkable discoveries about the public
+      men and women who have displayed extraordinary ability during the past
+      century. One is that they retained unusual youthfulness up to an advanced
+      age. The other is that they all met their death by drowning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Yes: I know. Can you explain it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. It cannot be explained. It is not reasonable. Therefore I do
+      not believe it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Accountant General rushes in, looking ghastly. He staggers to the
+      middle of the table.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Whats the matter? Are you ill?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS [<i>choking</i>] No. I&mdash;[<i>he collapses into the middle
+      chair</i>]. I must speak to you in private.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Confucius calmly withdraws.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. What on earth is it? Have some oxygen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. I have had some. Go to the Record Office. You will see men
+      fainting there again and again, and being revived with oxygen, as I have
+      been. They have seen with their own eyes as I have.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Seen what?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Seen the Archbishop of York.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Well, why shouldn't they see the Archbishop of York? What are
+      they fainting for? Has he been murdered?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. No: he has been drowned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Good God! Where? When? How? Poor fellow!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Poor fellow! Poor thief! Poor swindler! Poor robber of his
+      country's Exchequer! Poor fellow indeed! Wait til I catch him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. How can you catch him when he is dead? Youre mad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Dead! Who said he was dead?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. You did. Drowned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS [<i>exasperated</i>] Will you listen to me? Was old Archbishop
+      Haslam, the present man's last predecessor but four, drowned or not?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. I don't know. Look him up in the Encyclopedia Britannica.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Yah! Was Archbishop Stickit, who wrote Stickit on the Psalms,
+      drowned or not?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Yes, mercifully. He deserved it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Was President Dickenson drowned? Was General Bullyboy drowned?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Who is denying it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Well, wave had moving pictures of all four put on the screen
+      today for this American; and they and the Archbishop are the same man. Now
+      tell me I am mad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. I do tell you you are mad. Stark raving mad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Am I to believe my own eyes or am I not?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. You can do as you please. All I can tell you is that <i>I</i>
+      don't believe your eyes if they cant see any difference between a live
+      archbishop and two dead ones. [<i>The apparatus rings, he holds the button
+      down</i>]. Yes?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN'S VOICE. The Archbishop of York, to see the President.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS [<i>hoarse with rage</i>] Have him in. I'll talk to the
+      scoundrel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>releasing the button</i>] Not while you are in this state.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS [<i>reaching furiously for his button and holding it down</i>]
+      Send the Archbishop in at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. If you lose your temper, Barnabas, remember that we shall be
+      two to one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Archbishop enters. He has a white band round his throat, set in a
+      black stock. He wears a sort of kilt of black ribbons, and soft black
+      boots that button high up on his calves. His costume does not differ
+      otherwise from that of the President and the Accountant General; but its
+      color scheme is black and white. He is older than the Reverend Bill Haslam
+      was when he wooed Miss Savvy Barnabas; but he is recognizably the same
+      man. He does not look a day over fifty, and is very well preserved even at
+      that; but his boyishness of manner is quite gone: he now has complete
+      authority and self-possession: in fact the President is a little afraid of
+      him; and it seems quite natural and inevitable that he should speak fast.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Good day, Mr President.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Good day, Mr Archbishop. Be seated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP [<i>sitting down between them</i>] Good day, Mr Accountant
+      General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS [<i>malevolently</i>] Good day to you. I have a question to put
+      to you, if you don't mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP [<i>looking curiously at him, jarred by his uncivil tone</i>]
+      Certainly. What is it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. What is your definition of a thief?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Rather an old-fashioned word, is it not?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. It survives officially in my department.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Our departments are full of survivals. Look at my tie! my
+      apron! my boots! They are all mere survivals; yet it seems that without
+      them I cannot be a proper Archbishop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Indeed! Well, in my department the word thief survives, because
+      in the community the thing thief survives. And a very despicable and
+      dishonorable thing he is, too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP [<i>coolly</i>] I daresay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. In my department, sir, a thief is a person who lives longer than
+      the statutory expectation of life entitles him to, and goes on drawing
+      public money when, if he were an honest man, he would be dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Then let me say, sir, that your department does not
+      understand its own business. If you have miscalculated the duration of
+      human life, that is not the fault of the persons whose longevity you have
+      miscalculated. And if they continue to work and produce, they pay their
+      way, even if they live two or three centuries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. I know nothing about their working and producing. That is not
+      the business of my department. I am concerned with their expectation of
+      life; and I say that no man has any right to go on living and drawing
+      money when he ought to be dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. You do not comprehend the relation between income and
+      production.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. I understand my own department.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. That is not enough. Your department is part of a synthesis
+      which embraces all the departments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Synthesis! This is an intellectual difficulty. This is a job
+      for Confucius. I heard him use that very word the other day; and I
+      wondered what the devil he meant. [<i>Switching on</i>] Hallo! Put me
+      through to the Chief Secretary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS'S VOICE. You are speaking to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. An intellectual difficulty, old man. Something we don't
+      understand. Come and help us out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. May I ask how the question has arisen?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Ah! You begin to smell a rat, do you? You thought yourself
+      pretty safe. You&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Steady, Barnabas. Dont be in a hurry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Confucius enters.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP [<i>rising</i>] Good morning, Mr Chief Secretary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>rising in instinctive imitation of the Archbishop</i>]
+      Honor us by taking a seat, O sage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Ceremony is needless. [<i>He bows to the company, and takes the
+      chair at the foot of the table</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The President and the Archbishop resume their seats.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. We wish to put a case to you, Confucius. Suppose a man,
+      instead of conforming to the official estimate of his expectation of life,
+      were to live for more than two centuries and a half, would the Accountant
+      General be justified in calling him a thief?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. No. He would be justified in calling him a liar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. I think not, Mr Chief Secretary. What do you suppose my
+      age is?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Fifty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. You don't look it. Forty-five; and young for your age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. My age is two hundred and eighty-three.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS [<i>morosely triumphant</i>] Hmp! Mad, am I?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Youre both mad. Excuse me, Archbishop; but this is getting a
+      bit&mdash;well&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP [<i>to Confucius</i>] Mr Chief Secretary: will you, to
+      oblige me, assume that I have lived nearly three centuries? As a
+      hypothesis?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. What is a hypothesis?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. It does not matter. I understand. [To <i>the Archbishop</i>] Am
+      I to assume that you have lived in your ancestors, or by metempsychosis&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Met&mdash;Emp&mdash;Sy&mdash;Good Lord! What a brain,
+      Confucius! What a brain!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Nothing of that kind. Assume in the ordinary sense that I
+      was born in the year 1887, and that I have worked continuously in one
+      profession or another since the year 1910. Am I a thief?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. I do not know. Was that one of your professions?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. No. I have been nothing worse than an Archbishop, a
+      President, and a General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Has he or has he not robbed the Exchequer by drawing five or six
+      incomes when he was only entitled to one? Answer me that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Certainly not. The hypothesis is that he has worked
+      continuously since 1910. We are now in the year 2170. What is the official
+      lifetime?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Seventy-eight. Of course it's an average; and we don't mind a
+      man here and there going on to ninety, or even, as a curiosity, becoming a
+      centenarian. But I say that a man who goes beyond that is a swindler.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Seventy-eight into two hundred and eighty-three goes more than
+      three and a half times. Your department owes the Archbishop two and a half
+      educations and three and a half retiring pensions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Stuff! How can that be?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. At what age do your people begin to work for the community?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Three. They do certain things every day when they are three.
+      Just to break them in, you know. But they become self-supporting, or
+      nearly so, at thirteen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. And at what age do they retire?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Forty-three.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. That is, they do thirty years' work; and they receive
+      maintenance and education, without working, for thirteen years of
+      childhood and thirty-five years of superannuation, forty-eight years in
+      all, for each thirty years' work. The Archbishop has given you 260 years'
+      work, and has received only one education and no superannuation. You
+      therefore owe him over 300 years of leisure and nearly eight educations.
+      You are thus heavily in his debt. In other words, he has effected an
+      enormous national economy by living so long; and you, by living only
+      seventy-eight years, are profiting at his expense. He is the benefactor:
+      you are the thief. [<i>Half rising</i>] May I now withdraw and return to
+      my serious business, as my own span is comparatively short?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Dont be in a hurry, old chap. [<i>Confucius sits down again</i>].
+      This hypothecary, or whatever you call it, is put up seriously. I don't
+      believe it; but if the Archbishop and the Accountant General are going to
+      insist that it's true, we shall have either to lock them up or to see the
+      thing through.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. It's no use trying these Chinese subtleties on me. I'm a plain
+      man; and though I don't understand metaphysics, and don't believe in them,
+      I understand figures; and if the Archbishop is only entitled to
+      seventy-eight years, and he takes 283, I say he takes more than he is
+      entitled to. Get over that if you can.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. I have not taken 283 years: I have taken 23 and given 260.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Do your accounts shew a deficiency or a surplus?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. A surplus. Thats what I cant make out. Thats the artfulness of
+      these people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. That settles it. Whats the use of arguing? The Chink says you
+      are wrong; and theres an end of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. I say nothing against the Chink's arguments. But what about my
+      facts?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. If your facts include a case of a man living 283 years, I
+      advise you to take a few weeks at the seaside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Let there be an end of this hinting that I am out of my mind.
+      Come and look at the cinema record. I tell you this man is Archbishop
+      Haslam, Archbishop Stickit, President Dickenson, General Bullyboy and
+      himself into the bargain; all five of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. I do not deny it. I never have denied it. Nobody has ever
+      asked me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. But damn it, man&mdash;I beg your pardon, Archbishop; but
+      really, really&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Dont mention it. What were you going to say?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Well, you were drowned four times over. You are not a cat,
+      you know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. That is very easy to understand. Consider my situation
+      when I first made the amazing discovery that I was destined to live three
+      hundred years! I&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS [<i>interrupting him</i>] Pardon me. Such a discovery was
+      impossible. You have not made it yet. You may live a million years if you
+      have already lived two hundred. There is no question of three hundred
+      years. You have made a slip at the very beginning of your fairy tale, Mr
+      Archbishop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Good, Confucius! [<i>To the Archbishop</i>] He has you there.
+      I don't see how you can get over that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Yes: it is quite a good point. But if the Accountant
+      General will go to the British Museum library, and search the catalogue,
+      he will find under his own name a curious and now forgotten book, dated
+      1924, entitled The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas. That gospel was that
+      men must live three hundred years if civilization is to be saved. It
+      shewed that this extension of individual human life was possible, and how
+      it was likely to come about. I married the daughter of one of the
+      brothers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Do you mean to say you claim to be a connection of mine?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. I claim nothing. As I have by this time perhaps three or
+      four million cousins of one degree or another, I have ceased to call on
+      the family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Gracious heavens! Four million relatives! Is that calculation
+      correct, Confucius?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. In China it might be forty millions if there were no checks on
+      population.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. This is a staggerer. It brings home to one&mdash;but [<i>recovering</i>]
+      it isnt true, you know. Let us keep sane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS [<i>to the Archbishop</i>] You wish us to understand that the
+      illustrious ancestors of the Accountant General communicated to you a
+      secret by which you could attain the age of three hundred years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. No. Nothing of the kind. They simply believed that mankind
+      could live any length of time it knew to be absolutely necessary to save
+      civilization from extinction. I did not share their belief: at least I was
+      not conscious of sharing it: I thought I was only amused by it. To me my
+      father-in-law and his brother were a pair of clever cranks who had talked
+      one another into a fixed idea which had become a monomania with them. It
+      was not until I got into serious difficulties with the pension authorities
+      after turning seventy that I began to suspect the truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. The truth?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Yes, Mr Chief Secretary: the truth. Like all revolutionary
+      truths, it began as a joke. As I shewed no signs of ageing after
+      forty-five, my wife used to make fun of me by saying that I was certainly
+      going to live three hundred years. She was sixty-eight when she died; and
+      the last thing she said to me, as I sat by her bedside holding her hand,
+      was 'Bill: you really don't look fifty. I wonder&mdash;' She broke off,
+      and fell asleep wondering, and never awoke. Then I began to wonder too.
+      That is the explanation of the three hundred years, Mr Secretary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. It is very ingenious, Mr Archbishop. And very well told.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Of course you understand that <i>I</i> don't for a moment
+      suggest the very faintest doubt of your absolute veracity, Archbishop. You
+      know that, don't you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Quite, Mr President. Only you don't believe me: that is
+      all. I do not expect you to. In your place I should not believe. You had
+      better have a look at the films. [<i>Pointing to the Accountant General</i>]
+      He believes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. But the drowning? What about the drowning? A man might get
+      drowned once, or even twice if he was exceptionally careless. But he
+      couldn't be drowned four times. He would run away from water like a mad
+      dog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Perhaps Mr Chief Secretary can guess the explanation of
+      that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. To keep your secret, you had to die.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. But dash it all, man, he isn't dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. It is socially impossible not to do what everybody else does.
+      One must die at the usual time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Of course. A simple point of honour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Not at all. A simple necessity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Well, I'm hanged if I see it. I should jolly well live for
+      ever if I could.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. It is not so easy as you think. You, Mr Chief Secretary,
+      have grasped the difficulties of the position. Let me remind you, Mr
+      President, that I was over eighty before the 1969 Act for the
+      Redistribution of Income entitled me to a handsome retiring pension. Owing
+      to my youthful appearance I was prosecuted for attempting to obtain public
+      money on false pretences when I claimed it. I could prove nothing; for the
+      register of my birth had been blown to pieces by a bomb dropped on a
+      village church years before in the first of the big modern wars. I was
+      ordered back to work as a man of forty, and had to work for fifteen years
+      more, the retiring age being then fifty-five.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. As late as fifty-five! How did people stand it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. They made difficulties about letting me go even then, I
+      still looked so young. For some years I was in continual trouble. The
+      industrial police rounded me up again and again, refusing to believe that
+      I was over age. They began to call me The Wandering Jew. You see how
+      impossible my position was. I foresaw that in twenty years more my
+      official record would prove me to be seventy-five; my appearance would
+      make it impossible to believe that I was more than forty-five; and my real
+      age would be one hundred and seventeen. What was I to do? Bleach my hair?
+      Hobble about on two sticks? Mimic the voice of a centenarian? Better have
+      killed myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. You ought to have killed yourself. As an honest man you were
+      entitled to no more than an honest man's expectation of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. I did kill myself. It was quite easy. I left a suit of
+      clothes by the seashore during the bathing season, with documents in the
+      pockets to identify me. I then turned up in a strange place, pretending
+      that I had lost my memory, and did not know my name or my age or anything
+      about myself. Under treatment I recovered my health, but not my memory. I
+      have had several careers since I began this routine of life and death. I
+      have been an archbishop three times. When I persuaded the authorities to
+      knock down all our towns and rebuild them from the foundations, or move
+      them, I went into the artillery, and became a general. I have been
+      President.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Dickenson?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. But they found Dickenson's body: its ashes are buried in St
+      Paul's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. They almost always found the body. During the bathing
+      season there are plenty of bodies. I have been cremated again and again.
+      At first I used to attend my own funeral in disguise, because I had read
+      about a man doing that in an old romance by an author named Bennett, from
+      whom I remember borrowing five pounds in 1912. But I got tired of that. I
+      would not cross the street now to read my latest epitaph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Chief Secretary and the President look very glum. Their incredulity
+      is vanquished at last.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Look here. Do you chaps realize how awful this is? Here we
+      are sitting calmly in the presence of a man whose death is overdue by two
+      centuries. He may crumble into dust before our eyes at any moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Not he. He'll go on drawing his pension until the end of the
+      world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Not quite that. My expectation of life is only three
+      hundred years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. You will last out my time anyhow: that's enough for me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP [<i>coolly</i>] How do you know?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS [<i>taken aback</i>] How do I know!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Yes: how do you know? I did not begin even to suspect
+      until I was nearly seventy. I was only vain of my youthful appearance. I
+      was not quite serious about it until I was ninety. Even now I am not sure
+      from one moment to another, though I have given you my reason for thinking
+      that I have quite unintentionally committed myself to a lifetime of three
+      hundred years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. But how do you do it? Is it lemons? Is it Soya beans? Is it&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. I do not do it. It happens. It may happen to anyone. It
+      may happen to you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>the full significance of this for himself dawning on him</i>]
+      Then we three may be in the same boat with you, for all we know?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. You may. Therefore I advise you to be very careful how you
+      take any step that will make my position uncomfortable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Well, I'm dashed! One of my secretaries was remarking only
+      this morning how well and young I am looking. Barnabas: I have an absolute
+      conviction that I am one of the&mdash;the&mdash;shall I say one of the
+      victims?&mdash;of this strange destiny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Your great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather
+      formed the same conviction when he was between sixty and seventy. I knew
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>depressed</i>] Ah! But he died.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. No.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>hopefully</i>] Do you mean to say he is still alive?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. No. He was shot. Under the influence of his belief that he
+      was going to live three hundred years he became a changed man. He began to
+      tell people the truth; and they disliked it so much that they took
+      advantage of certain clauses of an Act of Parliament he had himself passed
+      during the Four Years War, and had purposely forgotten to repeal
+      afterwards. They took him to the Tower of London and shot him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The apparatus rings.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS [<i>answering</i>] Yes? [<i>He listens</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A WOMAN'S VOICE. The Domestic Minister has called.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>not quite catching the answer</i>] Who does she say has
+      called?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. The Domestic Minister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Oh, dash it! That awful woman!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. She certainly is a bit of a terror. I don't exactly know why;
+      for she is not at all bad-looking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS [<i>out of patience</i>] For Heaven's sake, don't be frivolous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. He cannot help it, Mr Accountant General. Three of his
+      sixteen great-great-great-grandfathers married Lubins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Tut tut! I am not frivolling. <i>I</i> did not ask the lady
+      here. Which of you did?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. It is her official duty to report personally to the President
+      once a quarter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Oh, that. Then I suppose it's my official duty to receive
+      her. Theyd better send her in. You don't mind, do you? She will bring us
+      back to real life. I don't know how you fellows feel; but I'm just going
+      dotty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS [<i>into the telephone</i>] The President will receive the
+      Domestic Minister at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>They watch the door in silence for the entrance of the Domestic
+      Minister.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>suddenly, to the Archbishop</i>] I suppose you have been
+      married over and over again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Once. You do not make vows until death when death is three
+      hundred years off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>They relapse into uneasy silence. The Domestic Minister enters. She is
+      a handsome woman, apparently in the prime of life, with elegant, tense,
+      well held-up figure, and the walk of a goddess. Her expression and
+      deportment are grave, swift, decisive, awful, unanswerable. She wears a
+      Dianesque tunic instead of a blouse, and a silver coronet instead of a
+      gold fillet. Her dress otherwise is not markedly different from that of
+      the men, who rise as she enters, and incline their heads with instinctive
+      awe. She comes to the vacant chair between Barnabas and Confucius.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>resolutely genial and gallant</i>] Delighted to see you,
+      Mrs Lutestring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. We are honored by your celestial presence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Good day, madam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. I have not had the pleasure of meeting you before. I am
+      the Archbishop of York.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. Surely we have met, Mr Archbishop. I remember your face.
+      We&mdash;[<i>she checks herself suddenly</i>] Ah, no: I remember now: it
+      was someone else. [<i>She sits down</i>]. They all sit down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP [<i>also puzzled</i>] Are you sure you are mistaken? I also
+      have some association with your face, Mrs Lutestring. Something like a
+      door opening continually and revealing you. And a smile of welcome when
+      you recognized me. Did you ever open a door for me, I wonder?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. I often opened a door for the person you have just
+      reminded me of. But he has been dead many years. The rest, except the
+      Archbishop, look at one another quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. May I ask how many years?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING [<i>struck by his tone, looks at him for a moment with some
+      displeasure; then replies</i>] It does not matter. A long time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. You mustnt rush to conclusions about the Archbishop, Mrs
+      Lutestring. He is an older bird than you think. Older than you, at all
+      events.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING [<i>with a melancholy smile</i>] I think not, Mr President.
+      But the subject is a delicate one. I had rather not pursue it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. There is a question which has not been asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING [<i>very decisively</i>] If it is a question about my age,
+      Mr Chief Secretary, it had better not be asked. All that concerns you
+      about my personal affairs can be found in the books of the Accountant
+      General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. The question I was thinking of will not be addressed to you.
+      But let me say that your sensitiveness on the point is very strange,
+      coming from a woman so superior to all common weaknesses as we know you to
+      be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. I may have reasons which have nothing to do with common
+      weaknesses, Mr Chief Secretary. I hope you will respect them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS [<i>after bowing to her in assent</i>] I will now put my
+      question. Have you, Mr Archbishop, any ground for assuming, as you seem to
+      do, that what has happened to you has not happened to other people as
+      well?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Yes, by George! I never thought of that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. I have never met any case but my own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. How do you know?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Well, no one has ever told me that they were in this
+      extraordinary position.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. That proves nothing. Did you ever tell anybody that you were in
+      it? You never told us. Why did you never tell us?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. I am surprised at the question, coming from so astute a
+      mind as yours, Mr Secretary. When you reach the age I reached before I
+      discovered what was happening to me, I was old enough to know and fear the
+      ferocious hatred with which human animals, like all other animals, turn
+      upon any unhappy individual who has the misfortune to be unlike themselves
+      in every respect: to be unnatural, as they call it. You will still find,
+      among the tales of that twentieth-century classic, Wells, a story of a
+      race of men who grew twice as big as their fellows, and another story of a
+      man who fell into the hands of a race of blind men. The big people had to
+      fight the little people for their lives; and the man with eyes would have
+      had his eyes put out by the blind had he not fled to the desert, where he
+      perished miserably. Wells's teaching, on that and other matters, was not
+      lost on me. By the way, he lent me five pounds once which I never repaid;
+      and it still troubles my conscience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. And were you the only reader of Wells? If there were others
+      like you, had they not the same reason for keeping the secret?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. That is true. But I should know. You short-lived people
+      are so childish. If I met a man of my own age I should recognize him at
+      once. I have never done so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. Would you recognize a woman of your age, do you think?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. I&mdash;[<i>He stops and turns upon her with a searching
+      look, startled by the suggestion and the suspicion it rouses</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. What is your age, Mr Archbishop?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Two hundred and eighty-three, he says. That is his little
+      joke. Do you know, Mrs Lutestring, he had almost talked us into believing
+      him when you came in and cleared the air with your robust common sense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. Do you really feel that, Mr President? I hear the note of
+      breezy assertion in your voice. I miss the note of conviction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>jumping up</i>] Look here. Let us stop talking damned
+      nonsense. I don't wish to be disagreeable; but it's getting on my nerves.
+      The best joke won't bear being pushed beyond a certain point. That point
+      has been reached. I&mdash;I'm rather busy this morning. We all have our
+      hands pretty full. Confucius here will tell you that I have a heavy day
+      before me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Have you anything more important than this thing, if it's true?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Oh, if if, if it's true! But it isn't true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Have you anything at all to do?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Anything to do! Have you forgotten, Barnabas, that I happen
+      to be President, and that the weight of the entire public business of this
+      country is on my shoulders?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Has he anything to do, Confucius?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. He has to be President.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. That means that he has nothing to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>sulkily</i>] Very well, Barnabas. Go on making a fool of
+      yourself. [<i>He sits down</i>]. Go on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. I am not going to leave this room until we get to the bottom of
+      this swindle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING [<i>turning with deadly gravity on the Accountant General</i>]
+      This what, did you say?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. These expressions cannot be sustained. You obscure the
+      discussion in using them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS [<i>glad to escape from her gaze by addressing Confucius</i>]
+      Well, this unnatural horror. Will that satisfy you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. That is in order. But we do not commit ourselves to the
+      implications of the word horror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. By the word horror the Accountant General means only
+      something unusual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. I notice that the honorable Domestic Minister, on learning the
+      advanced age of the venerable prelate, shews no sign of surprise or
+      incredulity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. She doesn't take it seriously. Who would? Eh, Mrs Lutestring?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. I take it very seriously indeed, Mr President. I see now
+      that I was not mistaken at first. I have met the Archbishop before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. I felt sure of it. This vision of a door opening to me,
+      and a woman's face welcoming me, must be a reminiscence of something that
+      really happened; though I see it now as an angel opening the gate of
+      heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. Or a parlor maid opening the door of the house of the
+      young woman you were in love with?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP [<i>making a wry face</i>] Is that the reality? How these
+      things grow in our imagination! But may I say, Mrs Lutestring, that the
+      transfiguration of a parlor maid to an angel is not more amazing than her
+      transfiguration to the very dignified and able Domestic Minister I am
+      addressing. I recognize the angel in you. Frankly, I do not recognize the
+      parlor maid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Whats a parlor maid?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. An extinct species. A woman in a black dress and white
+      apron, who opened the house door when people knocked or rang, and was
+      either your tyrant or your slave. I was a parlor maid in the house of one
+      of the Accountant General's remote ancestors. [<i>To Confucius</i>] You
+      asked me my age, Mr Chief Secretary, I am two hundred and seventy-four.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>gallantly</i>] You don't look it. You really don't look
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING [<i>turning her face gravely towards him</i>] Look again,
+      Mr President.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>looking at her bravely until the smile fades from his
+      face, and he suddenly covers his eyes with his hands</i>] Yes: you do look
+      it. I am convinced. It's true. Now call up the Lunatic Asylum, Confucius;
+      and tell them to send an ambulance for me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING [<i>to the Archbishop</i>] Why have you given away your
+      secret? our secret?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. They found it out. The cinema records betrayed me. But I
+      never dreamt that there were others. Did you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. I knew one other. She was a cook. She grew tired, and
+      killed herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Dear me! However, her death simplifies the situation, as I
+      have been able to convince these gentlemen that the matter had better go
+      no further.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. What! When the President knows! It will be all over the
+      place before the end of the week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>injured</i>] Really, Mrs Lutestring! You speak as if I
+      were a notoriously indiscreet person. Barnabas: have I such a reputation?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS [<i>resignedly</i>] It cant be helped. It's constitutional.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. It is utterly unconstitutional. But, as you say, it cannot be
+      helped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>solemnly</i>] I deny that a secret of State has ever
+      passed my lips&mdash;except perhaps to the Minister of Health, who is
+      discretion personified. People think, because she is a negress&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. It does not matter much now. Once, it would have mattered
+      a great deal. But my children are all dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Yes: the children must have been a terrible difficulty.
+      Fortunately for me, I had none.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. There was one daughter who was the child of my very heart.
+      Some years after my first drowning I learnt that she had lost her sight. I
+      went to her. She was an old woman of ninety-six, blind. She asked me to
+      sit and talk with her because my voice was like the voice of her dead
+      mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. The complications must be frightful. Really I hardly know
+      whether I do want to live much longer than other people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. You can always kill yourself, as cook did; but that was
+      influenza. Long life is complicated, and even terrible; but it is glorious
+      all the same. I would no more change places with an ordinary woman than
+      with a mayfly that lives only an hour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. What set you thinking of it first?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. Conrad Barnabas's book. Your wife told me it was more
+      wonderful than Napoleon's Book of Fate and Old Moore's Almanac, which cook
+      and I used to read. I was very ignorant: it did not seem so impossible to
+      me as to an educated woman. Yet I forgot all about it, and married and
+      drudged as a poor man's wife, and brought up children, and looked twenty
+      years older than I really was, until one day, long after my husband died
+      and my children were out in the world working for themselves, I noticed
+      that I looked twenty years younger than I really was. The truth came to me
+      in a flash.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. An amazing moment. Your feelings must have been beyond
+      description. What was your first thought?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. Pure terror. I saw that the little money I had laid up
+      would not last, and that I must go out and: work again. They had things
+      called Old Age Pensions then: miserable pittances for worn-out old
+      laborers to die on. I thought I should be found out if I went on drawing
+      it too long. The horror of facing another lifetime of drudgery, of missing
+      my hard-earned rest and losing my poor little savings, drove everything
+      else out of my mind. You people nowadays can have no conception of the
+      dread of poverty that hung over us then, or of the utter tiredness of
+      forty years' unending overwork and striving to make a shilling do the work
+      of a pound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. I wonder you did not kill yourself. I often wonder why the
+      poor in those evil old times did not kill themselves. They did not even
+      kill other people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. You never kill yourself, because you always may as well
+      wait until tomorrow. And you have not energy or conviction enough to kill
+      the others. Besides, how can you blame them when you would do as they do
+      if you were in their place?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Devilish poor consolation, that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. There were other consolations in those days for people
+      like me. We drank preparations of alcohol to relieve the strain of living
+      and give us an artificial happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN {[[<i>all together,</i>]} Alcohol!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS {[<i>making</i>] } Pfff...!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS {[<i>wry faces</i>]] } Disgusting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. A little alcohol would improve your temper and manners,
+      and make you much easier to live with, Mr Accountant General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>laughing</i>] By George, I believe you! Try it, Barnabas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. No. Try tea. It is the more civilized poison of the two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. You, Mr President, were born intoxicated with your own
+      well-fed natural exuberance. You cannot imagine what alcohol was to an
+      underfed poor woman. I had carefully arranged my little savings so that I
+      could get drunk, as we called it, once a week; and my only pleasure was
+      looking forward to that poor little debauch. That is what saved me from
+      suicide. I could not bear to miss my next carouse. But when I stopped
+      working, and lived on my pension, the fatigue of my life's drudgery began
+      to wear off, because, you see, I was not really old. I recuperated. I
+      looked younger and younger. And at last I was rested enough to have
+      courage and strength to begin life again. Besides, political changes were
+      making it easier: life was a little better worth living for the
+      nine-tenths of the people who used to be mere drudges. After that, I never
+      turned back or faltered. My only regret now is that I shall die when I am
+      three hundred or thereabouts. There was only one thing that made life
+      hard; and that is gone now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. May we ask what that was?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. Perhaps you will be offended if I tell you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Offended! My dear lady, do you suppose, after such a
+      stupendous revelation, that anything short of a blow from a sledge-hammer
+      could produce the smallest impression on any of us?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. Well, you see, it has been so hard on me never to meet a
+      grown-up person. You are all such children. And I never was very fond of
+      children, except that one girl who woke up the mother passion in me. I
+      have been very lonely sometimes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>again gallant</i>] But surely, Mrs Lutestring, that has
+      been your own fault. If I may say so, a lady of your attractions need
+      never have been lonely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. Why?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Why! Well&mdash;. Well, er&mdash;. Well, er er&mdash;. Well!
+      [<i>he gives it up</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. He means that you might have married. Curious, how little
+      they understand our position.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. I did marry. I married again on my hundred and first
+      birthday. But of course I had to marry an elderly man: a man over sixty.
+      He was a great painter. On his deathbed he said to me 'It has taken me
+      fifty years to learn my trade, and to paint all the foolish pictures a man
+      must paint and get rid of before he comes through them to the great things
+      he ought to paint. And now that my foot is at last on the threshold of the
+      temple I find that it is also the threshold of my tomb.' That man would
+      have been the greatest painter of all time if he could have lived as long
+      as I. I saw him die of old age whilst he was still, as he said himself, a
+      gentleman amateur, like all modern painters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. But why had you to marry an elderly man? Why not marry a
+      young one? or shall I say a middle-aged one? If my own affections were not
+      already engaged; and if, to tell the truth, I were not a little afraid of
+      you&mdash;for you are a very superior woman, as we all acknowledge&mdash;I
+      should esteem myself happy in&mdash;er&mdash;er&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. Mr President: have you ever tried to take advantage of the
+      innocence of a little child for the gratification of your senses?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Good Heavens, madam, what do you take me for? What right have
+      you to ask me such a question?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. I am at present in my two hundred and seventy-fifth year.
+      You suggest that I should take advantage of the innocence of a child of
+      thirty, and marry it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Can you shortlived people not understand that as the
+      confusion and immaturity and primitive animalism in which we live for the
+      first hundred years of our life is worse in this matter of sex than in any
+      other, you are intolerable to us in that relation?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Do you mean to say, Mrs Lutestring, that you regard me as a
+      child?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. Do you expect me to regard you as a completed soul? Oh,
+      you may well be afraid of me. There are moments when your levity, your
+      ingratitude, your shallow jollity, make my gorge rise so against you that
+      if I could not remind myself that you are a child I should be tempted to
+      doubt your right to live at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Do you grudge us the few years we have? you who have three
+      hundred!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. You accuse me of levity! Must I remind you, madam, that I am
+      the President, and that you are only the head of a department?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Ingratitude too! You draw a pension for three hundred years when
+      we owe you only seventy-eight; and you call us ungrateful!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. I do. When I think of the blessings that have been
+      showered on you, and contrast them with the poverty! the humiliations! the
+      anxieties! the heartbreak! the insolence and tyranny that were the daily
+      lot of mankind when I was learning to suffer instead of learning to live!
+      when I see how lightly you take it all! how you quarrel over the crumpled
+      leaves in your beds of roses! how you are so dainty about your work that
+      unless it is made either interesting or delightful to you you leave it to
+      negresses and Chinamen, I ask myself whether even three hundred years of
+      thought and experience can save you from being superseded by the Power
+      that created you and put you on your trial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. My dear lady: our Chinese and colored friends are perfectly
+      happy. They are twenty times better off here than they would be in China
+      or Liberia. They do their work admirably; and in doing it they set us free
+      for higher employments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP [<i>who has caught the infection of her indignation</i>]
+      What higher employments are you capable of? you that are superannuated at
+      seventy and dead at eighty!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. You are not really doing higher work. You are supposed to
+      make the decisions and give the orders; but the negresses and the Chinese
+      make up your minds for you and tell you what orders to give, just as my
+      brother, who was a sergeant in the Guards, used to prompt his officers in
+      the old days. When I want to get anything done at the Health Ministry I do
+      not come to you: I go to the black lady who has been the real president
+      during your present term of office, or to Confucius, who goes on for ever
+      while presidents come and presidents go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. This is outrageous. This is treason to the white race. And
+      let me tell you, madam, that I have never in my life met the Minister of
+      Health, and that I protest against the vulgar color prejudice which
+      disparages her great ability and her eminent services to the State. My
+      relations with her are purely telephonic, gramophonic, photophonic, and,
+      may I add, platonic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. There is no reason why you should be ashamed of them in
+      any case, Mr President. But let us look at the position impersonally. Can
+      you deny that what is happening is that the English people have become a
+      Joint Stock Company admitting Asiatics and Africans as shareholders?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Nothing like it. I know all about the old joint stock companies.
+      The shareholders did no work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. That is true; but we, like them, get our dividends whether
+      we work or not. We work partly because we know there would be no dividends
+      if we did not, and partly because if we refuse we are regarded as mentally
+      deficient and put into a lethal chamber. But what do we work at? Before
+      the few changes we were forced to make by the revolutions that followed
+      the Four Years War, our governing classes had been so rich, as it was
+      called, that they had become the most intellectually lazy and fat-headed
+      people on the face of the earth. There is a good deal of that fat still
+      clinging to us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. As President, I must not listen to unpatriotic criticisms of
+      our national character, Mr Archbishop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. As Archbishop, Mr President, it is my official duty to
+      criticize the national character unsparingly. At the canonization of Saint
+      Henrik Ibsen, you yourself unveiled the monument to him which bears on its
+      pedestal the noble inscription, 'I came not to call sinners, but the
+      righteous, to repentance.' The proof of what I say is that our routine
+      work, and what may be called our ornamental and figure-head work, is being
+      more and more sought after by the English; whilst the thinking,
+      organizing, calculating, directing work is done by yellow brains, brown
+      brains, and black brains, just as it was done in my early days by Jewish
+      brains, Scottish brains, Italian brains, German brains. The only white men
+      who still do serious work are those who, like the Accountant General, have
+      no capacity for enjoyment, and no social gifts to make them welcome
+      outside their offices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Confound your impudence! I had gifts enough to find you out,
+      anyhow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP [<i>disregarding this outburst</i>] If you were to kill me
+      as I stand here, you would have to appoint an Indian to succeed me. I take
+      precedence today not as an Englishman, but as a man with more than a
+      century and a half of fully adult experience. We are letting all the power
+      slip into the hands of the colored people. In another hundred years we
+      shall be simply their household pets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>reacting buoyantly</i>] Not the least danger of it. I
+      grant you we leave the most troublesome part of the labor of the nation to
+      them. And a good job too: why should we drudge at it? But think of the
+      activities of our leisure! Is there a jollier place on earth to live in
+      than England out of office hours? And to whom do we owe that? To
+      ourselves, not to the niggers. The nigger and the Chink are all right from
+      Tuesday to Friday; but from Friday to Tuesday they are simply nowhere; and
+      the real life of England is from Friday to Tuesday.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. That is terribly true. In devising brainless amusements;
+      in pursuing them with enormous vigor, and taking them with eager
+      seriousness, our English people are the wonder of the world. They always
+      were. And it is just as well; for otherwise their sensuality would become
+      morbid and destroy them. What appals me is that their amusements should
+      amuse them. They are the amusements of boys and girls. They are pardonable
+      up to the age of fifty or sixty: after that they are ridiculous. I tell
+      you, what is wrong with us is that we are a non-adult race; and the Irish
+      and the Scots, and the niggers and Chinks, as you call them, though their
+      lifetime is as short as ours, or shorter, yet do somehow contrive to grow
+      up a little before they die. We die in boyhood: the maturity that should
+      make us the greatest of all the nations lies beyond the grave for us.
+      Either we shall go under as greybeards with golf clubs in our hands, or we
+      must will to live longer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. Yes: that is it. I could not have expressed it in words;
+      but you have expressed it for me. I felt, even when I was an ignorant
+      domestic slave, that we had the possibility of becoming a great nation
+      within us; but our faults and follies drove me to cynical hopelessness. We
+      all ended then like that. It is the highest creatures who take the longest
+      to mature, and are the most helpless during their immaturity. I know now
+      that it took me a whole century to grow up. I began my serious life when I
+      was a hundred and twenty. Asiatics cannot control me: I am not a child in
+      their hands, as you are, Mr President. Neither, I am sure, is the
+      Archbishop. They respect me. You are not grown up enough even for that,
+      though you were kind enough to say that I frighten you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Honestly, you do. And will you think me very rude if I say
+      that if I must choose between a white woman old enough to be my
+      great-grandmother and a black woman of my own age, I shall probably find
+      the black woman more sympathetic?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. And more attractive in color, perhaps?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Yes. Since you ask me, more&mdash;well, not more attractive:
+      I do not deny that you have an excellent appearance&mdash;but I will say,
+      richer. More Venetian. Tropical. 'The shadowed livery of the burnished
+      sun.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. Our women, and their favorite story writers, begin already
+      to talk about men with golden complexions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS [<i>expanding into a smile all across both face and body</i>]
+      A-a-a-a-a-h!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Well, what of it, madam? Have you read a very interesting
+      book by the librarian of the Biological Society suggesting that the future
+      of the world lies with the Mulatto?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING [<i>rising</i>] Mr Archbishop: if the white race is to be
+      saved, our destiny is apparent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Yes: our duty is pretty clear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. Have you time to come home with me and discuss the matter?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP [<i>rising</i>] With pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS [<i>rising also and rushing past Mrs Lutestring to the door,
+      where he turns to bar her way</i>] No you don't. Burge: you understand,
+      don't you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. No. What is it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. These two are going to marry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Why shouldn't they, if they want to?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. They don't want to. They will do it in cold blood because their
+      children will live three hundred years. It mustnt be allowed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. You cannot prevent it. There is no law that gives you power to
+      interfere with them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. If they force me to it I will obtain legislation against
+      marriages above the age of seventy-eight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. There is not time for that before we are married, Mr
+      Accountant General. Be good enough to get out of the lady's way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. There is time to send the lady to the lethal chamber before
+      anything comes of your marriage. Dont forget that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. What nonsense, Mr Accountant General! Good afternoon, Mr
+      President. Good afternoon, Mr Chief Secretary. [<i>They rise and
+      acknowledge her salutation with bows. She walks straight at the Accountant
+      General, who instinctively shrinks out of her way as she leaves the room</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. I am surprised at you, Mr Barnabas. Your tone was like an
+      echo from the Dark Ages. [<i>He follows the Domestic Minister</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Confucius, shaking his head and clucking with his tongue in deprecation
+      of this painful episode, moves to the chair just vacated by the Archbishop
+      and stands behind it with folded palms, looking at the President. The
+      Accountant General shakes his fist after the departed visitors, and bursts
+      into savage abuse of them.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Thieves! Cursed thieves! Vampires! What are you going to do,
+      Burge?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Do?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Yes, do. There must be dozens of these people in existence. Are
+      you going to let them do what the two who have just left us mean to do,
+      and crowd us off the face of the earth?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>sitting down</i>] Oh, come, Barnabas! What harm are they
+      doing? Arnt you interested in them? Dont you like them?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Like them! I hate them. They are monsters, unnatural monsters.
+      They are poison to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. What possible objection can there be to their living as long
+      as they can? It does not shorten our lives, does it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. If I have to die when I am seventy-eight, I don't see why
+      another man should be privileged to live to be two hundred and
+      seventy-eight. It does shorten my life, relatively. It makes us
+      ridiculous. If they grew to be twelve feet high they would make us all
+      dwarfs. They talked to us as if we were children. There is no love lost
+      between us: their hatred of us came out soon enough. You heard what the
+      woman said, and how the Archbishop backed her up?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. But what can we do to them?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Kill them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Nonsense!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Lock them up. Sterilize them somehow, anyhow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. But what reason could we give?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. What reason can you give for killing a snake? Nature tells you
+      to do it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. My dear Barnabas, you are out of your mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Havnt you said that once too often already this morning?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. I don't believe you will carry a single soul with you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. I understand. I know you. You think you are one of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Mr Accountant General: you may be one of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. How dare you accuse me of such a thing? I am an honest man, not
+      a monster. I won my place in public life by demonstrating that the true
+      expectation of human life is seventy-eight point six. And I will resist
+      any attempt to alter or upset it to the last drop of my blood if need be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Oh, tut tut! Come, come! Pull yourself together. How can you,
+      a descendant of the great Conrad Barnabas, the man who is still remembered
+      by his masterly Biography of a Black Beetle, be so absurd?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. You had better go and write the autobiography of a jackass. I am
+      going to raise the country against this horror, and against you, if you
+      shew the slightest sign of weakness about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS [<i>very impressively</i>] You will regret it if you do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. What is to make me regret it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Every mortal man and woman in the community will begin to count
+      on living for three centuries. Things will happen which you do not
+      foresee: terrible things. The family will dissolve: parents and children
+      will be no longer the old and the young: brothers and sisters will meet as
+      strangers after a hundred years separation: the ties of blood will lose
+      their innocence. The imaginations of men, let loose over the possibilities
+      of three centuries of life, will drive them mad and wreck human society.
+      This discovery must be kept a dead secret. [<i>He sits down</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. And if I refuse to keep the secret?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. I shall have you safe in a lunatic asylum the day after you
+      blab.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. You forget that I can produce the Archbishop to prove my
+      statement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. So can I. Which of us do you think he will support when I
+      explain to him that your object in revealing his age is to get him killed?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS [<i>desperate</i>] Burge: are you going to back up this yellow
+      abomination against me? Are we public men and members of the Government?
+      or are we damned blackguards?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS [<i>unmoved</i>] Have you ever known a public man who was not
+      what vituperative people called a damned blackguard when some
+      inconsiderate person wanted to tell the public more than was good for it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Hold your tongue, you insolent heathen. Burge: I spoke to you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Well, you know, my dear Barnabas, Confucius is a very
+      long-headed chap. I see his point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Do you? Then let me tell you that, except officially, I will
+      never speak to you again. Do you hear?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>cheerfully</i>] You will. You will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. And don't you ever dare speak to me again. Do you hear? [<i>He
+      turns to the door</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. I will. I will. Goodbye, Barnabas. God bless you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. May you live forever, and be the laughingstock of the whole
+      world! [<i>he dashes out in a fury</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>laughing indulgently</i>] He will keep the secret all
+      right. I know Barnabas. You neednt worry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS [<i>troubled and grave</i>] There are no secrets except the
+      secrets that keep themselves. Consider. There are those films at the
+      Record Office. We have no power to prevent the Master of the Records from
+      publishing this discovery made in his department. We cannot silence the
+      American&mdash;who can silence an American?&mdash;nor the people who were
+      there today to receive him. Fortunately, a film can prove nothing but a
+      resemblance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Thats very true. After all, the whole thing is confounded
+      nonsense, isnt it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS [<i>raising his head to look at him</i>] You have decided not to
+      believe it now that you realize its inconveniences. That is the English
+      method. It may not work in this case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. English be hanged! It's common sense. You know, those two
+      people got us hypnotized: not a doubt of it. They must have been kidding
+      us. They were, werent they?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. You looked into that woman's face; and you believed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Just so. Thats where she had me. I shouldn't have believed
+      her a bit if she'd turned her back to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS [<i>shakes his head slowly and repeatedly</i>]???
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. You really think&mdash;? [<i>he hesitates</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. The Archbishop has always been a puzzle to me. Ever since I
+      learnt to distinguish between one English face and another I have noticed
+      what the woman pointed out: that the English face is not an adult face,
+      just as the English mind is not an adult mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Stow it, John Chinaman. If ever there was a race divinely
+      appointed to take charge of the non-adult races and guide them and train
+      them and keep them out of mischief until they grow up to be capable of
+      adopting our institutions, that race is the English race. It is the only
+      race in the world that has that characteristic. Now!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. That is the fancy of a child nursing a doll. But it is ten
+      times more childish of you to dispute the highest compliment ever paid
+      you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. You call it a compliment to class us as grown-up children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Not grown-up children, children at fifty, sixty, seventy. Your
+      maturity is so late that you never attain to it. You have to be governed
+      by races which are mature at forty. That means that you are potentially
+      the most highly developed race on earth, and would be actually the
+      greatest if you could live long enough to attain to maturity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>grasping the idea at last</i>] By George, Confucius, youre
+      right! I never thought of that. That explains everything. We are just a
+      lot of schoolboys: theres no denying it. Talk to an Englishman about
+      anything serious, and he listens to you curiously for a moment just as he
+      listens to a chap playing classical music. Then he goes back to his marine
+      golf, or motoring, or flying, or women, just like a bit of stretched
+      elastic when you let it go. [<i>Soaring to the height of his theme</i>]
+      Oh, youre quite right. We are only in our infancy. I ought to be in a
+      perambulator, with a nurse shoving me along. It's true: it's absolutely
+      true. But some day we'll grow up; and then, by Jingo, we'll shew em.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. The Archbishop is an adult. When I was a child I was dominated
+      and intimidated by people whom I now know to have been weaker and sillier
+      than I, because there was some mysterious quality in their mere age that
+      overawed me. I confess that, though I have kept up appearances, I have
+      always been afraid of the Archbishop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Between ourselves, Confucius, so have I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. It is this that convinced me. It was this in the woman's face
+      that convinced you. Their new departure in the history of the race is no
+      fraud. It does not even surprise me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Oh, come! Not surprise you! It's your pose never to be
+      surprised at anything; but if you are not surprised at this you are not
+      human.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. I am staggered, just as a man may be staggered by an explosion
+      for which he has himself laid the charge and lighted the fuse. But I am
+      not surprised, because, as a philosopher and a student of evolutionary
+      biology, I have come to regard some such development as this as
+      inevitable. If I had not thus prepared myself to be credulous, no mere
+      evidence of films and well-told tales would have persuaded me to believe.
+      As it is, I do believe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Well, that being settled, what the devil is to happen next?
+      Whats the next move for us?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. We do not make the next move. The next move will be made by the
+      Archbishop and the woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Their marriage?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. More than that. They have made the momentous discovery that
+      they are not alone in the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. You think there are others?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. There must be many others. Each of them believes that he or she
+      is the only one to whom the miracle has happened. But the Archbishop knows
+      better now. He will advertise in terms which only the longlived people
+      will understand. He will bring them together and organize them. They will
+      hasten from all parts of the earth. They will become a great Power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>a little alarmed</i>] I say, will they? I suppose they
+      will. I wonder is Barnabas right after all? Ought we to allow it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Nothing that we can do will stop it. We cannot in our souls
+      really want to stop it: the vital force that has produced this change
+      would paralyse our opposition to it, if we were mad enough to oppose. But
+      we will not oppose. You and I may be of the elect, too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Yes: thats what gets us every time. What the deuce ought we
+      to do? Something must be done about it, you know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Let us sit still, and meditate in silence on the vistas before
+      us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. By George, I believe youre right. Let us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>They sit meditating, the Chinaman naturally, the President with visible
+      effort and intensity. He is positively glaring into the future when the
+      voice of the Negress is heard.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEGRESS. Mr President.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>joyfully</i>] Yes. [<i>Taking up a peg</i>] Are you at
+      home?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEGRESS. No. Omega, zero, x squared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The President rapidly puts the peg in the switchboard; works the dial;
+      and presses the button. The screen becomes transparent; and the Negress,
+      brilliantly dressed, appears on what looks like the bridge of a steam
+      yacht in glorious sea weather. The installation with which she is
+      communicating is beside the binnacle.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS [<i>looking round, and recoiling with a shriek of disgust</i>]
+      Ach! Avaunt! Avaunt! [<i>He rushes from the room</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. What part of the coast is that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEGRESS. Fishguard Bay. Why not run over and join me for the
+      afternoon? I am disposed to be approachable at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. But Fishguard! Two hundred and seventy miles!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEGRESS. There is a lightning express on the Irish Air Service at
+      half-past sixteen. They will drop you by a parachute in the bay. The dip
+      will do you good. I will pick you up and dry you and give you a first-rate
+      time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Delightful. But a little risky, isnt it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEGRESS. Risky! I thought you were afraid of nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. I am not exactly afraid; but&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEGRESS [<i>offended</i>] But you think it is not good enough. Very
+      well [<i>she raises her hand to take the peg out of her switchboard</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>imploringly</i>] No: stop: let me explain: hold the line
+      just one moment. Oh, please.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEGRESS [<i>waiting with her hand poised over the peg</i>] Well?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. The fact is, I have been behaving very recklessly for some
+      time past under the impression that my life would be so short that it was
+      not worth bothering about. But I have just learnt that I may live&mdash;well,
+      much longer than I expected. I am sure your good sense will tell you that
+      this alters the case. I&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEGRESS [<i>with suppressed rage</i>] Oh, quite. Pray don't risk your
+      precious, life on my account. Sorry for troubling you. Goodbye. [<i>She
+      snatches out her peg and vanishes</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>urgently</i>] No: please hold on. I can convince you&mdash;[<i>a
+      loud buzz-uzz-uzz</i>]. Engaged! Who is she calling up now? [<i>Represses
+      the button and calls</i>] The Chief Secretary. Say I want to see him
+      again, just for a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS'S VOICE. Is the woman gone?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Yes, yes: it's all right. Just a moment, if&mdash;[<i>Confucius
+      returns</i>] Confucius: I have some important business at Fishguard. The
+      Irish Air Service can drop me in the bay by parachute. I suppose it's
+      quite safe, isnt it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Nothing is quite safe. The air service is as safe as any other
+      travelling service. The parachute is safe. But the water is not safe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Why? They will give me an unsinkable tunic, wont they?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. You will not sink; but the sea is very cold. You may get
+      rheumatism for life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. For life! That settles it: I wont risk it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Good. You have at last become prudent: you are no longer what
+      you call a sportsman: you are a sensible coward, almost a grown-up man. I
+      congratulate you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>resolutely</i>] Coward or no coward, I will not face an
+      eternity of rheumatism for any woman that ever was born. [<i>He rises and
+      goes to the rack for his fillet</i>] I have changed my mind: I am going
+      home. [<i>He cocks the fillet rakishly</i>] Good evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. So early? If the Minister of Health rings you up, what shall I
+      tell her?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Tell her to go to the devil. [<i>He goes out</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS [<i>shaking his head, shocked at the President's impoliteness</i>]
+      No. No, no, no, no, no. Oh, these English! these crude young
+      civilizations! Their manners! Hogs. Hogs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART4" id="link2H_PART4"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART IV&mdash;Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0059" id="link2H_4_0059"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      ACT I
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>Burrin pier on the south shore of Galway Bay in Ireland, a region of
+      stone-capped hills and granite fields. It is a fine summer day in the year
+      3000 A.D. On an ancient stone stump, about three feet thick and three feet
+      high, used for securing ships by ropes to the shore, and called a bollard
+      or holdfast, an elderly gentleman sits facing the land with his head bowed
+      and his face in his hands, sobbing. His sunburnt skin contrasts with his
+      white whiskers and eyebrows. He wears a black frock-coat, a white
+      waistcoat, lavender trousers, a brilliant silk cravat with a jewelled pin
+      stuck in it, a tall hat of grey felt, and patent leather boots with white
+      spats. His starched linen cuffs protrude from his coat sleeves; and his
+      collar, also of starched white linen, is Gladstonian. On his right, three
+      or four full sacks, lying side by side on the flags, suggest that the
+      pier, unlike many remote Irish piers, is occasionally useful as well as
+      romantic. On his left, behind him, a flight of stone steps descends out of
+      sight to the sea level. </i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A woman in a silk tunic and sandals, wearing little else except a cap with
+      the number 2 on it in gold, comes up the steps from the sea, and stares in
+      astonishment at the sobbing man. Her age cannot be guessed: her face is
+      firm and chiselled like a young face; but her expression is unyouthful in
+      its severity and determination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. What is the matter?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The elderly gentleman looks up; hastily pulls himself together; takes
+      out a silk handkerchief and dries his tears lightly with a brave attempt
+      to smile through them; and tries to rise gallantly, but sinks back.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. Do you need assistance?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No. Thank you very much. No. Nothing. The heat. [<i>He
+      punctuates with sniffs, and dabs with his handkerchief at his eyes and
+      nose.</i>] Hay fever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. You are a foreigner, are you not?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No. You must not regard me as a foreigner. I am a
+      Briton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. You come from some part of the British Commonwealth?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>amiably pompous</i>] From its capital, madam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. From Baghdad?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Yes. You may not be aware, madam, that these
+      islands were once the centre of the British Commonwealth, during a period
+      now known as The Exile. They were its headquarters a thousand years ago.
+      Few people know this interesting circumstance now; but I assure you it is
+      true. I have come here on a pious pilgrimage to one of the numerous lands
+      of my fathers. We are of the same stock, you and I. Blood is thicker than
+      water. We are cousins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. I do not understand. You say you have come here on a pious
+      pilgrimage. Is that some new means of transport?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>again shewing signs of distress</i>] I find it
+      very difficult to make myself understood here. I was not referring to a
+      machine, but to a&mdash;a&mdash;a sentimental journey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. I am afraid I am as much in the dark as before. You said also
+      that blood is thicker than water. No doubt it is; but what of it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Its meaning is obvious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. Perfectly. But I assure you I am quite aware that blood is
+      thicker than water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>sniffing: almost in tears again</i>] We will
+      leave it at that, madam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN [going <i>nearer to him and scrutinizing him with some concern</i>]
+      I am afraid you are not well. Were you not warned that it is dangerous for
+      shortlived people to come to this country? There is a deadly disease
+      called discouragement, against which shortlived people have to take very
+      strict precautions. Intercourse with us puts too great a strain on them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>pulling himself together huffily</i>] It has no
+      effect on me, madam. I fear my conversation does not interest you. If not,
+      the remedy is in your own hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN [<i>looking at her hands, and then looking inquiringly at him</i>]
+      Where?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>breaking down</i>] Oh, this is dreadful. No
+      understanding, no intelligence, no sympathy&mdash;[<i>his sobs choke him</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. You see, you are ill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>nerved by indignation</i>] I am not ill. I have
+      never had a day's illness in my life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. May I advise you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I have no need of a lady doctor, thank you, madam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN [<i>shaking her head</i>] I am afraid I do not understand. I
+      said nothing about a butterfly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Well, <i>I</i> said nothing about a butterfly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. You spoke of a lady doctor. The word is known here only as the
+      name of a butterfly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>insanely</i>] I give up. I can bear this no
+      longer. It is easier to go out of my mind at once. [<i>He rises and dances
+      about, singing</i>]
+    </p>
+<div style="margin-left: 10%;">
+    <i>I'd be a butterfly, born in a bower,<br />
+    Making apple dumplings without any flour.</i>
+</div>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN [<i>smiling gravely</i>] It must be at least a hundred and fifty
+      years since I last laughed. But if you do that any more I shall certainly
+      break out like a primary of sixty. Your dress is so extraordinarily
+      ridiculous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>halting abruptly in his antics</i>] My dress
+      ridiculous! I may not be dressed like a Foreign Office clerk; but my
+      clothes are perfectly in fashion in my native metropolis, where yours&mdash;pardon
+      my saying so&mdash;would be considered extremely unusual and hardly
+      decent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. Decent? There is no such word in our language. What does it
+      mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. It would not be decent for me to explain. Decency
+      cannot be discussed without indecency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. I cannot understand you at all. I fear you have not been
+      observing the rules laid down for shortlived visitors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Surely, madam, they do not apply to persons of my
+      age and standing. I am not a child, nor an agricultural laborer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN [<i>severely</i>] They apply to you very strictly. You are
+      expected to confine yourself to the society of children under sixty. You
+      are absolutely forbidden to approach fully adult natives under any
+      circumstances. You cannot converse with persons of my age for long without
+      bringing on a dangerous attack of discouragement. Do you realize that you
+      are already shewing grave symptoms of that very distressing and usually
+      fatal complaint?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Certainly not, madam. I am fortunately in no danger
+      of contracting it. I am quite accustomed to converse intimately and at the
+      greatest length with the most distinguished persons. If you cannot
+      discriminate between hay fever and imbecility, I can only say that your
+      advanced years carry with them the inevitable penalty of dotage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. I am one of the guardians of this district; and I am
+      responsible for your welfare&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. The Guardians! Do you take me for a pauper?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. I do not know what a pauper is. You must tell me who you are,
+      if it is possible for you to express yourself intelligibly&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>snorts indignantly</i>]!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN [<i>continuing</i>]&mdash;and why you are wandering here alone
+      without a nurse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>outraged</i>] Nurse!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. Shortlived visitors are not allowed to go about here without
+      nurses. Do you not know that rules are meant to be kept?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. By the lower classes, no doubt. But to persons in
+      my position there are certain courtesies which are never denied by
+      well-bred people; and&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. There are only two human classes here: the shortlived and the
+      normal. The rules apply to the shortlived, and are for their own
+      protection. Now tell me at once who you are.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>impressively</i>] Madam, I am a retired
+      gentleman, formerly Chairman of the All-British Synthetic Egg and
+      Vegetable Cheese Trust in Baghdad, and now President of the British
+      Historical and Archaeological Society, and a Vice-President of the
+      Travellers' Club.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. All that does not matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>again snorting</i>] Hm! Indeed!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. Have you been sent here to make your mind flexible?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. What an extraordinary question! Pray do you find my
+      mind noticeably stiff?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. Perhaps you do not know that you are on the west coast of
+      Ireland, and that it is the practice among natives of the Eastern Island
+      to spend some years here to acquire mental flexibility. The climate has
+      that effect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>haughtily</i>] I was born, not in the Eastern
+      Island, but, thank God, in dear old British Baghdad; and I am not in need
+      of a mental health resort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. Then why are you here?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Am I trespassing? I was not aware of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. Trespassing? I do not understand the word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Is this land private property? If so, I make no
+      claim. I proffer a shilling in satisfaction of damage (if any), and am
+      ready to withdraw if you will be good enough to shew me the nearest way. [<i>He
+      offers her a shilling</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN [<i>taking it and examining it without much interest</i>] I do
+      not understand a single word of what you have just said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I am speaking the plainest English. Are you the
+      landlord?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN [<i>shaking her head</i>] There is a tradition in this part of
+      the country of an animal with a name like that. It used to be hunted and
+      shot in the barbarous ages. It is quite extinct now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>breaking down again</i>] It is a dreadful thing
+      to be in a country where nobody understands civilized institutions. [<i>He
+      collapses on the bollard, struggling with his rising sobs</i>]. Excuse me.
+      Hay fever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN [<i>taking a tuning-fork from her girdle and holding it to her
+      ear; then speaking into space on one note, like a chorister intoning a
+      psalm</i>] Burrin Pier Galway please send someone to take charge of a
+      discouraged shortliver who has escaped from his nurse male harmless
+      babbles unintelligibly with moments of sense distressed hysterical foreign
+      dress very funny has curious fringe of white sea-weed under his chin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE GENTLEMAN. This is a gross impertinence. An insult.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN [<i>replacing her tuning-fork and addressing the elderly
+      gentleman</i>] These words mean nothing to me. In what capacity are you
+      here? How did you obtain permission to visit us?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>importantly</i>] Our Prime Minister, Mr Badger
+      Bluebin, has come to consult the oracle. He is my son-in-law. We are
+      accompanied by his wife and daughter: my daughter and granddaughter. I may
+      mention that General Aufsteig, who is one of our party, is really the
+      Emperor of Turania travelling incognito. I understand he has a question to
+      put to the oracle informally. I have come solely to visit the country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. Why should you come to a place where you have no business?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Great Heavens, madam, can anything be more natural?
+      I shall be the only member of the Travellers' Club who has set foot on
+      these shores. Think of that! My position will be unique.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. Is that an advantage? We have a person here who has lost both
+      legs in an accident. His position is unique. But he would much rather be
+      like everyone else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. This is maddening. There is no analogy whatever
+      between the two cases.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. They are both unique.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Conversation in this place seems to consist of
+      ridiculous quibbles. I am heartily tired of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. I conclude that your Travellers' Club is an assembly of persons
+      who wish to be able to say that they have been in some place where nobody
+      else has been.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Of Course if you wish to sneer at us&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. What is sneer?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>with a wild sob</i>] I shall drown myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>He makes desperately for the edge of the pier, but is confronted by a
+      man with the number one on his cap, who comes up the steps and intercepts
+      him. He is dressed like the woman, but a slight moustache proclaims his
+      sex.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN [<i>to the elderly gentleman</i>] Ah, here you are. I shall really
+      have to put a collar and lead on you if you persist in giving me the slip
+      like this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. Are you this stranger's nurse?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN. Yes. I am very tired of him. If I take my eyes off him for a
+      moment, he runs away and talks to everybody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN [<i>after taking out her tuning-fork and sounding it, intones as
+      before</i>] Burrin Pier. Wash out. [<i>She puts up the fork, and addresses
+      the man</i>]. I sent a call for someone to take care of him. I have been
+      trying to talk to him; but I can understand very little of what he says.
+      You must take better care of him: he is badly discouraged already. If I
+      can be of any further use, Fusima, Gort, will find me. [<i>She goes away</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Any further use! She has been of no use to me. She
+      spoke to me without any introduction, like any improper female. And she
+      has made off with my shilling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN. Please speak slowly. I cannot follow. What is a shilling? What is
+      an introduction? Improper female doesnt make sense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Nothing seems to make sense here. All I can tell
+      you is that she was the most impenetrably stupid woman I have ever met in
+      the whole course of my life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN. That cannot be. She cannot appear stupid to you. She is a
+      secondary, and getting on for a tertiary at that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. What is a tertiary? Everybody here keeps talking to
+      me about primaries and secondaries and tertiaries as if people were
+      geological strata.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN. The primaries are in their first century. The secondaries are in
+      their second century. I am still classed as a primary [<i>he points to his
+      number</i>]; but I may almost call myself a secondary, as I shall be
+      ninety-five next January. The tertiaries are in their third century. Did
+      you not see the number two on her badge? She is an advanced secondary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. That accounts for it. She is in her second
+      childhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN. Her second childhood! She is in her fifth childhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>again resorting to the bollard</i>] Oh! I cannot
+      bear these unnatural arrangements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN [<i>impatient and helpless</i>] You shouldn't have come among us.
+      This is no place for you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>nerved by indignation</i>] May I ask why? I am a
+      Vice-President of the Travellers' Club. I have been everywhere: I hold the
+      record in the Club for civilized countries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN. What is a civilized country?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. It is&mdash;well, it is a civilized country. [<i>Desperately</i>]
+      I don't know: I&mdash;I&mdash;I&mdash;I shall go mad if you keep on asking
+      me to tell you things that everybody knows. Countries where you can travel
+      comfortably. Where there are good hotels. Excuse me; but, though you say
+      you are ninety-four, you are worse company than a child of five with your
+      eternal questions. Why not call me Daddy at once?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN. I did not know your name was Daddy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. My name is Joseph Popham Bolge Bluebin Barlow, O.M.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN. That is five men's names. Daddy is shorter. And O.M. will not do
+      here. It is our name for certain wild creatures, descendants of the
+      aboriginal inhabitants of this coast. They used to be called the
+      O'Mulligans. We will stick to Daddy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. People will think I am your father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN [<i>shocked</i>] Sh-sh! People here never allude to such
+      relationships. It is not quite delicate, is it? What does it matter
+      whether you are my father or not?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. My worthy nonagenarian friend: your faculties are
+      totally decayed. Could you not find me a guide of my own age?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN. A young person?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Certainly not. I cannot go about with a young
+      person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN. Why?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Why! Why!! Why!!! Have you no moral sense?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN. I shall have to give you up. I cannot understand you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. But you meant a young woman, didn't you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN. I meant simply somebody of your own age. What difference does it
+      make whether the person is a man or a woman?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I could not have believed in the existence of such
+      scandalous insensibility to the elementary decencies of human intercourse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN. What are decencies?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>shrieking</i>] Everyone asks me that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN [<i>taking out a tuning-fork and using it as the woman did</i>]
+      Zozim on Burrin Pier to Zoo Ennistymon I have found the discouraged
+      shortliver he has been talking to a secondary and is much worse I am too
+      old he is asking for someone of his own age or younger come if you can. [<i>He
+      puts up his fork and turns to the Elderly Gentleman</i>]. Zoo is a girl of
+      fifty, and rather childish at that. So perhaps she may make you happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Make me happy! A bluestocking of fifty! Thank you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN. Bluestocking? The effort to make out your meaning is fatiguing.
+      Besides, you are talking too much to me: I am old enough to discourage
+      you. Let us be silent until Zoo comes. [<i>He turns his back on the
+      Elderly Gentleman, and sits down on the edge of the pier, with his legs
+      dangling over the water</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Certainly. I have no wish to force my conversation
+      on any man who does not desire it. Perhaps you would like to take a nap.
+      If so, pray do not stand on ceremony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN. What is a nap?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>exasperated, going to him and speaking with
+      great precision and distinctness</i>] A nap, my friend, is a brief period
+      of sleep which overtakes superannuated persons when they endeavor to
+      entertain unwelcome visitors or to listen to scientific lectures. Sleep.
+      Sleep. [<i>Bawling into his ear</i>] Sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN. I tell you I am nearly a secondary. I never sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>awestruck</i>] Good Heavens!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>A young woman with the number one on her cap arrives by land. She looks
+      no older than Savvy Barnabas, whom she somewhat resembles, looked a
+      thousand years before. Younger, if anything.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUNG WOMAN. Is this the patient?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN [<i>scrambling up</i>] This is Zoo. [<i>To Zoo</i>] Call him
+      Daddy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>vehemently</i>] No.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN [<i>ignoring the interruption</i>] Bless you for taking him off my
+      hands! I have had as much of him as I can bear. [<i>He goes down the steps
+      and disappears</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>ironically taking off his hat and making a
+      sweeping bow from the edge of the pier in the direction of the Atlantic
+      Ocean</i>] Good afternoon, sir; and thank you very much for your
+      extraordinary politeness, your exquisite consideration for my feelings,
+      your courtly manners. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. [<i>Clapping
+      his hat on again</i>] Pig! Ass!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>laughs very heartily at him</i>]!!!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>turning sharply on her</i>] Good afternoon,
+      madam. I am sorry to have had to put your friend in his place; but I find
+      that here as elsewhere it is necessary to assert myself if I am to be
+      treated with proper consideration. I had hoped that my position as a guest
+      would protect me from insult.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Putting my friend in his place. That is some poetic expression, is it
+      not? What does it mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Pray, is there no one in these islands who
+      understands plain English?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Well, nobody except the oracles. They have to make a special
+      historical study of what we call the dead thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Dead thought! I have heard of the dead languages,
+      but never of the dead thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Well, thoughts die sooner than languages. I understand your language;
+      but I do not always understand your thought. The oracles will understand
+      you perfectly. Have you had your consultation yet?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I did not come to consult the oracle, madam. I am
+      here simply as a gentleman travelling for pleasure in the company of my
+      daughter, who is the wife of the British Prime Minister, and of General
+      Aufsteig, who, I may tell you in confidence, is really the Emperor of
+      Turania, the greatest military genius of the age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Why should you travel for pleasure! Can you not enjoy yourself at
+      home?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I wish to see the World.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. It is too big. You can see a bit of it anywhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>out of patience</i>] Damn it, madam, you don't
+      want to spend your life looking at the same bit of it! [<i>Checking
+      himself</i>] I beg your pardon for swearing in your presence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Oh! That is swearing, is it? I have read about that. It sounds quite
+      pretty. Dammitmaddam, dammitmaddam, dammitmaddam, dammitmaddam. Say it as
+      often as you please: I like it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>expanding with intense relief</i>] Bless you for
+      those profane but familiar words! Thank you, thank you. For the first time
+      since I landed in this terrible country I begin to feel at home. The
+      strain which was driving me mad relaxes: I feel almost as if I were at the
+      club. Excuse my taking the only available seat: I am not so young as I
+      was. [<i>He sits on the bollard</i>]. Promise me that you will not hand me
+      over to one of these dreadful tertiaries or secondaries or whatever you
+      call them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Never fear. They had no business to give you in charge to Zozim. You
+      see he is just on the verge of becoming a secondary; and these adolescents
+      will give themselves the airs of tertiaries. You naturally feel more at
+      home with a flapper like me. [<i>She makes herself comfortable on the
+      sacks</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Flapper? What does that mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. It is an archaic word which we still use to describe a female who is
+      no longer a girl and is not yet quite adult.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. A very agreeable age to associate with, I find. I
+      am recovering rapidly. I have a sense of blossoming like a flower. May I
+      ask your name?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Zoo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Miss Zoo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Not Miss Zoo. Zoo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Precisely. Er&mdash;Zoo what?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. No. Not Zoo What. Zoo. Nothing but Zoo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>puzzled</i>] Mrs Zoo, perhaps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. No. Zoo. Cant you catch it? Zoo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Of course. Believe me, I did not really think you
+      were married: you are obviously too young; but here it is so hard to feel
+      sure&mdash;er&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>hopelessly puzzled</i>] What?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Marriage makes a difference, you know. One can say
+      things to a married lady that would perhaps be in questionable taste to
+      anyone without that experience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. You are getting out of my depth: I dont understand a word you are
+      saying. Married and questionable taste convey nothing to me. Stop, though.
+      Is married an old form of the word mothered?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Very likely. Let us drop the subject. Pardon me for
+      embarrassing you. I should not have mentioned it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. What does embarrassing mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Well, really! I should have thought that so natural
+      and common a condition would be understood as long as human nature lasted.
+      To embarrass is to bring a blush to the cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. What is a blush?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>amazed</i>] Dont you blush???
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Never heard of it. We have a word flush, meaning a rush of blood to
+      the skin. I have noticed it in my babies, but not after the age of two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Your babies!!! I fear I am treading on very
+      delicate ground; but your appearance is extremely youthful; and if I may
+      ask how many&mdash;?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Only four as yet. It is a long business with us. I specialize in
+      babies. My first was such a success that they made me go on. I&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>reeling on the bollard</i>] Oh! dear!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Whats the matter? Anything wrong?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. In Heaven's name, madam, how old are you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Fifty-six.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. My knees are trembling. I fear I am really ill. Not
+      so young as I was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. I noticed that you are not strong on your legs yet. You have many of
+      the ways and weaknesses of a baby. No doubt that is why I feel called on
+      to mother you. You certainly are a very silly little Daddy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>stimulated by indignation</i>] My name, I
+      repeat, is Joseph Popham Bolge Bluebin Barlow, O.M.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. What a ridiculously long name! I cant call you all that. What did
+      your mother call you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. You recall the bitterest struggles of my childhood.
+      I was sensitive on the point. Children suffer greatly from absurd
+      nicknames. My mother thoughtlessly called me Iddy Toodles. I was called
+      Iddy until I went to school, when I made my first stand for children's
+      rights by insisting on being called at least Joe. At fifteen I refused to
+      answer to anything shorter than Joseph. At eighteen I discovered that the
+      name Joseph was supposed to indicate an unmanly prudery because of some
+      old story about a Joseph who rejected the advances of his employer's wife:
+      very properly in my opinion. I then became Popham to my family and
+      intimate friends, and Mister Barlow to the rest of the world. My mother
+      slipped back into Iddy when her faculties began to fail her, poor woman;
+      but I could not resent that, at her age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Do you mean to say that your mother bothered about you after you were
+      ten?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Naturally, madam. She was my mother. What would you
+      have had her do?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Go on to the next, of course. After eight or nine children become
+      quite uninteresting, except to themselves. I shouldnt know my two eldest
+      if I met them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>again drooping</i>] I am dying. Let me die. I
+      wish to die.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>going to him quickly and supporting him</i>] Hold up. Sit up
+      straight. Whats the matter?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>faintly</i>] My spine, I think. Shock.
+      Concussion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>maternally</i>] Pow wow wow! What is there to shock you? [<i>Shaking
+      him playfully</i>] There! Sit up; and be good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>still feebly</i>] Thank you. I am better now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>resuming her seat on the sacks</i>] But what was all the rest of
+      that long name for? There was a lot more of it. Blops Booby or something.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>impressively</i>] Bolge Bluebin, madam: a
+      historical name. Let me inform you that I can trace my family back for
+      more than a thousand years, from the Eastern Empire to its ancient seat in
+      these islands, to a time when two of my ancestors, Joyce Bolge and Hengist
+      Horsa Bluebin, wrestled with one another for the prime ministership of the
+      British Empire, and occupied that position successively with a glory of
+      which we can in these degenerate days form but a faint conception. When I
+      think of these mighty men, lions in war, sages in peace, not babblers and
+      charlatans like the pigmies who now occupy their places in Baghdad, but
+      strong silent men, ruling an empire on which the sun never set, my eyes
+      fill with tears: my heart bursts with emotion: I feel that to have lived
+      but to the dawn of manhood in their day, and then died for them, would
+      have been a nobler and happier lot than the ignominious ease of my present
+      longevity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Longevity! [<i>she laughs</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Yes, madam, relative longevity. As it is, I have to
+      be content and proud to know that I am descended from both those heroes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. You must be descended from every Briton who was alive in their time.
+      Dont you know that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Do not quibble, madam. I bear their names, Bolge
+      and Bluebin; and I hope I have inherited something of their majestic
+      spirit. Well, they were born in these islands. I repeat, these islands
+      were then, incredible as it now seems, the centre of the British Empire.
+      When that centre shifted to Baghdad, and the Englishman at last returned
+      to the true cradle of his race in Mesopotamia, the western islands were
+      cast off, as they had been before by the Roman Empire. But it was to the
+      British race, and in these islands, that the greatest miracle in history
+      occurred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Miracle?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Yes: the first man to live three hundred years was
+      an Englishman. The first, that is, since the contemporaries of Methuselah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Oh, that!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Yes, that, as you call it so flippantly. Are you
+      aware, madam, that at that immortal moment the English race had lost
+      intellectual credit to such an extent that they habitually spoke of one
+      another as fatheads? Yet England is now a sacred grove to which statesmen
+      from all over the earth come to consult English sages who speak with the
+      experience of two and a half centuries of life. The land that once
+      exported cotton shirts and hardware now exports nothing but wisdom. You
+      see before you, madam, a man utterly weary of the week-end riverside
+      hotels of the Euphrates, the minstrels and pierrots on the sands of the
+      Persian Gulf, the toboggans and funiculars of the Hindoo Koosh. Can you
+      wonder that I turn, with a hungry heart, to the mystery and beauty of
+      these haunted islands, thronged with spectres from a magic past, made holy
+      by the footsteps of the wise men of the West. Consider this island on
+      which we stand, the last foothold of man on this side of the Atlantic:
+      this Ireland, described by the earliest bards as an emerald gem set in a
+      silver sea! Can I, a scion of the illustrious British race, ever forget
+      that when the Empire transferred its seat to the East, and said to the
+      turbulent Irish race which it had oppressed but never conquered, 'At last
+      we leave you to yourselves; and much good may it do you,' the Irish as one
+      man uttered the historic shout 'No: we'll be damned if you do,' and
+      emigrated to the countries where there was still a Nationalist question,
+      to India, Persia, and Corea, to Morocco, Tunis, and Tripoli. In these
+      countries they were ever foremost in the struggle for national
+      independence; and the world rang continually with the story of their
+      sufferings and wrongs. And what poem can do justice to the end, when it
+      came at last? Hardly two hundred years had elapsed when the claims of
+      nationality were so universally conceded that there was no longer a single
+      country on the face of the earth with a national grievance or a national
+      movement. Think of the position of the Irish, who had lost all their
+      political faculties by disuse except that of nationalist agitation, and
+      who owed their position as the most interesting race on earth solely to
+      their sufferings! The very countries they had helped to set free boycotted
+      them as intolerable bores. The communities which had once idolized them as
+      the incarnation of all that is adorable in the warm heart and witty brain,
+      fled from them as from a pestilence. To regain their lost prestige, the
+      Irish claimed the city of Jerusalem, on the ground that they were the lost
+      tribes of Israel; but on their approach the Jews abandoned the city and
+      redistributed themselves throughout Europe. It was then that these devoted
+      Irishmen, not one of whom had ever seen Ireland, were counselled by an
+      English Archbishop, the father of the oracles, to go back to their own
+      country. This had never once occurred to them, because there was nothing
+      to prevent them and nobody to forbid them. They jumped at the suggestion.
+      They landed here: here in Galway Bay, on this very ground. When they
+      reached the shore the older men and women flung themselves down and
+      passionately kissed the soil of Ireland, calling on the young to embrace
+      the earth that had borne their ancestors. But the young looked gloomily
+      on, and said 'There is no earth, only stone.' You will see by looking
+      round you why they said that: the fields here are of stone: the hills are
+      capped with granite. They all left for England next day; and no Irishman
+      ever again confessed to being Irish, even to his own children; so that
+      when that generation passed away the Irish race vanished from human
+      knowledge. And the dispersed Jews did the same lest they should be sent
+      back to Palestine. Since then the world, bereft of its Jews and its Irish,
+      has been a tame dull place. Is there no pathos for you in this story? Can
+      you not understand now why I am come to visit the scene of this tragic
+      effacement of a race of heroes and poets?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. We still tell our little children stories like that, to help them to
+      understand. But such things do not happen really. That scene of the Irish
+      landing here and kissing the ground might have happened to a hundred
+      people. It couldn't have happened to a hundred thousand: you know that as
+      well as I do. And what a ridiculous thing to call people Irish because
+      they live in Ireland! you might as well call them Airish because they live
+      in air. They must be just the same as other people. Why do you shortlivers
+      persist in making up silly stories about the world and trying to act as if
+      they were true? Contact with truth hurts and frightens you: you escape
+      from it into an imaginary vacuum in which you can indulge your desires and
+      hopes and loves and hates without any obstruction from the solid facts of
+      life. You love to throw dust in your own eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. It is my turn now, madam, to inform you that I do
+      not understand a single word you are saying. I should have thought that
+      the use of a vacuum for removing dust was a mark of civilization rather
+      than of savagery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>giving him up as hopeless</i>] Oh, Daddy, Daddy: I can hardly
+      believe that you are human, you are so stupid. It was well said of your
+      people in the olden days, 'Dust thou art; and to dust thou shalt return.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>nobly</i>] My body is dust, madam: not my soul.
+      What does it matter what my body is made of? the dust of the ground, the
+      particles of the air, or even the slime of the ditch? The important thing
+      is that when my Creator took it, whatever it was, He breathed into its
+      nostrils the breath of life; and Man became a living soul. Yes, madam, a
+      living soul. I am not the dust of the ground: I am a living soul. That is
+      an exalting, a magnificent thought. It is also a great scientific fact. I
+      am not interested in the chemicals and the microbes: I leave them to the
+      chumps and noodles, to the blockheads and the muckrakers who are incapable
+      of their own glorious destiny, and unconscious of their own divinity. They
+      tell me there are leucocytes in my blood, and sodium and carbon in my
+      flesh. I thank them for the information, and tell them that there are
+      blackbeetles in my kitchen, washing soda in my laundry, and coal in my
+      cellar. I do not deny their existence; but I keep them in their proper
+      place, which is not, if I may be allowed to use an antiquated form of
+      expression, the temple of the Holy Ghost. No doubt you think me behind the
+      times; but I rejoice in my enlightenment; and I recoil from your
+      ignorance, your blindness, your imbecility. Humanly I pity you.
+      Intellectually I despise you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Bravo, Daddy! You have the root of the matter in you. You will not
+      die of discouragement after all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I have not the smallest intention of doing so,
+      madam. I am no longer young; and I have moments of weakness; but when I
+      approach this subject the divine spark in me kindles and glows, the
+      corruptible becomes incorruptible, and the mortal Bolge Bluebin Barlow
+      puts on immortality. On this ground I am your equal, even if you survive
+      me by ten thousand years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Yes; but what do we know about this breath of life that puffs you up
+      so exaltedly? Just nothing. So let us shake hands as cultivated Agnostics,
+      and change the subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Cultivated fiddlesticks, madam! You cannot change
+      this subject until the heavens and the earth pass away. I am not an
+      Agnostic: I am a gentleman. When I believe a thing I say I believe it:
+      when I don't believe it I say I don't believe it. I do not shirk my
+      responsibilities by pretending that I know nothing and therefore can
+      believe nothing. We cannot disclaim knowledge and shirk responsibility. We
+      must proceed on assumptions of some sort or we cannot form a human
+      society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. The assumptions must be scientific, Daddy. We must live by science in
+      the long run.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I have the utmost respect, madam, for the
+      magnificent discoveries which we owe to science. But any fool can make a
+      discovery. Every baby has to discover more in the first years of its life
+      than Roger Bacon ever discovered in his laboratory. When I was seven years
+      old I discovered the sting of the wasp. But I do not ask you to worship me
+      on that account. I assure you, madam, the merest mediocrities can discover
+      the most surprising facts about the physical universe as soon as they are
+      civilized enough to have time to study these things, and to invent
+      instruments and apparatus for research. But what is the consequence? Their
+      discoveries discredit the simple stories of our religion. At first we had
+      no idea of astronomical space. We believed the sky to be only the ceiling
+      of a room as large as the earth, with another room on top of it. Death was
+      to us a going upstairs into that room, or, if we did not obey the priests,
+      going downstairs into the coal cellar. We founded our religion, our
+      morality, our laws, our lessons, our poems, our prayers, on that simple
+      belief. Well, the moment men became astronomers and made telescopes, their
+      belief perished. When they could no longer believe in the sky, they found
+      that they could no longer believe in their Deity, because they had always
+      thought of him as living in the sky. When the priests themselves ceased to
+      believe in their Deity and began to believe in astronomy, they changed
+      their name and their dress, and called themselves doctors and men of
+      science. They set up a new religion in which there was no Deity, but only
+      wonders and miracles, with scientific instruments and apparatus as the
+      wonder workers. Instead of worshipping the greatness and wisdom of the
+      Deity, men gaped foolishly at the million billion miles of space and
+      worshipped the astronomer as infallible and omniscient. They built temples
+      for his telescopes. Then they looked into their own bodies with
+      microscopes, and found there, not the soul they had formerly believed in,
+      but millions of micro-organisms; so they gaped at these as foolishly as at
+      the millions of miles, and built microscope temples in which horrible
+      sacrifices were offered. They even gave their own bodies to be sacrificed
+      by the microscope man, who was worshipped, like the astronomer, as
+      infallible and omniscient. Thus our discoveries instead of increasing our
+      wisdom, only destroyed the little childish wisdom we had. All I can grant
+      you is that they increased our knowledge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Nonsense! Consciousness of a fact is not knowledge of it: if it were,
+      the fish would know more of the sea than the geographers and the
+      naturalists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. That is an extremely acute remark, madam. The
+      dullest fish could not possibly know less of the majesty of the ocean than
+      many geographers and naturalists of my acquaintance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Just so. And the greatest fool on earth, by merely looking at a
+      mariners' compass, may become conscious of the fact that the needle turns
+      always to the pole. Is he any the less a fool with that consciousness than
+      he was without it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Only a more conceited one, madam, no doubt. Still,
+      I do not quite see how you can be aware of the existence of a thing
+      without knowing it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Well, you can see a man without knowing him, can you not?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>illuminated</i>] Oh how true! Of course, of
+      course. There is a member of the Travellers' Club who has questioned the
+      veracity of an experience of mine at the South Pole. I see that man almost
+      every day when I am at home. But I refuse to know him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. If you could see him much more distinctly through a magnifying glass,
+      or examine a drop of his blood through a microscope, or dissect out all
+      his organs and analyze them chemically, would you know him then?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Certainly not. Any such investigation could only
+      increase the disgust with which he inspires me, and make me more
+      determined than ever not to know him on any terms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Yet you would be much more conscious of him, would you not?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I should not allow that to commit me to any
+      familiarity with the fellow. I have been twice at the Summer Sports at the
+      South Pole; and this man pretended he had been to the North Pole, which
+      can hardly be said to exist, as it is in the middle of the sea. He
+      declared he had hung his hat on it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>laughing</i>] He knew that travellers are amusing only when they
+      are telling lies. Perhaps if you looked at that man through a microscope
+      you would find some good in him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I do not want to find any good in him. Besides,
+      madam, what you have just said encourages me to utter an opinion of mine
+      which is so advanced! so intellectually daring! that I have never ventured
+      to confess to it before, lest I should be imprisoned for blasphemy, or
+      even burnt alive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Indeed! What opinion is that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>after looking cautiously round</i>] I do not
+      approve of microscopes. I never have.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. You call that advanced! Oh, Daddy, that is pure obscurantism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Call it so if you will, madam; but I maintain that
+      it is dangerous to shew too much to people who do not know what they are
+      looking at. I think that a man who is sane as long as he looks at the
+      world through his own eyes is very likely to become a dangerous madman if
+      he takes to looking at the world through telescopes and microscopes. Even
+      when he is telling fairy stories about giants and dwarfs, the giants had
+      better not be too big nor the dwarfs too small and too malicious. Before
+      the microscope came, our fairy stories only made the children's flesh
+      creep pleasantly, and did not frighten grown-up persons at all. But the
+      microscope men terrified themselves and everyone else out of their wits
+      with the invisible monsters they saw: poor harmless little things that die
+      at the touch of a ray of sunshine, and are themselves the victims of all
+      the diseases they are supposed to produce! Whatever the scientific people
+      may say, imagination without microscopes was kindly and often courageous,
+      because it worked on things of which it had some real knowledge. But
+      imagination with microscopes, working on a terrifying spectacle of
+      millions of grotesque creatures of whose nature it had no knowledge,
+      became a cruel, terror-stricken, persecuting delirium. Are you aware,
+      madam, that a general massacre of men of science took place in the
+      twenty-first century of the pseudo-Christian era, when all their
+      laboratories were demolished, and all their apparatus destroyed?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Yes: the shortlived are as savage in their advances as in their
+      relapses. But when Science crept back, it had been taught its place. The
+      mere collectors of anatomical or chemical facts were not supposed to know
+      more about Science than the collector of used postage stamps about
+      international trade or literature. The scientific terrorist who was afraid
+      to use a spoon or a tumbler until he had dipt it in some poisonous acid to
+      kill the microbes, was no longer given titles, pensions, and monstrous
+      powers over the bodies of other people: he was sent to an asylum, and
+      treated there until his recovery. But all that is an old story: the
+      extension of life to three hundred years has provided the human race with
+      capable leaders, and made short work of such childish stuff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>pettishly</i>] You seem to credit every advance
+      in civilization to your inordinately long lives. Do you not know that this
+      question was familiar to men who died before they had reached my own age?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Oh yes: one or two of them hinted at it in a feeble way. An ancient
+      writer whose name has come down to us in several forms, such as
+      Shakespear, Shelley, Sheridan, and Shoddy, has a remarkable passage about
+      your dispositions being horridly shaken by thoughts beyond the reaches of
+      your souls. That does not come to much, does it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. At all events, madam, I may remind you, if you come
+      to capping ages, that whatever your secondaries and tertiaries may be, you
+      are younger than I am.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Yes, Daddy; but it is not the number of years we have behind us, but
+      the number we have before us, that makes us careful and responsible and
+      determined to find out the truth about everything. What does it matter to
+      you whether anything is true or not? your flesh is as grass: you come up
+      like a flower, and wither in your second childhood. A lie will last your
+      time: it will not last mine. If I knew I had to die in twenty years it
+      would not be worth my while to educate myself: I should not bother about
+      anything but having a little pleasure while I lasted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Young woman: you are mistaken. Shortlived as we
+      are, we&mdash;the best of us, I mean&mdash;regard civilization and
+      learning, art and science, as an ever-burning torch, which passes from the
+      hand of one generation to the hand of the next, each generation kindling
+      it to a brighter, prouder flame. Thus each lifetime, however short,
+      contributes a brick to a vast and growing edifice, a page to a sacred
+      volume, a chapter to a Bible, a Bible to a literature. We may be insects;
+      but like the coral insect we build islands which become continents: like
+      the bee we store sustenance for future communities. The individual
+      perishes; but the race is immortal. The acorn of today is the oak of the
+      next millennium. I throw my stone on the cairn and die; but later comers
+      add another stone and yet another; and lo! a mountain. I&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>interrupts him by laughing heartily at him</i>]!!!!!!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>with offended dignity</i>] May I ask what I have
+      said that calls for this merriment?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Oh, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, you are a funny little man, with your
+      torches, and your flames, and your bricks and edifices and pages and
+      volumes and chapters and coral insects and bees and acorns and stones and
+      mountains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Metaphors, madam. Metaphors merely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Images, images, images. I was talking about men, not about images.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I was illustrating&mdash;not, I hope, quite
+      infelicitously&mdash;the great march of Progress. I was shewing you how,
+      shortlived as we orientals are, mankind gains in stature from generation
+      to generation, from epoch to epoch, from barbarism to civilization, from
+      civilization to perfection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. I see. The father grows to be six feet high, and hands on his six
+      feet to his son, who adds another six feet and becomes twelve feet high,
+      and hands his twelve feet on to his son, who is full-grown at eighteen
+      feet, and so on. In a thousand years you would all be three or four miles
+      high. At that rate your ancestors Bilge and Bluebeard, whom you call
+      giants, must have been about quarter of an inch high.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I am not here to bandy quibbles and paradoxes with
+      a girl who blunders over the greatest names in history. I am in earnest. I
+      am treating a solemn theme seriously. I never said that the son of a man
+      six feet high would be twelve feet high.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. You didn't mean that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Most certainly not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Then you didn't mean anything. Now listen to me, you little ephemeral
+      thing. I knew quite well what you meant by your torch handed on from
+      generation to generation. But every time that torch is handed on, it dies
+      down to the tiniest spark; and the man who gets it can rekindle it only by
+      his own light. You are no taller than Bilge or Bluebeard; and you are no
+      wiser. Their wisdom, such as it was, perished with them: so did their
+      strength, if their strength ever existed outside your imagination. I do
+      not know how old you are: you look about five hundred&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Five hundred! Really, madam&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>continuing</i>]; but I know, of course, that you are an ordinary
+      shortliver. Well, your wisdom is only such wisdom as a man can have before
+      he has had experience enough to distinguish his wisdom from his folly, his
+      destiny from his delusions, his&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. In short, such wisdom as your own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. No, no, no, no. How often must I tell you that we are made wise not
+      by the recollections of our past, but by the responsibilities of our
+      future. I shall be more reckless when I am a tertiary than I am today. If
+      you cannot understand that, at least you must admit that I have learnt
+      from tertiaries. I have seen their work and lived under their
+      institutions. Like all young things I rebelled against them; and in their
+      hunger for new lights and new ideas they listened to me and encouraged me
+      to rebel. But my ways did not work; and theirs did; and they were able to
+      tell me why. They have no power over me except that power: they refuse all
+      other power; and the consequence is that there are no limits to their
+      power except the limits they set themselves. You are a child governed by
+      children, who make so many mistakes and are so naughty that you are in
+      continual rebellion against them; and as they can never convince you that
+      they are right: they can govern you only by beating you, imprisoning you,
+      torturing you, killing you if you disobey them without being strong enough
+      to kill or torture them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. That may be an unfortunate fact. I condemn it and
+      deplore it. But our minds are greater than the facts. We know better. The
+      greatest ancient teachers, followed by the galaxy of Christs who arose in
+      the twentieth century, not to mention such comparatively modern spiritual
+      leaders as Blitherinjam, Tosh, and Spiffkins, all taught that punishment
+      and revenge, coercion and militarism, are mistakes, and that the golden
+      rule&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. [<i>interrupting</i>] Yes, yes, yes, Daddy: we longlived people know
+      that quite well. But did any of their disciples ever succeed in governing
+      you for a single day on their Christ-like principles? It is not enough to
+      know what is good: you must be able to do it. They couldn't do it because
+      they did not live long enough to find out how to do it, or to outlive the
+      childish passions that prevented them from really wanting to do it. You
+      know very well that they could only keep order&mdash;such as it was&mdash;by
+      the very coercion and militarism they were denouncing and deploring. They
+      had actually to kill one another for preaching their own gospel, or be
+      killed themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. The blood of the martyrs, madam, is the seed of the
+      Church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. More images, Daddy! The blood of the shortlived falls on stony
+      ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>rising, very testy</i>] You are simply mad on
+      the subject of longevity. I wish you would change it. It is rather
+      personal and in bad taste. Human nature is human nature, longlived or
+      shortlived, and always will be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Then you give up the idea of progress? You cry off the torch, and the
+      brick, and the acorn, and all the rest of it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I do nothing of the sort. I stand for progress and
+      for freedom broadening down from precedent to precedent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. You are certainly a true Briton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I am proud of it. But in your mouth I feel that the
+      compliment hides some insult; so I do not thank you for it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. All I meant was that though Britons sometimes say quite clever things
+      and deep things as well as silly and shallow things, they always forget
+      them ten minutes after they have uttered them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Leave it at that, madam: leave it at that. [<i>He
+      sits down again</i>]. Even a Pope is not expected to be continually
+      pontificating. Our flashes of inspiration shew that our hearts are in the
+      right place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Of course. You cannot keep your heart in any place but the right
+      place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Tcha!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. But you can keep your hands in the wrong place. In your neighbor's
+      pockets, for example. So, you see, it is your hands that really matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>exhausted</i>] Well, a woman must have the last
+      word. I will not dispute it with you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Good. Now let us go back to the really interesting subject of our
+      discussion. You remember? The slavery of the shortlived to images and
+      metaphors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>aghast</i>] Do you mean to say, madam, that
+      after having talked my head off, and reduced me to despair and silence by
+      your intolerable loquacity, you actually propose to begin all over again?
+      I shall leave you at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. You must not. I am your nurse; and you must stay with me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I absolutely decline to do anything of the sort [<i>he
+      rises and walks away with marked dignity</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>using her tuning-fork</i>] Zoo on Burrin Pier to Oracle Police at
+      Ennistymon have you got me?... What?... I am picking you up now but you
+      are flat to my pitch.... Just a shade sharper.... That's better: still a
+      little more.... Got you: right. Isolate Burrin Pier quick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>is heard to yell</i>] Oh!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>still intoning</i>] Thanks.... Oh nothing serious I am nursing a
+      shortliver and the silly creature has run away he has discouraged himself
+      very badly by gadding about and talking to secondaries and I must keep him
+      strictly to heel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Elderly Gentleman returns, indignant.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Here he is you can release the Pier thanks. Goodbye. [<i>She puts up
+      her tuning-fork</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. This is outrageous. When I tried to step off the
+      pier on to the road, I received a shock, followed by an attack of pins and
+      needles which ceased only when I stepped back on to the stones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Yes: there is an electric hedge there. It is a very old and very
+      crude method of keeping animals from straying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. We are perfectly familiar with it in Baghdad,
+      madam; but I little thought I should live to have it ignominiously applied
+      to myself. You have actually Kiplingized me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Kiplingized! What is that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. About a thousand years ago there were two authors
+      named Kipling. One was an eastern and a writer of merit: the other, being
+      a western, was of course only an amusing barbarian. He is said to have
+      invented the electric hedge. I consider that in using it on me you have
+      taken a very great liberty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. What is a liberty?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>exasperated</i>] I shall not explain, madam. I
+      believe you know as well as I do. [<i>He sits down on the bollard in
+      dudgeon</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. No: even you can tell me things I do not know. Havnt you noticed that
+      all the time you have been here we have been asking you questions?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Noticed it! It has almost driven me mad. Do you see
+      my white hair? It was hardly grey when I landed: there were patches of its
+      original auburn still distinctly discernible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. That is one of the symptoms of discouragement. But have you noticed
+      something much more important to yourself: that is, that you have never
+      asked us any questions, although we know so much more than you do?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I am not a child, madam. I believe I have had
+      occasion to say that before. And I am an experienced traveller. I know
+      that what the traveller observes must really exist, or he could not
+      observe it. But what the natives tell him is invariably pure fiction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Not here, Daddy. With us life is too long for telling lies. They all
+      get found out. Youd better ask me questions while you have the chance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. If I have occasion to consult the oracle I shall
+      address myself to a proper one: to a tertiary: not to a primary flapper
+      playing at being an oracle. If you are a nurserymaid, attend to your
+      duties; and do not presume to ape your elders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. [<i>rising ominously and reddening</i>] You silly&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>thundering</i>] Silence! Do you hear! Hold your
+      tongue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Something very disagreeable is happening to me. I feel hot all over.
+      I have a horrible impulse to injure you. What have you done to me?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>triumphant</i>] Aha! I have made you blush. Now
+      you know what blushing means. Blushing with shame!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Whatever you are doing, it is something so utterly evil that if you
+      do not stop I will kill you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>apprehending his danger</i>] Doubtless you think
+      it safe to threaten an old man&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>fiercely</i>] Old! You are a child: an evil child. We kill evil
+      children here. We do it even against our own wills by instinct. Take care.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>rising with crestfallen courtesy</i>] I did not
+      mean to hurt your feelings. I&mdash;[<i>swallowing the apology with an
+      effort</i>] I beg your pardon. [<i>He takes off his hat, and bows</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. What does that mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I withdraw what I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. How can you withdraw what you said?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I can say no more than that I am sorry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. You have reason to be. That hideous sensation you gave me is
+      subsiding; but you have had a very narrow escape. Do not attempt to kill
+      me again; for at the first sign in your voice or face I shall strike you
+      dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. <i>I</i> attempt to kill you! What a monstrous
+      accusation!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>frowns</i>]!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>prudently correcting himself</i>] I mean
+      misunderstanding. I never dreamt of such a thing. Surely you cannot
+      believe that I am a murderer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. I know you are a murderer. It is not merely that you threw words at
+      me as if they were stones, meaning to hurt me. It was the instinct to kill
+      that you roused in me. I did not know it was in my nature: never before
+      has it wakened and sprung out at me, warning me to kill or be killed. I
+      must now reconsider my whole political position. I am no longer a
+      Conservative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>dropping his hat</i>] Gracious Heavens! you have
+      lost your senses. I am at the mercy of a madwoman: I might have known it
+      from the beginning. I can bear no more of this. [<i>Offering his chest for
+      the sacrifice</i>] Kill me at once; and much good may my death do you!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. It would be useless unless all the other shortlivers were killed at
+      the same time. Besides, it is a measure which should be taken politically
+      and constitutionally, not privately. However, I am prepared to discuss it
+      with you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No, no, no. I had much rather discuss your
+      intention of withdrawing from the Conservative party. How the
+      Conservatives have tolerated your opinions so far is more than I can
+      imagine: I can only conjecture that you have contributed very liberally to
+      the party funds. [<i>He picks up his hat, and sits down again</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Do not babble so senselessly: our chief political controversy is the
+      most momentous in the world for you and your like.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>interested</i>] Indeed? Pray, may I ask what it
+      is? I am a keen politician, and may perhaps be of some use. [<i>He puts on
+      his hat, cocking it slightly</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. We have two great parties: the Conservative party and the
+      Colonization party. The Colonizers are of opinion that we should increase
+      our numbers and colonize. The Conservatives hold that we should stay as we
+      are, confined to these islands, a race apart, wrapped up in the majesty of
+      our wisdom on a soil held as holy ground for us by an adoring world, with
+      our sacred frontier traced beyond dispute by the sea. They contend that it
+      is our destiny to rule the world, and that even when we were shortlived we
+      did so. They say that our power and our peace depend on our remoteness,
+      our exclusiveness, our separation, and the restriction of our numbers.
+      Five minutes ago that was my political faith. Now I do not think there
+      should be any shortlived people at all. [<i>She throws herself again
+      carelessly on the sacks</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Am I to infer that you deny my right to live
+      because I allowed myself&mdash;perhaps injudiciously&mdash;to give you a
+      slight scolding?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Is it worth living for so short a time? Are you any good to yourself?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>stupent</i>] Well, upon my soul!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. It is such a very little soul. You only encourage the sin of pride in
+      us, and keep us looking down at you instead of up to something higher than
+      ourselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Is not that a selfish view, madam? Think of the
+      good you do us by your oracular counsels!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. What good have our counsels ever done you? You come to us for advice
+      when you know you are in difficulties. But you never know you are in
+      difficulties until twenty years after you have made the mistakes that led
+      to them; and then it is too late. You cannot understand our advice: you
+      often do more mischief by trying to act on it than if you had been left to
+      your own childish devices. If you were not childish you would not come to
+      us at all: you would learn from experience that your consultations of the
+      oracle are never of any real help to you. You draw wonderful imaginary
+      pictures of us, and write fictitious tales and poems about our beneficent
+      operations in the past, our wisdom, our justice, our mercy: stories in
+      which we often appear as sentimental dupes of your prayers and sacrifices;
+      but you do it only to conceal from yourselves the truth that you are
+      incapable of being helped by us. Your Prime Minister pretends that he has
+      come to be guided by the oracle; but we are not deceived: we know quite
+      well that he has come here so that when he goes back he may have the
+      authority and dignity of one who has visited the holy islands and spoken
+      face to face with the ineffable ones. He will pretend that all the
+      measures he wishes to take for his own purposes have been enjoined on him
+      by the oracle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. But you forget that the answers of the oracle
+      cannot be kept secret or misrepresented. They are written and promulgated.
+      The Leader of the Opposition can obtain copies. All the nations know them.
+      Secret diplomacy has been totally abolished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Yes: you publish documents; but they are garbled or forged. And even
+      if you published our real answers it would make no difference, because the
+      shortlived cannot interpret the plainest writings. Your scriptures command
+      you in the plainest terms to do exactly the contrary of everything your
+      own laws and chosen rulers command and execute. You cannot defy Nature. It
+      is a law of Nature that there is a fixed relation between conduct and
+      length of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I have never heard of any such law, madam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Well, you are hearing of it now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Let me tell you that we shortlivers, as you call
+      us, have lengthened our lives very considerably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. How?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. By saving time. By enabling men to cross the ocean
+      in an afternoon, and to see and speak to one another when they are
+      thousands of miles apart. We hope shortly to organize their labor, and
+      press natural forces into their service, so scientifically that the burden
+      of labor will cease to be perceptible, leaving common men more leisure
+      than they will know what to do with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Daddy: the man whose life is lengthened in this way may be busier
+      than a savage; but the difference between such men living seventy years
+      and those living three hundred would be all the greater; for to a
+      shortliver increase of years is only increase of sorrow; but to a
+      long-liver every extra year is a prospect which forces him to stretch his
+      faculties to the utmost to face it. Therefore I say that we who live three
+      hundred years can be of no use to you who live less than a hundred, and
+      that our true destiny is not to advise and govern you, but to supplant and
+      supersede you. In that faith I now declare myself a Colonizer and an
+      Exterminator.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Oh, steady! steady! Pray! pray! Reflect, I implore
+      you. It is possible to colonize without exterminating the natives. Would
+      you treat us less mercifully than our barbarous forefathers treated the
+      Redskin and the Negro? Are we not, as Britons, entitled at least to some
+      reservations?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. What is the use of prolonging the agony? You would perish slowly in
+      our presence, no matter what we did to preserve you. You were almost dead
+      when I took charge of you today, merely because you had talked for a few
+      minutes to a secondary. Besides, we have our own experience to go upon.
+      Have you never heard that our children occasionally revert to the
+      ancestral type, and are born shortlived?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>eagerly</i>] Never. I hope you will not be
+      offended if I say that it would be a great comfort to me if I could be
+      placed in charge of one of those normal individuals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Abnormal, you mean. What you ask is impossible: we weed them all out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. When you say that you weed them out, you send a
+      cold shiver down my spine. I hope you don't mean that you&mdash;that you&mdash;that
+      you assist Nature in any way?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Why not? Have you not heard the saying of the Chinese sage Dee Ning,
+      that a good garden needs weeding? But it is not necessary for us to
+      interfere. We are naturally rather particular as to the conditions on
+      which we consent to live. One does not mind the accidental loss of an arm
+      or a leg or an eye: after all, no one with two legs is unhappy because he
+      has not three; so why should a man with one be unhappy because he has not
+      two? But infirmities of mind and temper are quite another matter. If one
+      of us has no self-control, or is too weak to bear the strain of our
+      truthful life without wincing, or is tormented by depraved appetites and
+      superstitions, or is unable to keep free from pain and depression, he
+      naturally becomes discouraged, and refuses to live.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Good Lord! Cuts his throat, do you mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. No: why should he cut his throat? He simply dies. He wants to. He is
+      out of countenance, as we call it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Well!!! But suppose he is depraved enough not to
+      want to die, and to settle the difficulty by killing all the rest of you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Oh, he is one of the thoroughly degenerate shortlivers whom we
+      occasionally produce. He emigrates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. And what becomes of him then?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. You shortlived people always think very highly of him. You accept him
+      as what you call a great man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. You astonish me; and yet I must admit that what you
+      tell me accounts for a great deal of the little I know of the private life
+      of our great men. We must be very convenient to you as a dumping place for
+      your failures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. I admit that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Good. Then if you carry out your plan of
+      colonization, and leave no shortlived countries in the world, what will
+      you do with your undesirables?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Kill them. Our tertiaries are not at all squeamish about killing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Gracious Powers!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>glancing up at the sun</i>] Come. It is just sixteen o'clock; and
+      you have to join your party at half-past in the temple in Galway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>rising</i>] Galway! Shall I at last be able to
+      boast of having seen that magnificent city?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. You will be disappointed: we have no cities. There is a temple of the
+      oracle: that is all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Alas! and I came here to fulfil two long-cherished
+      dreams. One was to see Galway. It has been said, 'See Galway and die.' The
+      other was to contemplate the ruins of London.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Ruins! We do not tolerate ruins. Was London a place of any
+      importance?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>amazed</i>] What! London! It was the mightiest
+      city of antiquity. [<i>Rhetorically</i>] Situate just where the Dover Road
+      crosses the Thames, it&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>curtly interrupting</i>] There is nothing there now. Why should
+      anybody pitch on such a spot to live? The nearest houses are at a place
+      called Strand-on-the-Green: it is very old. Come. We shall go across the
+      water. [<i>She goes down the steps</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Sic transit gloria mundi!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>from below</i>] What did you say?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>despairingly</i>] Nothing. You would not
+      understand. [<i>He goes down the steps</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0060" id="link2H_4_0060"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      ACT II
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>A courtyard before the columned portico of a temple. The temple door is
+      in the middle of the portico. A veiled and robed woman of majestic
+      carriage passes along behind the columns towards the entrance. From the
+      opposite direction a man of compact figure, clean-shaven, saturnine, and
+      self-centred: in short, very like Napoleon I, and wearing a military
+      uniform of Napoleonic cut, marches with measured steps; places his hand in
+      his lapel in the traditional manner; and fixes the woman with his eye. She
+      stops, her attitude expressing haughty amazement at his audacity. He is on
+      her right: she on his left.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON [<i>impressively</i>] I am the Man of Destiny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE VEILED WOMAN [<i>unimpressed</i>] How did you get in here?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. I walked in. I go on until I am stopped. I never am stopped. I
+      tell you I am the Man of Destiny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE VEILED WOMAN. You will be a man of very short destiny if you wander
+      about here without one of our children to guide you. I suppose you belong
+      to the Baghdad envoy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. I came with him; but I do not belong to him. I belong to myself.
+      Direct me to the oracle if you can. If not, do not waste my time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE VEILED WOMAN. Your time, poor creature, is short. I will not waste it.
+      Your envoy and his party will be here presently. The consultation of the
+      oracle is arranged for them, and will take place according to the
+      prescribed ritual. You can wait here until they come [<i>she turns to go
+      into the temple</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. I never wait. [<i>She stops</i>]. The prescribed ritual is, I
+      believe, the classical one of the pythoness on her tripod, the
+      intoxicating fumes arising from the abyss, the convulsions of the
+      priestess as she delivers the message of the God, and so on. That sort of
+      thing does not impose on me: I use it myself to impose on simpletons. I
+      believe that what is, is. I know that what is not, is not. The antics of a
+      woman sitting on a tripod and pretending to be drunk do not interest me.
+      Her words are put into her mouth, not by a god, but by a man three hundred
+      years old, who has had the capacity to profit by his experience. I wish to
+      speak to that man face to face, without mummery or imposture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE VEILED WOMAN. You seem to be an unusually sensible person. But there
+      is no old man. I am the oracle on duty today. I am on my way to take my
+      place on the tripod, and go through the usual mummery, as you rightly call
+      it, to impress your friend the envoy. As you are superior to that kind of
+      thing, you may consult me now. [<i>She leads the way into the middle of
+      the courtyard</i>]. What do you want to know?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON [<i>following her</i>] Madam: I have not come all this way to
+      discuss matters of State with a woman. I must ask you to direct me to one
+      of your oldest and ablest men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. None of our oldest and ablest men or women would dream of
+      wasting their time on you. You would die of discouragement in their
+      presence in less than three hours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. You can keep this idle fable of discouragement for people
+      credulous enough to be intimidated by it, madam. I do not believe in
+      metaphysical forces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. No one asks you to. A field is something physical, is it not.
+      Well, I have a field.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. I have several million fields. I am Emperor of Turania.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. You do not understand. I am not speaking of an agricultural
+      field. Do you not know that every mass of matter in motion carries with it
+      an invisible gravitational field, every magnet an invisible magnetic
+      field, and every living organism a mesmeric field? Even you have a
+      perceptible mesmeric field. Feeble as it is, it is the strongest I have
+      yet observed in a shortliver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. By no means feeble, madam. I understand you now; and I may tell
+      you that the strongest characters blench in my presence, and submit to my
+      domination. But I do not call that a physical force.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. What else do you call it, pray? Our physicists deal with it.
+      Our mathematicians express its measurements in algebraic equations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. Do you mean that they could measure mine?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. Yes: by a figure infinitely near to zero. Even in us the force
+      is negligible during our first century of life. In our second it develops
+      quickly, and becomes dangerous to shortlivers who venture into its field.
+      If I were not veiled and robed in insulating material you could not endure
+      my presence; and I am still a young woman: one hundred and seventy if you
+      wish to know exactly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON [<i>folding his arms</i>] I am not intimidated: no woman alive,
+      old or young, can put me out of countenance. Unveil, madam. Disrobe. You
+      will move this temple as easily as shake me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. Very well [<i>she throws back her veil</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON [<i>shrieking, staggering, and covering his eyes</i>] No. Stop.
+      Hide your face again. [<i>Shutting his eyes and distractedly clutching at
+      his throat and heart</i>] Let me go. Help! I am dying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. Do you still wish to consult an older person?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. No, no. The veil, the veil, I beg you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE [<i>replacing the veil</i>] So.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. Ouf! One cannot always be at one's best. Twice before in my life
+      I have lost my nerve and behaved like a poltroon. But I warn you not to
+      judge my quality by these involuntary moments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. I have no occasion to judge of your quality. You want my
+      advice. Speak quickly; or I shall go about my business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON [<i>After a moment's hesitation, sinks respectfully on one knee</i>]
+      I&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. Oh, rise, rise. Are you so foolish as to offer me this mummery
+      which even you despise?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON [<i>rising</i>] I knelt in spite of myself. I compliment you on
+      your impressiveness, madam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE [<i>impatiently</i>] Time! time! time! time!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. You will not grudge me the necessary time, madam, when you know
+      my case. I am a man gifted with a certain specific talent in a degree
+      altogether extraordinary. I am not otherwise a very extraordinary person:
+      my family is not influential; and without this talent I should cut no
+      particular figure in the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. Why cut a figure in the world?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. Superiority will make itself felt, madam. But when I say I
+      possess this talent I do not express myself accurately. The truth is that
+      my talent possesses me. It is genius. It drives me to exercise it. I must
+      exercise it. I am great when I exercise it. At other moments I am nobody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. Well, exercise it. Do you need an oracle to tell you that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. Wait. This talent involves the shedding of human blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. Are you a surgeon, or a dentist?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. Psha! You do not appreciate me, madam. I mean the shedding of
+      oceans of blood, the death of millions of men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. They object, I suppose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. Not at all. They adore me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. Indeed!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. I have never shed blood with my own hand. They kill each other:
+      they die with shouts of triumph on their lips. Those who die cursing do
+      not curse me. My talent is to organize this slaughter; to give mankind
+      this terrible joy which they call glory; to let loose the devil in them
+      that peace has bound in chains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. And you? Do you share their joy?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. Not at all. What satisfaction is it to me to see one fool pierce
+      the entrails of another with a bayonet? I am a man of princely character,
+      but of simple personal tastes and habits. I have the virtues of a laborer:
+      industry and indifference to personal comfort. But I must rule, because I
+      am so superior to other men that it is intolerable to me to be misruled by
+      them. Yet only as a slayer can I become a ruler. I cannot be great as a
+      writer: I have tried and failed. I have no talent as a sculptor or
+      painter; and as lawyer, preacher, doctor, or actor, scores of second-rate
+      men can do as well as I, or better. I am not even a diplomatist: I can
+      only play my trump card of force. What I can do is to organize war. Look
+      at me! I seem a man like other men, because nine-tenths of me is common
+      humanity. But the other tenth is a faculty for seeing things as they are
+      that no other man possesses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. You mean that you have no imagination?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON [<i>forcibly</i>] I mean that I have the only imagination worth
+      having: the power of imagining things as they are, even when I cannot see
+      them. You feel yourself my superior, I know: nay, you are my superior:
+      have I not bowed my knee to you by instinct? Yet I challenge you to a test
+      of our respective powers. Can you calculate what the methematicians call
+      vectors, without putting a single algebraic symbol on paper? Can you
+      launch ten thousand men across a frontier and a chain of mountains and
+      know to a mile exactly where they will be at the end of seven weeks? The
+      rest is nothing: I got it all from the books at my military school. Now
+      this great game of war, this playing with armies as other men play with
+      bowls and skittles, is one which I must go on playing, partly because a
+      man must do what he can and not what he would like to do, and partly
+      because, if I stop, I immediately lose my power and become a beggar in the
+      land where I now make men drunk with glory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. No doubt then you wish to know how to extricate yourself from
+      this unfortunate position?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. It is not generally considered unfortunate, madam. Supremely
+      fortunate rather.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. If you think so, go on making them drunk with glory. Why
+      trouble me with their folly and your vectors?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. Unluckily, madam, men are not only heroes: they are also
+      cowards. They desire glory; but they dread death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. Why should they? Their lives are too short to be worth living.
+      That is why they think your game of war worth playing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. They do not look at it quite in that way. The most worthless
+      soldier wants to live for ever. To make him risk being killed by the enemy
+      I have to convince him that if he hesitates he will inevitably be shot at
+      dawn by his own comrades for cowardice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. And if his comrades refuse to shoot him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. They will be shot too, of course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. By whom?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. By their comrades.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. And if they refuse?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. Up to a certain point they do not refuse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. But when that point is reached, you have to do the shooting
+      yourself, eh?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. Unfortunately, madam, when that point is reached, they shoot me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. Mf! It seems to me they might as well shoot you first as last.
+      Why don't they?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. Because their love of fighting, their desire for glory, their
+      shame of being branded as dastards, their instinct to test themselves in
+      terrible trials, their fear of being killed or enslaved by the enemy,
+      their belief that they are defending their hearths and homes, overcome
+      their natural cowardice, and make them willing not only to risk their own
+      lives but to kill everyone who refuses to take that risk. But if war
+      continues too long, there comes a time when the soldiers, and also the
+      taxpayers who are supporting and munitioning them, reach a condition which
+      they describe as being fed up. The troops have proved their courage, and
+      want to go home and enjoy in peace the glory it has earned them. Besides,
+      the risk of death for each soldier becomes a certainty if the fighting
+      goes on for ever: he hopes to escape for six months, but knows he cannot
+      escape for six years. The risk of bankruptcy for the citizen becomes a
+      certainty in the same way. Now what does this mean for me?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. Does that matter in the midst of such calamity?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. Psha! madam: it is the only thing that matters: the value of
+      human life is the value of the greatest living man. Cut off that
+      infinitesimal layer of grey matter which distinguishes my brain from that
+      of the common man, and you cut down the stature of humanity from that of a
+      giant to that of a nobody. I matter supremely: my soldiers do not matter
+      at all: there are plenty more where they came from. If you kill me, or put
+      a stop to my activity (it is the same thing), the nobler part of human
+      life perishes. You must save the world from that catastrophe, madam. War
+      has made me popular, powerful, famous, historically immortal. But I
+      foresee that if I go on to the end it will leave me execrated, dethroned,
+      imprisoned, perhaps executed. Yet if I stop fighting I commit suicide as a
+      great man and become a common one. How am I to escape the horns of this
+      tragic dilemma? Victory I can guarantee: I am invincible. But the cost of
+      victory is the demoralization, the depopulation, the ruin of the victors
+      no less than of the vanquished. How am I to satisfy my genius by fighting
+      until I die? that is my question to you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. Were you not rash to venture into these sacred islands with
+      such a question on your lips? Warriors are not popular here, my friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. If a soldier were restrained by such a consideration, madam, he
+      would no longer be a soldier. Besides [<i>he produces a pistol</i>], I
+      have not come unarmed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. What is that thing?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. It is an instrument of my profession, madam. I raise this
+      hammer; I point the barrel at you; I pull this trigger that is against my
+      forefinger; and you fall dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. Shew it to me [<i>she puts out her hand to take it from him</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON [<i>retreating a step</i>] Pardon me, madam. I never trust my
+      life in the hands of a person over whom I have no control.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE [<i>sternly</i>] Give it to me [<i>she raises her hand to her
+      veil</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON [<i>dropping the pistol and covering his eyes</i>] Quarter!
+      Kamerad! Take it, madam [<i>he kicks it towards her</i>]: I surrender.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. Give me that thing. Do you expect me to stoop for it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON [<i>taking his hands from his eyes with an effort</i>] A poor
+      victory, madam [<i>he picks up the pistol and hands it to her</i>]: there
+      was no vector strategy needed to win it. [Making a pose of his
+      humiliation] But enjoy your triumph: you have made me&mdash;ME! Cain
+      Adamson Charles Napoleon! Emperor of Turania! cry for quarter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. The way out of your difficulty, Cain Adamson, is very simple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON [<i>eagerly</i>] Good. What is it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. To die before the tide of glory turns. Allow me [<i>she shoots
+      him</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>He falls with a shriek. She throws the pistol away and goes haughtily
+      into the temple.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON [<i>scrambling to his feet</i>] Murderess! Monster! She-devil!
+      Unnatural, inhuman wretch! You deserve to be hanged, guillotined, broken
+      on the wheel, burnt alive. No sense of the sacredness of human life! No
+      thought for my wife and children! Bitch! Sow! Wanton! [<i>He picks up the
+      pistol</i>]. And missed me at five yards! Thats a woman all over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>He is going away whence he came when Zoo arrives and confronts him at
+      the head of a party consisting of the British Envoy, the Elderly
+      Gentleman, the Envoy's wife, and her daughter, aged about eighteen. The
+      envoy, a typical politician, looks like an imperfectly reformed criminal
+      disguised by a good tailor. The dress of the ladies is coeval with that of
+      the Elderly Gentleman, and suitable for public official ceremonies in
+      western capitals at the XVIII-XIX fin de siècle.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>They file in under the portico. Zoo immediately comes out imperiously
+      to Napoleon's right, whilst the Envoy's wife hurries effusively to his
+      left. The Envoy meanwhile passes along behind the columns to the door,
+      followed by his daughter. The Elderly Gentleman stops just where he
+      entered, to see why Zoo has swooped so abruptly on the Emperor of Turania.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>to Napoleon, severely</i>] What are you doing here by yourself?
+      You have no business to go about here alone. What was that noise just now?
+      What is that in your hand?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Napoleon glares at her in speechless fury; pockets the pistol; and
+      produces a whistle.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY'S WIFE. Arnt you coming with us to the oracle, sire?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. To hell with the oracle, and with you too [<i>he turns to go</i>]!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY'S WIFE} [<i>together</i>] {Oh, sire!!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO} {Where are you going?}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. To fetch the police. [<i>He goes out past Zoo, almost jostling
+      her, and blowing piercing blasts on his whistle</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>whipping out her tuning-fork and intoning</i>] Hallo Galway
+      Central. [<i>The whistling continues</i>]. Stand by to isolate. [<i>To the
+      Elderly Gentleman, who is staring after the whistling Emperor</i>] How far
+      has he gone?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. To that curious statue of a fat old man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>quickly, intoning</i>] Isolate the Falstaff monument isolate hard.
+      Paralyze&mdash;[<i>the whistling stops</i>]. Thank you. [<i>She puts up
+      her tuning-fork</i>]. He shall not move a muscle until I come to fetch
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY'S WIFE. Oh! he will be frightfully angry! Did you hear what he
+      said to me?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Much we care for his anger!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE DAUGHTER [<i>coming forward between her mother and Zoo</i>]. Please,
+      madam, whose statue is it? and where can I buy a picture postcard of it?
+      It is so funny. I will take a snapshot when we are coming back; but they
+      come out so badly sometimes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. They will give you pictures and toys in the temple to take away with
+      you. The story of the statue is too long. It would bore you [<i>she goes
+      past them across the courtyard to get rid of them</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WIFE [<i>gushing</i>] Oh no, I assure you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE DAUGHTER [<i>copying her mother</i>] We should be so interested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Nonsense! All I can tell you about it is that a thousand years ago,
+      when the whole world was given over to you shortlived people, there was a
+      war called the War to end War. In the war which followed it about ten
+      years later, hardly any soldiers were killed; but seven of the capital
+      cities of Europe were wiped out of existence. It seems to have been a
+      great joke: for the statesmen who thought they had sent ten million common
+      men to their deaths were themselves blown into fragments with their houses
+      and families, while the ten million men lay snugly in the caves they had
+      dug for themselves. Later on even the houses escaped; but their
+      inhabitants were poisoned by gas that spared no living soul. Of course the
+      soldiers starved and ran wild; and that was the end of pseudo-Christian
+      civilization. The last civilized thing that happened was that the
+      statesmen discovered that cowardice was a great patriotic virtue; and a
+      public monument was erected to its first preacher, an ancient and very fat
+      sage called Sir John Falstaff. Well [<i>pointing</i>], thats Falstaff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>coming from the portico to his granddaughter's
+      right</i>] Great Heavens! And at the base of this monstrous poltroon's
+      statue the War God of Turania is now gibbering impotently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Serve him right! War God indeed!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY [<i>coming between his wife and Zoo</i>] I don't know any
+      history: a modern Prime Minister has something better to do than sit
+      reading books; but&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>interrupting him encouragingly</i>] You make
+      history, Ambrose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. Well, perhaps I do; and perhaps history makes me. I hardly
+      recognize myself in the newspapers sometimes, though I suppose leading
+      articles are the materials of history, as you might say. But what I want
+      to know is, how did war come back again? and how did they make those
+      poisonous gases you speak of? We should be glad to know; for they might
+      come in very handy if we have to fight Turania. Of course I am all for
+      peace, and don't hold with the race of armaments in principle; still, we
+      must keep ahead or be wiped out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. You can make the gases for yourselves when your chemists find out
+      how. Then you will do as you did before: poison each other until there are
+      no chemists left, and no civilization. You will then begin all over again
+      as half-starved ignorant savages, and fight with boomerangs and poisoned
+      arrows until you work up to the poison gases and high explosives once
+      more, with the same result. That is, unless we have sense enough to make
+      an end of this ridiculous game by destroying you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY [<i>aghast</i>] Destroying us!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I told you, Ambrose. I warned you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. But&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>impatiently</i>] I wonder what Zozim is doing. He ought to be here
+      to receive you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Do you mean that rather insufferable young man whom
+      you found boring me on the pier?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Yes. He has to dress-up in a Druid's robe, and put on a wig and a
+      long false beard, to impress you silly people. I have to put on a purple
+      mantle. I have no patience with such mummery; but you expect it from us;
+      so I suppose it must be kept up. Will you wait here until Zozim comes,
+      please [<i>she turns to enter the temple</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. My good lady, is it worth while dressing-up and putting on
+      false beards for us if you tell us beforehand that it is all humbug?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. One would not think so; but if you wont believe in anyone who is not
+      dressed-up, why, we must dress-up for you. It was you who invented all
+      this nonsense, not we.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. But do you expect us to be impressed after this?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. I don't expect anything. I know, as a matter of experience, that you
+      will be impressed. The oracle will frighten you out of your wits. [<i>She
+      goes into the temple</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WIFE. These people treat us as if we were dirt beneath their feet. I
+      wonder at you putting up with it, Amby. It would serve them right if we
+      went home at once: wouldnt it, Eth?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE DAUGHTER. Yes, mamma. But perhaps they wouldnt mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. No use talking like that, Molly. Ive got to see this oracle.
+      The folks at home wont know how we have been treated: all theyll know is
+      that Ive stood face to face with the oracle and had the straight tip from
+      her. I hope this Zozim chap is not going to keep us waiting much longer;
+      for I feel far from comfortable about the approaching interview; and thats
+      the honest truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I never thought I should want to see that man
+      again; but now I wish he would take charge of us instead of Zoo. She was
+      charming at first: quite charming; but she turned into a fiend because I
+      had a few words with her. You would not believe: she very nearly killed
+      me. You heard what she said just now. She belongs to a party here which
+      wants to have us all killed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WIFE [<i>terrified</i>] Us! But we have done nothing: we have been as
+      nice to them as nice could be. Oh, Amby, come away, come away: there is
+      something dreadful about this place and these people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. There is, and no mistake. But youre safe with me: you ought to
+      have sense enough to know that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I am sorry to say, Molly, that it is not merely us
+      four poor weak creatures they want to kill, but the entire race of Man,
+      except themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. Not so poor neither, Poppa. Nor so weak, if you are going to
+      take in all the Powers. If it comes to killing, two can play at that game,
+      longlived or shortlived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No, Ambrose: we should have no chance. We are worms
+      beside these fearful people: mere worms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Zozim comes from the temple, robed majestically, and wearing a wreath
+      of mistletoe in his flowing white wig. His false beard reaches almost to
+      his waist. He carries a staff with a curiously carved top.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOZIM [<i>in the doorway, impressively</i>] Hail, strangers!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ALL [<i>reverently</i>] Hail!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOZIM. Are ye prepared?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. We are.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOZIM [<i>unexpectedly becoming conversational, and strolling down
+      carelessly to the middle of the group between the two ladies</i>] Well,
+      I'm sorry to say the oracle is not. She was delayed by some member of your
+      party who got loose; and as the show takes a bit of arranging, you will
+      have to wait a few minutes. The ladies can go inside and look round the
+      entrance hall and get pictures and things if they want them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WIFE} [<i>together</i>] {Thank you.} {I should like to,} [<i>They go
+      into</i>]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE DAUGHTER} {very much.} [<i>the temple</i>]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>in dignified rebuke of Zozim's levity</i>] Taken
+      in this spirit, sir, the show, as you call it, becomes almost an insult to
+      our common sense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOZIM. Quite, I should say. You need not keep it up with me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY [<i>suddenly making himself very agreeable</i>] Just so: just
+      so. We can wait as long as you please. And now, if I may be allowed to
+      seize the opportunity of a few minutes' friendly chat&mdash;?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOZIM. By all means, if only you will talk about things I can understand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. Well, about this colonizing plan of yours. My father-in-law
+      here has been telling me something about it; and he has just now let out
+      that you want not only to colonize us, but to&mdash;to&mdash;to&mdash;well,
+      shall we say to supersede us? Now why supersede us? Why not live and let
+      live? Theres not a scrap of ill-feeling on our side. We should welcome a
+      colony of immortals&mdash;we may almost call you that&mdash;in the British
+      Middle East. No doubt the Turanian Empire, with its Mahometan traditions,
+      overshadows us now. We have had to bring the Emperor with us on this
+      expedition, though of course you know as well as I do that he has imposed
+      himself on my party just to spy on me. I dont deny that he has the whip
+      hand of us to some extent, because if it came to a war none of our
+      generals could stand up against him. I give him best at that game: he is
+      the finest soldier in the world. Besides, he is an emperor and an
+      autocrat; and I am only an elected representative of the British
+      democracy. Not that our British democrats wont fight: they will fight the
+      heads off all the Turanians that ever walked; but then it takes so long to
+      work them up to it, while he has only to say the word and march. But you
+      people would never get on with him. Believe me, you would not be as
+      comfortable in Turania as you would be with us. We understand you. We like
+      you. We are easy-going people; and we are rich people. That will appeal to
+      you. Turania is a poor place when all is said. Five-eighths of it is
+      desert. They dont irrigate as we do. Besides&mdash;now I am sure this will
+      appeal to you and to all right-minded men&mdash;we are Christians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOZIM. The old uns prefer Mahometans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY [<i>shocked</i>] What!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOZIM [<i>distinctly</i>] They prefer Mahometans. Whats wrong with that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. Well, of all the disgraceful&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>diplomatically interrupting his scandalized
+      son-in-law</i>] There can be no doubt, I am afraid, that by clinging too
+      long to the obsolete features of the old pseudo-Christian Churches we
+      allowed the Mahometans to get ahead of us at a very critical period of the
+      development of the Eastern world. When the Mahometan Reformation took
+      place, it left its followers with the enormous advantage of having the
+      only established religion in the world in whose articles of faith any
+      intelligent and educated person could believe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. But what about our Reformation? Dont give the show away, Poppa.
+      We followed suit, didnt we?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Unfortunately, Ambrose, we could not follow suit
+      very rapidly. We had not only a religion to deal with, but a Church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOZIM. What is a Church?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. Not know what a Church is! Well!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. You must excuse me; but if I attempted to explain
+      you would only ask me what a bishop is; and that is a question that no
+      mortal man can answer. All I can tell you is that Mahomet was a truly wise
+      man; for he founded a religion without a Church; consequently when the
+      time came for a Reformation of the mosques there were no bishops and
+      priests to obstruct it. Our bishops and priests prevented us for two
+      hundred years from following suit; and we have never recovered the start
+      we lost then. I can only plead that we did reform our Church at last. No
+      doubt we had to make a few compromises as a matter of good taste; but
+      there is now very little in our Articles of Religion that is not accepted
+      as at least allegorically true by our Higher Criticism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY [<i>encouragingly</i>] Besides, does it matter? Why, <i>I</i>
+      have never read the Articles in my life; and I am Prime Minister! Come! if
+      my services in arranging for the reception of a colonizing party would be
+      acceptable, they are at your disposal. And when I say a reception I mean a
+      reception. Royal honors, mind you! A salute of a hundred and one guns! The
+      streets lined with troops! The Guards turned out at the Palace! Dinner at
+      the Guildhall!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOZIM. Discourage me if I know what youre talking about! I wish Zoo would
+      come: she understands these things. All I can tell you is that the general
+      opinion among the Colonizers is in favor of beginning in a country where
+      the people are of a different color from us; so that we can make short
+      work without any risk of mistakes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. What do you mean by short work? I hope&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOZIM [<i>with obviously feigned geniality</i>] Oh, nothing, nothing,
+      nothing. We are thinking of trying North America: thats all. You see, the
+      Red Men of that country used to be white. They passed through a period of
+      sallow complexions, followed by a period of no complexions at all, into
+      the red characteristic of their climate. Besides, several cases of long
+      life have occurred in North America. They joined us here; and their stock
+      soon reverted to the original white of these islands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. But have you considered the possibility of your
+      colony turning red?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOZIM. That wont matter. We are not particular about our pigmentation. The
+      old books mention red-faced Englishmen: they appear to have been common
+      objects at one time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>very persuasively</i>] But do you think you
+      would be popular in North America? It seems to me, if I may say so, that
+      on your own shewing you need a country in which society is organized in a
+      series of highly exclusive circles, in which the privacy of private life
+      is very jealously guarded, and in which no one presumes to speak to anyone
+      else without an introduction following a strict examination of social
+      credentials. It is only in such a country that persons of special tastes
+      and attainments can form a little world of their own, and protect
+      themselves absolutely from intrusion by common persons. I think I may
+      claim that our British society has developed this exclusiveness to
+      perfection. If you would pay us a visit and see the working of our caste
+      system, our club system, our guild system, you would admit that nowhere
+      else in the world, least of all, perhaps in North America, which has a
+      regrettable tradition of social promiscuity, could you keep yourselves so
+      entirely to yourselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOZIM [<i>good-naturedly embarrassed</i>] Look here. There is no good
+      discussing this. I had rather not explain; but it wont make any difference
+      to our Colonizers what sort of short-livers they come across. We shall
+      arrange all that. Never mind how. Let us join the ladies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>throwing off his diplomatic attitude and
+      abandoning himself to despair</i>] We understand you only too well, sir.
+      Well, kill us. End the lives you have made miserably unhappy by opening up
+      to us the possibility that any of us may live three hundred years. I
+      solemnly curse that possibility. To you it may be a blessing, because you
+      do live three hundred years. To us, who live less than a hundred, whose
+      flesh is as grass, it is the most unbearable burden our poor tortured
+      humanity has ever groaned under.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. Hullo, Poppa! Steady! How do you make that out?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOZIM. What is three hundred years? Short enough, if you ask me. Why, in
+      the old days you people lived on the assumption that you were going to
+      last out for ever and ever and ever. Immortal, you thought yourselves.
+      Were you any happier then?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. As President of the Baghdad Historical Society I am
+      in a position to inform you that the communities which took this monstrous
+      pretension seriously were the most wretched of which we have any record.
+      My Society has printed an editio princeps of the works of the father of
+      history, Thucyderodotus Macolly-buckle. Have you read his account of what
+      was blasphemously called the Perfect City of God, and the attempt made to
+      reproduce it in the northern part of these islands by Jonhobsnoxius,
+      called the Leviathan? Those misguided people sacrificed the fragment of
+      life that was granted to them to an imaginary immortality. They crucified
+      the prophet who told them to take no thought for the morrow, and that here
+      and now was their Australia: Australia being a term signifying paradise,
+      or an eternity of bliss. They tried to produce a condition of death in
+      life: to mortify the flesh, as they called it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOZIM. Well, you are not suffering from that, are you? You have not a
+      mortified air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Naturally we are not absolutely insane and
+      suicidal. Nevertheless we impose on ourselves abstinences and disciplines
+      and studies that are meant to prepare us for living three centuries. And
+      we seldom live one. My childhood was made unnecessarily painful, my
+      boyhood unnecessarily laborious, by ridiculous preparations for a length
+      of days which the chances were fifty thousand to one against my ever
+      attaining. I have been cheated out of the natural joys and freedoms of my
+      life by this dream to which the existence of these islands and their
+      oracles gives a delusive possibility of realization. I curse the day when
+      long life was invented, just as the victims of Jonhobsnoxius cursed the
+      day when eternal life was invented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOZIM. Pooh! You could live three centuries if you chose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. That is what the fortunate always say to the
+      unfortunate. Well, I do not choose. I accept my three score and ten years.
+      If they are filled with usefulness, with justice, with mercy, with
+      good-will: if they are the lifetime of a soul that never loses its honor
+      and a brain that never loses its eagerness, they are enough for me,
+      because these things are infinite and eternal, and can make ten of my
+      years as long as thirty of yours. I shall not conclude by saying live as
+      long as you like and be damned to you, because I have risen for the moment
+      far above any ill-will to you or to any fellow-creature; but I am your
+      equal before that eternity in which the difference between your lifetime
+      and mine is as the difference between one drop of water and three in the
+      eyes of the Almighty Power from which we have both proceeded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOZIM [<i>impressed</i>] You spoke that piece very well, Daddy. I couldnt
+      talk like that if I tried. It sounded fine. Ah! here comes the ladies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>To his relief, they have just appeared on the threshold of the temple.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>passing from exaltation to distress</i>] It
+      means nothing to him: in this land of discouragement the sublime has
+      become the ridiculous. [<i>Turning on the hopelessly puzzled Zozim</i>]
+      'Behold, thou hast made my days as it were a span long; and mine age is
+      even as nothing in respect of thee.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WIFE.} [<i>running</i>] {{Poppa, Poppa: dont look like that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE DAUGHTER.}[<i>to him</i>] {Oh, granpa, whats the matter?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOZIM [<i>with a shrug</i>] Discouragement!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>throwing off the women with a superb gesture</i>]
+      Liar! [<i>Recollecting himself, he adds, with noble courtesy, raising his
+      hat and bowing</i>] I beg your pardon, sir; but I am NOT discouraged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>A burst of orchestral music, through which a powerful gong sounds, is
+      heard from the temple. Zoo, in a purple robe, appears in the doorway.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Come. The oracle is ready.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Zozim motions them to the threshold with a wave of his staff. The Envoy
+      and the Elderly Gentleman take off their hats and go into the temple on
+      tiptoe, Zoo leading the way. The Wife and Daughter, frightened as they
+      are, raise their heads uppishly and follow flatfooted, sustained by a
+      sense of their Sunday clothes and social consequence. Zozim remains in the
+      portico, alone.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOZIM [<i>taking off his wig, beard, and robe, and bundling them under his
+      arm</i>] Ouf! [He goes home].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0061" id="link2H_4_0061"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      ACT III
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>Inside the temple. A gallery overhanging an abyss. Dead silence. The
+      gallery is brightly lighted; but beyond is a vast gloom, continually
+      changing in intensity. A shaft of violet light shoots upward; and a very
+      harmonious and silvery carillon chimes. When it ceases the violet ray
+      vanishes.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Zoo comes along the gallery, followed by the Envoy's daughter, his
+      wife, the Envoy himself, and the Elderly Gentleman. The two men are
+      holding their hats with the brims near their noses, as if prepared to pray
+      into them at a moment's notice. Zoo halts: they all follow her example.
+      They contemplate the void with awe. Organ music of the kind called sacred
+      in the nineteenth century begins. Their awe deepens. The violet ray, now a
+      diffused mist, rises again from the abyss.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WIFE [<i>to Zoo, in a reverent whisper</i>] Shall we kneel?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>loudly</i>] Yes, if you want to. You can stand on your head if you
+      like. [<i>She sits down carelessly on the gallery railing, with her back
+      to the abyss</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>jarred by her callousness</i>] We desire to
+      behave in a becoming manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Very well. Behave just as you feel. It doesn't matter how you behave.
+      But keep your wits about you when the pythoness ascends, or you will
+      forget the questions you have come to ask her.
+    </p>
+
+    <table style="margin-left: 0.8em; border-collapse: collapse;">
+      <tbody>
+        <tr>
+          <td style="border-right-style:solid; border-width: thin;">THE ENVOY</td>
+          <td rowspan="2">[<i>simul-<br />taneously</i>]</td>
+          <td style="border-left-style:solid; border-width: thin;">[<i>very nervous, takes out a paper to refresh his memory</i>] Ahem!</td>
+        </tr>
+        <tr>
+          <td style="border-right-style:solid; border-width: thin;">THE DAUGHTER</td>
+          <td style="border-left-style:solid; border-width: thin;">[<i>alarmed</i>] The pythoness. Is she a snake?</td>
+        </tr>
+      </tbody>
+    </table>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Tch-ch! The priestess of the oracle. A sybil. A
+      prophetess. Not a snake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WIFE. How awful!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. I'm glad you think so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WIFE. Oh dear! Dont you think so?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. No. This sort of thing is got up to impress you, not to impress me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I wish you would let it impress us, then, madam. I
+      am deeply impressed; but you are spoiling the effect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. You just wait. All this business with colored lights and chords on
+      that old organ is only tomfoolery. Wait til you see the pythoness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Envoy's wife falls on her knees, and takes refuge in prayer.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE DAUGHTER [<i>trembling</i>] Are we really going to see a woman who has
+      lived three hundred years?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Stuff! Youd drop dead if a tertiary as much as looked at you. The
+      oracle is only a hundred and seventy; and you'll find it hard enough to
+      stand her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE DAUGHTER [<i>piteously</i>] Oh! [<i>she falls on her knees</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. Whew! Stand by me, Poppa. This is a little more than I
+      bargained for. Are you going to kneel; or how?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Perhaps it would be in better taste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The two men kneel.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The vapor of the abyss thickens; and a distant roll of thunder seems to
+      come from its depths. The pythoness, seated on her tripod, rises slowly
+      from it. She has discarded the insulating robe and veil in which she
+      conversed with Napoleon, and is now draped and hooded in voluminous folds
+      of a single piece of grey-white stuff. Something supernatural about her
+      terrifies the beholders, who throw themselves on their faces. Her outline
+      flows and waves: she is almost distinct at moments, and again vague and
+      shadowy: above all, she is larger than life-size, not enough to be
+      measured by the flustered congregation, but enough to affect them with a
+      dreadful sense of her supernaturalness.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Get up, get up. Do pull yourselves together, you people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Envoy and his family, by shuddering negatively, intimate that it is
+      impossible. The Elderly Gentleman manages to get on his hands and knees.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Come on, Daddy: you are not afraid. Speak to her. She wont wait here
+      all day for you, you know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>rising very deferentially to his feet</i>]
+      Madam: you will excuse my very natural nervousness in addressing, for the
+      first time in my life, a&mdash;a&mdash;a&mdash;a goddess. My friend and
+      relative the Envoy is unhinged. I throw myself upon your indulgence&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>interrupting him intolerantly</i>] Dont throw yourself on anything
+      belonging to her or you will go right through her and break your neck. She
+      isnt solid, like you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I was speaking figuratively&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. You have been told not to do it. Ask her what you want to know; and
+      be quick about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>stooping and taking the prostrate Envoy by the
+      shoulders</i>] Ambrose: you must make an effort. You cannot go back to
+      Baghdad without the answers to your questions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY [<i>rising to his knees</i>] I shall be only too glad to get
+      back alive on any terms. If my legs would support me I'd just do a bunk
+      straight for the ship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No, no. Remember: your dignity&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. Dignity be damned! I'm terrified. Take me away, for God's sake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>producing a brandy flask and taking the cap off</i>]
+      Try some of this. It is still nearly full, thank goodness!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY [<i>clutching it and drinking eagerly</i>] Ah! Thats better. [<i>He
+      tries to drink again. Finding that he has emptied it, he hands it back to
+      his father-in-law upside down</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>taking it</i>] Great heavens! He has swallowed
+      half-a-pint of neat brandy. [<i>Much perturbed, he screws the cap on
+      again, and pockets the flask</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY [<i>staggering to his feet; pulling a paper from his pocket; and
+      speaking with boisterous confidence</i>] Get up, Molly. Up with you, Eth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The two women rise to their knees.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. What I want to ask is this. [<i>He refers to the paper</i>].
+      Ahem! Civilization has reached a crisis. We are at the parting of the
+      ways. We stand on the brink of the Rubicon. Shall we take the plunge?
+      Already a leaf has been torn out of the book of the Sybil. Shall we wait
+      until the whole volume is consumed? On our right is the crater of the
+      volcano: on our left the precipice. One false step, and we go down to
+      annihilation dragging the whole human race with us. [<i>He pauses for
+      breath</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>recovering his spirits under the familiar
+      stimulus of political oratory</i>] Hear, hear!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. What are you raving about? Ask your question while you have the
+      chance. What is it you want to know?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY [<i>patronizing her in the manner of a Premier debating with a
+      very young member of the Opposition</i>] A young woman asks me a question.
+      I am always glad to see the young taking an interest in politics. It is an
+      impatient question; but it is a practical question, an intelligent
+      question. She asks why we seek to lift a corner of the veil that shrouds
+      the future from our feeble vision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. I don't. I ask you to tell the oracle what you want, and not keep her
+      sitting there all day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>warmly</i>] Order, order!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. What does 'Order, order!' mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. I ask the august oracle to listen to my voice&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. You people seem never to tire of listening to your voices; but it
+      doesn't amuse us. What do you want?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. I want, young woman, to be allowed to proceed without unseemly
+      interruptions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>A low roll of thunder comes from the abyss.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. There! Even the oracle is indignant. [<i>To the
+      Envoy</i>] Do not allow yourself to be put down by this lady's rude
+      clamor, Ambrose. Take no notice. Proceed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY'S WIFE. I cant bear this much longer, Amby. Remember: I havn't
+      had any brandy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HIS DAUGHTER [<i>trembling</i>] There are serpents curling in the vapor. I
+      am afraid of the lightning. Finish it, Papa; or I shall die.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY [<i>sternly</i>] Silence. The destiny of British civilization is
+      at stake. Trust me. I am not afraid. As I was saying&mdash;where was I?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. I don't know. Does anybody?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>tactfully</i>] You were just coming to the
+      election, I think.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY [<i>reassured</i>] Just so. The election. Now what we want to
+      know is this: ought we to dissolve in August, or put it off until next
+      spring?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Dissolve? In what? [<i>Thunder</i>]. Oh! My fault this time. That
+      means that the oracle understands you, and desires me to hold my tongue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY [<i>fervently</i>] I thank the oracle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WIFE [<i>to Zoo</i>] Serve you right!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Before the oracle replies, I should like to be
+      allowed to state a few of the reasons why, in my opinion, the Government
+      should hold on until the spring. In the first&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Terrific lightning and thunder. The Elderly Gentleman is knocked flat;
+      but as he immediately sits up again dazedly it is clear that he is none
+      the worse for the shock. The ladies cower in terror. The Envoy's hat is
+      blown off; but he seizes it just as it quits his temples, and holds it on
+      with both hands. He is recklessly drunk, but quite articulate, as he
+      seldom speaks in public without taking stimulants beforehand.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY [<i>taking one hand from his hat to make a gesture of stilling
+      the tempest</i>] Thats enough. We know how to take a hint. I'll put the
+      case in three words. I am the leader of the Potterbill party. My party is
+      in power. I am Prime Minister. The Opposition&mdash;the Rotterjacks&mdash;have
+      won every bye-election for the last six months. They&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>scrambling heatedly to his feet</i>] Not by fair
+      means. By bribery, by misrepresentation, by pandering to the vilest
+      prejudices [<i>muttered thunder</i>]&mdash;I beg your pardon [<i>he is
+      silent</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. Never mind the bribery and lies. The oracle knows all about
+      that. The point is that though our five years will not expire until the
+      year after next, our majority will be eaten away at the bye-elections by
+      about Easter. We can't wait: we must start some question that will excite
+      the public, and go to the country on it. But some of us say do it now.
+      Others say wait til the spring. We cant make up our minds one way or the
+      other. Which would you advise?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. But what is the question that is to excite your public?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. That doesnt matter. I dont know yet. We will find a question
+      all right enough. The oracle can foresee the future: we cannot. [<i>Thunder</i>].
+      What does that mean? What have I done now?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. [<i>severely</i>] How often must you be told that we cannot foresee
+      the future? There is no such thing as the future until it is the present.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Allow me to point out, madam, that when the
+      Potterbill party sent to consult the oracle fifteen years ago, the oracle
+      prophesied that the Potterbills would be victorious at the General
+      Election; and they were. So it is evident that the oracle can foresee the
+      future, and is sometimes willing to reveal it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. Quite true. Thank you, Poppa. I appeal now, over your head,
+      young woman, direct to the August Oracle, to repeat the signal favor
+      conferred on my illustrious predecessor, Sir Fuller Eastwind, and to
+      answer me exactly as he was answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The oracle raises her hands to command silence.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ALL. Sh-sh-sh!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Invisible trombones utter three solemn blasts in the manner of Die
+      Zauberflöte.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. May I&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>quickly</i>] Hush. The oracle is going to speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. Go home, poor fool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>She vanishes; and the atmosphere changes to prosaic daylight. Zoo comes
+      off the railing; throws off her robe; makes a bundle of it; and tucks it
+      under her arm. The magic and mystery are gone. The women rise to their
+      feet. The Envoy's party stare at one another helplessly.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. The same reply, word for word, that your illustrious predecessor, as
+      you call him, got fifteen years ago. You asked for it; and you got it. And
+      just think of all the important questions you might have asked. She would
+      have answered them, you know. It is always like that. I will go and
+      arrange to have you sent home: you can wait for me in the entrance hall [<i>she
+      goes out</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. What possessed me to ask for the same answer old Eastwind got?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. But it was not the same answer. The answer to
+      Eastwind was an inspiration to our party for years. It won us the
+      election.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY'S DAUGHTER. I learnt it at school, granpa. It wasn't the same at
+      all. I can repeat it. [<i>She quotes</i>] 'When Britain was cradled in the
+      west, the east wind hardened her and made her great. Whilst the east wind
+      prevails Britain shall prosper. The east wind shall wither Britain's
+      enemies in the day of contest. Let the Rotterjacks look to it.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. The old man invented that. I see it all. He was a doddering old
+      ass when he came to consult the oracle. The oracle naturally said 'Go
+      home, poor fool.' There was no sense in saying that to me; but as that
+      girl said, I asked for it. What else could the poor old chap do but fake
+      up an answer fit for publication? There were whispers about it; but nobody
+      believed them. I believe them now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Oh, I cannot admit that Sir Fuller Eastwind was
+      capable of such a fraud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. He was capable of anything: I knew his private secretary. And
+      now what are we going to say? You don't suppose I am going back to Baghdad
+      to tell the British Empire that the oracle called me a fool, do you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Surely we must tell the truth, however painful it
+      may be to our feelings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. I am not thinking of my feelings: I am not so selfish as that,
+      thank God. I am thinking of the country: of our party. The truth, as you
+      call it, would put the Rotterjacks in for the next twenty years. It would
+      be the end of me politically. Not that I care for that: I am only too
+      willing to retire if you can find a better man. Dont hesitate on my
+      account.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No, Ambrose: you are indispensable. There is no one
+      else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. Very well, then. What are you going to do?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. My dear Ambrose, you are the leader of the party,
+      not I. What are you going to do?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. I am going to tell the exact truth; thats what I'm going to do.
+      Do you take me for a liar?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>puzzled</i>] Oh. I beg your pardon. I understood
+      you to say&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY [<i>cutting him short</i>] You understood me to say that I am
+      going back to Baghdad to tell the British electorate that the oracle
+      repeated to me, word for word, what it said to Sir Fuller Eastwind fifteen
+      years ago. Molly and Ethel can bear me out. So must you, if you are an
+      honest man. Come on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>He goes out, followed by his wife and daughter.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>left alone and shrinking into an old and
+      desolate figure</i>] What am I to do? I am a most perplexed and wretched
+      man. [<i>He falls on his knees, and stretches his hands in entreaty over
+      the abyss</i>]. I invoke the oracle. I cannot go back and connive at a
+      blasphemous lie. I implore guidance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Pythoness walks in on the gallery behind him, and touches him on
+      the shoulder. Her size is now natural. Her face is hidden by her hood. He
+      flinches as if from an electric shock; turns to her; and cowers, covering
+      his eyes in terror.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No: not close to me. I'm afraid I can't bear it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE [<i>with grave pity</i>] Come: look at me. I am my natural size
+      now: what you saw there was only a foolish picture of me thrown on a cloud
+      by a lantern. How can I help you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. They have gone back to lie about your answer. I
+      cannot go with them. I cannot live among people to whom nothing is real. I
+      have become incapable of it through my stay here. I implore to be allowed
+      to stay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. My friend: if you stay with us you will die of discouragement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. If I go back I shall die of disgust and despair. I
+      take the nobler risk. I beg you, do not cast me out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>He catches her robe and holds her.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. Take care. I have been here one hundred and seventy years.
+      Your death does not mean to me what it means to you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. It is the meaning of life, not of death, that makes
+      banishment so terrible to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. Be it so, then. You may stay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>She offers him her hands. He grasps them and raises himself a little by
+      clinging to her. She looks steadily into his face. He stiffens; a little
+      convulsion shakes him; his grasp relaxes; and he falls dead.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE [<i>looking down at the body</i>] Poor shortlived thing! What
+      else could I do for you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART5" id="link2H_PART5"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART V.&mdash;As Far as Thought can Reach
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>Summer afternoon in the year 31,920 A.D. A sunlit glade at the southern
+      foot of a thickly wooded hill. On the west side of it, the steps and
+      columned porch of a dainty little classic temple. Between it and the hill,
+      a rising path to the wooded heights begins with rough steps of stones in
+      the moss. On the opposite side, a grove. In the middle of the glade, an
+      altar in the form of a low marble table as long as a man, set parallel to
+      the temple steps and pointing to the hill. Curved marble benches radiate
+      from it into the foreground; but they are not joined to it: there is
+      plenty of space to pass between the altar and the benches. </i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A dance of youths and maidens is in progress. The music is provided by a
+      few fluteplayers seated carelessly on the steps of the temple. There are
+      no children; and none of the dancers seems younger than eighteen. Some of
+      the youths have beards. Their dress, like the architecture of the theatre
+      and the design of the altar and curved seats, resembles Grecian of the
+      fourth century B.C., freely handled. They move with perfect balance and
+      remarkable grace, racing through a figure like a farandole. They neither
+      romp nor hug in our manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the first full close they clap their hands to stop the musicians, who
+      recommence with a saraband, during which a strange figure appears on the
+      path beyond the temple. He is deep in thought, with his eyes closed and
+      his feet feeling automatically for the rough irregular steps as he slowly
+      descends them. Except for a sort of linen kilt consisting mainly of a
+      girdle carrying a sporran and a few minor pockets, he is naked. In
+      physical hardihood and uprightness he seems to be in the prime of life;
+      and his eyes and mouth shew no signs of age; but his face, though fully
+      and firmly fleshed, bears a network of lines, varying from furrows to
+      hairbreadth reticulations, as if Time had worked over every inch of it
+      incessantly through whole geologic periods. His head is finely domed and
+      utterly bald. Except for his eyelashes he is quite hairless. He is
+      unconscious of his surroundings, and walks right into one of the dancing
+      couples, separating them. He wakes up and stares about him. The couple
+      stop indignantly. The rest stop. The music stops. The youth whom he has
+      jostled accosts him without malice, but without anything that we should
+      call manners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH. Now, then, ancient sleepwalker, why don't you keep your eyes
+      open and mind where you are going?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ANCIENT [<i>mild, bland, and indulgent</i>] I did not know there was a
+      nursery here, or I should not have turned my face in this direction. Such
+      accidents cannot always be avoided. Go on with your play: I will turn
+      back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH. Why not stay with us and enjoy life for once in a way? We will
+      teach you to dance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ANCIENT. No, thank you. I danced when I was a child like you. Dancing
+      is a very crude attempt to get into the rhythm of life. It would be
+      painful to me to go back from that rhythm to your babyish gambols: in fact
+      I could not do it if I tried. But at your age it is pleasant: and I am
+      sorry I disturbed you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH. Come! own up: arnt you very unhappy? It's dreadful to see you
+      ancients going about by yourselves, never noticing anything, never
+      dancing, never laughing, never singing, never getting anything out of
+      life. None of us are going to be like that when we grow up. It's a dog's
+      life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ANCIENT. Not at all. You repeat that old phrase without knowing that
+      there was once a creature on earth called a dog. Those who are interested
+      in extinct forms of life will tell you that it loved the sound of its own
+      voice and bounded about when it was happy, just as you are doing here. It
+      is you, my children, who are living the dog's life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH. The dog must have been a good sensible creature: it set you a
+      very wise example. You should let yourself go occasionally and have a good
+      time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ANCIENT. My children: be content to let us ancients go our ways and
+      enjoy ourselves in our own fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>He turns to go.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. But wait a moment. Why will you not tell us how you enjoy
+      yourself? You must have secret pleasures that you hide from us, and that
+      you never get tired of. I get tired of all our dances and all our tunes. I
+      get tired of all my partners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH [<i>suspiciously</i>] Do you? I shall bear that in mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>They all look at one another as if there were some sinister
+      significance in what she has said.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. We all do: what is the use of pretending we don't? It is
+      natural.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SEVERAL YOUNG PEOPLE. No, no. We don't. It is not natural.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ANCIENT. You are older than he is, I see. You are growing up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. How do you know? I do not look so much older, do I?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ANCIENT. Oh, I was not looking at you. Your looks do not interest me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. Thank you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>They all laugh.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH. You old fish! I believe you don't know the difference between a
+      man and a woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ANCIENT. It has long ceased to interest me in the way it interests
+      you. And when anything no longer interests us we no longer know it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. You havnt told me how I shew my age. That is what I want to
+      know. As a matter of fact I am older than this boy here: older than he
+      thinks. How did you find that out?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ANCIENT. Easily enough. You are ceasing to pretend that these childish
+      games&mdash;this dancing and singing and mating&mdash;do not become
+      tiresome and unsatisfying after a while. And you no longer care to pretend
+      that you are younger than you are. These are the signs of adolescence. And
+      then, see these fantastic rags with which you have draped yourself. [<i>He
+      takes up a piece of her draperies in his hand</i>]. It is rather badly
+      worn here. Why do you not get a new one?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. Oh, I did not notice it. Besides, it is too much trouble.
+      Clothes are a nuisance. I think I shall do without them some day, as you
+      ancients do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ANCIENT. Signs of maturity. Soon you will give up all these toys and
+      games and sweets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH. What! And be as miserable as you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ANCIENT. Infant: one moment of the ecstasy of life as we live it would
+      strike you dead. [<i>He stalks gravely out through the grove</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>They stare after him, much damped.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH [<i>to the musicians</i>] Let us have another dance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The musicians shake their heads; get up from their seats on the steps;
+      and troop away into the temple. The others follow them, except the Maiden,
+      who sits down on the altar.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A MAIDEN [<i>as she goes</i>] There! The ancient has put them out of
+      countenance. It is your fault, Strephon, for provoking him. [<i>She
+      leaves, much disappointed</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A YOUTH. Why need you have cheeked him like that? [<i>He goes grumbling</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON [<i>calling after him</i>] I thought it was understood that we
+      are always to cheek the ancients on principle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ANOTHER YOUTH. Quite right too! There would be no holding them if we
+      didn't. [<i>He goes</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. Why don't you really stand up to them? <i>I</i> did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ANOTHER YOUTH. Sheer, abject, pusillanimous, dastardly cowardice. Thats
+      why. Face the filthy truth. [<i>He goes</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ANOTHER YOUTH [<i>turning on the steps as he goes out</i>] And don't you
+      forget, infant, that one moment of the ecstasy of life as I live it would
+      strike you dead. Haha!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON [<i>now the only one left, except the Maiden</i>] Arnt you
+      coming, Chloe?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN [<i>shakes her head</i>]!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH [<i>hurrying back to her</i>] What is the matter?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN [<i>tragically pensive</i>] I dont know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH. Then there is something the matter. Is that what you mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. Yes. Something is happening to me. I dont know what.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH. You no longer love me. I have seen it for a month past.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. Dont you think all that is rather silly? We cannot go on as if
+      this kind of thing, this dancing and sweethearting, were everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH. What is there better? What else is there worth living for?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. Oh, stuff! Dont be frivolous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH. Something horrible is happening to you. You are losing all
+      heart, all feeling. [<i>He sits on the altar beside her and buries his
+      face in his hands</i>]. I am bitterly unhappy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. Unhappy! Really, you must have a very empty head if there is
+      nothing in it but a dance with one girl who is no better than any of the
+      other girls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH. You did not always think so. You used to be vexed if I as much
+      as looked at another girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. What does it matter what I did when I was a baby? Nothing
+      existed for me then except what I tasted and touched and saw; and I wanted
+      all that for myself, just as I wanted the moon to play with. Now the world
+      is opening out for me. More than the world: the universe. Even little
+      things are turning out to be great things, and becoming intensely
+      interesting. Have you ever thought about the properties of numbers?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH [<i>sitting up, markedly disenchanted</i>] Numbers!!! I cannot
+      imagine anything drier or more repulsive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. They are fascinating, just fascinating. I want to get away
+      from our eternal dancing and music, and just sit down by myself and think
+      about numbers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH [<i>rising indignantly</i>] Oh, this is too much. I have
+      suspected you for some time past. We have all suspected you. All the girls
+      say that you have deceived us as to your age: that you are getting
+      flat-chested: that you are bored with us; that you talk to the ancients
+      when you get the chance. Tell me the truth: how old are you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. Just twice your age, my poor boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH. Twice my age! Do you mean to say you are four?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. Very nearly four.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH [<i>collapsing on the altar with a groan</i>] Oh!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. My poor Strephon: I pretended I was only two for your sake. I
+      was two when you were born. I saw you break from your shell; and you were
+      such a charming child! You ran round and talked to us all so prettily, and
+      were so handsome and well grown, that I lost my heart to you at once. But
+      now I seem to have lost it altogether: bigger things are taking possession
+      of me. Still, we were very happy in our childish way for the first year,
+      werent we?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. I was happy until you began cooling towards me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. Not towards you, but towards all the trivialities of our life
+      here. Just think. I have hundreds of years to live: perhaps thousands. Do
+      you suppose I can spend centuries dancing; listening to flutes ringing
+      changes on a few tunes and a few notes; raving about the beauty of a few
+      pillars and arches; making jingles with words; lying about with your arms
+      round me, which is really neither comfortable nor convenient;
+      everlastingly choosing colors for dresses, and putting them on, and
+      washing; making a business of sitting together at fixed hours to absorb
+      our nourishment; taking little poisons with it to make us delirious enough
+      to imagine we are enjoying ourselves; and then having to pass the nights
+      in shelters lying in cots and losing half our lives in a state of
+      unconsciousness. Sleep is a shameful thing: I have not slept at all for
+      weeks past. I have stolen out at night when you were all lying insensible&mdash;quite
+      disgusting, I call it&mdash;and wandered about the woods, thinking,
+      thinking, thinking; grasping the world; taking it to pieces; building it
+      up again; devising methods; planning experiments to test the methods; and
+      having a glorious time. Every morning I have come back here with greater
+      and greater reluctance; and I know that the time will soon come&mdash;perhaps
+      it has come already&mdash;when I shall not come back at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. How horribly cold and uncomfortable!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. Oh, don't talk to me of comfort! Life is not worth living if
+      you have to bother about comfort. Comfort makes winter a torture, spring
+      an illness, summer an oppression, and autumn only a respite. The ancients
+      could make life one long frowsty comfort if they chose. But they never
+      lift a finger to make themselves comfortable. They will not sleep under a
+      roof. They will not clothe themselves: a girdle with a few pockets hanging
+      to it to carry things about in is all they wear: they will sit down on the
+      wet moss or in a gorse bush when there is dry heather within two yards of
+      them. Two years ago, when you were born, I did not understand this. Now I
+      feel that I would not put myself to the trouble of walking two paces for
+      all the comfort in the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. But you don't know what this means to me. It means that you are
+      dying to me: yes, just dying. Listen to me [<i>he puts his arm around her</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN [<i>extricating herself</i>] Dont. We can talk quite as well
+      without touching one another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON [<i>horrified</i>] Chloe! Oh, this is the worst symptom of all!
+      The ancients never touch one another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. Why should they?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. Oh, I don't know. But don't you want to touch me? You used to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. Yes: that is true: I used to. We used to think it would be
+      nice to sleep in one another's arms; but we never could go to sleep
+      because our weight stopped our circulations just above the elbows. Then
+      somehow my feeling began to change bit by bit. I kept a sort of interest
+      in your head and arms long after I lost interest in your whole body. And
+      now that has gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. You no longer care for me at all, then?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. Nonsense! I care for you much more seriously than before;
+      though perhaps not so much for you in particular. I mean I care more for
+      everybody. But I don't want to touch you unnecessarily; and I certainly
+      don't want you to touch me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON [<i>rising decisively</i>] That finishes it. You dislike me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN [<i>impatiently</i>] I tell you again, I do not dislike you;
+      but you bore me when you cannot understand; and I think I shall be happier
+      by myself in future. You had better get a new companion. What about the
+      girl who is to be born today?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. I do not want the girl who is to be born today. How do I know
+      what she will be like? I want you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. You cannot have me. You must recognize facts and face them. It
+      is no use running after a woman twice your age. I cannot make my childhood
+      last to please you. The age of love is sweet; but it is short; and I must
+      pay nature's debt. You no longer attract me; and I no longer care to
+      attract you. Growth is too rapid at my age: I am maturing from week to
+      week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. You are maturing, as you call it&mdash;I call it ageing&mdash;from
+      minute to minute. You are going much further than you did when we began
+      this conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. It is not the ageing that is so rapid. It is the realization
+      of it when it has actually happened. Now that I have made up my mind to
+      the fact that I have left childhood behind me, it comes home to me in
+      leaps and bounds with every word you say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. But your vow. Have you forgotten that? We all swore together in
+      that temple: the temple of love. You were more earnest than any of us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN [<i>with a grim smile</i>] Never to let our hearts grow cold!
+      Never to become as the ancients! Never to let the sacred lamp be
+      extinguished! Never to change or forget! To be remembered for ever as the
+      first company of true lovers faithful to this vow so often made and broken
+      by past generations! Ha! ha! Oh, dear!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. Well, you need not laugh. It is a beautiful and holy compact;
+      and I will keep it whilst I live. Are you going to break it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. Dear child: it has broken itself. The change has come in spite
+      of my childish vow. [<i>She rises</i>]. Do you mind if I go into the woods
+      for a walk by myself? This chat of ours seems to me an unbearable waste of
+      time. I have so much to think of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON [<i>again collapsing on the altar and covering his eyes with his
+      hands</i>] My heart is broken. [<i>He weeps</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN [<i>with a shrug</i>] I have luckily got through my childhood
+      without that experience. It shews how wise I was to choose a lover half my
+      age. [<i>She goes towards the grove, and is disappearing among the trees,
+      when another youth, older and manlier than Strephon, with crisp hair and
+      firm arms, comes from the temple, and calls to her from the threshold</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE TEMPLE YOUTH. I say, Chloe. Is there any sign of the Ancient yet? The
+      hour of birth is overdue. The baby is kicking like mad. She will break her
+      shell prematurely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN [<i>looks across to the hill path; then points up it, and says</i>]
+      She is coming, Acis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Maiden turns away through the grove and is lost to sight among the
+      trees.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Acis [<i>coming to Strephon</i>] Whats the matter? Has Chloe been unkind?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. She has grown up in spite of all her promises. She deceived us
+      about her age. She is four.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Four! I am sorry, Strephon. I am getting on for three myself; and I
+      know what old age is. I hate to say 'I told you so'; but she was getting a
+      little hard set and flat-chested and thin on the top, wasn't she?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON [<i>breaking down</i>] Dont.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. You must pull yourself together. This is going to be a busy day.
+      First the birth. Then the Festival of the Artists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON [<i>rising</i>] What is the use of being born if we have to decay
+      into unnatural, heartless, loveless, joyless monsters in four short years?
+      What use are the artists if they cannot bring their beautiful creations to
+      life? I have a great mind to die and have done with it all. [<i>He moves
+      away to the corner of the curved seat farthest from the theatre, and
+      throws himself moodily into it</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>An Ancient Woman has descended the hill path during Strephon's lament,
+      and has heard most of it. She is like the He-Ancient, equally bald, and
+      equally without sexual charm, but intensely interesting and rather
+      terrifying. Her sex is discoverable only by her voice, as her breasts are
+      manly, and her figure otherwise not very different. She wears no clothes,
+      but has draped herself rather perfunctorily with a ceremonial robe, and
+      carries two implements like long slender saws. She comes to the altar
+      between the two young men.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT [<i>to Strephon</i>] Infant: you are only at the beginning
+      of it all. [<i>To Acis</i>] Is the child ready to be born?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. More than ready, Ancient. Shouting and kicking and cursing. We have
+      called to her to be quiet and wait until you come; but of course she only
+      half understands, and is very impatient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. Very well. Bring her out into the sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS [<i>going quickly into the temple</i>] All ready. Come along.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Joyous processional music strikes up in the temple.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT [<i>going close to Strephon</i>]. Look at me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON [<i>sulkily keeping his face </i>averted] Thank you; but I don't
+      want to be cured. I had rather be miserable in my own way than callous in
+      yours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. You like being miserable? You will soon grow out of that.
+      [<i>She returns to the altar</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The procession, headed by Acis, emerges from the temple. Six youths
+      carry on their shoulders a burden covered with a gorgeous but light pall.
+      Before them certain official maidens carry a new tunic, ewers of water,
+      silver dishes pierced with holes, cloths, and immense sponges. The rest
+      carry wands with ribbons, and strew flowers. The burden is deposited on
+      the altar, and the pall removed. It is a huge egg.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT [<i>freeing her arms from her robe, and placing her saws
+      on the altar ready to her hand in a businesslike manner</i>] A girl, I
+      think you said?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE TUNIC BEARER. It is a shame. Why cant we have more boys?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SEVERAL YOUTHS [<i>protesting</i>] Not at all. More girls. We want new
+      girls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A GIRL'S VOICE FROM THE EGG. Let me out. Let me out. I want to be born. I
+      want to be born. [<i>The egg rocks</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS [<i>snatching a wand from one of the others and whacking the egg with
+      it</i>] Be quiet, I tell you. Wait. You will be born presently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE EGG. No, no: at once, at once. I want to be born: I want to be born. [<i>Violent
+      kicking within the egg, which rocks so hard that it has to be held on the
+      altar by the bearers</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. Silence. [<i>The music stops; and the egg behaves itself</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The She-Ancient takes her two saws, and with a couple of strokes rips
+      the egg open. The Newly Born, a pretty girl who would have been guessed as
+      seventeen in our day, sits up in the broken shell, exquisitely fresh and
+      rosy, but with filaments of spare albumen clinging to her here and there.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN [<i>as the world bursts on her vision</i>] Oh! Oh!! Oh!!!
+      Oh!!!! [<i>She continues this ad libitum during the following
+      remonstrances</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Hold your noise, will you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The washing begins. The Newly Born shrieks and struggles.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A YOUTH. Lie quiet, you clammy little devil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A MAIDEN. You must be washed, dear. Now quiet, quiet, quiet: be good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Shut your mouth, or I'll shove the sponge in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. Shut your eyes. Itll hurt if you don't.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ANOTHER MAIDEN. Dont be silly. One would think nobody had ever been born
+      before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN [<i>yells</i>]!!!!!!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Serve you right! You were told to shut your eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH. Dry her off quick. I can hardly hold her. Shut it, will you; or
+      I'll smack you into a pickled cabbage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The dressing begins. The Newly Born chuckles with delight.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. Your arms go here, dear. Isnt it pretty? Youll look lovely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN [<i>rapturously</i>] Oh! Oh!! Oh!!! Oh!!!!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ANOTHER YOUTH. No: the other arm: youre putting it on back to front. You
+      are a silly little beast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Here! Thats it. Now youre clean and decent. Up with you! Oopsh! [<i>He
+      hauls her to her feet. She cannot walk at first, but masters it after a
+      few steps</i>]. Now then: march. Here she is, Ancient: put her through the
+      catechism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. What name have you chosen for her?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Amaryllis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT [<i>to the Newly Born</i>] Your name is Amaryllis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. What does it mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A YOUTH. Love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A MAIDEN. Mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ANOTHER YOUTH. Lilies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN [<i>to Acis</i>] What is your name?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Acis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. I love you, Acis. I must have you all to myself. Take me
+      in your arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Steady, young one. I am three years old.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. What has that to do with it? I love you; and I must have
+      you or I will go back into my shell again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. You cant. It's broken. Look here [<i>pointing to Strephon, who has
+      remained in his seal without looking round at the birth, wrapped up in his
+      sorrow</i>]! Look at this poor fellow!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. What is the matter with him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. When he was born he chose a girl two years old for his sweetheart.
+      He is two years old now himself; and already his heart is broken because
+      she is four. That means that she has grown up like this Ancient here, and
+      has left him. If you choose me, we shall have only a year's happiness
+      before I break your heart by growing up. Better choose the youngest you
+      can find.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. I will not choose anyone but you. You must not grow up. We
+      will love one another for ever. [<i>They all laugh</i>]. What are you
+      laughing at?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. Listen, child&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Do not come near me, you dreadful old creature. You
+      frighten me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Just give her another moment. She is not quite reasonable yet. What
+      can you expect from a child less than five minutes old?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. I think I feel a little more reasonable now. Of course I
+      was rather young when I said that; but the inside of my head is changing
+      very rapidly. I should like to have things explained to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS [<i>to the She-Ancient</i>] Is she all right, do you think?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The She-Ancient looks at the Newly Born critically; feels her bumps
+      like a phrenologist; grips her muscles and shakes her limbs; examines her
+      teeth; looks into her eyes for a moment; and finally relinquishes her with
+      an air of having finished her job.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. She will do. She may live.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>They all wave their hands and shout for joy.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN [<i>indignant</i>] I may live! Suppose there had been
+      anything wrong with me?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. Children with anything wrong do not live here, my child.
+      Life is not cheap with us. But you would not have felt anything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. You mean that you would have murdered me!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. That is one of the funny words the newly born bring with
+      them out of the past. You will forget it tomorrow. Now listen. You have
+      four years of childhood before you. You will not be very happy; but you
+      will be interested and amused by the novelty of the world; and your
+      companions here will teach you how to keep up an imitation of happiness
+      during your four years by what they call arts and sports and pleasures.
+      The worst of your troubles is already over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. What! In five minutes?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. No: you have been growing for two years in the egg. You
+      began by being several sorts of creatures that no longer exist, though we
+      have fossils of them. Then you became human; and you passed in fifteen
+      months through a development that once cost human beings twenty years of
+      awkward stumbling immaturity after they were born. They had to spend fifty
+      years more in the sort of childhood you will complete in four years. And
+      then they died of decay. But you need not die until your accident comes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. What is my accident?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. Sooner or later you will fall and break your neck; or a
+      tree will fall on you; or you will be struck by lightning. Something or
+      other must make an end of you some day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. But why should any of these things happen to me?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. There is no why. They do. Everything happens to everybody
+      sooner or later if there is time enough. And with us there is eternity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Nothing need happen. I never heard such nonsense in all my
+      life. I shall know how to take care of myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. So you think.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. I don't think: I know. I shall enjoy life for ever and
+      ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. If you should turn out to be a person of infinite
+      capacity, you will no doubt find life infinitely interesting. However, all
+      you have to do now is to play with your companions. They have many pretty
+      toys, as you see: a playhouse, pictures, images, flowers, bright fabrics,
+      music: above all, themselves; for the most amusing child's toy is another
+      child. At the end of four years, your mind will change: you will become
+      wise; and then you will be entrusted with power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. But I want power now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. No doubt you do; so that you could play with the world by
+      tearing it to pieces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Only to see how it is made. I should put it all together
+      again much better than before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. There was a time when children were given the world to
+      play with because they promised to improve it. They did not improve it;
+      and they would have wrecked it had their power been as great as that which
+      you will wield when you are no longer a child. Until then your young
+      companions will instruct you in whatever is necessary. You are not
+      forbidden to speak to the ancients; but you had better not do so, as most
+      of them have long ago exhausted all the interest there is in observing
+      children and conversing with them. [<i>She turns to go</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Wait. Tell me some things that I ought to do and ought not
+      to do. I feel the need of education. They all laugh at her, except the
+      She-Ancient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. You will have grown out of that by tomorrow. Do what you
+      please. [<i>She goes away up the hill path</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The officials take their paraphernalia and the fragments of the egg
+      back into the temple.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Just fancy: that old girl has been going for seven hundred years and
+      hasnt had her fatal accident yet; and she is not a bit tired of it all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. How could anyone ever get tired of life?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. They do. That is, of the same life. They manage to change themselves
+      in a wonderful way. You meet them sometimes with a lot of extra heads and
+      arms and legs: they make you split laughing at them. Most of them have
+      forgotten how to speak: the ones that attend to us have to brush up their
+      knowledge of the language once a year or so. Nothing makes any difference
+      to them that I can see. They never enjoy themselves. I don't know how they
+      can stand it. They don't even come to our festivals of the arts. That old
+      one who saw you out of your shell has gone off to moodle about doing
+      nothing; though she knows that this is Festival Day?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. What is Festival Day?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Two of our greatest sculptors are bringing us their latest
+      masterpieces; and we are going to crown them with flowers and sing
+      dithyrambs to them and dance round them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. How jolly! What is a sculptor?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Listen here, young one. You must find out things for yourself, and
+      not ask questions. For the first day or two you must keep your eyes and
+      ears open and your mouth shut. Children should be seen and not heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Who are you calling a child? I am fully a quarter of an
+      hour old [<i>She sits down on the curved bench near Strephon with her
+      maturest air</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VOICES IN THE TEMPLE [<i>all expressing protest, disappointment, disgust</i>]
+      Oh! Oh! Scandalous. Shameful. Disgraceful. What filth! Is this a joke?
+      Why, theyre ancients! Ss-s-s-sss! Are you mad, Arjillax? This is an
+      outrage. An insult. Yah! etc. etc. etc. [<i>The malcontents appear on the
+      steps, grumbling</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Hullo: whats the matter? [<i>He goes to the steps of the temple</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The two sculptors issue from the temple. One has a beard two feet long:
+      the other is beardless. Between them comes a handsome nymph with marked
+      features, dark hair richly waved, and authoritative bearing.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE AUTHORITATIVE NYMPH [<i>swooping down to the centre of the glade with
+      the sculptors, between Acis and the Newly Born</i>] Do not try to browbeat
+      me, Arjillax, merely because you are clever with your hands. Can you play
+      the flute?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX [<i>the bearded sculptor on her right</i>] No, Ecrasia: I cannot.
+      What has that to do with it? [<i>He is half derisive, half impatient,
+      wholly resolved not to take her seriously in spite of her beauty and
+      imposing tone</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Well, have you ever hesitated to criticize our best flute
+      players, and to declare whether their music is good or bad? Pray have I
+      not the same right to criticize your busts, though I cannot make images
+      anymore than you can play?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Any fool can play the flute, or play anything else, if he
+      practises enough; but sculpture is a creative art, not a mere business of
+      whistling into a pipe. The sculptor must have something of the god in him.
+      From his hand comes a form which reflects a spirit. He does not make it to
+      please you, nor even to please himself, but because he must. You must take
+      what he gives you, or leave it if you are not worthy of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA [<i>scornfully</i>] Not worthy of it! Ho! May I not leave it
+      because it is not worthy of me?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Of you! Hold your silly tongue, you conceited humbug. What do
+      you know about it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. I know what every person of culture knows: that the business of
+      the artist is to create beauty. Until today your works have been full of
+      beauty; and I have been the first to point that out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Thank you for nothing. People have eyes, havnt they, to see what
+      is as plain as the sun in the heavens without your pointing it out?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. You were very glad to have it pointed out. You did not call me a
+      conceited humbug then. You stifled me with caresses. You modelled me as
+      the genius of art presiding over the infancy of your master here [<i>indicating
+      the other sculptor</i>], Martellus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS [<i>a silent and meditative listener, shudders and shakes his
+      head, but says nothing</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX [<i>quarrelsomely</i>] I was taken in by your talk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. I discovered your genius before anyone else did. Is that true, or
+      is it not?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Everybody knew I was an extraordinary person. When I was born my
+      beard was three feet long.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Yes; and it has shrunk from three feet to two. Your genius seems
+      to have been in the last foot of your beard; for you have lost both.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS [<i>with a short sardonic cachinnation</i>] Ha! My beard was
+      three and a half feet long when I was born; and a flash of lightning burnt
+      it off and killed the ancient who was delivering me. Without a hair on my
+      chin I became the greatest sculptor in ten generations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. And yet you come to us today with empty hands. We shall actually
+      have to crown Arjillax here because no other sculptor is exhibiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS [<i>returning from the temple steps to behind the curved seat on the
+      right of the three</i>] Whats the row, Ecrasia? Why have you fallen out
+      with Arjillax?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. He has insulted us! outraged us! profaned his art! You know how
+      much we hoped from the twelve busts he placed in the temple to be unveiled
+      today. Well, go in and look at them. That is all I have to say. [<i>She
+      sweeps to the curved seat, and sits down just where Acis is leaning over
+      it</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. I am no great judge of sculpture. Art is not my line. What is wrong
+      with the busts?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Wrong with them! Instead of being ideally beautiful nymphs and
+      youths, they are horribly realistic studies of&mdash;but I really cannot
+      bring my lips to utter it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Newly Born, full of curiosity, runs to the temple, and peeps in.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Oh, stow it, Ecrasia. Your lips are not so squeamish as all that.
+      Studies of what?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN [<i>from the temple steps</i>] Ancients.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS [<i>surprised but not scandalized</i>] Ancients!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Yes, ancients. The one subject that is by the universal consent
+      of all connoisseurs absolutely excluded from the fine arts. [<i>To
+      Arjillax</i>] How can you defend such a proceeding?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. If you come to that, what interest can you find in the statues
+      of smirking nymphs and posturing youths you stick up all over the place?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. You did not ask that when your hand was still skilful enough to
+      model them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Skilful! You high-nosed idiot, I could turn such things out by
+      the score with my eyes bandaged and one hand tied behind me. But what use
+      would they be? They would bore me; and they would bore you if you had any
+      sense. Go in and look at my busts. Look at them again and yet again until
+      you receive the full impression of the intensity of mind that is stamped
+      on them; and then go back to the pretty-pretty confectionery you call
+      sculpture, and see whether you can endure its vapid emptiness. [<i>He
+      mounts the altar impetuously</i>] Listen to me, all of you; and do you,
+      Ecrasia, be silent if you are capable of silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn. Scorn! That is
+      what I feel for your revolting busts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Fool: the busts are only the beginning of a mighty design.
+      Listen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Go ahead, old sport. We are listening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Martellus stretches himself on the sward beside the altar. The Newly
+      Born sits on the temple steps with her chin on her hands, ready to devour
+      the first oration she has ever heard. The rest sit or stand at ease.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. In the records which generations of children have rescued from
+      the stupid neglect of the ancients, there has come down to us a fable
+      which, like many fables, is not a thing that was done in the past, but a
+      thing that is to be done in the future. It is a legend of a supernatural
+      being called the Archangel Michael.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Is this a story? I want to hear a story. [<i>She runs down
+      the steps and sits on the altar at Arjillax's feet</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. The Archangel Michael was a mighty sculptor and painter. He
+      found in the centre of the world a temple erected to the goddess of the
+      centre, called Mediterranea. This temple was full of silly pictures of
+      pretty children, such as Ecrasia approves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Fair play, Arjillax! If she is to keep silent, let her alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. I shall not interrupt, Acis. Why should I not prefer youth and
+      beauty to age and ugliness?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Just so. Well, the Archangel Michael was of my opinion, not
+      yours. He began by painting on the ceiling the newly born in all their
+      childish beauty. But when he had done this he was not satisfied; for the
+      temple was no more impressive than it had been before, except that there
+      was a strength and promise of greater things about his newly born ones
+      than any other artist had attained to. So he painted all round these newly
+      born a company of ancients, who were in those days called prophets and
+      sybils, whose majesty was that of the mind alone at its intensest. And
+      this painting was acknowledged through ages and ages to be the summit and
+      masterpiece of art. Of course we cannot believe such a tale literally. It
+      is only a legend. We do not believe in archangels; and the notion that
+      thirty thousand years ago sculpture and painting existed, and had even
+      reached the glorious perfection they have reached with us, is absurd. But
+      what men cannot realize they can at least aspire to. They please
+      themselves by pretending that it was realized in a golden age of the past.
+      This splendid legend endured because it lived as a desire in the hearts of
+      the greatest artists. The temple of Mediterranea never was built in the
+      past, nor did Michael the Archangel exist. But today the temple is here [<i>he
+      points to the porch</i>]; and the man is here [<i>he slaps himself on the
+      chest</i>]. I, Arjillax, am the man. I will place in your theatre such
+      images of the newly born as must satisfy even Ecrasia's appetite for
+      beauty; and I will surround them with ancients more august than any who
+      walk through our woods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS [<i>as before</i>] Ha!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX [<i>stung</i>] Why do you laugh, you who have come empty-handed,
+      and, it seems, empty-headed?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA [<i>rising indignantly</i>] Oh, shame! You dare disparage
+      Martellus, twenty times your master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Be quiet, will you [<i>he seizes her shoulders and thrusts her back
+      into her seat</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Let him disparage his fill, Ecrasia. [<i>Sitting up</i>] My
+      poor Arjillax, I too had this dream. I too found one day that my images of
+      loveliness had become vapid, uninteresting, tedious, a waste of time and
+      material. I too lost my desire to model limbs, and retained only my
+      interest in heads and faces. I, too, made busts of ancients; but I had not
+      your courage: I made them in secret, and hid them from you all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX [<i>jumping down from the altar behind Martellus in his surprise
+      and excitement</i>] You made busts of ancients! Where are they, man? Will
+      you be talked out of your inspiration by Ecrasia and the fools who imagine
+      she speaks with authority? Let us have them all set up beside mine in the
+      theatre. I have opened the way for you; and you see I am none the worse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Impossible. They are all smashed. [<i>He rises, laughing</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ALL. Smashed!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Who smashed them?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. I did. That is why I laughed at you just now. You will smash
+      yours before you have completed a dozen of them. [<i>He goes to the end of
+      the altar and sits down beside the Newly Born</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. But why?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Because you cannot give them life. A live ancient is better
+      than a dead statue. [<i>He takes the Newly Born on his knee: she is
+      flattered and voluptuously responsive</i>]. Anything alive is better than
+      anything that is only pretending to be alive. [<i>To Arjillax</i>] Your
+      disillusion with your works of beauty is only the beginning of your
+      disillusion with images of all sorts. As your hand became more skilful and
+      your chisel cut deeper, you strove to get nearer and nearer to truth and
+      reality, discarding the fleeting fleshly lure, and making images of the
+      mind that fascinates to the end. But how can so noble an inspiration be
+      satisfied with any image, even an image of the truth? In the end the
+      intellectual conscience that tore you away from the fleeting in art to the
+      eternal must tear you away from art altogether, because art is false and
+      life alone is true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN [<i>flings her arms round his neck and kisses him
+      enthusiastically</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS [<i>rises; carries her to the curved bench on his left; deposits
+      her beside Strephon as if she were his overcoat; and continues without the
+      least change of tone</i>] Shape it as you will, marble remains marble, and
+      the graven image an idol. As I have broken my idols, and cast away my
+      chisel and modelling tools, so will you too break these busts of yours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Never.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Wait, my friend. I do not come empty-handed today, as you
+      imagined. On the contrary, I bring with me such a work of art as you have
+      never seen, and an artist who has surpassed both you and me further than
+      we have surpassed all our competitors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Impossible. The greatest things in art can never be surpassed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Who is this paragon whom you declare greater than I?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. I declare him greater than myself, Arjillax.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX [<i>frowning</i>] I understand. Sooner than not drown me, you are
+      willing to clasp me round the waist and jump overboard with me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Oh, stop squabbling. That is the worst of you artists. You are
+      always in little squabbling cliques; and the worst cliques are those which
+      consist of one man. Who is this new fellow you are throwing in one
+      another's teeth?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Ask Martellus: do not ask me. I know nothing of him. [<i>He
+      leaves Martellus, and sits down beside Ecrasia, on her left</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. You know him quite well. Pygmalion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA [<i>indignantly</i>] Pygmalion! That soulless creature! A
+      scientist! A laboratory person!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Pygmalion produce a work of art! You have lost your artistic
+      senses. The man is utterly incapable of modelling a thumb nail, let alone
+      a human figure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. That does not matter: I have done the modelling for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. What on earth do you mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS [<i>calling</i>] Pygmalion: come forth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Pygmalion, a square-fingered youth with his face laid out in horizontal
+      blocks, and a perpetual smile of eager benevolent interest in everything,
+      and expectation of equal interest from everybody else, comes from the
+      temple to the centre of the group, who regard him for the most part with
+      dismay, as dreading that he will bore them. Ecrasia is openly
+      contemptuous.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Friends: it is unfortunate that Pygmalion is constitutionally
+      incapable of exhibiting anything without first giving a lecture about it
+      to explain it; but I promise you that if you will be patient he will shew
+      you the two most wonderful works of art in the world, and that they will
+      contain some of my own very best workmanship. Let me add that they will
+      inspire a loathing that will cure you of the lunacy of art for ever. [<i>He
+      sits down next the Newly Born, who pouts and turns a very cold right
+      shoulder to him, a demonstration utterly lost on him</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Pygmalion, with the smile of a simpleton, and the eager confidence of a
+      fanatical scientist, climbs awkwardly on to the altar. They prepare for
+      the worst.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. My friends: I will omit the algebra&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Thank God!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION [<i>continuing</i>]&mdash;because Martellus has made me promise
+      to do so. To come to the point, I have succeeded in making artificial
+      human beings. Real live ones, I mean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      INCREDULOUS VOICES. Oh, come! Tell us another. Really, Pyg! Get out. You
+      havnt. What a lie!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. I tell you I have. I will shew them to you. It has been done
+      before. One of the very oldest documents we possess mentions a tradition
+      of a biologist who extracted certain unspecified minerals from the earth
+      and, as it quaintly expresses it, 'breathed into their nostrils the breath
+      of life.' This is the only tradition from the primitive ages which we can
+      regard as really scientific. There are later documents which specify the
+      minerals with great precision, even to their atomic weights; but they are
+      utterly unscientific, because they overlook the element of life which
+      makes all the difference between a mere mixture of salts and gases and a
+      living organism. These mixtures were made over and over again in the crude
+      laboratories of the Silly-Clever Ages; but nothing came of them until the
+      ingredient which the old chronicler called the breath of life was added by
+      this very remarkable early experimenter. In my view he was the founder of
+      biological science.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Is that all we know about him? It doesnt amount to very much,
+      does it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. There are some fragments of pictures and documents which
+      represent him as walking in a garden and advising people to cultivate
+      their gardens. His name has come down to us in several forms. One of them
+      is Jove. Another is Voltaire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. You are boring us to distraction with your Voltaire. What about
+      your human beings?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Aye: come to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. I assure you that these details are intensely interesting. [<i>Cries
+      of</i> No! They are not! Come to the human beings! Conspuez Voltaire! Cut
+      it short, Pyg! <i>interrupt him from all sides</i>]. You will see their
+      bearing presently. I promise you I will not detain you long. We know, we
+      children of science, that the universe is full of forces and powers and
+      energies of one kind and another. The sap rising in a tree, the stone
+      holding together in a definite crystalline structure, the thought of a
+      philosopher holding his brain in form and operation with an inconceivably
+      powerful grip, the urge of evolution: all these forces can be used by us.
+      For instance, I use the force of gravitation when I put a stone on my
+      tunic to prevent it being blown away when I am bathing. By substituting
+      appropriate machines for the stone we have made not only gravitation our
+      slave, but also electricity and magnetism, atomic attraction, repulsion,
+      polarization, and so forth. But hitherto the vital force has eluded us; so
+      it has had to create machinery for itself. It has created and developed
+      bony structures of the requisite strength, and clothed them with cellular
+      tissue of such amazing sensitiveness that the organs it forms will adapt
+      their action to all the normal variations in the air they breathe, the
+      food they digest, and the circumstances about which they have to think.
+      Yet, as these live bodies, as we call them, are only machines after all,
+      it must be possible to construct them mechanically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Everything is possible. Have you done it? that is the question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. Yes. But that is a mere fact. What is interesting is the
+      explanation of the fact. Forgive my saying so; but it is such a pity that
+      you artists have no intellect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA [<i>sententiously</i>] I do not admit that. The artist divines by
+      inspiration all the truths that the so-called scientist grubs up in his
+      laboratory slowly and stupidly long afterwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX [<i>to Ecrasia, quarrelsomely</i>] What do you know about it? You
+      are not an artist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Shut your heads, both of you. Let us have the artificial men. Trot
+      them out, Pygmalion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. It is a man and a woman. But I really must explain first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ALL [<i>groaning</i>]!!!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. Yes: I&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. We want results, not explanations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION [<i>hurt</i>] I see I am boring you. Not one of you takes the
+      least interest in science. Goodbye. [<i>He descends from the altar and
+      makes for the temple</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SEVERAL YOUTHS AND MAIDENS [<i>rising and rushing to him</i>] No, no. Dont
+      go. Dont be offended. We want to see the artificial pair. We will listen.
+      We are tremendously interested. Tell us all about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION [<i>relenting</i>] I shall not detain you two minutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ALL. Half an hour if you like. Please go on, Pygmalion. [<i>They rush him
+      back to the altar, and hoist him on to it</i>]. Up you go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>They return to their former places.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. As I told you, lots of attempts were made to produce protoplasm
+      in the laboratory. Why were these synthetic plasms, as they called them,
+      no use?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. We are waiting for you to tell us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN [<i>modelling herself on Ecrasia, and trying to outdo her
+      intellectually</i>] Clearly because they were dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. Not bad for a baby, my pet. But dead and alive are very loose
+      terms. You are not half as much alive as you will be in another month or
+      so. What was wrong with the synthetic protoplasm was that it could not fix
+      and conduct the Life Force. It was like a wooden magnet or a lightning
+      conductor made of silk: it would not take the current.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Nobody but a fool would make a wooden magnet, and expect it to
+      attract anything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. He might if he were so ignorant as not to be able to
+      distinguish between wood and soft iron. In those days they were very
+      ignorant of the differences between things, because their methods of
+      analysis were crude. They mixed up messes that were so like protoplasm
+      that they could not tell the difference. But the difference was there,
+      though their analysis was too superficial and incomplete to detect it. You
+      must remember that these poor devils were very little better than our
+      idiots: we should never dream of letting one of them survive the day of
+      its birth. Why, the Newly Born there already knows by instinct many things
+      that their greatest physicists could hardly arrive at by forty years of
+      strenuous study. Her simple direct sense of space-time and quantity
+      unconsciously solves problems which cost their most famous mathematicians
+      years of prolonged and laborious calculations requiring such intense
+      mental application that they frequently forgot to breathe when engaged in
+      them, and almost suffocated themselves in consequence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Leave these obscure prehistoric abortions; and come back to your
+      synthetic man and woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. When I undertook the task of making synthetic men, I did not
+      waste my time on protoplasm. It was evident to me that if it were possible
+      to make protoplasm in the laboratory, it must be equally possible to begin
+      higher up and make fully evolved muscular and nervous tissues, bone, and
+      so forth. Why make the seed when the making of the flower would be no
+      greater miracle? I tried thousands of combinations before I succeeded in
+      producing anything that would fix high-potential Life Force.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. High what?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. High-po-tential. The Life Force is not so simple as you think.
+      A high-potential current of it will turn a bit of dead tissue into a
+      philosopher's brain. A low-potential current will reduce the same bit of
+      tissue to a mass of corruption. Will you believe me when I tell you that,
+      even in man himself, the Life Force used to slip suddenly down from its
+      human level to that of a fungus, so that men found their flesh no longer
+      growing as flesh, but proliferating horribly in a lower form which was
+      called cancer, until the lower form of life killed the higher, and both
+      perished together miserably?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Keep off the primitive tribes, Pygmalion. They interest you;
+      but they bore these young things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. I am only trying to make you understand. There was the Life
+      Force raging all round me: there was I, trying to make organs that would
+      capture it as a battery captures electricity, and tissues that would
+      conduct it and operate it. It was easy enough to make eyes more perfect
+      than our own, and ears with a larger range of sound; but they could
+      neither see nor hear, because they were not susceptible to the Life Force.
+      But it was far worse when I discovered how to make them susceptible; for
+      the first thing that happened was that they ceased to be eyes and ears and
+      turned into heaps of maggots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Disgusting! Please stop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. If you don't want to hear, go away. You go ahead, Pyg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. I went ahead. You see, the lower potentials of the Life Force
+      could make maggots, but not human eyes or ears. I improved the tissue
+      until it was susceptible to a higher potential.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX [<i>intensely interested</i>] Yes; and then?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. Then the eyes and ears turned into cancers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Oh, hideous!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. Not at all. That was a great advance. It encouraged me so much
+      that I put aside the eyes and ears, and made a brain. It wouldn't take the
+      Life Force at all until I had altered its constitution a dozen times; but
+      when it did, it took a much higher potential, and did not dissolve; and
+      neither did the eyes and ears when I connected them up with the brain. I
+      was able to make a sort of monster: a thing without arms or legs; and it
+      really and truly lived for half-an-hour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Half-an-hour! What good was that? Why did it die?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. Its blood went wrong. But I got that right; and then I went
+      ahead with a complete human body: arms and legs and all. He was my first
+      man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Who modelled him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. I did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Do you mean to say you tried your own hand before you sent for
+      me?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. Bless you, yes, several times. My first man was the ghastliest
+      creature: a more dreadful mixture of horror and absurdity than you who
+      have not seen him can conceive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. If you modelled him, he must indeed have been a spectacle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. Oh, it was not his shape. You see I did not invent that. I took
+      actual measurements and moulds from my own body. Sculptors do that
+      sometimes, you know; though they pretend they don't.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Hm!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Hah!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. He was all right to look at, at first, or nearly so. But he
+      behaved in the most appalling manner; and the subsequent developments were
+      so disgusting that I really cannot describe them to you. He seized all
+      sorts of things and swallowed them. He drank every fluid in the
+      laboratory. I tried to explain to him that he must take nothing that he
+      could not digest and assimilate completely; but of course he could not
+      understand me. He assimilated a little of what he swallowed; but the
+      process left horrible residues which he had no means of getting rid of.
+      His blood turned to poison; and he perished in torments, howling. I then
+      perceived that I had produced a prehistoric man; for there are certain
+      traces in our own bodies of arrangements which enabled the earlier forms
+      of mankind to renew their bodies by swallowing flesh and grains and
+      vegetables and all sorts of unnatural and hideous foods, and getting rid
+      of what they could not digest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. But what a pity he died! What a glimpse of the past we have lost!
+      He could have told us stories of the Golden Age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. Not he. He was a most dangerous beast. He was afraid of me, and
+      actually tried to kill me by snatching up things and striking at me with
+      them. I had to give him two or three pretty severe shocks before I
+      convinced him that he was at my mercy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Why did you not make a woman instead of a man? She would
+      have known how to behave herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Why did you not make a man and a woman? Their children would
+      have been interesting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. I intended to make a woman; but after my experience with the
+      man it was out of the question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Pray why?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. Well, it is difficult to explain if you have not studied
+      prehistoric methods of reproduction. You see the only sort of men and
+      women I could make were men and women just like us as far as their bodies
+      were concerned. That was how I killed the poor beast of a man. I hadnt
+      provided for his horrible prehistoric methods of feeding himself. Suppose
+      the woman had reproduced in some prehistoric way instead of being
+      oviparous as we are? She couldn't have done it with a modern female body.
+      Besides, the experiment might have been painful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Then you have nothing to shew us at all?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. Oh yes I have. I am not so easily beaten as that. I set to work
+      again for months to find out how to make a digestive system that would
+      deal with waste products and a reproductive system capable of internal
+      nourishment and incubation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Why did you not find out how to make them like us?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON [<i>crying out in his grief for the first time</i>] Why did you
+      not make a woman whom you could love? That was the secret you needed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Oh yes. How true! How great of you, darling Strephon! [<i>She
+      kisses him impulsively</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON [<i>passionately</i>] Let me alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Control your reflexes, child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. My what!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Your reflexes. The things you do without thinking. Pygmalion is
+      going to shew you a pair of human creatures who are all reflexes and
+      nothing else. Take warning by them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. But wont they be alive, like us?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. That is a very difficult question to answer, my dear. I confess
+      I thought at first I had created living creatures; but Martellus declares
+      they are only automata. But then Martellus is a mystic: <i>I</i> am a man
+      of science. He draws a line between an automaton and a living organism. I
+      cannot draw that line to my own satisfaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Your artificial men have no self-control. They only respond to
+      stimuli from without.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. But they are conscious. I have taught them to talk and read;
+      and now they tell lies. That is so very lifelike.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Not at all. If they were alive they would tell the truth. You
+      can provoke them to tell any silly lie; and you can foresee exactly the
+      sort of lie they will tell. Give them a clip below the knee, and they will
+      jerk their foot forward. Give them a clip in their appetites or vanities
+      or any of their lusts and greeds, and they will boast and lie, and affirm
+      and deny, and hate and love without the slightest regard to the facts that
+      are staring them in the face, or to their own obvious limitations. That
+      proves that they are automata.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION [<i>unconvinced</i>] I know, dear old chap; but there really is
+      some evidence that we are descended from creatures quite as limited and
+      absurd as these. After all, the baby there is three-quarters an automaton.
+      Look at the way she has been going on!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN [<i>indignantly</i>] What do you mean? How have I been
+      going on?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. If they have no regard for truth, they can have no real vitality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. Truth is sometimes so artificial: so relative, as we say in the
+      scientific world, that it is very hard to feel quite sure that what is
+      false and even ridiculous to us may not be true to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. I ask you again, why did you not make them like us? Would any
+      true artist be content with less than the best?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. I couldnt. I tried. I failed. I am convinced that what I am
+      about to shew you is the very highest living organism that can be produced
+      in the laboratory. The best tissues we can manufacture will not take as
+      high potentials as the natural product: that is where Nature beats us. You
+      dont seem to understand, any of you, what an enormous triumph it was to
+      produce consciousness at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Cut the cackle; and come to the synthetic couple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SEVERAL YOUTHS AND MAIDENS. Yes, yes. No more talking. Let us have them.
+      Dry up, Pyg; and fetch them along. Come on: out with them! The synthetic
+      couple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION [<i>waving his hands to appease them</i>] Very well, very well.
+      Will you please whistle for them? They respond to the stimulus of a
+      whistle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>All who can, whistle like streetboys.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA [<i>makes a wry face and puts her fingers in her ears</i>]!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. Sh-sh-sh! Thats enough: thats enough: thats enough. [<i>Silence</i>].
+      Now let us have some music. A dance tune. Not too fast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The flutists play a quiet dance.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Prepare yourselves for something ghastly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Two figures, a man and woman of noble appearance, beautifully modelled
+      and splendidly attired, emerge hand in hand from the temple. Seeing that
+      all eyes are fixed on them, they halt on the steps, smiling with gratified
+      vanity. The woman is on the man's left.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION [<i>rubbing his hands with the purring satisfaction of a creator</i>]
+      This way, please.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Figures advance condescendingly and pose themselves centrally
+      between the curved seats.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. Now if you will be so good as to oblige us with a little
+      something. You dance so beautifully, you know. [<i>He sits down next
+      Martellus, and whispers to him</i>] It is extraordinary how sensitive they
+      are to the stimulus of flattery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Figures, with a gracious air, dance pompously, but very passably.
+      At the close they bow to one another.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ON ALL HANDS [<i>clapping</i>] Bravo! Thank you. Wonderful! Splendid.
+      Perfect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Figures acknowledge the applause in an obvious condition of swelled
+      head.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Can they make love?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. Yes: they can respond to every stimulus. They have all the
+      reflexes. Put your arm round the man's neck, and he will put his arm round
+      your body. He cannot help it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE FEMALE FIGURE [<i>frowning</i>] Round mine, you mean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. Yours, too, of course, if the stimulus comes from you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Cannot he do anything original?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. No. But then, you know, I do not admit that any of us can do
+      anything really original, though Martellus thinks we can.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Can he answer a question?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. Oh yes. A question is a stimulus, you know. Ask him one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS [<i>to the Male Figure</i>] What do you think of what you see around
+      you? Of us, for instance, and our ways and doings?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MALE FIGURE. I have not seen the newspaper today.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE FEMALE FIGURE. How can you expect my husband to know what to think of
+      you if you give him his breakfast without his paper?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. You see. He is a mere automaton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. I don't think I should like him to put his arm round my
+      neck. I don't like them. [<i>The Male Figure looks offended, and the
+      Female jealous</i>]. Oh, I thought they couldn't understand. Have they
+      feelings?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. Of course they have. I tell you they have all the reflexes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. But feelings are not reflexes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. They are sensations. When the rays of light enter their eyes
+      and make a picture on their retinas, their brains become conscious of the
+      picture and they act accordingly. When the waves of sound started by your
+      speaking enter their ears and record a disparaging remark on their
+      keyboards, their brains become conscious of the disparagement and resent
+      it accordingly. If you did not disparage them they would not resent it.
+      They are merely responding to a stimulus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MALE FIGURE. We are part of a cosmic system. Free will is an illusion.
+      We are the children of Cause and Effect. We are the Unalterable, the
+      Irresistible, the Irresponsible, the Inevitable.
+    </p>
+<div style="margin-left: 10%;">
+    <i>My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:<br />
+    Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.</div>i>
+</div>
+    <p>
+      <i>There is a general stir of curiosity at this.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. What the dickens does he mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MALE FIGURE. Silence, base accident of Nature. This [<i>taking the
+      hand of the Female Figure and introducing her</i>] is Cleopatra-Semiramis,
+      consort of the king of kings, and therefore queen of queens. Ye are things
+      hatched from eggs by the brainless sun and the blind fire; but the king of
+      kings and queen of queens are not accidents of the egg: they are
+      thought-out and hand-made to receive the sacred Life Force. There is one
+      person of the king and one of the queen; but the Life Force of the king
+      and queen is all one: the glory equal, the majesty co-eternal. Such as the
+      king is so is the queen, the king thought-out and hand-made, the queen
+      thought-out and hand-made. The actions of the king are caused, and
+      therefore determined, from the beginning of the world to the end; and the
+      actions of the queen are likewise. The king logical and predetermined and
+      inevitable, and the queen logical and predetermined and inevitable. And
+      yet they are not two logical and predetermined and inevitable, but one
+      logical and predetermined and inevitable. Therefore confound not the
+      persons, nor divide the substance: but worship us twain as one throne, two
+      in one and one in two, lest by error ye fall into irretrievable damnation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE FEMALE FIGURE. And if any say unto you 'Which one?' remember that
+      though there is one person of the king and one of the queen, yet these two
+      persons are not alike, but are woman and man, and that as woman was
+      created after man, the skill and practice gained in making him were added
+      to her, wherefore she is to be exalted above him in all personal respects,
+      and&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MALE FIGURE. Peace, woman; for this is a damnable heresy. Both Man and
+      Woman are what they are and must do what they must according to the
+      eternal laws of Cause and Effect. Look to your words; for if they enter my
+      ear and jar too repugnantly on my sensorium, who knows that the inevitable
+      response to that stimulus may not be a message to my muscles to snatch up
+      some heavy object and break you in pieces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Female Figure picks up a stone and is about to throw it at her
+      consort.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX [<i>springing up and shouting to Pygmalion, who is fondly
+      watching the Male Figure</i>] Look out, Pygmalion! Look at the woman!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Pygmalion, seeing what is happening, hurls himself on the Female Figure
+      and wrenches the stone out of her hand. All spring up in consternation.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. She meant to kill him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. This is horrible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE FEMALE FIGURE [<i>wrestling with Pygmalion</i>] Let me go. Let me go,
+      will you [<i>she bites his hand</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION [<i>releasing her and staggering</i>] Oh!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>A general shriek of horror echoes his exclamation. He turns deadly
+      pale, and supports himself against the end of the curved seat.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE FEMALE FIGURE [<i>to her consort</i>] You would stand there and let me
+      be treated like this, you unmanly coward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Pygmalion falls dead.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Oh! Whats the matter? Why did he fall! What has happened
+      to him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>They look on anxiously as Martellus kneels down and examines the body
+      of Pygmalion.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. She has bitten a piece out of his hand nearly as large as a
+      finger nail: enough to kill ten men. There is no pulse, no breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. But his thumb is clinched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. No: it has just straightened out. See! He has gone. Poor
+      Pygmalion!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Oh! [<i>She weeps</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. Hush, dear: thats childish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN [<i>subsiding with a sniff</i>]!!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS [<i>rising</i>] Dead in his third year. What a loss to Science!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Who cares about Science? Serve him right for making that pair of
+      horrors!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MALE FIGURE [<i>glaring</i>] Ha!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE FEMALE FIGURE. Keep a civil tongue in your head, you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Oh, do not be so unkind, Arjillax. You will make water
+      come out of my eyes again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS [<i>contemplating the Figures</i>] Just look at these two
+      devils. I modelled them out of the stuff Pygmalion made for them. They are
+      masterpieces of art. And see what they have done! Does that convince you
+      of the value of art, Arjillax!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. They look dangerous. Keep away from them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. No need to tell us that, Strephon. Pf! They poison the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MALE FIGURE. Beware, woman. The wrath of Ozymandias strikes like the
+      lightning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE FEMALE FIGURE. You just say that again if you dare, you filthy
+      creature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. What are you going to do with them, Martellus? You are responsible
+      for them, now that Pygmalion has gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. If they were marble it would be simple enough: I could smash
+      them. As it is, how am I to kill them without making a horrible mess?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MALE FIGURE [<i>posing heroically</i>] Ha! [<i>He declaims</i>]
+    </p>
+<div style="margin-left: 10%;">
+    <i>Come one: come all: this rock shall fly<br />
+    From its firm base as soon as I.</i>
+</div>
+    <p>
+      THE FEMALE FIGURE [<i>fondly</i>] My man! My hero husband! I am proud of
+      you. I love you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. We must send out a message for an ancient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Need we bother an ancient about such a trifle? It will take less
+      than half a second to reduce our poor Pygmalion to a pinch of dust. Why
+      not calcine the two along with him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. No: the two automata are trifles; but the use of our powers of
+      destruction is never a trifle. I had rather have the case judged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The He-Ancient emerges from the grove. The Figures are panic-stricken.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT [<i>mildly</i>] Am I wanted? I feel called. [<i>Seeing the
+      body of Pygmalion, and immediately taking a sterner tone</i>] What! A
+      child lost! A life wasted! How has this happened?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE FEMALE FIGURE [<i>frantically</i>] I didn't do it. It was not me. May
+      I be struck dead if I touched him! It was he [<i>pointing to the Male
+      Figure</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ALL [amazed at the lie] Oh!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MALE FIGURE. Liar. You bit him. Everyone here saw you do it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. Silence. [<i>Going between the Figures</i>] Who made these
+      two loathsome dolls?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MALE FIGURE [<i>trying to assert himself with his knees knocking</i>]
+      My name is Ozymandias, king of&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT [<i>with a contemptuous gesture</i>] Pooh!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MALE FIGURE [<i>falling on his knees</i>] Oh dont, sir. Dont. She did
+      it, sir: indeed she did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE FEMALE FIGURE [<i>howling lamentably</i>] Boohoo! oo! ooh!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. Silence, I say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>He knocks the Male Automaton upright by a very light flip under the
+      chin. The Female Automaton hardly dares to sob. The immortals contemplate
+      them with shame and loathing. The She-Ancient comes from the trees
+      opposite the temple.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. Somebody wants me. What is the matter? [<i>She comes to
+      the left hand of the Female Figure, not seeing the body of Pygmalion</i>].
+      Pf! [<i>Severely</i>] You have been making dolls. You must not: they are
+      not only disgusting: they are dangerous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE FEMALE FIGURE [<i>snivelling piteously</i>] I'm not a doll, mam. I'm
+      only poor Cleopatra-Semiramis, queen of queens. [<i>Covering her face with
+      her hands</i>] Oh, don't look at me like that, mam. I meant no harm. He
+      hurt me: indeed he did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. The creature has killed that poor youth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT [<i>seeing the body of Pygmalion</i>] What! This clever
+      child, who promised so well!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE FEMALE FIGURE. He made me. I had as much right to kill him as he had
+      to make me. And how was I to know that a little thing like that would kill
+      him? I shouldn't die if he cut off my arm or leg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. What nonsense!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. It may not be nonsense. I daresay if you cut off her leg she
+      would grow another, like the lobsters and the little lizards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. Did this dead boy make these two things?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. He made them in his laboratory. I moulded their limbs. I am
+      sorry. I was thoughtless: I did not foresee that they would kill and
+      pretend to be persons they were not, and declare things that were false,
+      and wish evil. I thought they would be merely mechanical fools.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MALE FIGURE. Do you blame us for our human nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE FEMALE FIGURE. We are flesh and blood and not angels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MALE FIGURE. Have you no hearts?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. They are mad as well as mischievous. May we not destroy them?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. We abhor them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. We loathe them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. They are noisome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. I don't want to be hard on the poor devils; but they are making me
+      feel uneasy in my inside. I never had such a sensation before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. I took a lot of trouble with them. But as far as I am
+      concerned, destroy them by all means. I loathed them from the beginning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ALL. Yes, yes: we all loathe them. Let us calcine them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE FEMALE FIGURE. Oh, don't be so cruel. I'm not fit to die. I will never
+      bite anyone again. I will tell the truth. I will do good. Is it my fault
+      if I was not made properly? Kill him; but spare me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MALE FIGURE. No! I have done no harm: she has. Kill her if you like:
+      you have no right to kill me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Do you hear that? They want to have one another killed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Monstrous! Kill them both.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. Silence. These things are mere automata: they cannot help
+      shrinking from death at any cost. You see that they have no self-control,
+      and are merely shuddering through a series of reflexes. Let us see whether
+      we cannot put a little more life into them. [<i>He takes the Male Figure
+      by the hand, and places his disengaged hand on its head</i>]. Now listen.
+      One of you two is to be destroyed. Which of you shall it be?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MALE FIGURE [<i>after a slight convulsion during which his eyes are
+      fixed on the He-Ancient</i>] Spare her; and kill me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. Thats better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Much better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT [<i>handling the Female Automaton in the same manner</i>]
+      Which of you shall we kill?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE FEMALE FIGURE. Kill us both. How could either of us live without the
+      other?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. The woman is more sensible than the man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Ancients release the Automata.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MALE FIGURE [<i>sinking to the ground</i>] I am discouraged. Life is
+      too heavy a burden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE FEMALE FIGURE [<i>collapsing</i>] I am dying. I am glad. I am afraid
+      to live.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. I think it would be nice to give the poor things a little
+      music.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Why?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. I don't know. But it would.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Musicians play.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE FEMALE FIGURE. Ozymandias: do you hear that? [<i>She rises on her
+      knees and looks raptly into space</i>] Queen of queens! [<i>She dies</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MALE FIGURE [<i>crawling feebly towards her until he reaches her hand</i>]
+      I knew I was really a king of kings. [<i>To the others</i>] Illusions,
+      farewell: we are going to our thrones. [<i>He dies</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The music stops. There is dead silence for a moment.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. That was funny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. It was. Even the Ancients are smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Just a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT [<i>quickly recovering her grave and peremptory manner</i>]
+      Take these two abominations away to Pygmalion's laboratory, and destroy
+      them with the rest of the laboratory refuse. [<i>Some of them move to </i>obey].
+      Take care: do not touch their flesh: it is noxious: lift them by their
+      robes. Carry Pygmalion into the temple; and dispose of his remains in the
+      usual way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The three bodies are carried out as directed, Pygmalion into the temple
+      by his bare arms and legs, and the two Figures through the grove by their
+      clothes. Martellus superintends the removal of the Figures, Acis that of
+      Pygmalion. Ecrasia, Arjillax, Strephon, and the Newly Born sit down as
+      before, but on contrary benches; so that Strephon and the Newly Born now
+      face the grove, and Ecrasia and Arjillax the temple. The Ancients remain
+      standing at the altar.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA [<i>as she sits down</i>] Oh for a breeze from the hills!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. Or the wind from the sea at the turn of the tide!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. I want some clean air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. The air will be clean in a moment. This doll flesh that
+      children make decomposes quickly at best; but when it is shaken by such
+      passions as the creatures are capable of, it breaks up at once and becomes
+      horribly tainted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. Let it be a lesson to you all to be content with lifeless
+      toys, and not attempt to make living ones. What would you think of us
+      ancients if we made toys of you children?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN [<i>coaxingly</i>] Why do you not make toys of us? Then you
+      would play with us; and that would be very nice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. It would not amuse us. When you play with one another you
+      play with your bodies, and that makes you supple and strong; but if we
+      played with you we should play with your minds, and perhaps deform them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. You are a ghastly lot, you ancients. I shall kill myself when I
+      am four years old. What do you live for?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. You will find out when you grow up. You will not kill
+      yourself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. If you make me believe that, I shall kill myself now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Oh no. I want you. I love you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. I love someone else. And she has gone old, old. Lost to me for
+      ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. How old?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. You saw her when you barged into us as we were dancing. She is
+      four.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. How I should have hated her twenty minutes ago! But I have
+      grown out of that now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. Good. That hatred is called jealousy, the worst of our
+      childish complaints.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Martellus, dusting his hands and puffing, returns from the grove.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Ouf! [<i>He sits down next the Newly Born</i>] That job's
+      finished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Ancients: I should like to make a few studies of you. Not
+      portraits, of course: I shall idealize you a little. I have come to the
+      conclusion that you ancients are the most interesting subjects after all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. What! Have those two horrors, whose ashes I have just deposited
+      with peculiar pleasure in poor Pygmalion's dustbin, not cured you of this
+      silly image-making!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Why did you model them as young things, you fool? If Pygmalion
+      had come to me, I should have made ancients of them for him. Not that I
+      should have modelled them any better. I have always said that no one can
+      beat you at your best as far as handwork is concerned. But this job
+      required brains. That is where I should have come in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Well, my brainy boy, you are welcome to try your hand. There
+      are two of Pygmalion's pupils at the laboratory who helped him to
+      manufacture the bones and tissues and all the rest of it. They can turn
+      out a couple of new automatons; and you can model them as ancients if this
+      venerable pair will sit for you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA [<i>decisively</i>] No. No more automata. They are too disgusting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS [<i>returning from the temple</i>] Well, thats done. Poor old Pyg!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Only fancy, Acis! Arjillax wants to make more of those abominable
+      things, and to destroy even their artistic character by making ancients of
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. You wont sit for them, will you? Please dont.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. Children, listen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS [<i>striding down the steps to the bench and seating himself next
+      Ecrasia</i>] What! Even the Ancient wants to make a speech! Give it mouth,
+      O Sage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. For heaven's sake don't tell us that the earth was once
+      inhabited by Ozymandiases and Cleopatras. Life is hard enough for us as it
+      is.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage:
+      it can be delightful. What I wanted to tell you is that ever since men
+      existed, children have played with dolls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. You keep using that word. What are dolls, pray?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. What you call works of art. Images. We call them dolls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Just so. You have no sense of art; and you instinctively insult
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. Children have been known to make dolls out of rags, and to
+      caress them with the deepest fondness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. Eight centuries ago, when I was a child, I made a rag
+      doll. The rag doll is the dearest of all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN [<i>eagerly interested</i>] Oh! Have you got it still?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. I kept it a full week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Even in your childhood, then, you did not understand high art,
+      and adored your own amateur crudities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. How old are you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Eight months.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. When you have lived as long as I have&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA [<i>interrupting rudely</i>] I shall worship rag dolls, perhaps.
+      Thank heaven I am still in my prime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. You are still capable of thanking, though you do not know
+      what you thank. You are a thanking little animal, a blaming little animal,
+      a&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. A gushing little animal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. And, as she thinks, an artistic little animal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA [<i>nettled</i>] I am an animated being with a reasonable soul and
+      human flesh subsisting. If your Automata had been properly animated,
+      Martellus, they would have been more successful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. That is where you are wrong, my child. If those two
+      loathsome things had been rag dolls, they would have been amusing and
+      lovable. The Newly Born here would have played with them; and you would
+      all have laughed and played with them too until you had torn them to
+      pieces; and then you would have laughed more than ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Of course we should. Isnt that funny?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. When a thing is funny, search it for a hidden truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. Yes; and take all the fun out of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. Do not be so embittered because your sweetheart has
+      outgrown her love for you. The Newly Born will make amends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Oh yes: I will be more than she could ever have been.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. Psha! Jealous!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Oh no. I have grown out of that. I love her now because
+      she loved you, and because you love her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. That is the next stage. You are getting on very nicely, my
+      child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Come! what is the truth that was hidden in the rag doll?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. Well, consider why you are not content with the rag doll,
+      and must have something more closely resembling a real living creature. As
+      you grow up you make images and paint pictures. Those of you who cannot do
+      that make stories about imaginary dolls. Or you dress yourselves up as
+      dolls and act plays about them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. And, to deceive yourself the more completely, you take
+      them so very very seriously that Ecrasia here declares that the making of
+      dolls is the holiest work of creation, and the words you put into the
+      mouths of dolls the sacredest of scriptures and the noblest of utterances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Tush!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Tosh!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. Yet the more beautiful they become the further they
+      retreat from you. You cannot caress them as you caress the rag doll. You
+      cannot cry for them when they are broken or lost, or when you pretend they
+      have been unkind to you, as you could when you played with rag dolls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. At last, like Pygmalion, you demand from your dolls the
+      final perfection of resemblance to life. They must move and speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. They must love and hate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. They must think that they think.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. They must have soft flesh and warm, blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. And then, when you have achieved this as Pygmalion did;
+      when the marble masterpiece is dethroned by the automaton and the homo by
+      the homunculus; when the body and the brain, the reasonable soul and human
+      flesh subsisting, as Ecrasia says, stand before you unmasked as mere
+      machinery, and your impulses are shewn to be nothing but reflexes, you are
+      filled with horror and loathing, and would give worlds to be young enough
+      to play with your rag doll again, since every step away from it has been a
+      step away from love and happiness. Is it not true?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. Speak, Martellus: you who have travelled the whole path.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. It is true. With fierce joy I turned a temperature of a million
+      degrees on those two things I had modelled, and saw them vanish in an
+      instant into inoffensive dust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. Speak, Arjillax: you who have advanced from imitating the
+      lightly living child to the intensely living ancient. Is it true, so far?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. It is partly true: I cannot pretend to be satisfied now with
+      modelling pretty children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. And you, Ecrasia: you cling to your highly artistic dolls
+      as the noblest projections of the Life Force, do you not?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world
+      unbearable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN [<i>anticipating the She-Ancient, who is evidently going to
+      challenge her</i>] Now you are coming to me, because I am the latest
+      arrival. But I don't understand your art and your dolls at all. I want to
+      caress my darling Strephon, not to play with dolls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. I am in my fourth year; and I have got on very well without your
+      dolls. I had rather walk up a mountain and down again than look at all the
+      statues Martellus and Arjillax ever made. You prefer a statue to an
+      automaton, and a rag doll to a statue. So do I; but I prefer a man to a
+      rag doll. Give me friends, not dolls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. Yet I have seen you walking over the mountains alone. Have
+      you not found your best friend in yourself?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. What are you driving at, old one? What does all this lead to?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. It leads, young man, to the truth that you can create
+      nothing but yourself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS [<i>musing</i>] I can create nothing but myself. Ecrasia: you are
+      clever. Do you understand it? I don't.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. It is as easy to understand as any other ignorant error. What
+      artist is as great as his own works? He can create masterpieces; but he
+      cannot improve the shape of his own nose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. There! What have you to say to that, old one?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. He can alter the shape of his own soul. He could alter the
+      shape of his nose if the difference between a turned-up nose and a
+      turned-down one were worth the effort. One does not face the throes of
+      creation for trifles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. What have you to say to that, Ecrasia?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. I say that if the ancients had thoroughly grasped the theory of
+      fine art they would understand that the difference between a beautiful
+      nose and an ugly one is of supreme importance: that it is indeed the only
+      thing that matters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. That is, they would understand something they could not
+      believe, and that you do not believe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Just so, mam. Art is not honest: that is why I never could stand
+      much of it. It is all make-believe. Ecrasia never really says things: she
+      only rattles her teeth in her mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Acis: you are rude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. You mean that I wont play the game of make-believe. Well, I don't
+      ask you to play it with me; so why should you expect me to play it with
+      you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. You have no right to say that I am not sincere. I have found a
+      happiness in art that real life has never given me. I am intensely in
+      earnest about art. There is a magic and mystery in art that you know
+      nothing of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. Yes, child: art is the magic mirror you make to reflect
+      your invisible dreams in visible pictures. You use a glass mirror to see
+      your face: you use works of art to see your soul. But we who are older use
+      neither glass mirrors nor works of art. We have a direct sense of life.
+      When you gain that you will put aside your mirrors and statues, your toys
+      and your dolls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. Yet we too have our toys and our dolls. That is the
+      trouble of the ancients.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. What! The ancients have their troubles! It is the first time I
+      ever heard one of them confess it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. Look at us. Look at me. This is my body, my blood, my
+      brain; but it is not me. I am the eternal life, the perpetual
+      resurrection; but [<i>striking his body</i>] this structure, this
+      organism, this makeshift, can be made by a boy in a laboratory, and is
+      held back from dissolution only by my use of it. Worse still, it can be
+      broken by a slip of the foot, drowned by a cramp in the stomach, destroyed
+      by a flash from the clouds. Sooner or later, its destruction is certain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. Yes: this body is the last doll to be discarded. When I
+      was a child, Ecrasia, I, too, was an artist, like your sculptor friends
+      there, striving to create perfection in things outside myself. I made
+      statues: I painted pictures: I tried to worship them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. I had no such skill; but I, like Acis, sought perfection
+      in friends, in lovers, in nature, in things outside myself. Alas! I could
+      not create if. I could only imagine it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. I, like Arjillax, found out that my statues of bodily
+      beauty were no longer even beautiful to me; and I pressed on and made
+      statues and pictures of men and women of genius, like those in the old
+      fable of Michael Angelo. Like Martellus, I smashed them when I saw that
+      there was no life in them: that they were so dead that they would not even
+      dissolve as a dead body does.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. And I, like Acis, ceased to walk over the mountains with
+      my friends, and walked alone; for I found that I had creative power over
+      myself but none over my friends. And then I ceased to walk on the
+      mountains; for I saw that the mountains were dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS [<i>protesting vehemently</i>] No. I grant you about the friends
+      perhaps; but the mountains are still the mountains, each with its name,
+      its individuality, its upstanding strength and majesty, its beauty&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. What! Acis among the rhapsodists!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. Mere metaphor, my poor boy: the mountains are corpses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ALL THE YOUNG [<i>repelled</i>] Oh!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. Yes. In the hardpressed heart of the earth, where the
+      inconceivable heat of the sun still glows, the stone lives in fierce
+      atomic convulsion, as we live in our slower way. When it is cast out to
+      the surface it dies like deep-sea fish: what you see is only its cold dead
+      body. We have tapped that central heat as prehistoric man tapped water
+      springs; but nothing has come up alive from those flaming depths: your
+      landscapes, your mountains, are only the world's cast skins and decaying
+      teeth on which we live like microbes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Ancient: you blaspheme against Nature and against Man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. Child, child, how much enthusiasm will you have for man
+      when you have endured eight centuries of him, as I have, and seen him
+      perish by an empty mischance that is yet a certainty? When I discarded my
+      dolls as he discarded his friends and his mountains, it was to myself I
+      turned as to the final reality. Here, and here alone, I could shape and
+      create. When my arm was weak and I willed it to be strong, I could create
+      a roll of muscle on it; and when I understood that, I understood that I
+      could without any greater miracle give myself ten arms and three heads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. I also came to understand such miracles. For fifty years I
+      sat contemplating this power in myself and concentrating my will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. So did I; and for five more years I made myself into all
+      sorts of fantastic monsters. I walked upon a dozen legs: I worked with
+      twenty hands and a hundred fingers: I looked to the four quarters of the
+      compass with eight eyes out of four heads. Children fled in amazement from
+      me until I had to hide myself from them; and the ancients, who had
+      forgotten how to laugh, smiled grimly when they passed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. We have all committed these follies. You will all commit
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Oh, do grow a lot of arms and legs and heads for us. It
+      would be so funny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. My child: I am just as well as I am. I would not lift my
+      finger now to have a thousand heads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. But what would I not give to have no head at all?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ALL THE YOUNG. Whats that? No head at all? Why? How?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. Can you not understand?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ALL THE YOUNG [<i>shaking their heads</i>] No.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. One day, when I was tired of learning to walk forward
+      with some of my feet and backwards with others and sideways with the rest
+      all at once, I sat on a rock with my four chins resting on four of my
+      palms, and four or my elbows resting on four of my knees. And suddenly it
+      came into my mind that this monstrous machinery of heads and limbs was no
+      more me than my statues had been me, and that it was only an automaton
+      that I had enslaved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Enslaved? What does that mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. A thing that must do what you command it is a slave; and
+      its commander is its master. These are words you will learn when your turn
+      comes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. You will also learn that when the master has come to do
+      everything through the slave, the slave becomes his master, since he
+      cannot live without him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. And so I perceived that I had made myself the slave of a
+      slave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. When we discovered that, we shed our superfluous heads and
+      legs and arms until we had our old shapes again, and no longer startled
+      the children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. But still I am the slave of this slave, my body. How am I
+      to be delivered from it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. That, children, is the trouble of the ancients. For whilst
+      we are tied to this tyrannous body we are subject to its death, and our
+      destiny is not achieved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. What is your destiny?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. To be immortal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. The day will come when there will be no people, only
+      thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. And that will be life eternal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. I trust I shall meet my fatal accident before that day dawns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. For once, Ecrasia, I agree with you. A world in which there were
+      nothing plastic would be an utterly miserable one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. No limbs, no contours, no exquisite lines and elegant shapes, no
+      worship of beautiful bodies, no poetic embraces in which cultivated lovers
+      pretend that their caressing hands are wandering over celestial hills and
+      enchanted valleys, no&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS [<i>interrupting her disgustedly</i>] What an inhuman mind you have,
+      Ecrasia!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Inhuman!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Yes: inhuman. Why don't you fall in love with someone?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. I! I have been in love all my life. I burned with it even in the
+      egg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Not a bit of it. You and Arjillax are just as hard as two stones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. You did not always think so, Acis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Oh, I know. I offered you my love once, and asked for yours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. And did I deny it to you, Acis?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. You didn't even know what love was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Oh! I adored you, you stupid oaf, until I found that you were a
+      mere animal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. And I made no end of a fool of myself about you until I discovered
+      that you were a mere artist. You appreciated my contours! I was plastic,
+      as Arjillax says. I wasn't a man to you: I was a masterpiece appealing to
+      your tastes and your senses. Your tastes and senses had overlaid the
+      direct impulse of life in you. And because I cared only for our life, and
+      went straight to it, and was bored by your calling my limbs fancy names
+      and mapping me into mountains and valleys and all the rest of it, you
+      called me an animal. Well, I am an animal, if you call a live man an
+      animal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. You need not explain. You refused to be refined. I did my best to
+      lift your prehistoric impulses on to the plane of beauty, of imagination,
+      of romance, of poetry, of art, of&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. These things are all very well in their way and in their proper
+      places. But they are not love. They are an unnatural adulteration of love.
+      Love is a simple thing and a deep thing: it is an act of life and not an
+      illusion. Art is an illusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. That is false. The statue comes to life always. The statues of
+      today are the men and women of the next incubation. I hold up the marble
+      figure before the mother and say, 'This is the model you must copy.' We
+      produce what we see. Let no man dare to create in art a thing that he
+      would not have exist in life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Yes: I have been through all that. But you yourself are making
+      statues of ancients instead of beautiful nymphs and swains. And Ecrasia is
+      right about the ancients being inartistic. They are damnably inartistic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA [<i>triumphant</i>] Ah! Our greatest artist vindicates me. Thanks,
+      Martellus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. The body always ends by being a bore. Nothing remains beautiful
+      and interesting except thought, because the thought is the life. Which is
+      just what this old gentleman and this old lady seem to think too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. Quite so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. Precisely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN [<i>to the He-Ancient</i>] But you cant be nothing. What do
+      you want to be?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. A vortex.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. A what?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. A vortex. I began as a vortex: why should I not end as
+      one?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Oh! That is what you old people are, Vorticists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. But if life is thought, can you live without a head?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. Not now perhaps. But prehistoric men thought they could
+      not live without tails. I can live without a tail. Why should I not live
+      without a head?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. What is a tail?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT A habit of which your ancestors managed to pure themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. None of us now believe that all this machinery of flesh
+      and blood is necessary. It dies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. It imprisons us on this petty planet and forbids us to
+      range through the stars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. But even a vortex is a vortex in something. You cant have a
+      whirlpool without water; and you cant have a vortex without gas, or
+      molecules or atoms or ions or electrons or something, not nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. No: the vortex is not the water nor the gas nor the atoms:
+      it is a power over these things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. The body was the slave of the vortex; but the slave has
+      become the master; and we must free ourselves from that tyranny. It is
+      this stuff [<i>indicating her body</i>], this flesh and blood and bone and
+      all the rest of it, that is intolerable. Even prehistoric man dreamed of
+      what he called an astral body, and asked who would deliver him from the
+      body of this death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS [<i>evidently out of his depth</i>] I shouldn't think too much about
+      it if I were you. You have to keep sane, you know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The two Ancients look at one another; shrug their shoulders; and
+      address themselves to their departure.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. We are staying too long with you, children. We must go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>All the young people rise rather eagerly.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Dont mention it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. It is tiresome for us, too. You see, children, we have to
+      put things very crudely to you to make ourselves intelligible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. And I am afraid we do not quite succeed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. Very kind of you to come at all and talk to us, I'm sure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Why do the other ancients never come and give us a turn?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. It is difficult for them. They have forgotten how to
+      speak; how to read; even how to think in your fashion. We do not
+      communicate with one another in that way or apprehend the world as you do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. I find it more and more difficult to keep up your
+      language. Another century or two and it will be impossible. I shall have
+      to be relieved by a younger shepherd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Of course we are always delighted to see you; but still, if it tries
+      you very severely, we could manage pretty well by ourselves, you know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. Tell me, Acis: do you ever think of yourself as having to
+      live perhaps for thousands of years?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Oh, don't talk about it. Why, I know very well that I have only four
+      years of what any reasonable person would call living; and three and a
+      half of them are already gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. You must not mind our saying so; but really you cannot call being
+      an ancient living.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN [<i>almost in tears</i>] Oh, this dreadful shortness of our
+      lives! I cannot bear it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. I made up my mind on that subject long ago. When I am three
+      years and fifty weeks old, I shall have my fatal accident. And it will not
+      be an accident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. We are very tired of this subject. I must leave you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. What is being tired?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. The penalty of attending to children. Farewell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The two Ancients go away severally, she into the grove, he up to the
+      hills behind the temple.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ALL. Ouf! [<i>A great sigh of relief</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Dreadful people!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. Bores!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Yet one would like to follow them; to enter into their life; to
+      grasp their thought; to comprehend the universe as they must.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Getting old, Martellus?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Well, I have finished with the dolls; and I am no longer
+      jealous of you. That looks like the end. Two hours sleep is enough for me.
+      I am afraid I am beginning to find you all rather silly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. I know. My girl went off this morning. She hadnt slept for
+      weeks. And she found mathematics more interesting than me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. There is a prehistoric saying that has come down to us from a
+      famous woman teacher. She said: 'Leave women; and study mathematics.' It
+      is the only remaining fragment of a lost scripture called The Confessions
+      of St Augustin, the English Opium Eater. That primitive savage must have
+      been a great woman, to say a thing that still lives after three hundred
+      centuries. I too will leave women and study mathematics, which I have
+      neglected too long. Farewell, children, my old playmates. I almost wish I
+      could feel sentimental about parting from you; but the cold truth is that
+      you bore me. Do not be angry with me: your turn will come. [<i>He passes
+      away gravely into the grove</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. There goes a great spirit. What a sculptor he was! And now,
+      nothing! It is as if he had cut off his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Oh, will you all leave me as he has left you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Never. We have sworn it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. What is the use of swearing? She swore. He swore. You have
+      sworn. They have sworn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. You speak like a grammar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. That is how one ought to speak, isnt it? We shall all be
+      forsworn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Do not talk like that. You are saddening us; and you are
+      chasing the light away. It is growing dark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Night is falling. The light will come back tomorrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. What is tomorrow?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. The day that never comes. [<i>He turns towards the temple</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>All begin trooping into the temple.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN [<i>holding Acis back</i>] That is no answer. What&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Silence. Little children should be seen and not heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN [<i>putting out her tongue at him</i>]!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Ungraceful. You must not do that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. I will do what I like. But there is something the matter
+      with me. I want to lie down. I cannot keep my eyes open.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. You are falling asleep. You will wake up again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN [<i>drowsily</i>] What is sleep?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Ask no questions; and you will be told no lies. [<i>He takes her by
+      the ear, and leads her firmly towards the temple</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Ai! oi! ai! Dont. I want to be carried. [<i>She reels into
+      the arms of Acts, who carries her into the temple</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Come, Arjillax: you at least are still an artist. I adore you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Do you? Unfortunately for you, I am not still a child. I have
+      grown out of cuddling. I can only appreciate your figure. Does that
+      satisfy you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. At what distance?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Arm's length or more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Thank you: not for me. [<i>She turns away from him</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Ha! ha! [<i>He strides off into the temple</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA [<i>calling to Strephon, who is on the threshold of the temple,
+      going in</i>] Strephon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. No. My heart is broken. [<i>He goes into the temple</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Must I pass the night alone? [<i>She looks round, seeking another
+      partner; but they have all gone</i>]. After all, I can imagine a lover
+      nobler than any of you. [<i>She goes into the temple</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>It is now quite dark. A vague radiance appears near the temple and
+      shapes itself into the ghost of Adam.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A WOMAN'S VOICE [<i>in the grove</i>] Who is that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. The ghost of Adam, the first father of mankind. Who are you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE VOICE. The ghost of Eve, the first mother of mankind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Come forth, wife; and shew yourself to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>appearing near the grove</i>] Here I am, husband. You are very
+      old.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A VOICE [<i>in the hills</i>] Ha! ha! ha!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Who laughs? Who dares laugh at Adam?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Who has the heart to laugh at Eve?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE VOICE. The ghost of Cain, the first child, and the first murderer. [<i>He
+      appears between them; and as he does so there is a prolonged hiss</i>].
+      Who dares hiss at Cain, the lord of death?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A VOICE. The ghost of the serpent, that lived before Adam and before Eve,
+      and taught them how to bring forth Cain. [<i>She becomes visible, coiled
+      in the trees</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A VOICE. There is one that came before the serpent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. That is the voice of Lilith, in whom the father and mother
+      were one. Hail, Lilith!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Lilith becomes visible between Cain and Adam.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LILITH. I suffered unspeakably; I tore myself asunder; I lost my life, to
+      make of my one flesh these twain, man and woman. And this is what has come
+      of it. What do you make of it, Adam, my son?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. I made the earth bring forth by my labor, and the woman bring forth
+      by my love. And this is what has come of it. What do you make of it, Eve,
+      my wife?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. I nourished the egg in my body and fed it with my blood. And now they
+      let it fall as the birds did, and suffer not at all. What do you make of
+      it, Cain, my first-born?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. I invented killing and conquest and mastery and the winnowing out of
+      the weak by the strong. And now the strong have slain one another; and the
+      weak live for ever; and their deeds do nothing for the doer more than for
+      another. What do you make of it, snake?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. I am justified. For I chose wisdom and the knowledge of good
+      and evil; and now there is no evil; and wisdom and good are one. It is
+      enough. [<i>She vanishes</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. There is no place for me on earth any longer. You cannot deny that
+      mine was a splendid game while it lasted. But now! Out, out, brief candle!
+      [<i>He vanishes</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. The clever ones were always my favorites. The diggers and the
+      fighters have dug themselves in with the worms. My clever ones have
+      inherited the earth. All's well. [<i>She fades away</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. I can make nothing of it, neither head nor tail. What is it all for?
+      Why? Whither? Whence? We were well enough in the garden. And now the fools
+      have killed all the animals; and they are dissatisfied because they cannot
+      be bothered with their bodies! Foolishness, I call it. [<i>He disappears</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LILITH. They have accepted the burden of eternal life. They have taken the
+      agony from birth; and their life does not fail them even in the hour of
+      their destruction. Their breasts are without milk: their bowels are gone:
+      the very shapes of them are only ornaments for their children to admire
+      and caress without understanding. Is this enough; or shall I labor again?
+      Shall I bring forth something that will sweep them away and make an end of
+      them as they have swept away the beasts of the garden, and made an end of
+      the crawling things and the flying things and of all them that refuse to
+      live for ever? I had patience with them for many ages: they tried me very
+      sorely. They did terrible things: they embraced death, and said that
+      eternal life was a fable. I stood amazed at the malice and destructiveness
+      of the things I had made: Mars blushed as he looked down on the shame of
+      his sister planet: cruelty and hypocrisy became so hideous that the face
+      of the earth was pitted with the graves of little children among which
+      living skeletons crawled in search of horrible food. The pangs of another
+      birth were already upon me when one man repented and lived three hundred
+      years; and I waited to see what would come of that. And so much came of it
+      that the horrors of that time seem now but an evil dream. They have
+      redeemed themselves from their vileness, and turned away from their sins.
+      Best of all, they are still not satisfied: the impulse I gave them in that
+      day when I sundered myself in twain and launched Man and Woman on the
+      earth still urges them: after passing a million goals they press on to the
+      goal of redemption from the flesh, to the vortex freed from matter, to the
+      whirlpool in pure intelligence that, when the world began, was a whirlpool
+      in pure force. And though all that they have done seems but the first hour
+      of the infinite work of creation, yet I will not supersede them until they
+      have forded this last stream that lies between flesh and spirit, and
+      disentangled their life from the matter that has always mocked it. I can
+      wait: waiting and patience mean nothing to the eternal. I gave the woman
+      the greatest of gifts: curiosity. By that her seed has been saved from my
+      wrath; for I also am curious; and I have waited always to see what they
+      will do tomorrow. Let them feed that appetite well for me. I say, let them
+      dread, of all things, stagnation; for from the moment I, Lilith, lose hope
+      and faith in them, they are doomed. In that hope and faith I have let them
+      live for a moment; and in that moment I have spared them many times. But
+      mightier creatures than they have killed hope and faith, and perished from
+      the earth; and I may not spare them for ever. I am Lilith: I brought life
+      into the whirlpool of force, and compelled my enemy, Matter, to obey a
+      living soul. But in enslaving Life's enemy I made him Life's master; for
+      that is the end of all slavery; and now I shall see the slave set free and
+      the enemy reconciled, the whirlpool become all life and no matter. And
+      because these infants that call themselves ancients are reaching out
+      towards that, I will have patience with them still; though I know well
+      that when they attain it they shall become one with me and supersede me,
+      and Lilith will be only a legend and a lay that has lost its meaning. Of
+      Life only is there no end; and though of its million starry mansions many
+      are empty and many still unbuilt, and though its vast domain is as yet
+      unbearably desert, my seed shall one day fill it and master its matter to
+      its uttermost confines. And for what may be beyond, the eyesight of Lilith
+      is too short. It is enough that there is a beyond. [<i>She vanishes</i>].
+    </p>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BACK TO METHUSELAH ***</div>
+<div style='text-align:left'>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+Updated editions will replace the previous one&#8212;the old editions will
+be renamed.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
+law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
+so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
+States without permission and without paying copyright
+royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
+of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
+Gutenberg&#8482; electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG&#8482;
+concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
+and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
+the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
+of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
+copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
+easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
+of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
+Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away--you may
+do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
+by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
+license, especially commercial redistribution.
+</div>
+
+<div style='margin:0.83em 0; font-size:1.1em; text-align:center'>START: FULL LICENSE<br />
+<span style='font-size:smaller'>THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE<br />
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK</span>
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+To protect the Project Gutenberg&#8482; mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase &#8220;Project
+Gutenberg&#8221;), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
+Project Gutenberg&#8482; License available with this file or online at
+www.gutenberg.org/license.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; font-size:1.1em; margin:1em 0; font-weight:bold'>
+Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg&#8482; electronic works
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg&#8482;
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
+destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg&#8482; electronic works in your
+possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
+Project Gutenberg&#8482; electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
+by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person
+or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.B. &#8220;Project Gutenberg&#8221; is a registered trademark. It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg&#8482; electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
+paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg&#8482; electronic works if you follow the terms of this
+agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg&#8482;
+electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (&#8220;the
+Foundation&#8221; or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
+of Project Gutenberg&#8482; electronic works. Nearly all the individual
+works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
+States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
+United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
+claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
+displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
+all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
+that you will support the Project Gutenberg&#8482; mission of promoting
+free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg&#8482;
+works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
+Project Gutenberg&#8482; name associated with the work. You can easily
+comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
+same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg&#8482; License when
+you share it without charge with others.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
+in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
+check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
+agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
+distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
+other Project Gutenberg&#8482; work. The Foundation makes no
+representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
+country other than the United States.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
+immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg&#8482; License must appear
+prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg&#8482; work (any work
+on which the phrase &#8220;Project Gutenberg&#8221; appears, or with which the
+phrase &#8220;Project Gutenberg&#8221; is associated) is accessed, displayed,
+performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
+</div>
+
+<blockquote>
+  <div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+    This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+    other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+    whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+    of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+    at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
+    are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws
+    of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
+  </div>
+</blockquote>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg&#8482; electronic work is
+derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
+contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
+copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
+the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
+redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase &#8220;Project
+Gutenberg&#8221; associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
+either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
+obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg&#8482;
+trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg&#8482; electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
+additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
+will be linked to the Project Gutenberg&#8482; License for all works
+posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
+beginning of this work.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg&#8482;
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg&#8482;.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg&#8482; License.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
+any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
+to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg&#8482; work in a format
+other than &#8220;Plain Vanilla ASCII&#8221; or other format used in the official
+version posted on the official Project Gutenberg&#8482; website
+(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
+to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
+of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original &#8220;Plain
+Vanilla ASCII&#8221; or other form. Any alternate format must include the
+full Project Gutenberg&#8482; License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg&#8482; works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg&#8482; electronic works
+provided that:
+</div>
+
+<div style='margin-left:0.7em;'>
+    <div style='text-indent:-0.7em'>
+        &#8226; You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+        the use of Project Gutenberg&#8482; works calculated using the method
+        you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
+        to the owner of the Project Gutenberg&#8482; trademark, but he has
+        agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
+        Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
+        within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
+        legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
+        payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
+        Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
+        Section 4, &#8220;Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
+        Literary Archive Foundation.&#8221;
+    </div>
+
+    <div style='text-indent:-0.7em'>
+        &#8226; You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+        you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+        does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg&#8482;
+        License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
+        copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
+        all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg&#8482;
+        works.
+    </div>
+
+    <div style='text-indent:-0.7em'>
+        &#8226; You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
+        any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+        electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
+        receipt of the work.
+    </div>
+
+    <div style='text-indent:-0.7em'>
+        &#8226; You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+        distribution of Project Gutenberg&#8482; works.
+    </div>
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
+Gutenberg&#8482; electronic work or group of works on different terms than
+are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
+from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
+the Project Gutenberg&#8482; trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
+forth in Section 3 below.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.F.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
+Gutenberg&#8482; collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg&#8482;
+electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
+contain &#8220;Defects,&#8221; such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
+or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
+other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
+cannot be read by your equipment.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the &#8220;Right
+of Replacement or Refund&#8221; described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg&#8482; trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg&#8482; electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
+with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
+with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
+lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
+or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
+opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
+the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
+without further opportunities to fix the problem.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you &#8216;AS-IS&#8217;, WITH NO
+OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
+damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
+violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
+agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
+limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
+unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
+remaining provisions.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg&#8482; electronic works in
+accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
+production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg&#8482;
+electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
+including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
+the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
+or any Project Gutenberg&#8482; work, (b) alteration, modification, or
+additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg&#8482; work, and (c) any
+Defect you cause.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; font-size:1.1em; margin:1em 0; font-weight:bold'>
+Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg&#8482;
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+Project Gutenberg&#8482; is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
+computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
+exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
+from people in all walks of life.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg&#8482;&#8217;s
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg&#8482; collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg&#8482; and future
+generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
+Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; font-size:1.1em; margin:1em 0; font-weight:bold'>
+Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service. The Foundation&#8217;s EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
+U.S. federal laws and your state&#8217;s laws.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+The Foundation&#8217;s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,
+Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
+to date contact information can be found at the Foundation&#8217;s website
+and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; font-size:1.1em; margin:1em 0; font-weight:bold'>
+Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+Project Gutenberg&#8482; depends upon and cannot survive without widespread
+public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
+DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state
+visit <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/donate/">www.gutenberg.org/donate</a>.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
+donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; font-size:1.1em; margin:1em 0; font-weight:bold'>
+Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg&#8482; electronic works
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
+Gutenberg&#8482; concept of a library of electronic works that could be
+freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
+distributed Project Gutenberg&#8482; eBooks with only a loose network of
+volunteer support.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+Project Gutenberg&#8482; eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
+the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
+necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
+edition.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
+facility: <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This website includes information about Project Gutenberg&#8482;,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+</div>
+
+</div>
+  </body>
+</html>
diff --git a/old/old/13084-8.zip b/old/old/13084-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a90193
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/old/13084-8.zip
diff --git a/old/old/13084-h.htm.2021-01-26 b/old/old/13084-h.htm.2021-01-26
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..86dea9a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/old/13084-h.htm.2021-01-26
@@ -0,0 +1,17390 @@
+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title></title>
+    <meta content="pg2html (binary v0.17)" />
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .75em; margin-bottom: .75em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%; text-align: justify; font-size: 80%; font-style: italic;}
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    .xx-small {font-size: 60%;}
+    .x-small {font-size: 75%;}
+    .small {font-size: 85%;}
+    .large {font-size: 115%;}
+    .x-large {font-size: 130%;}
+    .indent5   { margin-left: 5%;}
+    .indent10  { margin-left: 10%;}
+    .indent15  { margin-left: 15%;}
+    .indent20  { margin-left: 20%;}
+    .indent25  { margin-left: 25%;}
+    .indent30  { margin-left: 30%;}
+    .indent35  { margin-left: 35%;}
+    .indent40  { margin-left: 40%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {position: absolute; right: 1%; font-size: 0.6em;
+                font-variant: normal; font-style: normal;
+                text-align: right; background-color: #FFFACD;
+                border: 1px solid; padding: 0.3em;text-indent: 0em;}
+    .side      { float: left; font-size: 75%; width: 15%; padding-left: 0.8em;
+               border-left: dashed thin; text-align: left;
+               text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;
+               font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border:        solid 1px;}
+    .head      { float: left; font-size: 90%; width: 98%; padding-left: 0.8em;
+               border-left: dashed thin; text-align: center;
+               text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;
+               font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border:        solid 1px;}
+    p.pfirst, p.noindent {text-indent: 0}
+    span.dropcap         { float: left; margin: 0 0.1em 0 0; line-height: 0.8 }
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Back to Methuselah, by George Bernard Shaw
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+Title: Back to Methuselah
+
+Author: George Bernard Shaw
+
+Release Date: August 2, 2004  [eBook #13084]
+Last Updated: August 18, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BACK TO METHUSELAH***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell and Project Gutenberg Distributed
+Proofreaders
+
+HTML file produced by David Widger
+
+
+EDITORIAL NOTE: The reader is likely to notice the absence of
+apostrophes from contractions in the essay section of this work. The
+author disliked apostrophes and often omitted them. Some of his
+publishers inserted them, others honored his wishes. The policy of
+Project Gutenberg is to treat apostrophes as they were in the source
+text. In this case, apostrophes were omitted in the essay section but
+used in the play.
+
+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      BACK TO METHUSELAH
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      A Metabiological Pentateuch
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      By Bernard Shaw
+    </h3>
+    <h4>
+      1921
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> <b>THE INFIDEL HALF CENTURY</b> </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> THE DAWN OF DARWINISM </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> THE ADVENT OF THE NEO-DARWINIANS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> POLITICAL INADEQUACY OF THE HUMAN ANIMAL </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> COWARDICE OF THE IRRELIGIOUS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> IS THERE ANY HOPE IN EDUCATION? </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> HOMEOPATHIC EDUCATION </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> THE DIABOLICAL EFFICIENCY OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> FLIMSINESS OF CIVILIZATION </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> CREATIVE EVOLUTION </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> VOLUNTARY LONGEVITY </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> THE EARLY EVOLUTIONISTS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> THE ADVENT OF THE NEO-LAMARCKIANS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> HOW ACQUIREMENTS ARE INHERITED </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> THE MIRACLE OF CONDENSED RECAPITULATION </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> HEREDITY AN OLD STORY </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> DISCOVERY ANTICIPATED BY DIVINATION </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> CORRECTED DATES FOR THE DISCOVERY OF EVOLUTION
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> DEFYING THE LIGHTNING: A FRUSTRATED EXPERIMENT
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0021"> IN QUEST OF THE FIRST CAUSE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0022"> PALEY'S WATCH </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0023"> THE IRRESISTIBLE CRY OF ORDER, ORDER! </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0024"> THE MOMENT AND THE MAN </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0025"> THE BRINK OF THE BOTTOMLESS PIT </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0026"> WHY DARWIN CONVERTED THE CROWD </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0027"> HOW WE RUSHED DOWN A STEEP PLACE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0028"> DARWINISM NOT FINALLY REFUTABLE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0029"> THREE BLIND MICE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0030"> THE GREATEST OF THESE IS SELF-CONTROL </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0031"> A SAMPLE OF LAMARCKO-SHAVIAN INVECTIVE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0032"> THE HUMANITARIANS AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0033"> HOW ONE TOUCH OF DARWIN MAKES THE WHOLE WORLD
+      KIN </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0034"> WHY DARWIN PLEASED THE SOCIALISTS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0035"> DARWIN AND KARL MARX </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0036"> WHY DARWIN PLEASED THE PROFITEERS ALSO </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0037"> THE POETRY AND PURITY OF MATERIALISM </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0038"> THE VICEROYS OF THE KING OF KINGS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0039"> POLITICAL OPPORTUNISM IN EXCELSIS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0040"> THE BETRAYAL OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0041"> CIRCUMSTANTIAL SELECTION IN FINANCE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0042"> THE HOMEOPATHIC REACTION AGAINST DARWINISM </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0043"> RELIGION AND ROMANCE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0044"> THE DANGER OF REACTION </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0045"> A TOUCHSTONE FOR DOGMA </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0046"> WHAT TO DO WITH THE LEGENDS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0047"> A LESSON FROM SCIENCE TO THE CHURCHES </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0048"> THE RELIGIOUS ART OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0049"> THE ARTIST-PROPHETS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0050"> EVOLUTION IN THE THEATRE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0051"> MY OWN PART IN THE MATTER </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0052"> <b>BACK TO METHUSELAH.</b> </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_PART"> PART I&mdash;In the Beginning </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0054"> ACT I </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0055"> ACT II </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_PART2"> PART II&mdash;The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_PART3"> PART III&mdash;The Thing Happens </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_PART4"> PART IV&mdash;Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0059"> ACT I </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0060"> ACT II </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0061"> ACT III </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_PART5"> PART V.&mdash;As Far as Thought can Reach </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      THE INFIDEL HALF CENTURY
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE DAWN OF DARWINISM
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      One day early in the eighteen hundred and sixties, I, being then a small
+      boy, was with my nurse, buying something in the shop of a petty newsagent,
+      bookseller, and stationer in Camden Street, Dublin, when there entered an
+      elderly man, weighty and solemn, who advanced to the counter, and said
+      pompously, 'Have you the works of the celebrated Buffoon?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My own works were at that time unwritten, or it is possible that the shop
+      assistant might have misunderstood me so far as to produce a copy of Man
+      and Superman. As it was, she knew quite well what he wanted; for this was
+      before the Education Act of 1870 had produced shop assistants who know how
+      to read and know nothing else. The celebrated Buffoon was not a humorist,
+      but the famous naturalist Buffon. Every literate child at that time knew
+      Buffon's Natural History as well as Esop's Fables. And no living child had
+      heard the name that has since obliterated Buffon's in the popular
+      consciousness: the name of Darwin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ten years elapsed. The celebrated Buffoon was forgotten; I had doubled my
+      years and my length; and I had discarded the religion of my forefathers.
+      One day the richest and consequently most dogmatic of my uncles came into
+      a restaurant where I was dining, and found himself, much against his will,
+      in conversation with the most questionable of his nephews. By way of
+      making myself agreeable, I spoke of modern thought and Darwin. He said,
+      'Oh, thats the fellow who wants to make out that we all have tails like
+      monkeys.' I tried to explain that what Darwin had insisted on in this
+      connection was that some monkeys have no tails. But my uncle was as
+      impervious to what Darwin really said as any Neo-Darwinian nowadays. He
+      died impenitent, and did not mention me in his will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Twenty years elapsed. If my uncle had been alive, he would have known all
+      about Darwin, and known it all wrong. In spite of the efforts of Grant
+      Allen to set him right, he would have accepted Darwin as the discoverer of
+      Evolution, of Heredity, and of modification of species by Selection. For
+      the pre-Darwinian age had come to be regarded as a Dark Age in which men
+      still believed that the book of Genesis was a standard scientific
+      treatise, and that the only additions to it were Galileo's demonstration
+      of Leonardo da Vinci's simple remark that the earth is a moon of the sun,
+      Newton's theory of gravitation, Sir Humphry Davy's invention of the
+      safety-lamp, the discovery of electricity, the application of steam to
+      industrial purposes, and the penny post. It was just the same in other
+      subjects. Thus Nietzsche, by the two or three who had come across his
+      writings, was supposed to have been the first man to whom it occurred that
+      mere morality and legality and urbanity lead nowhere, as if Bunyan had
+      never written Badman. Schopenhauer was credited with inventing the
+      distinction between the Covenant of Grace and the Covenant of Works which
+      troubled Cromwell on his deathbed. People talked as if there had been no
+      dramatic or descriptive music before Wagner; no impressionist painting
+      before Whistler; whilst as to myself, I was finding that the surest way to
+      produce an effect of daring innovation and originality was to revive the
+      ancient attraction of long rhetorical speeches; to stick closely to the
+      methods of Molière; and to lift characters bodily out of the pages of
+      Charles Dickens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE ADVENT OF THE NEO-DARWINIANS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      This particular sort of ignorance does not always or often matter. But in
+      Darwin's case it did matter. If Darwin had really led the world at one
+      bound from the book of Genesis to Heredity, to Modification of Species by
+      Selection, and to Evolution, he would have been a philosopher and a
+      prophet as well as an eminent professional naturalist, with geology as a
+      hobby. The delusion that he had actually achieved this feat did no harm at
+      first, because if people's views are sound, about evolution or anything
+      else, it does not make two straws difference whether they call the
+      revealer of their views Tom or Dick. But later on such apparently
+      negligible errors have awkward consequences. Darwin was given an imposing
+      reputation as not only an Evolutionist, but as <i>the</i> Evolutionist,
+      with the immense majority who never read his books. The few who never read
+      any others were led by them to concentrate exclusively on Circumstantial
+      Selection as the explanation of all the transformations and adaptations
+      which were the evidence for Evolution. And they presently found themselves
+      so cut off by this specialization from the majority who knew Darwin only
+      by his spurious reputation, that they were obliged to distinguish
+      themselves, not as Darwinians, but as Neo-Darwinians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before ten more years had elapsed, the Neo-Darwinians were practically
+      running current Science. It was 1906; I was fifty; I published my own view
+      of evolution in a play called Man and Superman; and I found that most
+      people were unable to understand how I could be an Evolutionist and not a
+      Neo-Darwinian, or why I habitually derided Neo-Darwinism as a ghastly
+      idiocy, and would fall on its professors slaughterously in public
+      discussions. It was in the hope of making me clear the matter up that the
+      Fabian Society, which was then organizing a series of lectures on Prophets
+      of the Nineteenth Century, asked me to deliver a lecture on the prophet
+      Darwin. I did so; and scraps of that lecture, which was never published,
+      variegate these pages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      POLITICAL INADEQUACY OF THE HUMAN ANIMAL
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Ten more years elapsed. Neo-Darwinism in politics had produced a European
+      catastrophe of a magnitude so appalling, and a scope so unpredictable,
+      that as I write these lines in 1920, it is still far from certain whether
+      our civilization will survive it. The circumstances of this catastrophe,
+      the boyish cinema-fed romanticism which made it possible to impose it on
+      the people as a crusade, and especially the ignorance and errors of the
+      victors of Western Europe when its violent phase had passed and the time
+      for reconstruction arrived, confirmed a doubt which had grown steadily in
+      my mind during my forty years public work as a Socialist: namely, whether
+      the human animal, as he exists at present, is capable of solving the
+      social problems raised by his own aggregation, or, as he calls it, his
+      civilization.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      COWARDICE OF THE IRRELIGIOUS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Another observation I had made was that goodnatured unambitious men are
+      cowards when they have no religion. They are dominated and exploited not
+      only by greedy and often half-witted and half-alive weaklings who will do
+      anything for cigars, champagne, motor cars, and the more childish and
+      selfish uses of money, but by able and sound administrators who can do
+      nothing else with them than dominate and exploit them. Government and
+      exploitation become synonymous under such circumstances; and the world is
+      finally ruled by the childish, the brigands, and the blackguards. Those
+      who refuse to stand in with them are persecuted and occasionally executed
+      when they give any trouble to the exploiters. They fall into poverty when
+      they lack lucrative specific talents. At the present moment one half of
+      Europe, having knocked the other half down, is trying to kick it to death,
+      and may succeed: a procedure which is, logically, sound Neo-Darwinism. And
+      the goodnatured majority are looking on in helpless horror, or allowing
+      themselves to be persuaded by the newspapers of their exploiters that the
+      kicking is not only a sound commercial investment, but an act of divine
+      justice of which they are the ardent instruments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But if Man is really incapable of organizing a big civilization, and
+      cannot organize even a village or a tribe any too well, what is the use of
+      giving him a religion? A religion may make him hunger and thirst for
+      righteousness; but will it endow him with the practical capacity to
+      satisfy that appetite? Good intentions do not carry with them a grain of
+      political science, which is a very complicated one. The most devoted and
+      indefatigable, the most able and disinterested students of this science in
+      England, as far as I know, are my friends Sidney and Beatrice Webb. It has
+      taken them forty years of preliminary work, in the course of which they
+      have published several treatises comparable to Adam Smith's Wealth of
+      Nations, to formulate a political constitution adequate to existing needs.
+      If this is the measure of what can be done in a lifetime by extraordinary
+      ability, keen natural aptitude, exceptional opportunities, and freedom
+      from the preoccupations of bread-winning, what are we to expect from the
+      parliament man to whom political science is as remote and distasteful as
+      the differential calculus, and to whom such an elementary but vital point
+      as the law of economic rent is a <i>pons asinorum</i> never to be
+      approached, much less crossed? Or from the common voter who is mostly so
+      hard at work all day earning a living that he cannot keep awake for five
+      minutes over a book?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IS THERE ANY HOPE IN EDUCATION?
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The usual answer is that we must educate our masters: that is, ourselves.
+      We must teach citizenship and political science at school. But must we?
+      There is no must about it, the hard fact being that we must <i>not</i>
+      teach political science or citizenship at school. The schoolmaster who
+      attempted it would soon find himself penniless in the streets without
+      pupils, if not in the dock pleading to a pompously worded indictment for
+      sedition against the exploiters. Our schools teach the morality of
+      feudalism corrupted by commercialism, and hold up the military conqueror,
+      the robber baron, and the profiteer, as models of the illustrious and the
+      successful. In vain do the prophets who see through this imposture preach
+      and teach a better gospel: the individuals whom they convert are doomed to
+      pass away in a few years; and the new generations are dragged back in the
+      schools to the morality of the fifteenth century, and think themselves
+      Liberal when they are defending the ideas of Henry VII, and gentlemanly
+      when they are opposing to them the ideas of Richard III. Thus the educated
+      man is a greater nuisance than the uneducated one: indeed it is the
+      inefficiency and sham of the educational side of our schools (to which,
+      except under compulsion, children would not be sent by their parents at
+      all if they did not act as prisons in which the immature are kept from
+      worrying the mature) that save us from being dashed on the rocks of false
+      doctrine instead of drifting down the midstream of mere ignorance. There
+      is no way out through the schoolmaster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      HOMEOPATHIC EDUCATION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In truth, mankind cannot be saved from without, by schoolmasters or any
+      other sort of masters: it can only be lamed and enslaved by them. It is
+      said that if you wash a cat it will never again wash itself. This may or
+      may not be true: what is certain is that if you teach a man anything he
+      will never learn it; and if you cure him of a disease he will be unable to
+      cure himself the next time it attacks him. Therefore, if you want to see a
+      cat clean, you throw a bucket of mud over it, when it will immediately
+      take extraordinary pains to lick the mud off, and finally be cleaner than
+      it was before. In the same way doctors who are up-to-date (BURGE-LUBIN per
+      cent of all the registered practitioners, and 20 per cent of the
+      unregistered ones), when they want to rid you of a disease or a symptom,
+      inoculate you with that disease or give you a drug that produces that
+      symptom, in order to provoke you to resist it as the mud provokes the cat
+      to wash itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now an acute person will ask me why, if this be so, our false education
+      does not provoke our scholars to find out the truth. My answer is that it
+      sometimes does. Voltaire was a pupil of the Jesuits; Samuel Butler was the
+      pupil of a hopelessly conventional and erroneous country parson. But then
+      Voltaire was Voltaire, and Butler was Butler: that is, their minds were so
+      abnormally strong that they could throw off the doses of poison that
+      paralyse ordinary minds. When the doctors inoculate you and the
+      homeopathists dose you, they give you an infinitesimally attenuated dose.
+      If they gave you the virus at full strength it would overcome your
+      resistance and produce its direct effect. The doses of false doctrine
+      given at public schools and universities are so big that they overwhelm
+      the resistance that a tiny dose would provoke. The normal student is
+      corrupted beyond redemption, and will drive the genius who resists out of
+      the country if he can. Byron and Shelley had to fly to Italy, whilst
+      Castlereagh and Eldon ruled the roost at home. Rousseau was hunted from
+      frontier to frontier; Karl Marx starved in exile in a Soho lodging;
+      Ruskin's articles were refused by the magazines (he was too rich to be
+      otherwise persecuted); whilst mindless forgotten nonentities governed the
+      land; sent men to the prison or the gallows for blasphemy and sedition
+      (meaning the truth about Church and State); and sedulously stored up the
+      social disease and corruption which explode from time to time in gigantic
+      boils that have to be lanced by a million bayonets. This is the result of
+      allopathic education. Homeopathic education has not yet been officially
+      tried, and would obviously be a delicate matter if it were. A body of
+      schoolmasters inciting their pupils to infinitesimal peccadilloes with the
+      object of provoking them to exclaim, 'Get thee behind me, Satan,' or
+      telling them white lies about history for the sake of being contradicted,
+      insulted, and refuted, would certainly do less harm than our present
+      educational allopaths do; but then nobody will advocate homeopathic
+      education. Allopathy has produced the poisonous illusion that it
+      enlightens instead of darkening. The suggestion may, however, explain why,
+      whilst most people's minds succumb to inculcation and environment, a few
+      react vigorously: honest and decent people coming from thievish slums, and
+      sceptics and realists from country parsonages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE DIABOLICAL EFFICIENCY OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      But meanwhile&mdash;and here comes the horror of it&mdash;our technical
+      instruction is honest and efficient. The public schoolboy who is carefully
+      blinded, duped, and corrupted as to the nature of a society based on
+      profiteering, and is taught to honor parasitic idleness and luxury, learns
+      to shoot and ride and keep fit with all the assistance and guidance that
+      can be procured for him by the most anxiously sincere desire that he may
+      do these things well, and if possible superlatively well. In the army he
+      learns to fly; to drop bombs; to use machine-guns to the utmost of his
+      capacity. The discovery of high explosives is rewarded and dignified:
+      instruction in the manufacture of the weapons, battleships, submarines,
+      and land batteries by which they are applied destructively, is quite
+      genuine: the instructors know their business, and really mean the learners
+      to succeed. The result is that powers of destruction that could hardly
+      without uneasiness be entrusted to infinite wisdom and infinite
+      benevolence are placed in the hands of romantic schoolboy patriots who,
+      however generous by nature, are by education ignoramuses, dupes, snobs,
+      and sportsmen to whom fighting is a religion and killing an
+      accomplishment; whilst political power, useless under such circumstances
+      except to militarist imperialists in chronic terror of invasion and
+      subjugation, pompous tufthunting fools, commercial adventurers to whom the
+      organization by the nation of its own industrial services would mean
+      checkmate, financial parasites on the money market, and stupid people who
+      cling to the status quo merely because they are used to it, is obtained by
+      heredity, by simple purchase, by keeping newspapers and pretending that
+      they are organs of public opinion, by the wiles of seductive women, and by
+      prostituting ambitious talent to the service of the profiteers, who call
+      the tune because, having secured all the spare plunder, they alone can
+      afford to pay the piper. Neither the rulers nor the ruled understand high
+      politics. They do not even know that there is such a branch of knowledge
+      as political science; but between them they can coerce and enslave with
+      the deadliest efficiency, even to the wiping out of civilization, because
+      their education as slayers has been honestly and thoroughly carried out.
+      Essentially the rulers are all defectives; and there is nothing worse than
+      government by defectives who wield irresistible powers of physical
+      coercion. The commonplace sound people submit, and compel the rest to
+      submit, because they have been taught to do so as an article of religion
+      and a point of honor. Those in whom natural enlightenment has reacted
+      against artificial education submit because they are compelled; but they
+      would resist, and finally resist effectively, if they were not cowards.
+      And they are cowards because they have neither an officially accredited
+      and established religion nor a generally recognized point of honor, and
+      are all at sixes and sevens with their various private speculations,
+      sending their children perforce to the schools where they will be
+      corrupted for want of any other schools. The rulers are equally
+      intimidated by the immense extension and cheapening of the means of
+      slaughter and destruction. The British Government is more afraid of
+      Ireland now that submarines, bombs, and poison gas are cheap and easily
+      made than it was of the German Empire before the war; consequently the old
+      British custom which maintained a balance of power through command of the
+      sea is intensified into a terror that sees security in nothing short of
+      absolute military mastery of the entire globe: that is, in an
+      impossibility that will yet seem possible in detail to soldiers and to
+      parochial and insular patriotic civilians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      FLIMSINESS OF CIVILIZATION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      This situation has occurred so often before, always with the same result
+      of a collapse of civilization (Professor Flinders Petrie has let out the
+      secret of previous collapses), that the rich are instinctively crying 'Let
+      us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die,' and the poor, 'How long, O Lord,
+      how long?' But the pitiless reply still is that God helps those who help
+      themselves. This does not mean that if Man cannot find the remedy no
+      remedy will be found. The power that produced Man when the monkey was not
+      up to the mark, can produce a higher creature than Man if Man does not
+      come up to the mark. What it means is that if Man is to be saved, Man must
+      save himself. There seems no compelling reason why he should be saved. He
+      is by no means an ideal creature. At his present best many of his ways are
+      so unpleasant that they are unmentionable in polite society, and so
+      painful that he is compelled to pretend that pain is often a good. Nature
+      holds no brief for the human experiment: it must stand or fall by its
+      results. If Man will not serve, Nature will try another experiment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What hope is there then of human improvement? According to the
+      Neo-Darwinists, to the Mechanists, no hope whatever, because improvement
+      can come only through some senseless accident which must, on the
+      statistical average of accidents, be presently wiped out by some other
+      equally senseless accident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CREATIVE EVOLUTION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      But this dismal creed does not discourage those who believe that the
+      impulse that produces evolution is creative. They have observed the simple
+      fact that the will to do anything can and does, at a certain pitch of
+      intensity set up by conviction of its necessity, create and organize new
+      tissue to do it with. To them therefore mankind is by no means played out
+      yet. If the weight lifter, under the trivial stimulus of an athletic
+      competition, can 'put up a muscle,' it seems reasonable to believe that an
+      equally earnest and convinced philosopher could 'put up a brain.' Both are
+      directions of vitality to a certain end. Evolution shews us this direction
+      of vitality doing all sorts of things: providing the centipede with a
+      hundred legs, and ridding the fish of any legs at all; building lungs and
+      arms for the land and gills and fins for the sea; enabling the mammal to
+      gestate its young inside its body, and the fowl to incubate hers outside
+      it; offering us, we may say, our choice of any sort of bodily contrivance
+      to maintain our activity and increase our resources.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VOLUNTARY LONGEVITY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Among other matters apparently changeable at will is the duration of
+      individual life. Weismann, a very clever and suggestive biologist who was
+      unhappily reduced to idiocy by Neo-Darwinism, pointed out that death is
+      not an eternal condition of life, but an expedient introduced to provide
+      for continual renewal without overcrowding. Now Circumstantial Selection
+      does not account for natural death: it accounts only for the survival of
+      species in which the individuals have sense enough to decay and die on
+      purpose. But the individuals do not seem to have calculated very
+      reasonably: nobody can explain why a parrot should live ten times as long
+      as a dog, and a turtle be almost immortal. In the case of man, the
+      operation has overshot its mark: men do not live long enough: they are,
+      for all the purposes of high civilization, mere children when they die;
+      and our Prime Ministers, though rated as mature, divide their time between
+      the golf course and the Treasury Bench in parliament. Presumably, however,
+      the same power that made this mistake can remedy it. If on opportunist
+      grounds Man now fixes the term of his life at three score and ten years,
+      he can equally fix it at three hundred, or three thousand, or even at the
+      genuine Circumstantial Selection limit, which would be until a
+      sooner-or-later-inevitable fatal accident makes an end of the individual.
+      All that is necessary to make him extend his present span is that
+      tremendous catastrophes such as the late war shall convince him of the
+      necessity of at least outliving his taste for golf and cigars if the race
+      is to be saved. This is not fantastic speculation: it is deductive
+      biology, if there is such a science as biology. Here, then, is a stone
+      that we have left unturned, and that may be worth turning. To make the
+      suggestion more entertaining than it would be to most people in the form
+      of a biological treatise, I have written Back to Methuselah as a
+      contribution to the modern Bible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Many people, however, can read treatises and cannot read Bibles. Darwin
+      could not read Shakespear. Some who can read both, like to learn the
+      history of their ideas. Some are so entangled in the current confusion of
+      Creative Evolution with Circumstantial Selection by their historical
+      ignorance that they are puzzled by any distinction between the two. For
+      all their sakes I must give here a little history of the conflict between
+      the view of Evolution taken by the Darwinians (though not altogether by
+      Darwin himself) and called Natural Selection, and that which is emerging,
+      under the title of Creative Evolution, as the genuinely scientific
+      religion for which all wise men are now anxiously looking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE EARLY EVOLUTIONISTS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The idea of Evolution, or Transformation as it is now sometimes called,
+      was not first conceived by Charles Darwin, nor by Alfred Russel Wallace,
+      who observed the operation of Circumstantial Selection simultaneously with
+      Charles. The celebrated Buffoon was a better Evolutionist than either of
+      them; and two thousand years before Buffon was born, the Greek philosopher
+      Empedocles opined that all forms of life are transformations of four
+      elements, Fire, Air, Earth, and Water, effected by the two innate forces
+      of attraction and repulsion, or love and hate. As lately as 1860 I myself
+      was taught as a child that everything was made out of these four elements.
+      Both the Empedocleans and the Evolutionists were opposed to those who
+      believed in the separate creation of all forms of life as described in the
+      book of Genesis. This 'conflict between religion and science', as the
+      phrase went then, did not perplex my infant mind in the least: I knew
+      perfectly well, without knowing that I knew it, that the validity of a
+      story is not the same as the occurrence of a fact. But as I grew up I
+      found that I had to choose between Evolution and Genesis. If you believed
+      that dogs and cats and snakes and birds and beetles and oysters and whales
+      and men and women were all separately designed and made and named in Eden
+      garden at the beginning of things, and have since survived simply by
+      reproducing their kind, then you were not an Evolutionist. If you
+      believed, on the contrary, that all the different species are
+      modifications, variations, and elaborations of one primal stock, or even
+      of a few primal stocks, then you were an Evolutionist. But you were not
+      necessarily a Darwinian; for you might have been a modern Evolutionist
+      twenty years before Charles Darwin was born, and a whole lifetime before
+      he published his Origin of Species. For that matter, when Aristotle
+      grouped animals with backbones as blood relations, he began the sort of
+      classification which, when extended by Darwin to monkeys and men, so
+      shocked my uncle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Genesis had held the field until the time (1707-1778) of Linnaeus the
+      famous botanist. In the meantime the microscope had been invented. It
+      revealed a new world of hitherto invisible creatures called Infusorians,
+      as common water was found to be an infusion of them. In the eighteenth
+      century naturalists were very keen on the Infusorian Amoebas, and were
+      much struck by the way in which the members of this old family behaved and
+      developed. But it was still possible for Linnaeus to begin a treatise by
+      saying 'There are just so many species as there were forms created in the
+      beginning,' though there were hundreds of commonplace Scotch gardeners,
+      pigeon fanciers, and stock breeders then living who knew better. Linnaeus
+      himself knew better before he died. In the last edition of his System of
+      Nature, he began to wonder whether the transmutation of species by
+      variation might not be possible. Then came the great poet who jumped over
+      the facts to the conclusion. Goethe said that all the shapes of creation
+      were cousins; that there must be some common stock from which all the
+      species had sprung; that it was the environment of air that had produced
+      the eagle, of water the seal, and of earth the mole. He could not say how
+      this happened; but he divined that it did happen. Erasmus Darwin, the
+      grandfather of Charles, carried the environment theory much further,
+      pointing out instance after instance of modifications made in species
+      apparently to adapt it to circumstances and environment: for instance,
+      that the brilliant colors of the leopard, which make it so conspicuous in
+      Regent's Park, conceal it in a tropical jungle. Finally he wrote, as his
+      declaration of faith, 'The world has been evolved, not created: it has
+      arisen little by little from a small beginning, and has increased through
+      the activity of the elemental forces embodied in itself, and so has rather
+      grown than come into being at an almighty word. What a sublime idea of the
+      infinite might of the great Architect, the Cause of all causes, the Father
+      of all fathers, the Ens Entium! For if we would compare the Infinite, it
+      would surely require a greater Infinite to cause the causes of effects
+      than to produce the effects themselves.' In this, published in the year
+      1794, you have nineteenth-century Evolution precisely defined. And Erasmus
+      Darwin was by no means its only apostle. It was in the air then. A German
+      biologist named Treviranus, whose book was published in 1802, wrote, 'In
+      every living being there exists a capacity for endless diversity of form.
+      Each possesses the power of adapting its organization to the variations of
+      the external world; and it is this power, called into activity by cosmic
+      changes, which has enabled the simple zoophytes of the primitive world to
+      climb to higher and higher stages of organization, and has brought endless
+      variety into nature.' There you have your evolution of Man from the amoeba
+      all complete whilst Nelson was still alive on the seas. And in 1809,
+      before the battle of Waterloo, a French soldier named Lamarck, who had
+      beaten his musket into a microscope and turned zoologist, declared that
+      species were an illusion produced by the shortness of our individual
+      lives, and that they were constantly changing and melting into one another
+      and into new forms as surely as the hand of a clock is continually moving,
+      though it moves so slowly that it looks stationary to us. We have since
+      come to think that its industry is less continuous: that the clock stops
+      for a long time, and then is suddenly 'put on' by a mysterious finger. But
+      never mind that just at present.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE ADVENT OF THE NEO-LAMARCKIANS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I call your special attention to Lamarck, because later on there were
+      Neo-Lamarckians as well as Neo-Darwinians. I was a Neo-Lamarckian. Lamarck
+      passed on from the conception of Evolution as a general law to Charles
+      Darwin's department of it, which was the method of Evolution. Lamarck,
+      whilst making many ingenious suggestions as to the reaction of external
+      causes on life and habit, such as changes of climate, food supply,
+      geological upheavals and so forth, really held as his fundamental
+      proposition that living organisms changed because they wanted to. As he
+      stated it, the great factor in Evolution is use and disuse. If you have no
+      eyes, and want to see, and keep trying to see, you will finally get eyes.
+      If, like a mole or a subterranean fish, you have eyes and dont want to
+      see, you will lose your eyes. If you like eating the tender tops of trees
+      enough to make you concentrate all your energies on the stretching of your
+      neck, you will finally get a long neck, like the giraffe. This seems
+      absurd to inconsiderate people at the first blush; but it is within the
+      personal experience of all of us that it is just by this process that a
+      child tumbling about the floor becomes a boy walking erect; and that a man
+      sprawling on the road with a bruised chin, or supine on the ice with a
+      bashed occiput, becomes a bicyclist and a skater. The process is not
+      continuous, as it would be if mere practice had anything to do with it;
+      for though you may improve at each bicycling lesson <i>during</i> the
+      lesson, when you begin your next lesson you do not begin at the point at
+      which you left off: you relapse apparently to the beginning. Finally, you
+      succeed quite suddenly, and do not relapse again. More miraculous still,
+      you at once exercise the new power unconsciously. Although you are
+      adapting your front wheel to your balance so elaborately and actively that
+      the accidental locking of your handle bars for a second will throw you
+      off; though five minutes before you could not do it at all, yet now you do
+      it as unconsciously as you grow your finger nails. You have a new faculty,
+      and must have created some new bodily tissue as its organ. And you have
+      done it solely by willing. For here there can be no question of
+      Circumstantial Selection, or the survival of the fittest. The man who is
+      learning how to ride a bicycle has no advantage over the non-cyclist in
+      the struggle for existence: quite the contrary. He has acquired a new
+      habit, an automatic unconscious habit, solely because he wanted to, and
+      kept trying until it was added unto him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      HOW ACQUIREMENTS ARE INHERITED
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      But when your son tries to skate or bicycle in his turn, he does not pick
+      up the accomplishment where you left it, any more than he is born six feet
+      high with a beard and a tall hat. The set-back that occurred between your
+      lessons occurs again. The race learns exactly as the individual learns.
+      Your son relapses, not to the very beginning, but to a point which no
+      mortal method of measurement can distinguish from the beginning. Now this
+      is odd; for certain other habits of yours, equally acquired (to the
+      Evolutionist, of course, all habits are acquired), equally unconscious,
+      equally automatic, are transmitted without any perceptible relapse. For
+      instance, the very first act of your son when he enters the world as a
+      separate individual is to yell with indignation: that yell which
+      Shakespear thought the most tragic and piteous of all sounds. In the act
+      of yelling he begins to breathe: another habit, and not even a necessary
+      one, as the object of breathing can be achieved in other ways, as by deep
+      sea fishes. He circulates his blood by pumping it with his heart. He
+      demands a meal, and proceeds at once to perform the most elaborate
+      chemical operations on the food he swallows. He manufactures teeth;
+      discards them; and replaces them with fresh ones. Compared to these
+      habitual feats, walking, standing upright, and bicycling are the merest
+      trifles; yet it is only by going through the wanting, trying process that
+      he can stand, walk, or cycle, whereas in the other and far more difficult
+      and complex habits he not only does not consciously want nor consciously
+      try, but actually consciously objects very strongly. Take that early habit
+      of cutting the teeth: would he do that if he could help it? Take that
+      later habit of decaying and eliminating himself by death&mdash;equally an
+      acquired habit, remember&mdash;how he abhors it! Yet the habit has become
+      so rooted, so automatic, that he must do it in spite of himself, even to
+      his own destruction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have here a routine which, given time enough for it to operate, will
+      finally produce the most elaborate forms of organized life on Lamarckian
+      lines without the intervention of Circumstantial Selection at all. If you
+      can turn a pedestrian into a cyclist, and a cyclist into a pianist or
+      violinist, without the intervention of Circumstantial Selection, you can
+      turn an amoeba into a man, or a man into a superman, without it. All of
+      which is rank heresy to the Neo-Darwinian, who imagines that if you stop
+      Circumstantial Selection, you not only stop development but inaugurate a
+      rapid and disastrous degeneration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us fix the Lamarckian evolutionary process well in our minds. You are
+      alive; and you want to be more alive. You want an extension of
+      consciousness and of power. You want, consequently, additional organs, or
+      additional uses of your existing organs: that is, additional habits. You
+      get them because you want them badly enough to keep trying for them until
+      they come. Nobody knows how: nobody knows why: all we know is that the
+      thing actually takes place. We relapse miserably from effort to effort
+      until the old organ is modified or the new one created, when suddenly the
+      impossible becomes possible and the habit is formed. The moment we form it
+      we want to get rid of the consciousness of it so as to economize our
+      consciousness for fresh conquests of life; as all consciousness means
+      preoccupation and obstruction. If we had to think about breathing or
+      digesting or circulating our blood we should have no attention to spare
+      for anything else, as we find to our cost when anything goes wrong with
+      these operations. We want to be unconscious of them just as we wanted to
+      acquire them; and we finally win what we want. But we win unconsciousness
+      of our habits at the cost of losing our control of them; and we also build
+      one habit and its corresponding functional modification of our organs on
+      another, and so become dependent on our old habits. Consequently we have
+      to persist in them even when they hurt us. We cannot stop breathing to
+      avoid an attack of asthma, or to escape drowning. We can lose a habit and
+      discard an organ when we no longer need them, just as we acquired them;
+      but this process is slow and broken by relapses; and relics of the organ
+      and the habit long survive its utility. And if other and still
+      indispensable habits and modifications have been built on the ones we wish
+      to discard, we must provide a new foundation for them before we demolish
+      the old one. This is also a slow process and a very curious one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE MIRACLE OF CONDENSED RECAPITULATION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The relapses between the efforts to acquire a habit are important because,
+      as we have seen, they recur not only from effort to effort in the case of
+      the individual, but from generation to generation in the case of the race.
+      This relapsing from generation to generation is an invariable
+      characteristic of the evolutionary process. For instance, Raphael, though
+      descended from eight uninterrupted generations of painters, had to learn
+      to paint apparently as if no Sanzio had ever handled a brush before. But
+      he had also to learn to breathe, and digest, and circulate his blood.
+      Although his father and mother were fully grown adults when he was
+      conceived, he was not conceived or even born fully grown: he had to go
+      back and begin as a speck of protoplasm, and to struggle through an
+      embryonic lifetime, during part of which he was indistinguishable from an
+      embryonic dog, and had neither a skull nor a backbone. When he at last
+      acquired these articles, he was for some time doubtful whether he was a
+      bird or a fish. He had to compress untold centuries of development into
+      nine months before he was human enough to break loose as an independent
+      being. And even then he was still so incomplete that his parents might
+      well have exclaimed 'Good Heavens! have you learnt nothing from our
+      experience that you come into the world in this ridiculously elementary
+      state? Why cant you talk and walk and paint and behave decently?' To that
+      question Baby Raphael had no answer. All he could have said was that this
+      is how evolution or transformation happens. The time may come when the
+      same force that compressed the development of millions of years into nine
+      months may pack many more millions into even a shorter space; so that
+      Raphaels may be born painters as they are now born breathers and blood
+      circulators. But they will still begin as specks of protoplasm, and
+      acquire the faculty of painting in their mother's womb at quite a late
+      stage of their embryonic life. They must recapitulate the history of
+      mankind in their own persons, however briefly they may condense it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing was so astonishing and significant in the discoveries of the
+      embryologists, nor anything so absurdly little appreciated, as this
+      recapitulation, as it is now called: this power of hurrying up into months
+      a process which was once so long and tedious that the mere contemplation
+      of it is unendurable by men whose span of life is three-score-and-ten. It
+      widened human possibilities to the extent of enabling us to hope that the
+      most prolonged and difficult operation of our minds may yet become
+      instantaneous, or, as we call it, instinctive. It also directed our
+      attention to examples of this packing up of centuries into seconds which
+      were staring us in the face in all directions. As I write these lines the
+      newspapers are occupied by the exploits of a child of eight, who has just
+      defeated twenty adult chess players in twenty games played simultaneously,
+      and has been able afterwards to reconstruct all the twenty games without
+      any apparent effort of memory. Most people, including myself, play chess
+      (when they play it at all) from hand to mouth, and can hardly recall the
+      last move but one, or foresee the next but two. Also, when I have to make
+      an arithmetical calculation, I have to do it step by step with pencil and
+      paper, slowly, reluctantly, and with so little confidence in the result
+      that I dare not act on it without 'proving' the sum by a further
+      calculation involving more ciphering. But there are men who can neither
+      read, write, nor cipher, to whom the answer to such sums as I can do is
+      instantly obvious without any conscious calculation at all; and the result
+      is infallible. Yet some of these natural arithmeticians have but a small
+      vocabulary; are at a loss when they have to find words for any but the
+      simplest everyday occasions; and cannot for the life of them describe
+      mechanical operations which they perform daily in the course of their
+      trade; whereas to me the whole vocabulary of English literature, from
+      Shakespear to the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, is so
+      completely and instantaneously at my call that I have never had to consult
+      even a thesaurus except once or twice when for some reason I wanted a
+      third or fourth synonym. Again, though I have tried and failed to draw
+      recognizable portraits of persons I have seen every day for years, Mr
+      Bernard Partridge, having seen a man once, will, without more strain than
+      is involved in eating a sandwich, draw him to the life. The keyboard of a
+      piano is a device I have never been able to master; yet Mr Cyril Scott
+      uses it exactly as I use my own fingers; and to Sir Edward Elgar an
+      orchestral score is as instantaneously intelligible at sight as a page of
+      Shakespear is to me. One man cannot, after trying for years, finger the
+      flute fluently. Another will take up a flute with a newly invented
+      arrangement of keys on it, and play it at once with hardly a mistake. We
+      find people to whom writing is so difficult that they prefer to sign their
+      name with a mark, and beside them men who master systems of shorthand and
+      improvise new systems of their own as easily as they learnt the alphabet.
+      These contrasts are to be seen on all hands, and have nothing to do with
+      variations in general intelligence, nor even in the specialized
+      intelligence proper to the faculty in question: for example, no composer
+      or dramatic poet has ever pretended to be able to perform all the parts he
+      writes for the singers, actors, and players who are his executants. One
+      might as well expect Napoleon to be a fencer, or the Astronomer Royal to
+      know how many beans make five any better than his bookkeeper. Even
+      exceptional command of language does not imply the possession of ideas to
+      express; Mezzofanti, the master of fifty-eight languages, had less to say
+      in them than Shakespear with his little Latin and less Greek; and public
+      life is the paradise of voluble windbags.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All these examples, which might be multiplied by millions, are cases in
+      which a long, laborious, conscious, detailed process of acquirement has
+      been condensed into an instinctive and unconscious inborn one. Factors
+      which formerly had to be considered one by one in succession are
+      integrated into what seems a single simple factor. Chains of hardly
+      soluble problems have coalesced in one problem which solves itself the
+      moment it is raised. What is more, they have been pushed back (or forward,
+      if you like) from post-natal to pre-natal ones. The child in the womb may
+      take some time over them; but it is a miraculously shortened time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The time phenomena involved are curious, and suggest that we are either
+      wrong about our history or else that we enormously exaggerate the periods
+      required for the pre-natal acquirement of habits. In the nineteenth
+      century we talked very glibly about geological periods, and flung millions
+      of eons about in the most lordly manner in our reaction against Archbishop
+      Ussher's chronology. We had a craze for big figures, and positively liked
+      to believe that the progress made by the child in the womb in a month was
+      represented in prehistoric time by ages and ages. We insisted that
+      Evolution advanced more slowly than any snail ever crawled, and that
+      Nature does not proceed by leaps and bounds. This was all very well as
+      long as we were dealing with such acquired habits as breathing or
+      digestion. It was possible to believe that dozens of epochs had gone to
+      the slow building up of these habits. But when we have to consider the
+      case of a man born not only as an accomplished metabolist, but with such
+      an aptitude for shorthand and keyboard manipulation that he is a
+      stenographer or pianist at least five sixths ready-made as soon as he can
+      control his hands intelligently, we are forced to suspect either that
+      keyboards and shorthand are older inventions than we suppose, or else that
+      acquirements can be assimilated and stored as congenital qualifications in
+      a shorter time than we think; so that, as between Lyell and Archbishop
+      Ussher, the laugh may not be with Lyell quite so uproariously as it seemed
+      fifty years ago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      HEREDITY AN OLD STORY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It is evident that the evolutionary process is a hereditary one, or, to
+      put it less drily, that human life is continuous and immortal. The
+      Evolutionists took heredity for granted. So did everybody. The human mind
+      has been soaked in heredity as long back as we can trace its thought.
+      Hereditary peers, hereditary monarchs, hereditary castes and trades and
+      classes were the best known of social institutions, and in some cases of
+      public nuisances. Pedigree men counted pedigree dogs and pedigree horses
+      among their most cherished possessions. Far from being unconscious of
+      heredity, or sceptical, men were insanely credulous about it: they not
+      only believed in the transmission of qualities and habits from generation
+      to generation, but expected the son to begin mentally where the father
+      left off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This belief in heredity led naturally to the practice of Intentional
+      Selection. Good blood and breeding were eagerly sought after in human
+      marriage. In dealing with plants and animals, selection with a view to the
+      production of new varieties and the improvement and modification of
+      species had been practised ever since men began to cultivate them. My
+      pre-Darwinian uncle knew as well as Darwin that the race-horse and the
+      dray-horse are not separate creations from the Garden of Eden, but
+      adaptations by deliberate human selection of the medieval war-horse to
+      modern racing and industrial haulage. He knew that there are nearly two
+      hundred different sorts of dogs, all capable of breeding with one another
+      and of producing cross varieties unknown to Adam. He knew that the same
+      thing is true of pigeons. He knew that gardeners had spent their lives
+      trying to breed black tulips and green carnations and unheard-of orchids,
+      and had actually produced flowers just as strange to Eve. His quarrel with
+      the Evolutionists was not a quarrel with the evidence for Evolution: he
+      had accepted enough of it to prove Evolution ten times over before he ever
+      heard of it. What he repudiated was cousinship with the ape, and the
+      implied suspicion of a rudimentary tail, because it was offensive to his
+      sense of his own dignity, and because he thought that apes were
+      ridiculous, and tails diabolical when associated with the erect posture.
+      Also he believed that Evolution was a heresy which involved the
+      destruction of Christianity, of which, as a member of the Irish Church
+      (the pseudo-Protestant one), he conceived himself a pillar. But this was
+      only his ignorance; for man may deny his descent from an ape and be
+      eligible as a churchwarden without being any the less a convinced
+      Evolutionist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      DISCOVERY ANTICIPATED BY DIVINATION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      What is more, the religious folk can claim to be among the pioneers of
+      Evolutionism. Weismann, Neo-Darwinist though he was, devoted a long
+      passage in his History of Evolution to the Nature Philosophy of Lorenz
+      Oken, published in 1809. Oken defined natural science as 'the science of
+      the everlasting transmutations of the Holy Ghost in the world.' His
+      religion had started him on the right track, and not only led him to think
+      out a whole scheme of Evolution in abstract terms, but guided his aim in a
+      significantly good scientific shot which brought him within the scope of
+      Weismann. He not only defined the original substance from which all forms
+      of life have developed as protoplasm, or, as he called it, primitive slime
+      (<i>Urschleim</i>), but actually declared that this slime took the form of
+      vesicles out of which the universe was built. Here was the modern cell
+      morphology guessed by a religious thinker long before the microscope and
+      the scalpel forced it on the vision of mere laboratory workers who could
+      not think and had no religion. They worked hard to discover the vital
+      secrets of the glands by opening up dogs and cutting out the glands, or
+      tying up their ducts, or severing their nerves, thereby learning,
+      negatively, that the governors of our vital forces do not hold their
+      incessant conversations through the nerves, and, positively, how miserably
+      a horribly injured dog can die, leaving us to infer that we shall probably
+      perish likewise if we grudge our guineas to Harley Street. Lorenz Oken <i>thought</i>
+      very hard to find out what was happening to the Holy Ghost, and thereby
+      made a contribution of extraordinary importance to our understanding of
+      uninjured creatures. The man who was scientific enough to see that the
+      Holy Ghost is a scientific fact got easily in front of the blockheads who
+      could only sin against it. Hence my uncle was turning his back on very
+      respectable company when he derided Evolution, and would probably have
+      recanted and apologized at once had anybody pointed out to him what a
+      solecism he was committing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The metaphysical side of Evolution was thus no novelty when Darwin
+      arrived. Had Oken never lived, there would still have been millions of
+      persons trained from their childhood to believe that we are continually
+      urged upwards by a force called the Will of God. In 1819 Schopenhauer
+      published his treatise on The World as Will, which is the metaphysical
+      complement to Lamarck's natural history, as it demonstrates that the
+      driving force behind Evolution is a will-to-live, and to live, as Christ
+      said long before, more abundantly. And the earlier philosophers, from
+      Plato to Leibniz, had kept the human mind open for the thought of the
+      universe as one idea behind all its physically apprehensible
+      transformations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CORRECTED DATES FOR THE DISCOVERY OF EVOLUTION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      All this, remember, is the state of things in the pre-Darwin period, which
+      so many of us still think of as a pre-evolutionary period. Evolutionism
+      was the rage before Queen Victoria came to the throne. To fix this
+      chronology, let me repeat the story told by Weismann of the July
+      revolution in Paris in 1830, when the French got rid of Charles the Tenth.
+      Goethe was then still living; and a French friend of his called on him and
+      found him wildly excited. 'What do you think of the great event?' said
+      Goethe. 'The volcano is in eruption; and all is in flames. There can no
+      longer be discussion with closed doors.' The Frenchman replied that no
+      doubt it was a terrible business; but what could they expect with such a
+      ministry and such a king? 'Stuff!' said Goethe: 'I am not thinking of
+      these people at all, but of the open rupture in the French Academy between
+      Cuvier and St Hilaire. It is of the utmost importance to science,' The
+      rupture Goethe meant was about Evolution, Cuvier contending that there
+      were four species, and St Hilaire that there was only one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From 1830, when Darwin was an apparently unpromising lad of twenty-one,
+      until 1859, when he turned the world upside down by his Origin of Species,
+      there was a slump in Evolutionism. The first generation of its enthusiasts
+      was ageing and dying out; and their successors were being taught from the
+      Book of Genesis, just as Edward VI was (and Edward VII too, for that
+      matter). Nobody who knew the theory was adding anything to it. This slump
+      not only heightened the impression of entire novelty when Darwin brought
+      the subject to the front again: it probably prevented him from realizing
+      how much had been done before, even by his own grandfather, to whom he was
+      accused of being unjust. Besides, he was not really carrying on the family
+      business. He was an entirely original worker; and he was on a new tack, as
+      we shall see presently. And he would not in any case have thought much, as
+      a practical naturalist, of the more or less mystical intellectual
+      speculations of the Deists of 1790-1830. Scientific workers were very
+      tired of Deism just then. They had given up the riddle of the Great First
+      Cause as insoluble, and were calling themselves, accordingly, Agnostics.
+      They had turned from the inscrutable question of Why things existed, to
+      the spade work of discovering What was really occurring in the world and
+      How it really occurred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With all his attention bent in this new direction, Darwin soon noticed
+      that a good deal was occurring in an entirely unmystical and even
+      unmeaning way of which the older speculative Deist-Evolutionists had taken
+      little or no account. Nowadays, when we are turning in weary disgust and
+      disillusion from Neo-Darwinism and Mechanism to Vitalism and Creative
+      Evolution, it is difficult to imagine how this new departure of Darwin's
+      could possibly have appealed to his contemporaries as exciting, agreeable,
+      above all as hopeful. Let me therefore try to bring back something of the
+      atmosphere of that time by describing a scene, very characteristic of its
+      superstitions, in which I took what was then considered an unspeakably
+      shocking part.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      DEFYING THE LIGHTNING: A FRUSTRATED EXPERIMENT
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      One evening in 1878 or thereabouts, I, being then in my earliest twenties,
+      was at a bachelor party of young men of the professional class in the
+      house of a doctor in the Kensingtonian quarter of London. They fell to
+      talking about religious revivals; and an anecdote was related of a man
+      who, having incautiously scoffed at the mission of Messrs Moody and
+      Sankey, a then famous firm of American evangelists, was subsequently
+      carried home on a shutter, slain by divine vengeance as a blasphemer. A
+      timid minority, without quite venturing to question the truth of the
+      incident&mdash;for they naturally did not care to run the risk of going
+      home on shutters themselves&mdash;nevertheless shewed a certain
+      disposition to cavil at those who exulted in it; and something approaching
+      to an argument began. At last it was alleged by the most evangelical of
+      the disputants that Charles Bradlaugh, the most formidable atheist on the
+      Secularist platform, had taken out his watch publicly and challenged the
+      Almighty to strike him dead in five minutes if he really existed and
+      disapproved of atheism. The leader of the cavillers, with great heat,
+      repudiated this as a gross calumny, declaring that Bradlaugh had
+      repeatedly and indignantly contradicted it, and implying that the atheist
+      champion was far too pious a man to commit such a blasphemy. This
+      exquisite confusion of ideas roused my sense of comedy. It was clear to me
+      that the challenge attributed to Charles Bradlaugh was a scientific
+      experiment of a quite simple, straightforward, and proper kind to
+      ascertain whether the expression of atheistic opinions really did involve
+      any personal risk. It was certainly the method taught in the Bible, Elijah
+      having confuted the prophets of Baal in precisely that way, with every
+      circumstance of bitter mockery of their god when he failed to send down
+      fire from heaven. Accordingly I said that if the question at issue were
+      whether the penalty of questioning the theology of Messrs Moody and Sankey
+      was to be struck dead on the spot by an incensed deity, nothing could
+      effect a more convincing settlement of it than the very obvious experiment
+      attributed to Mr Bradlaugh, and that consequently if he had not tried it,
+      he ought to have tried it. The omission, I added, was one which could
+      easily be remedied there and then, as I happened to share Mr Bradlaugh's
+      views as to the absurdity of the belief in these violent interferences
+      with the order of nature by a short-tempered and thin-skinned supernatural
+      deity. Therefore&mdash;and at that point I took out my watch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The effect was electrical. Neither sceptics nor devotees were prepared to
+      abide the result of the experiment. In vain did I urge the pious to trust
+      in the accuracy of their deity's aim with a thunderbolt, and the justice
+      of his discrimination between the innocent and the guilty. In vain did I
+      appeal to the sceptics to accept the logical outcome of their scepticism:
+      it soon appeared that when thunderbolts were in question there were no
+      sceptics. Our host, seeing that his guests would vanish precipitately if
+      the impious challenge were uttered, leaving him alone with a solitary
+      infidel under sentence of extermination in five minutes, interposed and
+      forbade the experiment, pleading at the same time for a change of subject.
+      I of course complied, but could not refrain from remarking that though the
+      dreadful words had not been uttered, yet, as the thought had been
+      formulated in my mind, it was very doubtful whether the consequences could
+      be averted by sealing my lips. However, the rest appeared to feel that the
+      game would be played according to the rules, and that it mattered very
+      little what I thought so long as I said nothing. Only the leader of the
+      evangelical party, I thought, was a little preoccupied until five minutes
+      had elapsed and the weather was still calm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0021" id="link2H_4_0021"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IN QUEST OF THE FIRST CAUSE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Another reminiscence. In those days we thought in terms of time and space,
+      of cause and effect, as we still do; but we do not now demand from a
+      religion that it shall explain the universe completely in terms of cause
+      and effect, and present the world to us as a manufactured article and as
+      the private property of its Manufacturer. We did then. We were invited to
+      pity the delusion of certain heathens who held that the world is supported
+      by an elephant who is supported by a tortoise. Mahomet decided that the
+      mountains are great weights to keep the world from being blown away into
+      space. But we refuted these orientals by asking triumphantly what the
+      tortoise stands on? Freethinkers asked which came first: the owl or the
+      egg. Nobody thought of saying that the ultimate problem of existence,
+      being clearly insoluble and even unthinkable on causation lines, could not
+      be a causation problem. To pious people this would have been flat atheism,
+      because they assumed that God must be a Cause, and sometimes called him
+      The Great First Cause, or, in still choicer language, The Primal Cause. To
+      the Rationalists it would have been a renunciation of reason. Here and
+      there a man would confess that he stood as with a dim lantern in a dense
+      fog, and could see but a little way in any direction into infinity. But he
+      did not really believe that infinity was infinite or that the eternal was
+      also sempiternal: he assumed that all things, known and unknown, were
+      caused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hence it was that I found myself one day towards the end of the
+      eighteen-seventies in a cell in the old Brompton Oratory arguing with
+      Father Addis, who had been called by one of his flock to attempt my
+      conversion to Roman Catholicism. The universe exists, said the father:
+      somebody must have made it. If that somebody exists, said I, somebody must
+      have made him. I grant that for the sake of argument, said the Oratorian.
+      I grant you a maker of God. I grant you a maker of the maker of God. I
+      grant you as long a line of makers as you please; but an infinity of
+      makers is unthinkable and extravagant: it is no harder to believe in
+      number one than in number fifty thousand or fifty million; so why not
+      accept number one and stop there, since no attempt to get behind him will
+      remove your logical difficulty? By your leave, said I, it is as easy for
+      me to believe that the universe made itself as that a maker of the
+      universe made himself: in fact much easier; for the universe visibly
+      exists and makes itself as it goes along, whereas a maker for it is a
+      hypothesis. Of course we could get no further on these lines. He rose and
+      said that we were like two men working a saw, he pushing it forward and I
+      pushing it back, and cutting nothing; but when we had dropped the subject
+      and were walking through the refectory, he returned to it for a moment to
+      say that he should go mad if he lost his belief. I, glorying in the robust
+      callousness of youth and the comedic spirit, felt quite comfortable and
+      said so; though I was touched, too, by his evident sincerity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These two anecdotes are superficially trivial and even comic; but there is
+      an abyss of horror beneath them. They reveal a condition so utterly
+      irreligious that religion means nothing but belief in a nursery bogey, and
+      its inadequacy is demonstrated by a toy logical dilemma, neither the bogey
+      nor the dilemma having anything to do with religion, or being serious
+      enough to impose on or confuse any properly educated child over the age of
+      six. One hardly knows which is the more appalling: the abjectness of the
+      credulity or the flippancy of the scepticism. The result was inevitable.
+      All who were strong-minded enough not to be terrified by the bogey were
+      left stranded in empty contemptuous negation, and argued, when they argued
+      at all, as I argued with Father Addis. But their position was not
+      intellectually comfortable. A member of parliament expressed their
+      discomfort when, objecting to the admission of Charles Bradlaugh into
+      parliament, he said 'Hang it all, a man should believe in something or
+      somebody.' It was easy to throw the bogey into the dustbin; but none the
+      less the world, our corner of the universe, did not look like a pure
+      accident: it presented evidences of design in every direction. There was
+      mind and purpose behind it. As the anti-Bradlaugh member would have put
+      it, there must be somebody behind the something: no atheist could get over
+      that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0022" id="link2H_4_0022"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PALEY'S WATCH
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Paley had put the argument in an apparently unanswerable form. If you
+      found a watch, full of mechanism exquisitely adapted to produce a series
+      of operations all leading to the fulfilment of one central purpose of
+      measuring for mankind the march of the day and night, could you believe
+      that it was not the work of a cunning artificer who had designed and
+      contrived it all to that end? And here was a far more wonderful thing than
+      a watch, a man with all his organs ingeniously contrived, cords and
+      levers, girders and kingposts, circulating systems of pipes and valves,
+      dialysing membranes, chemical retorts, carburettors, ventilators, inlets
+      and outlets, telephone transmitters in his ears, light recorders and
+      lenses in his eye: was it conceivable that this was the work of chance?
+      that no artificer had wrought here? that there was no purpose in this, no
+      design, no guiding intelligence? The thing was incredible. In vain did
+      Helmholtz declare that 'the eye has every possible defect that can be
+      found in an optical instrument, and even some peculiar to itself,' and
+      that 'if an optician tried to sell me an instrument which had all these
+      defects I should think myself quite justified in blaming his carelessness
+      in the strongest terms, and sending him back his instrument.' To discredit
+      the optician's skill was not to get rid of the optician. The eye might not
+      be so cleverly made as Paley thought, but it was made somehow, by
+      somebody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then my argument with Father Addis began all over again. It was easy
+      enough to say that every man makes his own eyes: indeed the embryologists
+      had actually caught him doing it. But what about the very evident purpose
+      that prompted him to do it? Why did he want to see, if not to extend his
+      consciousness and his knowledge and his power? That purpose was at work
+      everywhere, and must be something bigger than the individual eye-making
+      man. Only the stupidest muckrakers could fail to see this, and even to
+      know it as part of their own consciousness. Yet to admit it seemed to
+      involve letting the bogey come back, so inextricably had we managed to mix
+      up belief in the bogey's existence with belief in the existence of design
+      in the universe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0023" id="link2H_4_0023"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE IRRESISTIBLE CRY OF ORDER, ORDER!
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Our scornful young scientific and philosophic lions of today must not
+      blame the Church of England for this confusion of thought. In 1562 the
+      Church, in convocation in London 'for the avoiding of diversities of
+      opinions and for the establishment of consent touching true religion,'
+      proclaimed in their first utterance, and as an Article of Religion, that
+      God is 'without body, parts, or passions,' or, as we say, an <i>Elan Vital</i>
+      or Life Force. Unfortunately neither parents, parsons, nor pedagogues
+      could be induced to adopt that article. St John might say that 'God is
+      spirit' as pointedly as he pleased; our Sovereign Lady Elizabeth might
+      ratify the Article again and again; serious divines might feel as deeply
+      as they could that a God with body, parts, and passions could be nothing
+      but an anthropomorphic idol: no matter: people at large could not conceive
+      a God who was not anthropomorphic: they stood by the Old Testament legends
+      of a God whose parts had been seen by one of the patriarchs, and finally
+      set up as against the Church a God who, far from being without body,
+      parts, or passions, was composed of nothing else, and of very evil
+      passions too. They imposed this idol in practice on the Church itself, in
+      spite of the First Article, and thereby homeopathically produced the
+      atheist, whose denial of God was simply a denial of the idol and a
+      demonstration against an unbearable and most unchristian idolatry. The
+      idol was, as Shelley had been expelled from Oxford for pointing out, an
+      almighty fiend, with a petty character and unlimited power, spiteful,
+      cruel, jealous, vindictive, and physically violent. The most villainous
+      schoolmasters, the most tyrannical parents, fell far short in their
+      attempts to imitate it. But it was not its social vices that brought it
+      low. What made it scientifically intolerable was that it was ready at a
+      moment's notice to upset the whole order of the universe on the most
+      trumpery provocation, whether by stopping the sun in the valley of Ajalon
+      or sending an atheist home dead on a shutter (the shutter was
+      indispensable because it marked the utter unpreparedness of the atheist,
+      who, unable to save himself by a deathbed repentance, was subsequently
+      roasted through all eternity in blazing brimstone). It was this
+      disorderliness, this refusal to obey its own laws of nature, that created
+      a scientific need for its destruction. Science could stand a cruel and
+      unjust god; for nature was full of suffering and injustice. But a
+      disorderly god was impossible. In the Middle Ages a compromise had been
+      made by which two different orders of truth, religious and scientific, had
+      been recognized, in order that a schoolman might say that two and two make
+      four without being burnt for heresy. But the nineteenth century, steeped
+      in a meddling, presumptuous, reading-and-writing, socially and politically
+      powerful ignorance inconceivable by Thomas Aquinas or even Roger Bacon,
+      was incapable of so convenient an arrangement; and science was strangled
+      by bigoted ignoramuses claiming infallibility for their interpretation of
+      the Bible, which was regarded, not as a literature nor even as a book, but
+      partly as an oracle which answered and settled all questions, and partly
+      as a talisman to be carried by soldiers in their breast pockets or placed
+      under the pillows of persons who were afraid of ghosts. The tract shops
+      exhibited in their windows bullet-dinted testaments, mothers' gifts to
+      their soldier sons whose lives had been saved by it; for the
+      muzzle-loaders of those days could not drive a projectile through so many
+      pages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0024" id="link2H_4_0024"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE MOMENT AND THE MAN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      This superstition of a continual capricious disorder in nature, of a
+      lawgiver who was also a lawbreaker, made atheists in all directions among
+      clever and lightminded people. But atheism did not account for Paley's
+      watch. Atheism accounted for nothing; and it was the business of science
+      to account for everything that was plainly accountable. Science had no use
+      for mere negation: what was desired by it above all things just then was a
+      demonstration that the evidences of design could be explained without
+      resort to the hypothesis of a personal designer. If only some genius,
+      whilst admitting Paley's facts, could knock the brains out of Paley by the
+      discovery of a method whereby watches could happen without watchmakers,
+      that genius was assured of such a welcome from the thought of his day as
+      no natural philosopher had ever enjoyed before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The time being thus ripe, the genius appeared; and his name was Charles
+      Darwin. And now, what did Darwin really discover?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here, I am afraid, I shall require once more the assistance of the
+      giraffe, or, as he was called in the days of the celebrated Buffoon, the
+      camelopard (by children, cammyleopard). I do not remember how this animal
+      imposed himself illustratively on the Evolution controversy; but there was
+      no getting away from him then; and I am old-fashioned enough to be unable
+      to get away from him now. How did he come by his long neck? Lamarck would
+      have said, by wanting to get at the tender leaves high up on the tree, and
+      trying until he succeeded in wishing the necessary length of neck into
+      existence. Another answer was also possible: namely, that some prehistoric
+      stockbreeder, wishing to produce a natural curiosity, selected the
+      longest-necked animals he could find, and bred from them until at last an
+      animal with an abnormally long neck was evolved by intentional selection,
+      just as the race-horse or the fantail pigeon has been evolved. Both these
+      explanations, you will observe, involve consciousness, will, design,
+      purpose, either on the part of the animal itself or on the part of a
+      superior intelligence controlling its destiny. Darwin pointed out&mdash;and
+      this and no more was Darwin's famous discovery&mdash;that a third
+      explanation, involving neither will nor purpose nor design either in the
+      animal or anyone else, was on the cards. If your neck is too short to
+      reach your food, you die. That may be the simple explanation of the fact
+      that all the surviving animals that feed on foliage have necks or trunks
+      long enough to reach it. So bang goes your belief that the necks must have
+      been designed to reach the food. But Lamarck did not believe that the
+      necks were so designed in the beginning: he believed that the long necks
+      were evolved by wanting and trying. Not necessarily, said Darwin. Consider
+      the effect on the giraffes of the natural multiplication of their numbers,
+      as insisted on by Malthus. Suppose the average height of the
+      foliage-eating animals is four feet, and that they increase in numbers
+      until a time comes when all the trees are eaten away to within four feet
+      of the ground. Then the animals who happen to be an inch or two short of
+      the average will die of starvation. All the animals who happen to be an
+      inch or so above the average will be better fed and stronger than the
+      others. They will secure the strongest and tallest mates; and their
+      progeny will survive whilst the average ones and the sub-average ones will
+      die out. This process, by which the species gains, say, an inch in reach,
+      will repeat itself until the giraffe's neck is so long that he can always
+      find food enough within his reach, at which point, of course, the
+      selective process stops and the length of the giraffe's neck stops with
+      it. Otherwise, he would grow until he could browse off the trees in the
+      moon. And this, mark you, without the intervention of any stockbreeder,
+      human or divine, and without will, purpose, design, or even consciousness
+      beyond the blind will to satisfy hunger. It is true that this blind will,
+      being in effect a will to live, gives away the whole case; but still, as
+      compared to the open-eyed intelligent wanting and trying of Lamarck, the
+      Darwinian process may be described as a chapter of accidents. As such, it
+      seems simple, because you do not at first realize all that it involves.
+      But when its whole significance dawns on you, your heart sinks into a heap
+      of sand within you. There is a hideous fatalism about it, a ghastly and
+      damnable reduction of beauty and intelligence, of strength and purpose, of
+      honor and aspiration, to such casually picturesque changes as an avalanche
+      may make in a mountain landscape, or a railway accident in a human figure.
+      To call this Natural Selection is a blasphemy, possible to many for whom
+      Nature is nothing but a casual aggregation of inert and dead matter, but
+      eternally impossible to the spirits and souls of the righteous. If it be
+      no blasphemy, but a truth of science, then the stars of heaven, the
+      showers and dew, the winter and summer, the fire and heat, the mountains
+      and hills, may no longer be called to exalt the Lord with us by praise;
+      their work is to modify all things by blindly starving and murdering
+      everything that is not lucky enough to survive in the universal struggle
+      for hogwash.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0025" id="link2H_4_0025"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE BRINK OF THE BOTTOMLESS PIT
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Thus did the neck of the giraffe reach out across the whole heavens and
+      make men believe that what they saw there was a gloaming of the gods. For
+      if this sort of selection could turn an antelope into a giraffe, it could
+      conceivably turn a pond full of amoebas into the French Academy. Though
+      Lamarck's way, the way of life, will, aspiration, and achievement,
+      remained still possible, this newly shewn way of hunger, death, stupidity,
+      delusion, chance, and bare survival was also possible: was indeed most
+      certainly the way in which many apparently intelligently designed
+      transformations had actually come to pass. Had I not preluded with the
+      apparently idle story of my revival of the controversial methods of
+      Elijah, I should be asked how it was that the explorer who opened up this
+      gulf of despair, far from being stoned or crucified as the destroyer of
+      the honor of the race and the purpose of the world, was hailed as
+      Deliverer, Savior, Prophet, Redeemer, Enlightener, Rescuer, Hope Giver,
+      and Epoch Maker; whilst poor Lamarck was swept aside as a crude and
+      exploded guesser hardly worthy to be named as his erroneous forerunner. In
+      the light of my anecdote, the explanation is obvious. The first thing the
+      gulf did was to swallow up Paley, and the Disorderly Designer, and
+      Shelley's Almighty Fiend, and all the rest of the pseudo-religious rubbish
+      that had blocked every upward and onward path since the hopes of men had
+      turned to Science as their true Savior. It seemed such a convenient grave
+      that nobody at first noticed that it was nothing less than the bottomless
+      pit, now become a very real terror. For though Darwin left a path round it
+      for his soul, his followers presently dug it right across the whole width
+      of the way. Yet for the moment, there was nothing but wild rejoicing: a
+      sort of scientific mafficking. We had been so oppressed by the notion that
+      everything that happened in the world was the arbitrary personal act of an
+      arbitrary personal god of dangerously jealous and cruel personal
+      character, so that even the relief of the pains of childbirth and the
+      operating table by chloroform was objected to as an interference with his
+      arrangements which he would probably resent, that we just jumped at
+      Darwin. When Napoleon was asked what would happen when he died, he said
+      that Europe would express its intense relief with a great 'Ouf!': Well,
+      when Darwin killed the god who objected to chloroform, everybody who had
+      ever thought about it said 'Ouf!' Paley was buried fathoms deep with his
+      watch, now fully accounted for without any divine artificer at all. We
+      were so glad to be rid of both that we never gave a thought to the
+      consequences. When a prisoner sees the door of his dungeon open, he dashes
+      for it without stopping to think where he shall get his dinner outside.
+      The moment we found that we could do without Shelley's almighty fiend
+      intellectually, he went into the gulf that seemed only a dustbin with a
+      suddenness that made our own lives one of the most astonishing periods in
+      history. If I had told that uncle of mine that within thirty years from
+      the date of our conversation I should be exposing myself to suspicions of
+      the grossest superstition by questioning the sufficiency of Darwin;
+      maintaining the reality of the Holy Ghost; declaring that the phenomenon
+      of the Word becoming Flesh was occurring daily, he would have regarded me
+      as the most extravagant madman our family had ever produced. Yet it was
+      so. In 1906 I might have vituperated Jehovah more heartily than ever
+      Shelley did without eliciting a protest in any circle of thinkers, or
+      shocking any public audience accustomed to modern discussion; but when I
+      described Darwin as 'an intelligent and industrious pigeon fancier,' that
+      blasphemous levity, as it seemed, was received with horror and
+      indignation. The tide has now turned; and every puny whipster may say what
+      he likes about Darwin; but anyone who wants to know what it was to be a
+      Lamarckian during the last quarter of the nineteenth century has only to
+      read Mr Festing Jones's memoir of Samuel Butler to learn how completely
+      even a man of genius could isolate himself by antagonizing Darwin on the
+      one hand and the Church on the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0026" id="link2H_4_0026"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      WHY DARWIN CONVERTED THE CROWD
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I am well aware that in describing the effect of Darwin's discovery on
+      naturalists and on persons capable of serious reflection on the nature and
+      attributes of God, I am leaving the vast mass of the British public out of
+      account. I have pointed out elsewhere that the British nation does not
+      consist of atheists and Plymouth Brothers; and I am not now going to
+      pretend that it ever consisted of Darwinians and Lamarckians. The average
+      citizen is irreligious and unscientific: you talk to him about cricket and
+      golf, market prices and party politics, not about evolution and
+      relativity, transubstantiation and predestination. Nothing will knock into
+      his head the fateful distinction between Evolution as promulgated by
+      Erasmus Darwin, and Circumstantial (so-called Natural) Selection as
+      revealed by his grandson. Yet the doctrine of Charles reached him, though
+      the doctrine of Erasmus had passed over his head. Why did not Erasmus
+      Darwin popularize the word Evolution as effectively as Charles?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reason was, I think, that Circumstantial Selection is easier to
+      understand, more visible and concrete, than Lamarckian evolution.
+      Evolution as a philosophy and physiology of the will is a mystical
+      process, which can be apprehended only by a trained, apt, and
+      comprehensive thinker. Though the phenomena of use and disuse, of wanting
+      and trying, of the manufacture of weight lifters and wrestlers from men of
+      ordinary strength, are familiar enough as facts, they are extremely
+      puzzling as subjects of thought, and lead you into metaphysics the moment
+      you try to account for them. But pigeon fanciers, dog fanciers, gardeners,
+      stock breeders, or stud grooms, can understand Circumstantial Selection,
+      because it is their business to produce transformation by imposing on
+      flowers and animals a Selection From Without. All that Darwin had to say
+      to them was that the mere chapter of accidents is always doing on a huge
+      scale what they themselves are doing on a very small scale. There is
+      hardly a laborer attached to an English country house who has not taken a
+      litter of kittens or puppies to the bucket, and drowned all of them except
+      the one he thinks the most promising. Such a man has nothing to learn
+      about the survival of the fittest except that it acts in more ways than he
+      has yet noticed; for he knows quite well, as you will find if you are not
+      too proud to talk to him, that this sort of selection occurs naturally (in
+      Darwin's sense) too: that, for instance, a hard winter will kill off a
+      weakly child as the bucket kills off a weakly puppy. Then there is the
+      farm laborer. Shakespear's Touchstone, a court-bred fool, was shocked to
+      find in the shepherd a natural philosopher, and opined that he would be
+      damned for the part he took in the sexual selection of sheep. As to the
+      production of new species by the selection of variations, that is no news
+      to your gardener. Now if you are familiar with these three processes: the
+      survival of the fittest, sexual selection, and variation leading to new
+      kinds, there is nothing to puzzle you in Darwinism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was the secret of Darwin's popularity. He never puzzled anybody. If
+      very few of us have read The Origin of Species from end to end, it is not
+      because it overtaxes our mind, but because we take in the whole case and
+      are prepared to accept it long before we have come to the end of the
+      innumerable instances and illustrations of which the book mainly consists.
+      Darwin becomes tedious in the manner of a man who insists on continuing to
+      prove his innocence after he has been acquitted. You assure him that there
+      is not a stain on his character, and beg him to leave the court; but he
+      will not be content with enough evidence: he will have you listen to all
+      the evidence that exists in the world. Darwin's industry was enormous. His
+      patience, his perseverance, his conscientiousness reached the human limit.
+      But he never got deeper beneath or higher above his facts than an ordinary
+      man could follow him. He was not conscious of having raised a stupendous
+      issue, because, though it arose instantly, it was not his business. He was
+      conscious of having discovered a process of transformation and
+      modification which accounted for a great deal of natural history. But he
+      did not put it forward as accounting for the whole of natural history. He
+      included it under the heading of Evolution, though it was only
+      pseudo-evolution at best; but he revealed it as <i>a</i> method of
+      evolution, not as <i>the</i> method of evolution. He did not pretend that
+      it excluded other methods, or that it was the chief method. Though he
+      demonstrated that many transformations which had been taken as functional
+      adaptations (the current phrase for Lamarckian evolution) either certainly
+      were or conceivably might be due to Circumstantial Selection, he was
+      careful not to claim that he had superseded Lamarck or disproved
+      Functional Adaptation. In short, he was not a Darwinian, but an honest
+      naturalist working away at his job with so little preoccupation with
+      theological speculation that he never quarrelled with the theistic
+      Unitarianism into which he was born, and remained to the end the
+      engagingly simple and socially easy-going soul he had been in his boyhood,
+      when his elders doubted whether he would ever be of much use in the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0027" id="link2H_4_0027"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      HOW WE RUSHED DOWN A STEEP PLACE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Not so the rest of us intellectuals. We all began going to the devil with
+      the utmost cheerfulness. Everyone who had a mind to change, changed it.
+      Only Samuel Butler, on whom Darwin had acted homeopathically, reacted
+      against him furiously; ran up the Lamarckian flag to the top-gallant peak;
+      declared with penetrating accuracy that Darwin had 'banished mind from the
+      universe'; and even attacked Darwin's personal character, unable to bear
+      the fact that the author of so abhorrent a doctrine was an amiable and
+      upright man. Nobody would listen to him. He was so completely submerged by
+      the flowing tide of Darwinism that when Darwin wanted to clear up the
+      misunderstanding on which Butler was basing his personal attacks, Darwin's
+      friends, very foolishly and snobbishly, persuaded him that Butler was too
+      ill-conditioned and negligible to be answered. That they could not
+      recognize in Butler a man of genius mattered little: what did matter was
+      that they could not understand the provocation under which he was raging.
+      They actually regarded the banishment of mind from the universe as a
+      glorious enlightenment and emancipation for which he was ignorantly
+      ungrateful. Even now, when Butler's eminence is unchallenged, and his
+      biographer, Mr Festing Jones, is enjoying a vogue like that of Boswell or
+      Lockhart, his memoirs shew him rather as a shocking example of the bad
+      controversial manners of our country parsonages than as a prophet who
+      tried to head us back when we were gaily dancing to our damnation across
+      the rainbow bridge which Darwinism had thrown over the gulf which
+      separates life and hope from death and despair. We were intellectually
+      intoxicated with the idea that the world could make itself without design,
+      purpose, skill, or intelligence: in short, without life. We completely
+      overlooked the difference between the modification of species by
+      adaptation to their environment and the appearance of new species: we just
+      threw in the word 'variations' or the word 'sports' (fancy a man of
+      science talking of an unknown factor as a sport instead of as <i>x</i>!)
+      and left them to 'accumulate' and account for the difference between a
+      cockatoo and a hippopotamus. Such phrases set us free to revel in
+      demonstrating to the Vitalists and Bible worshippers that if we once admit
+      the existence of any kind of force, however unintelligent, and stretch out
+      the past to unlimited time for such force to operate accidentally in, that
+      force may conceivably, by the action of Circumstantial Selection, produce
+      a world in which every function has an organ perfectly adapted to perform
+      it, and therefore presents every appearance of having been designed, like
+      Paley's watch, by a conscious and intelligent artificer for the purpose.
+      We took a perverse pleasure in arguing, without the least suspicion that
+      we were reducing ourselves to absurdity, that all the books in the British
+      Museum library might have been written word for word as they stand on the
+      shelves if no human being had ever been conscious, just as the trees stand
+      in the forest doing wonderful things without consciousness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the Darwinians went far beyond denying consciousness to trees.
+      Weismann insisted that the chick breaks out of its eggshell automatically;
+      that the butterfly, springing into the air to avoid the pounce of the
+      lizard, 'does not wish to avoid death; knows nothing about death,' what
+      has happened being simply that a flight instinct evolved by Circumstantial
+      Selection reacts promptly to a visual impression produced by the lizard's
+      movement. His proof is that the butterfly immediately settles again on the
+      flower, and repeats the performance every time the lizard springs, thus
+      shewing that it learns nothing from experience, and&mdash;Weismann
+      concludes&mdash;is not conscious of what it does.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It should hardly have escaped so curious an observer that when the cat
+      jumps up on the dinner table, and you put it down, it instantly jumps up
+      again, and finally establishes its right to a place on the cloth by
+      convincing you that if you put it down a hundred times it will jump up a
+      hundred and one times; so that if you desire its company at dinner you can
+      have it only on its own terms. If Weismann really thought that cats act
+      thus without any consciousness or any purpose, immediate or ulterior, he
+      must have known very little about cats. But a thoroughgoing Weismannite,
+      if any such still survive from those mad days, would contend that I am not
+      at present necessarily conscious of what I am doing; that my writing of
+      these lines, and your reading of them, are effects of Circumstantial
+      Selection; that I heed know no more about Darwinism than a butterfly knows
+      of a lizard's appetite; and that the proof that I actually am doing it
+      unconsciously is that as I have spent forty years in writing in this
+      fashion without, as far as I can see, producing any visible effect on
+      public opinion, I must be incapable of learning from experience, and am
+      therefore a mere automaton. And the Weismannite demonstration of this
+      would of course be an equally unconscious effect of Circumstantial
+      Selection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0028" id="link2H_4_0028"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      DARWINISM NOT FINALLY REFUTABLE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Do not too hastily say that this is inconceivable. To Circumstantial
+      Selection all mechanical and chemical reactions are possible, provided you
+      accept the geologists' estimates of the great age of the earth, and
+      therefore allow time enough for the circumstances to operate. It is true
+      that mere survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence plus
+      sexual selection fail as hopelessly to account for Darwin's own life work
+      as for my conquest of the bicycle; but who can prove that there are not
+      other soulless factors, unnoticed or undiscovered, which only require
+      imagination enough to fit them to the evolution of an automatic Jesus or
+      Shakespear? When a man tells you that you are a product of Circumstantial
+      Selection solely, you cannot finally disprove it. You can only tell him
+      out of the depths of your inner conviction that he is a fool and a liar.
+      But as this, though British, is uncivil, it is wiser to offer him the
+      counter-assurance that you are the product of Lamarckian evolution,
+      formerly called Functional Adaptation and now Creative Evolution, and
+      challenge him to disprove <i>that</i>, which he can no more do than you
+      can disprove Circumstantial Selection, both forces being conceivably able
+      to produce anything if you only give them rope enough. You may also defy
+      him to act for a single hour on the assumption that he may safely cross
+      Oxford Street in a state of unconsciousness, trusting to his dodging
+      reflexes to react automatically and promptly enough to the visual
+      impression produced by a motor bus, and the audible impression produced by
+      its hooter. But if you allow yourself to defy him to explain any
+      particular action of yours by Circumstantial Selection, he should always
+      be able to find some explanation that will fit the case if only he is
+      ingenious enough and goes far enough to find it. Darwin found several such
+      explanations in his controversies. Anybody who really wants to believe
+      that the universe has been produced by Circumstantial Selection
+      co-operating with a force as inhuman as we conceive magnetism to be can
+      find a logical excuse for his belief if he tries hard enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0029" id="link2H_4_0029"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THREE BLIND MICE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The stultification and damnation which ensued are illustrated by a
+      comparison of the ease and certainty with which Butler's mind moved to
+      humane and inspiring conclusions with the grotesque stupidities and
+      cruelties of the idle and silly controversy which arose among the
+      Darwinians as to whether acquired habits can be transmitted from parents
+      to offspring. Consider, for example, how Weismann set to work on that
+      subject. An Evolutionist with a live mind would first have dropped the
+      popular expression 'acquired habits,' because to an Evolutionist there are
+      no other habits and can be no others, a man being only an amoeba with
+      acquirements. He would then have considered carefully the process by which
+      he himself had acquired his habits. He would have assumed that the habits
+      with which he was born must have been acquired by a similar process. He
+      would have known what a habit is: that is, an Action voluntarily attempted
+      until it has become more or less automatic and involuntary; and it would
+      never have occurred to him that injuries or accidents coming from external
+      sources against the will of the victim could possibly establish a habit;
+      that, for instance, a family could acquire a habit of being killed in
+      railway accidents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet Weismann began to investigate the point by behaving like the
+      butcher's wife in the old catch. He got a colony of mice, and cut off
+      their tails. Then he waited to see whether their children would be born
+      without tails. They were not, as Butler could have told him beforehand. He
+      then cut off the children's tails, and waited to see whether the
+      grandchildren would be born with at least rather short tails. They were
+      not, as I could have told him beforehand. So with the patience and
+      industry on which men of science pride themselves, he cut off the
+      grandchildren's tails too, and waited, full of hope, for the birth of
+      curtailed great-grandchildren. But their tails were quite up to the mark,
+      as any fool could have told him beforehand. Weismann then gravely drew the
+      inference that acquired habits cannot be transmitted. And yet Weismann was
+      not a born imbecile. He was an exceptionally clever and studious man, not
+      without roots of imagination and philosophy in him which Darwinism killed
+      as weeds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How was it that he did not see that he was not experimenting with habits
+      or characteristics at all? How had he overlooked the glaring fact that his
+      experiment had been tried for many generations in China on the feet of
+      Chinese women without producing the smallest tendency on their part to be
+      born with abnormally small feet? He must have known about the bound feet
+      even if he knew nothing of the mutilations, the clipped ears and docked
+      tails, practised by dog fanciers and horse breeders on many generations of
+      the unfortunate animals they deal in. Such amazing blindness and stupidity
+      on the part of a man who was naturally neither blind nor stupid is a
+      telling illustration of what Darwin unintentionally did to the minds of
+      his disciples by turning their attention so exclusively towards the part
+      played in Evolution by accident and violence operating with entire
+      callousness to suffering and sentiment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A vital conception of Evolution would have taught Weismann that biological
+      problems are not to be solved by assaults on mice. The scientific form of
+      his experiment would have been something like this. First, he should have
+      procured a colony of mice highly susceptible to hypnotic suggestion. He
+      should then have hypnotized them into an urgent conviction that the fate
+      of the musque world depended on the disappearance of its tail, just as
+      some ancient and forgotten experimenter seems to have convinced the cats
+      of the Isle of Man. Having thus made the mice desire to lose their tails
+      with a life-or-death intensity, he would very soon have seen a few mice
+      born with little or no tail. These would be recognized by the other mice
+      as superior beings, and privileged in the division of food and in sexual
+      selection. Ultimately the tailed mice would be put to death as monsters by
+      their fellows, and the miracle of the tailless mouse completely achieved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The objection to this experiment is not that it seems too funny to be
+      taken seriously, and is not cruel enough to overawe the mob, but simply
+      that it is impossible because the human experimenter cannot get at the
+      mouse's mind. And that is what is wrong with all the barren cruelties of
+      the laboratories. Darwin's followers did not think of this. Their only
+      idea of investigation was to imitate 'Nature' by perpetrating violent and
+      senseless cruelties, and watch the effect of them with a paralyzing
+      fatalism which forbade the smallest effort to use their minds instead of
+      their knives and eyes, and established an abominable tradition that the
+      man who hesitates to be as cruel as Circumstantial Selection itself is a
+      traitor to science. For Weismann's experiment upon the mice was a mere
+      joke compared to the atrocities committed by other Darwinians in their
+      attempts to prove that mutilations could not be transmitted. No doubt the
+      worst of these experiments were not really experiments at all, but
+      cruelties committed by cruel men who were attracted to the laboratory by
+      the fact that it was a secret refuge left by law and public superstition
+      for the amateur of passionate torture. But there is no reason to suspect
+      Weismann of Sadism. Cutting off the tails of several generations of mice
+      is not voluptuous enough to tempt a scientific Nero. It was a mere piece
+      of one-eyedness; and it was Darwin who put out Weismann's humane and
+      sensible eye. He blinded many another eye and paralyzed many another will
+      also. Ever since he set up Circumstantial Selection as the creator and
+      ruler of the universe, the scientific world has been the very citadel of
+      stupidity and cruelty. Fearful as the tribal god of the Hebrews was,
+      nobody ever shuddered as they passed even his meanest and narrowest Little
+      Bethel or his proudest war-consecrating cathedral as we shudder now when
+      we pass a physiological laboratory. If we dreaded and mistrusted the
+      priest, we could at least keep him out of the house; but what of the
+      modern Darwinist surgeon whom we dread and mistrust ten times more, but
+      into whose hands we must all give ourselves from time to time? Miserably
+      as religion had been debased, it did at least still proclaim that our
+      relation to one another was that of a fellowship in which we were all
+      equal and members one of another before the judgment-seat of our common
+      father. Darwinism proclaimed that our true relation is that of competitors
+      and combatants in a struggle for mere survival, and that every act of pity
+      or loyalty to the old fellowship is a vain and mischievous attempt to
+      lessen the severity of the struggle and preserve inferior varieties from
+      the efforts of Nature to weed them out. Even in Socialist Societies which
+      existed solely to substitute the law of fellowship for the law of
+      competition, and the method of providence and wisdom for the method of
+      rushing violently down a steep place into the sea, I found myself regarded
+      as a blasphemer and an ignorant sentimentalist because whenever the
+      Neo-Darwinian doctrine was preached there I made no attempt to conceal my
+      intellectual contempt for its blind coarseness and shallow logic, or my
+      natural abhorrence of its sickening inhumanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0030" id="link2H_4_0030"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE GREATEST OF THESE IS SELF-CONTROL
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      As there is no place in Darwinism for free will, or any other sort of
+      will, the Neo-Darwinists held that there is no such thing as self-control.
+      Yet self-control is just the one quality of survival value which
+      Circumstantial Selection must invariably and inevitably develop in the
+      long run. Uncontrolled qualities may be selected for survival and
+      development for certain periods and under certain circumstances. For
+      instance, since it is the ungovernable gluttons who strive the hardest to
+      get food and drink, their efforts would develop their strength and cunning
+      in a period of such scarcity that the utmost they could do would not
+      enable them to over-eat themselves. But a change of circumstances
+      involving a plentiful supply of food would destroy them. We see this very
+      thing happening often enough in the case of the healthy and vigorous poor
+      man who becomes a millionaire by one of the accidents of our competitive
+      commerce, and immediately proceeds to dig his grave with his teeth. But
+      the self-controlled man survives all such changes of circumstance, because
+      he adapts himself to them, and eats neither as much as he can hold nor as
+      little as he can scrape along on, but as much as is good for him. What is
+      self-control? It is nothing but a highly developed vital sense, dominating
+      and regulating the mere appetites. To overlook the very existence of this
+      supreme sense; to miss the obvious inference that it is the quality that
+      distinguishes the fittest to survive; to omit, in short, the highest moral
+      claim of Evolutionary Selection: all this, which the Neo-Darwinians did in
+      the name of Natural Selection, shewed the most pitiable want of mastery of
+      their own subject, the dullest lack of observation of the forces upon
+      which Natural Selection works.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0031" id="link2H_4_0031"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A SAMPLE OF LAMARCKO-SHAVIAN INVECTIVE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The Vitalist philosophers made no such mistakes. Nietzsche, for example,
+      thinking out the great central truth of the Will to Power instead of
+      cutting off mouse-tails, had no difficulty in concluding that the final
+      objective of this Will was power over self, and that the seekers after
+      power over others and material possessions were on a false scent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stultification naturally became much worse as the first Darwinians
+      died out. The prestige of these pioneers, who had the older evolutionary
+      culture to build on, and were in fact no more Darwinian in the modern
+      sense than Darwin himself, ceased to dazzle us when Huxley and Tyndall and
+      Spencer and Darwin passed away, and we were left with the smaller people
+      who began with Darwin and took in nothing else. Accordingly, I find that
+      in the year 1906 I indulged my temper by hurling invectives at the
+      Neo-Darwinians in the following terms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      'I really do not wish to be abusive; but when I think of these poor little
+      dullards, with their precarious hold of just that corner of evolution that
+      a blackbeetle can understand&mdash;with their retinue of
+      twopenny-halfpenny Torquemadas wallowing in the infamies of the
+      vivisector's laboratory, and solemnly offering us as epoch-making
+      discoveries their demonstrations that dogs get weaker and die if you give
+      them no food; that intense pain makes mice sweat; and that if you cut off
+      a dog's leg the three-legged dog will have a four-legged puppy, I ask
+      myself what spell has fallen on intelligent and humane men that they allow
+      themselves to be imposed on by this rabble of dolts, blackguards,
+      impostors, quacks, liars, and, worst of all, credulous conscientious
+      fools. Better a thousand times Moses and Spurgeon [a then famous preacher]
+      back again. After all, you cannot understand Moses without imagination nor
+      Spurgeon without metaphysics; but you can be a thorough-going
+      Neo-Darwinian without imagination, metaphysics, poetry, conscience, or
+      decency. For "Natural Selection" has no moral significance: it deals with
+      that part of evolution which has no purpose, no intelligence, and might
+      more appropriately be called accidental selection, or better still,
+      Unnatural Selection, since nothing is more unnatural than an accident. If
+      it could be proved that the whole universe had been produced by such
+      Selection, only fools and rascals could bear to live.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0032" id="link2H_4_0032"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE HUMANITARIANS AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Yet the humanitarians were as delighted as anybody with Darwinism at
+      first. They had been perplexed by the Problem of Evil and the Cruelty of
+      Nature. They were Shelleyists, but not atheists. Those who believed in God
+      were at a terrible disadvantage with the atheist. They could not deny the
+      existence of natural facts so cruel that to attribute them to the will of
+      God is to make God a demon. Belief in God was impossible to any thoughtful
+      person without belief in the Devil as well. The painted Devil, with his
+      horns, his barbed tail, and his abode of burning brimstone, was an
+      incredible bogey; but the evil attributed to him was real enough; and the
+      atheists argued that the author of evil, if he exists, must be strong
+      enough to overcome God, else God is morally responsible for everything he
+      permits the Devil to do. Neither conclusion delivered us from the horror
+      of attributing the cruelty of nature to the workings of an evil will, or
+      could reconcile it with our impulses towards justice, mercy, and a higher
+      life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A complete deliverance was offered by the discovery of Circumstantial
+      Selection: that is to say, of a method by which horrors having every
+      appearance of being elaborately planned by some intelligent contriver are
+      only accidents without any moral significance at all. Suppose a watcher
+      from the stars saw a frightful accident produced by two crowded trains at
+      full speed crashing into one another! How could he conceive that a
+      catastrophe brought about by such elaborate machinery, such ingenious
+      preparation, such skilled direction, such vigilant industry, was quite
+      unintentional? Would he not conclude that the signal-men were devils?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, Circumstantial Selection is largely a theory of collisions: that is,
+      a theory of the innocence of much apparently designed devilry. In this way
+      Darwin brought intense relief as well as an enlarged knowledge of facts to
+      the humanitarians. He destroyed the omnipotence of God for them; but he
+      also exonerated God from a hideous charge of cruelty. Granted that the
+      comfort was shallow, and that deeper reflection was bound to shew that
+      worse than all conceivable devil-deities is a blind, deaf, dumb,
+      heartless, senseless mob of forces that strike as a tree does when it is
+      blown down by the wind, or as the tree itself is struck by lightning. That
+      did not occur to the humanitarians at the moment: people do not reflect
+      deeply when they are in the first happiness of escape from an intolerably
+      oppressive situation. Like Bunyan's pilgrim they could not see the wicket
+      gate, nor the Slough of Despond, nor the castle of Giant Despair; but they
+      saw the shining light at the end of the path, and so started gaily towards
+      it as Evolutionists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And they were right; for the problem of evil yields very easily to
+      Creative Evolution. If the driving power behind Evolution is omnipotent
+      only in the sense that there seems no limit to its final achievement; and
+      if it must meanwhile struggle with matter and circumstance by the method
+      of trial and error, then the world must be full of its unsuccessful
+      experiments. Christ may meet a tiger, or a High Priest arm-in-arm with a
+      Roman Governor, and be the unfittest to survive under the circumstances.
+      Mozart may have a genius that prevails against Emperors and Archbishops,
+      and a lung that succumbs to some obscure and noxious property of foul air.
+      If all our calamities are either accidents or sincerely repented mistakes,
+      there is no malice in the Cruelty of Nature and no Problem of Evil in the
+      Victorian sense at all. The theology of the women who told us that they
+      became atheists when they sat by the cradles of their children and saw
+      them strangled by the hand of God is succeeded by the theology of Blanco
+      Posnet, with his 'It was early days when He made the croup, I guess. It
+      was the best He could think of then; but when it turned out wrong on His
+      hands He made you and me to fight the croup for Him.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0033" id="link2H_4_0033"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      HOW ONE TOUCH OF DARWIN MAKES THE WHOLE WORLD KIN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Another humanitarian interest in Darwinism was that Darwin popularized
+      Evolution generally, as well as making his own special contribution to it.
+      Now the general conception of Evolution provides the humanitarian with a
+      scientific basis, because it establishes the fundamental equality of all
+      living things. It makes the killing of an animal murder in exactly the
+      same sense as the killing of a man is murder. It is sometimes necessary to
+      kill men as it is always necessary to kill tigers; but the old theoretic
+      distinction between the two acts has been obliterated by Evolution. When I
+      was a child and was told that our dog and our parrot, with whom I was on
+      intimate terms, were not creatures like myself, but were brutal whilst I
+      was reasonable, I not only did not believe it, but quite consciously and
+      intellectually formed the opinion that the distinction was false; so that
+      afterwards, when Darwin's views were first unfolded to me, I promptly said
+      that I had found out all that for myself before I was ten years old; and I
+      am far from sure that my youthful arrogance was not justified; for this
+      sense of the kinship of all forms of life is all that is needed to make
+      Evolution not only a conceivable theory, but an inspiring one. St Anthony
+      was ripe for the Evolution theory when he preached to the fishes, and St
+      Francis when he called the birds his little brothers. Our vanity, and our
+      snobbish conception of Godhead as being, like earthly kingship, a supreme
+      class distinction instead of the rock on which Equality is built, had led
+      us to insist on God offering us special terms by placing us apart from and
+      above all the rest of his creatures. Evolution took that conceit out of
+      us; and now, though we may kill a flea without the smallest remorse, we at
+      all events know that we are killing our cousin. No doubt it shocks the
+      flea when the creature that an almighty Celestial Flea created expressly
+      for the food of fleas, destroys the jumping lord of creation with his
+      sharp and enormous thumbnail; but no flea will ever be so foolish as to
+      preach that in slaying fleas Man is applying a method of Natural Selection
+      which will finally evolve a flea so swift that no man can catch him, and
+      so hardy of constitution that Insect Powder will have no more effect on
+      him than strychnine on an elephant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0034" id="link2H_4_0034"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      WHY DARWIN PLEASED THE SOCIALISTS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The Humanitarians were not alone among the agitators in their welcome to
+      Darwin. He had the luck to please everybody who had an axe to grind. The
+      Militarists were as enthusiastic as the Humanitarians, the Socialists as
+      the Capitalists. The Socialists were specially encouraged by Darwin's
+      insistence on the influence of environment. Perhaps the strongest moral
+      bulwark of Capitalism is the belief in the efficacy of individual
+      righteousness. Robert Owen made desperate efforts to convince England that
+      her criminals, her drunkards, her ignorant and stupid masses, were the
+      victims of circumstance: that if we would only establish his new moral
+      world we should find that the masses born into an educated and moralized
+      community would be themselves educated and moralized. The stock reply to
+      this is to be found in Lewes's Life of Goethe. Lewes scorned the notion
+      that circumstances govern character. He pointed to the variety of
+      character in the governing rich class to prove the contrary. Similarity of
+      circumstance can hardly be carried to a more desolating dead level than in
+      the case of the individuals who are born and bred in English country
+      houses, and sent first to Eton or Harrow, and then to Oxford or Cambridge,
+      to have their minds and habits formed. Such a routine would destroy
+      individuality if anything could. Yet individuals come out from it as
+      different as Pitt from Fox, as Lord Russell from Lord Gurzon, as Mr
+      Winston Churchill from Lord Robert Cecil. This acceptance of the
+      congenital character of the individual as the determining factor in his
+      destiny had been reinforced by the Lamarckian view of Evolution. If the
+      giraffe can develop his neck by wanting and trying, a man can develop his
+      character in the same way. The old saying, 'Where there is a will, there
+      is a way,' condenses Lamarck's theory of functional adaptation into a
+      proverb. This felt bracingly moral to strong minds, and reassuringly pious
+      to feeble ones. There was no more effective retort to the Socialist than
+      to tell him to reform himself before he pretends to reform society. If you
+      were rich, how pleasant it was to feel that you owed your riches to the
+      superiority of your own character! The industrial revolution had turned
+      numbers of greedy dullards into monstrously rich men. Nothing could be
+      more humiliating and threatening to them than the view that the falling of
+      a shower of gold into their pockets was as pure an accident as the falling
+      of a shower of hail on their umbrellas, and happened alike to the just and
+      unjust. Nothing could be more flattering and fortifying to them than the
+      assumption that they were rich because they were virtuous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now Darwinism made a clean sweep of all such self-righteousness. It more
+      than justified Robert Owen by discovering in the environment of an
+      organism an influence on it more potent than Owen had ever claimed. It
+      implied that street arabs are produced by slums and not by original sin:
+      that prostitutes are produced by starvation wages and not by feminine
+      concupiscence. It threw the authority of science on the side of the
+      Socialist who said that he who would reform himself must first reform
+      society. It suggested that if we want healthy and wealthy citizens we must
+      have healthy and wealthy towns; and that these can exist only in healthy
+      and wealthy countries. It could be led to the conclusion that the type of
+      character which remains indifferent to the welfare of its neighbors as
+      long as its own personal appetite is satisfied is the disastrous type, and
+      the type which is deeply concerned about its environment the only possible
+      type for a permanently prosperous community. It shewed that the surprising
+      changes which Robert Owen had produced in factory children by a change in
+      their circumstances which does not seem any too generous to us nowadays
+      were as nothing to the changes&mdash;changes not only of habits but of
+      species, not only of species but of orders&mdash;which might conceivably
+      be the work of environment acting on individuals without any character or
+      intellectual consciousness whatever. No wonder the Socialists received
+      Darwin with open arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0035" id="link2H_4_0035"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      DARWIN AND KARL MARX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Besides, the Socialists had an evolutionary prophet of their own, who had
+      discredited Manchester as Darwin discredited the Garden of Eden. Karl Marx
+      had proclaimed in his Communist Manifesto of 1848 (now enjoying Scriptural
+      authority in Russia) that civilization is an organism evolving
+      irresistibly by circumstantial selection; and he published the first
+      volume of his Das Kapital in 1867. The revolt against anthropomorphic
+      idolatry, which was, as we have seen, the secret of Darwin's success, had
+      been accompanied by a revolt against the conventional respectability which
+      covered not only the brigandage and piracy of the feudal barons, but the
+      hypocrisy, inhumanity, snobbery, and greed of the bourgeoisie, who were
+      utterly corrupted by an essentially diabolical identification of success
+      in life with big profits. The moment Marx shewed that the relation of the
+      bourgeoisie to society was grossly immoral and disastrous, and that the
+      whited wall of starched shirt fronts concealed and defended the most
+      infamous of all tyrannies and the basest of all robberies, he became an
+      inspired prophet in the mind of every generous soul whom his book reached.
+      He had said and proved what they wanted to have proved; and they would
+      hear nothing against him. Now Marx was by no means infallible: his
+      economics, half borrowed, and half home-made by a literary amateur, were
+      not, when strictly followed up, even favorable to Socialism. His theory of
+      civilisation had been promulgated already in Buckle's History of
+      Civilization, a book as epoch-making in the minds of its readers as Das
+      Kapital. There was nothing about Socialism in the widely read first volume
+      of Das Kapital: every reference it made to workers and capitalists shewed
+      that Marx had never breathed industrial air, and had dug his case out of
+      bluebooks in the British Museum. Compared to Darwin, he seemed to have no
+      power of observation: there was not a fact in Das Kapital that had not
+      been taken out of a book, nor a discussion that had not been opened by
+      somebody else's pamphlet. No matter: he exposed the bourgeoisie and made
+      an end of its moral prestige. That was enough: like Darwin he had for the
+      moment the World Will by the ear. Marx had, too, what Darwin had not:
+      implacability and a fine Jewish literary gift, with terrible powers of
+      hatred, invective, irony, and all the bitter qualities bred, first in the
+      oppression of a rather pampered young genius (Marx was the spoilt child of
+      a well-to-do family) by a social system utterly uncongenial to him, and
+      later on by exile and poverty. Thus Marx and Darwin between them toppled
+      over two closely related idols, and became the prophets of two new creeds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0036" id="link2H_4_0036"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      WHY DARWIN PLEASED THE PROFITEERS ALSO
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      But how, at this rate, did Darwin succeed with the capitalists too? It is
+      not easy to make the best of both worlds when one of the worlds is
+      preaching a Class War, and the other vigorously practising it. The
+      explanation is that Darwinism was so closely related to Capitalism that
+      Marx regarded it as an economic product rather than as a biological
+      theory. Darwin got his main postulate, the pressure of population on the
+      available means of subsistence, from the treatise of Malthus on
+      Population, just as he got his other postulate of a practically unlimited
+      time for that pressure to operate from the geologist Lyell, who made an
+      end of Archbishop Ussher's Biblical estimate of the age of the earth as
+      4004 B.C. plus A.D. The treatises of the Ricardian economists on the Law
+      of Diminishing Return, which was only the Manchester School's version of
+      the giraffe and the trees, were all very fiercely discussed when Darwin
+      was a young man. In fact the discovery in the eighteenth century by the
+      French Physiocrats of the economic effects of Commercial Selection in
+      soils and sites, and by Malthus of a competition for subsistence which he
+      attributed to pressure of population on available subsistence, had already
+      brought political science into that unbreathable atmosphere of fatalism
+      which is the characteristic blight of Darwinism. Long before Darwin
+      published a line, the Ricardo-Malthusian economists were preaching the
+      fatalistic Wages Fund doctrine, and assuring the workers that Trade
+      Unionism is a vain defiance of the inexorable laws of political economy,
+      just as the Neo-Darwinians were presently assuring us that Temperance
+      Legislation is a vain defiance of Natural Selection, and that the true way
+      to deal with drunkenness is to flood the country with cheap gin and let
+      the fittest survive. Cobdenism is, after all, nothing but the abandonment
+      of trade to Circumstantial Selection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is hardly possible to exaggerate the importance of this preparation for
+      Darwinism by a vast political and clerical propaganda of its moral
+      atmosphere. Never in history, as far as we know, had there been such a
+      determined, richly subsidized, politically organized attempt to persuade
+      the human race that all progress, all prosperity, all salvation,
+      individual and social, depend on an unrestrained conflict for food and
+      money, on the suppression and elimination of the weak by the strong, on
+      Free Trade, Free Contract, Free Competition, Natural Liberty,
+      Laisser-faire: in short, on 'doing the other fellow down' with impunity,
+      all interference by a guiding government, all organization except police
+      organization to protect legalized fraud against fisticuffs, all attempt to
+      introduce human purpose and design and forethought into the industrial
+      welter, being 'contrary to the laws of political economy.' Even the
+      proletariat sympathized, though to them Capitalist liberty meant only wage
+      slavery without the legal safeguards of chattel slavery. People were tired
+      of governments and kings and priests and providences, and wanted to find
+      out how Nature would arrange matters if she were let alone. And they found
+      it out to their cost in the days when Lancashire used up nine generations
+      of wage slaves in one generation of their masters. But their masters,
+      becoming richer and richer, were very well satisfied, and Bastiat proved
+      convincingly that Nature had arranged Economic Harmonies which would
+      settle social questions far better than theocracies or aristocracies or
+      mobocracies, the real <i>deus ex machina</i> being unrestrained
+      plutocracy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0037" id="link2H_4_0037"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE POETRY AND PURITY OF MATERIALISM
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Thus the stars in their courses fought for Darwin. Every faction drew a
+      moral from him; every catholic hater of faction founded a hope on him;
+      every blackguard felt justified by him; and every saint felt encouraged by
+      him. The notion that any harm could come of so splendid an enlightenment
+      seemed as silly as the notion that the atheists would steal all our
+      spoons. The physicists went further than the Darwinians. Tyndall declared
+      that he saw in Matter the promise and potency of all forms of life, and
+      with his Irish graphic lucidity made a picture of a world of magnetic
+      atoms, each atom with a positive and a negative pole, arranging itself by
+      attraction and repulsion in orderly crystalline structure. Such a picture
+      is dangerously fascinating to thinkers oppressed by the bloody disorders
+      of the living world. Craving for purer subjects of thought, they find in
+      the contemplation of crystals and magnets a happiness more dramatic and
+      less childish than the happiness found by the mathematicians in abstract
+      numbers, because they see in the crystals beauty and movement without the
+      corrupting appetites of fleshly vitality. In such Materialism as that of
+      Lucretius and Tyndall there is a nobility which produces poetry: John
+      Davidson found his highest inspiration in it. Even its pessimism as it
+      faces the cooling of the sun and the return of the ice-caps does not
+      degrade the pessimist: for example, the Quincy Adamses, with their
+      insistence on modern democratic degradation as an inevitable result of
+      solar shrinkage, are not dehumanized as the vivisectionists are. Perhaps
+      nobody is at heart fool enough to believe that life is at the mercy of
+      temperature: Dante was not troubled by the objection that Brunetto could
+      not have lived in the fire nor Ugolino in the ice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the physicists found their intellectual vision of the world
+      incommunicable to those who were not born with it. It came to the public
+      simply as Materialism; and Materialism lost its peculiar purity and
+      dignity when it entered into the Darwinian reaction against Bible
+      fetichism. Between the two of them religion was knocked to pieces; and
+      where there had been a god, a cause, a faith that the universe was ordered
+      however inexplicable by us its order might be, and therefore a sense of
+      moral responsibility as part of that order, there was now an utter void.
+      Chaos had come again. The first effect was exhilarating: we had the
+      runaway child's sense of freedom before it gets hungry and lonely and
+      frightened. In this phase we did not desire our God back again. We printed
+      the verses in which William Blake, the most religious of our great poets,
+      called the anthropomorphic idol Old Nobodaddy, and gibed at him in terms
+      which the printer had to leave us to guess from his blank spaces. We had
+      heard the parson droning that God is not mocked; and it was great fun to
+      mock Him to our hearts' content and not be a penny the worse. It did not
+      occur to us that Old Nobodaddy, instead of being a ridiculous fiction,
+      might be only an impostor, and that the exposure of this Koepenik Captain
+      of the heavens, far from proving that there was no real captain, rather
+      proved the contrary: that, in short, Nobodaddy could not have impersonated
+      anybody if there had not been Somebodaddy to impersonate. We did not see
+      the significance of the fact that on the last occasion on which God had
+      been 'expelled with a pitchfork,' men so different as Voltaire and
+      Robespierre had said, the one that if God did not exist it would be
+      necessary to invent him, and the other that after an honest attempt to
+      dispense with a Supreme Being in practical politics, some such hypothesis
+      had been found quite indispensable, and could not be replaced by a mere
+      Goddess of Reason. If these two opinions were quoted at all, they were
+      quoted as jokes at the expense of Nobodaddy. We were quite sure for the
+      moment that whatever lingering superstition might have daunted these men
+      of the eighteenth century, we Darwinians could do without God, and had
+      made a good riddance of Him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0038" id="link2H_4_0038"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE VICEROYS OF THE KING OF KINGS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Now in politics it is much easier to do without God than to do without his
+      viceroys and vicars and lieutenants; and we begin to miss the lieutenants
+      long before we begin to miss their principal. Roman Catholics do what
+      their confessors advise without troubling God; and Royalists are content
+      to worship the King and ask the policeman. But God's trustiest lieutenants
+      often lack official credentials. They may be professed atheists who are
+      also men of honor and high public spirit. The old belief that it matters
+      dreadfully to God whether a man thinks himself an atheist or not, and that
+      the extent to which it matters can be stated with exactness as one single
+      damn, was an error: for the divinity is in the honor and public spirit,
+      not in the mouthed <i>credo</i> or <i>non credo</i>. The consequences of
+      this error became grave when the fitness of a man for public trust was
+      tested, not by his honor and public spirit, but by asking him whether he
+      believed in Nobodaddy or not. If he said yes, he was held fit to be a
+      Prime Minister, though, as our ablest Churchman has said, the real
+      implication was that he was either a fool, a bigot, or a liar. Darwin
+      destroyed this test; but when it was only thoughtlessly dropped, there was
+      no test at all; and the door to public trust was open to the man who had
+      no sense of God because he had no sense of anything beyond his own
+      business interests and personal appetites and ambitions. As a result, the
+      people who did not feel in the least inconvenienced by being no longer
+      governed by Nobodaddy soon found themselves very acutely inconvenienced by
+      being governed by fools and commercial adventurers. They had forgotten not
+      only God but Goldsmith, who had warned them that 'honor sinks where
+      commerce long prevails.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lieutenants of God are not always persons: some of them are legal and
+      parliamentary fictions. One of them is Public Opinion. The pre-Darwinian
+      statesmen and publicists were not restrained directly by God; but they
+      restrained themselves by setting up an image of a Public Opinion which
+      would not tolerate any attempt to tamper with British liberties. Their
+      favorite way of putting it was that any Government which proposed such and
+      such an infringement of such and such a British liberty would be hurled
+      from office in a week. This was not true: there was no such public
+      opinion, no limit to what the British people would put up with in the
+      abstract, and no hardship short of immediate and sudden starvation that it
+      would not and did not put up with in the concrete. But this very
+      helplessness of the people had forced their rulers to pretend that they
+      were not helpless, and that the certainty of a sturdy and unconquerable
+      popular resistance forbade any trifling with Magna Carta or the Petition
+      of Rights or the authority of parliament. Now the reality behind this
+      fiction was the divine sense that liberty is a need vital to human growth.
+      Accordingly, though it was difficult enough to effect a political reform,
+      yet, once parliament had passed it, its wildest opponent had no hope that
+      the Government would cancel it, or shelve it, or be bought off from
+      executing it. From Walpole to Campbell-Bannerman there was no Prime
+      Minister to whom such renagueing or trafficking would ever have occurred,
+      though there were plenty who employed corruption unsparingly to procure
+      the votes of members of parliament for their policy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0039" id="link2H_4_0039"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      POLITICAL OPPORTUNISM IN EXCELSIS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The moment Nobodaddy was slain by Darwin, Public Opinion, as divine
+      deputy, lost its sanctity. Politicians no longer told themselves that the
+      British public would never suffer this or that: they allowed themselves to
+      know that for their own personal purposes, which are limited to their ten
+      or twenty years on the front benches in parliament, the British public can
+      be humbugged and coerced into believing and suffering everything that it
+      pays to impose on them, and that any false excuse for an unpopular step
+      will serve if it can be kept in countenance for a fortnight: that is,
+      until the terms of the excuse are forgotten. The people, untaught or
+      mistaught, are so ignorant and incapable politically that this in itself
+      would not greatly matter; for a statesman who told them the truth would
+      not be understood, and would in effect mislead them more completely than
+      if he dealt with them according to their blindness instead of to his own
+      wisdom. But though there is no difference in this respect between the best
+      demagogue and the worst, both of them having to present their cases
+      equally in terms of melodrama, there is all the difference in the world
+      between the statesman who is humbugging the people into allowing him to do
+      the will of God, in whatever disguise it may come to him, and one who is
+      humbugging them into furthering his personal ambition and the commercial
+      interests of the plutocrats who own the newspapers and support him on
+      reciprocal terms. And there is almost as great a difference between the
+      statesman who does this naively and automatically, or even does it telling
+      himself that he is ambitious and selfish and unscrupulous, and the one who
+      does it on principle, believing that if everyone takes the line of least
+      material resistance the result will be the survival of the fittest in a
+      perfectly harmonious universe. Once produce an atmosphere of fatalism on
+      principle, and it matters little what the opinions or superstitions of the
+      individual statesmen concerned may be. A Kaiser who is a devout reader of
+      sermons, a Prime Minister who is an emotional singer of hymns, and a
+      General who is a bigoted Roman Catholic may be the executants of the
+      policy; but the policy itself will be one of unprincipled opportunism; and
+      all the Governments will be like the tramp who walks always with the wind
+      and ends as a pauper, or the stone that rolls down the hill and ends as an
+      avalanche: their way is the way to destruction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0040" id="link2H_4_0040"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE BETRAYAL OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Within sixty years from the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species
+      political opportunism had brought parliaments into contempt; created a
+      popular demand for direct action by the organized industries
+      ('Syndicalism'); and wrecked the centre of Europe in a paroxysm of that
+      chronic terror of one another, that cowardice of the irreligious, which,
+      masked in the bravado of militarist patriotism, had ridden the Powers like
+      a nightmare since the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71. The sturdy old
+      cosmopolitan Liberalism vanished almost unnoticed. At the present moment
+      all the new ordinances for the government of our Grown Colonies contain,
+      as a matter of course, prohibitions of all criticism, spoken or written,
+      of their ruling officials, which would have scandalized George III and
+      elicited Liberal pamphlets from Catherine II. Statesmen are afraid of the
+      suburbs, of the newspapers, of the profiteers, of the diplomatists, of the
+      militarists, of the country houses, of the trade unions, of everything
+      ephemeral on earth except the revolutions they are provoking; and they
+      would be afraid of these if they were not too ignorant of society and
+      history to appreciate the risk, and to know that a revolution always seems
+      hopeless and impossible the day before it breaks out, and indeed never
+      does break out until it seems hopeless and impossible; for rulers who
+      think it possible take care to insure the risk by ruling reasonably. This
+      brings about a condition fatal to all political stability: namely, that
+      you never know where to have the politicians. If the fear of God was in
+      them it might be possible to come to some general understanding as to what
+      God disapproves of; and Europe might pull together on that basis. But the
+      present panic, in which Prime Ministers drift from election to election,
+      either fighting or running away from everybody who shakes a fist at them,
+      makes a European civilization impossible. Such peace and prosperity as we
+      enjoyed before the war depended on the loyalty of the Western States to
+      their own civilization. That loyalty could find practical expression only
+      in an alliance of the highly civilized Western Powers against the
+      primitive tyrannies of the East. Britain, Germany, France, and the United
+      States of America could have imposed peace on the world, and nursed modern
+      civilization in Russia, Turkey, and the Balkans. Every meaner
+      consideration should have given way to this need for the solidarity of the
+      higher civilization. What actually happened was that France and England,
+      through their clerks the diplomatists, made an alliance with Russia to
+      defend themselves against Germany; Germany made an alliance with Turkey to
+      defend herself against the three; and the two unnatural and suicidal
+      combinations fell on one another in a war that came nearer to being a war
+      of extermination than any wars since those of Timur the Tartar; whilst the
+      United States held aloof as long as they could, and the other States
+      either did the same or joined in the fray through compulsion, bribery, or
+      their judgment as to which side their bread was buttered. And at the
+      present moment, though the main fighting has ceased through the surrender
+      of Germany on terms which the victors have never dreamt of observing, the
+      extermination by blockade and famine, which was what forced Germany to
+      surrender, still continues, although it is certain that if the vanquished
+      starve the victors will starve too, and Europe will liquidate its affairs
+      by going, not into bankruptcy, but into chaos.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now all this, it will be noticed, was fundamentally nothing but an idiotic
+      attempt on the part of each belligerent State to secure for itself the
+      advantage of the survival of the fittest through Circumstantial Selection.
+      If the Western Powers had selected their allies in the Lamarckian manner
+      intelligently, purposely, and vitally, <i>ad majorem Dei gloriam</i>, as
+      what Nietzsche called good Europeans, there would have been a League of
+      Nations and no war. But because the selection relied on was purely
+      circumstantial opportunist selection, so that the alliances were mere
+      marriages of convenience, they have turned out, not merely as badly as
+      might have been expected, but far worse than the blackest pessimist had
+      ever imagined possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0041" id="link2H_4_0041"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CIRCUMSTANTIAL SELECTION IN FINANCE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      How it will all end we do not yet know. When wolves combine to kill a
+      horse, the death of the horse only sets them fighting one another for the
+      choicest morsels. Men are no better than wolves if they have no better
+      principles: accordingly, we find that the Armistice and the Treaty have
+      not extricated us from the war. A handful of Serbian regicides flung us
+      into it as a sporting navvy throws a bull pup at a cat; but the Supreme
+      Council, with all its victorious legions and all its prestige, cannot get
+      us out of it, though we are heartily sick and tired of the whole business,
+      and know now very well that it should never have been allowed to happen.
+      But we are helpless before a slate scrawled with figures of National
+      Debts. As there is no money to pay them because it was all spent on the
+      war (wars have to be paid for on the nail) the sensible thing to do is to
+      wipe the slate and let the wrangling States distribute what they can
+      spare, on the sound communist principle of from each according to his
+      ability, to each according to his need. But no: we have no principles
+      left, not even commercial ones; for what sane commercialist would decree
+      that France must not pay for her failure to defend her own soil; that
+      Germany must pay for her success in carrying the war into the enemy's
+      country; and that as Germany has not the money to pay, and under our
+      commercial system can make it only by becoming once more a commercial
+      competitor of England and France, which neither of them will allow, she
+      must borrow the money from England, or America, or even from France: an
+      arrangement by which the victorious creditors will pay one another, and
+      wait to get their money back until Germany is either strong enough to
+      refuse to pay or ruined beyond the possibility of paying? Meanwhile
+      Russia, reduced to a scrap of fish and a pint of cabbage soup a day, has
+      fallen into the hands of rulers who perceive that Materialist Communism is
+      at all events more effective than Materialist Nihilism, and are attempting
+      to move in an intelligent and ordered manner, practising a very strenuous
+      Intentional Selection of workers as fitter to survive than idlers; whilst
+      the Western Powers are drifting and colliding and running on the rocks, in
+      the hope that if they continue to do their worst they will get Naturally
+      Selected for survival without the trouble of thinking about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0042" id="link2H_4_0042"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE HOMEOPATHIC REACTION AGAINST DARWINISM
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When, like the Russians, our Nihilists have it urgently borne in on them,
+      by the brute force of rising wages that never overtake rising prices, that
+      they are being Naturally Selected for destruction, they will perhaps
+      remember that 'Dont Care came to a bad end,' and begin to look round for a
+      religion. And the whole purpose of this book is to shew them where to
+      look. For, throughout all the godless welter of the infidel half-century,
+      Darwinism has been acting not only directly but homeopathically, its
+      poison rallying our vital forces not only to resist it and cast it out,
+      but to achieve a new Reformation and put a credible and healthy religion
+      in its place. Samuel Butler was the pioneer of the reaction as far as the
+      casting out was concerned; but the issue was confused by the
+      physiologists, who were divided on the question into Mechanists and
+      Vitalists. The Mechanists said that life is nothing but physical and
+      chemical action; that they have demonstrated this in many cases of
+      so-called vital phenomena; and that there is no reason to doubt that with
+      improved methods they will presently be able to demonstrate it in all of
+      them. The Vitalists said that a dead body and a live one are physically
+      and chemically identical, and that the difference can be accounted for
+      only by the existence of a Vital Force. This seems simple; but the
+      Anti-Mechanists objected to be called Vitalists (obviously the right name
+      for them) on two contradictory grounds. First, that vitality is
+      scientifically inadmissible, because it cannot be isolated and
+      experimented with in the laboratory. Second, that force, being by
+      definition anything that can alter the speed or direction of matter in
+      motion (briefly, that can overcome inertia), is essentially a mechanistic
+      conception. Here we had the New Vitalist only half extricated from the Old
+      Mechanist, objecting to be called either, and unable to give a clear lead
+      in the new direction. And there was a deeper antagonism. The Old
+      Vitalists, in postulating a Vital Force, were setting up a comparatively
+      mechanical conception as against the divine idea of the life breathed into
+      the clay nostrils of Adam, whereby he became a living soul. The New
+      Vitalists, filled by their laboratory researches with a sense of the
+      miraculousness of life that went far beyond the comparatively uninformed
+      imaginations of the authors of the Book of Genesis, regarded the Old
+      Vitalists as Mechanists who had tried to fill up the gulf between life and
+      death with an empty phrase denoting an imaginary physical force.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These professional faction fights are ephemeral, and need not trouble us
+      here. The Old Vitalist, who was essentially a Materialist, has evolved
+      into the New Vitalist, who is, as every genuine scientist must be, finally
+      a metaphysician. And as the New Vitalist turns from the disputes of his
+      youth to the future of his science, he will cease to boggle at the name
+      Vitalist, or at the inevitable, ancient, popular, and quite correct use of
+      the term Force to denote metaphysical as well as physical overcomers of
+      inertia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Since the discovery of Evolution as the method of the Life Force the
+      religion of metaphysical Vitalism has been gaining the definiteness and
+      concreteness needed to make it assimilable by the educated critical man.
+      But it has always been with us. The popular religions, disgraced by their
+      Opportunist cardinals and bishops, have been kept in credit by canonized
+      saints whose secret was their conception of themselves as the instruments
+      and vehicles of divine power and aspiration: a conception which at moments
+      becomes an actual experience of ecstatic possession by that power. And
+      above and below all have been millions of humble and obscure persons,
+      sometimes totally illiterate, sometimes unconscious of having any religion
+      at all, sometimes believing in their simplicity that the gods and temples
+      and priests of their district stood for their instinctive righteousness,
+      who have kept sweet the tradition that good people follow a light that
+      shines within and above and ahead of them, that bad people care only for
+      themselves, and that the good are saved and blessed and the bad damned and
+      miserable. Protestantism was a movement towards the pursuit of a light
+      called an inner light because every man must see it with his own eyes and
+      not take any priest's word for it or any Church's account of it. In short,
+      there is no question of a new religion, but rather of redistilling the
+      eternal spirit of religion and thus extricating it from the sludgy residue
+      of temporalities and legends that are making belief impossible, though
+      they are the stock-in-trade of all the Churches and all the Schools.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0043" id="link2H_4_0043"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      RELIGION AND ROMANCE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It is the adulteration of religion by the romance of miracles and
+      paradises and torture chambers that makes it reel at the impact of every
+      advance in science, instead of being clarified by it. If you take an
+      English village lad, and teach him that religion means believing that the
+      stories of Noah's Ark and the Garden of Eden are literally true on the
+      authority of God himself, and if that boy becomes an artisan and goes into
+      the town among the sceptical city proletariat, then, when the jibes of his
+      mates set him thinking, and he sees that these stories cannot be literally
+      true, and learns that no candid prelate now pretends to believe them, he
+      does not make any fine distinctions: he declares at once that religion is
+      a fraud, and parsons and teachers hypocrites and liars. He becomes
+      indifferent to religion if he has little conscience, and indignantly
+      hostile to it if he has a good deal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The same revolt against wantonly false teaching is happening daily in the
+      professional classes whose recreation is reading and whose intellectual
+      sport is controversy. They banish the Bible from their houses, and
+      sometimes put into the hands of their unfortunate children Ethical and
+      Rationalist tracts of the deadliest dullness, compelling these wretched
+      infants to sit out the discourses of Secularist lecturers (I have
+      delivered some of them myself), who bore them at a length now forbidden by
+      custom in the established pulpit. Our minds have reacted so violently
+      towards provable logical theorems and demonstrable mechanical or chemical
+      facts that we have become incapable of metaphysical truth, and try to cast
+      out incredible and silly lies by credible and clever ones, calling in
+      Satan to cast out Satan, and getting more into his clutches than ever in
+      the process. Thus the world is kept sane less by the saints than by the
+      vast mass of the indifferent, who neither act nor react in the matter.
+      Butler's preaching of the gospel of Laodicea was a piece of common sense
+      founded on his observation of this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But indifference will not guide nations through civilization to the
+      establishment of the perfect city of God. An indifferent statesman is a
+      contradiction in terms; and a statesman who is indifferent on principle, a
+      Laisser-faire or Muddle-Through doctrinaire, plays the deuce with us in
+      the long run. Our statesmen must get a religion by hook or crook; and as
+      we are committed to Adult Suffrage it must be a religion capable of
+      vulgarization. The thought first put into words by the Mills when they
+      said 'There is no God; but this is a family secret,' and long held
+      unspoken by aristocratic statesmen and diplomatists, will not serve now;
+      for the revival of civilization after the war cannot be effected by
+      artificial breathing: the driving force of an undeluded popular consent is
+      indispensable, and will be impossible until the statesman can appeal to
+      the vital instincts of the people in terms of a common religion. The
+      success of the Hang the Kaiser cry at the last General Election shews us
+      very terrifyingly how a common irreligion can be used by myopic demagogy;
+      and common irreligion will destroy civilization unless it is countered by
+      common religion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0044" id="link2H_4_0044"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE DANGER OF REACTION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      And here arises the danger that when we realize this we shall do just what
+      we did half a century ago, and what Pliable did in The Pilgrim's Progress
+      when Christian landed him in the Slough of Despond: that is, run back in
+      terror to our old superstitions. We jumped out of the frying-pan into the
+      fire; and we are just as likely to jump back again, now that we feel
+      hotter than ever. History records very little in the way of mental
+      activity on the part of the mass of mankind except a series of stampedes
+      from affirmative errors into negative ones and back again. It must
+      therefore be said very precisely and clearly that the bankruptcy of
+      Darwinism does not mean that Nobodaddy was Somebodaddy <i>with</i> 'body,
+      parts, and passions' after all; that the world was made in the year 4004
+      B.C.; that damnation means a eternity of blazing brimstone; that the
+      Immaculate Conception means that sex is sinful and that Christ was
+      parthenogenetically brought forth by a virgin descended in like manner
+      from a line of virgins right back to Eve; that the Trinity is an
+      anthropomorphic monster with three heads which are yet only one head; that
+      in Rome the bread and wine on the altar become flesh and blood, and in
+      England, in a still more mystical manner, they do and they do not; that
+      the Bible is an infallible scientific manual, an accurate historical
+      chronicle, and a complete guide to conduct; that we may lie and cheat and
+      murder and then wash ourselves innocent in the blood of the lamb on Sunday
+      at the cost of a <i>credo</i> and a penny in the plate, and so on and so
+      forth. Civilization cannot be saved by people not only crude enough to
+      believe these things, but irreligious enough to believe that such belief
+      constitutes a religion. The education of children cannot safely be left in
+      their hands. If dwindling sects like the Church of England, the Church of
+      Rome, the Greek Church, and the rest, persist in trying to cramp the human
+      mind within the limits of these grotesque perversions of natural truths
+      and poetic metaphors, then they must be ruthlessly banished from the
+      schools until they either perish in general contempt or discover the soul
+      that is hidden in every dogma. The real Class War will be a war of
+      intellectual classes; and its conquest will be the souls of the children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0045" id="link2H_4_0045"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A TOUCHSTONE FOR DOGMA
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The test of a dogma is its universality. As long as the Church of England
+      preaches a single doctrine that the Brahman, the Buddhist, the Mussulman,
+      the Parsee, and all the other sectarians who are British subjects cannot
+      accept, it has no legitimate place in the counsels of the British
+      Commonwealth, and will remain what it is at present, a corrupter of youth,
+      a danger to the State, and an obstruction to the Fellowship of the Holy
+      Ghost. This has never been more strongly felt than at present, after a war
+      in which the Church failed grossly in the courage of its profession, and
+      sold its lilies for the laurels of the soldiers of the Victoria Cross. All
+      the cocks in Christendom have been crowing shame on it ever since; and it
+      will not be spared for the sake of the two or three faithful who were
+      found even among the bishops. Let the Church take it on authority, even my
+      authority (as a professional legend maker) if it cannot see the truth by
+      its own light: no dogma can be a legend. A legend can pass an ethnical
+      frontier as a legend, but not as a truth; whilst the only frontier to the
+      currency of a sound dogma as such is the frontier of capacity for
+      understanding it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This does not mean that we should throw away legend and parable and drama:
+      they are the natural vehicles of dogma; but woe to the Churches and rulers
+      who substitute the legend for the dogma, the parable for the history, the
+      drama for the religion! Better by far declare the throne of God empty than
+      set a liar and a fool on it. What are called wars of religion are always
+      wars to destroy religion by affirming the historical truth or material
+      substantiality of some legend, and killing those who refuse to accept it
+      as historical or substantial. But who has ever refused to accept a good
+      legend with delight as a legend? The legends, the parables, the dramas,
+      are among the choicest treasures of mankind. No one is ever tired of
+      stories of miracles. In vain did Mahomet repudiate the miracles ascribed
+      to him: in vain did Christ furiously scold those who asked him to give
+      them an exhibition as a conjurer: in vain did the saints declare that God
+      chose them not for their powers but for their weaknesses; that the humble
+      might be exalted, and the proud rebuked. People will have their miracles,
+      their stories, their heroes and heroines and saints and martyrs and
+      divinities to exercise their gifts of affection, admiration, wonder, and
+      worship, and their Judases and devils to enable them to be angry and yet
+      feel that they do well to be angry. Every one of these legends is the
+      common heritage of the human race; and there is only one inexorable
+      condition attached to their healthy enjoyment, which is that no one shall
+      believe them literally. The reading of stories and delighting in them made
+      Don Quixote a gentleman: the believing them literally made him a madman
+      who slew lambs instead of feeding them. In England today good books of
+      Eastern religious legends are read eagerly; and Protestants and Atheists
+      read Roman Catholic legends of the Saints with pleasure. But such fare is
+      shirked by Indians and Roman Catholics. Freethinkers read the Bible:
+      indeed they seem to be its only readers now except the reluctant parsons
+      at the church lecterns, who communicate their discomfort to the
+      congregation by gargling the words in their throats in an unnatural manner
+      that is as repulsive as it is unintelligible. And this is because the
+      imposition of the legends as literal truths at once changes them from
+      parables into falsehoods. The feeling against the Bible has become so
+      strong at last that educated people not only refuse to outrage their
+      intellectual consciences by reading the legend of Noah's Ark, with its
+      funny beginning about the animals and its exquisite end about the birds:
+      they will not read even the chronicles of King David, which may very well
+      be true, and are certainly more candid than the official biographies of
+      our contemporary monarchs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0046" id="link2H_4_0046"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      WHAT TO DO WITH THE LEGENDS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      What we should do, then, is to pool our legends and make a delightful
+      stock of religious folk-lore on an honest basis for all mankind. With our
+      minds freed from pretence and falsehood we could enter into the heritage
+      of all the faiths. China would share her sages with Spain, and Spain her
+      saints with China. The Ulster man who now gives his son an unmerciful
+      thrashing if the boy is so tactless as to ask how the evening and the
+      morning could be the first day before the sun was created, or to betray an
+      innocent calf-love for the Virgin Mary, would buy him a bookful of legends
+      of the creation and of mothers of God from all parts of the world, and be
+      very glad to find his laddie as interested in such things as in marbles or
+      Police and Robbers. That would be better than beating all good feeling
+      towards religion out of the child, and blackening his mind by teaching him
+      that the worshippers of the holy virgins, whether of the Parthenon or St
+      Peter's, are fire-doomed heathens and idolaters. All the sweetness of
+      religion is conveyed to the world by the hands of storytellers and
+      image-makers. Without their fictions the truths of religion would for the
+      multitude be neither intelligible nor even apprehensible; and the prophets
+      would prophesy and the teachers teach in vain. And nothing stands between
+      the people and the fictions except the silly falsehood that the fictions
+      are literal truths, and that there is nothing in religion but fiction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0047" id="link2H_4_0047"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A LESSON FROM SCIENCE TO THE CHURCHES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Let the Churches ask themselves why there is no revolt against the dogmas
+      of mathematics though there is one against the dogmas of religion. It is
+      not that the mathematical dogmas are more comprehensible. The law of
+      inverse squares is as incomprehensible to the common man as the Athanasian
+      creed. It is not that science is free from legends, witchcraft, miracles,
+      biographic boostings of quacks as heroes and saints, and of barren
+      scoundrels as explorers and discoverers. On the contrary, the iconography
+      and hagiology of Scientism are as copious as they are mostly squalid. But
+      no student of science has yet been taught that specific gravity consists
+      in the belief that Archimedes jumped out of his bath and ran naked through
+      the streets of Syracuse shouting Eureka, Eureka, or that the law of
+      inverse squares must be discarded if anyone can prove that Newton was
+      never in an orchard in his life. When some unusually conscientious or
+      enterprising bacteriologist reads the pamphlets of Jenner, and discovers
+      that they might have been written by an ignorant but curious and observant
+      nurserymaid, and could not possibly have been written by any person with a
+      scientifically trained mind, he does not feel that the whole edifice of
+      science has collapsed and crumbled, and that there is no such thing as
+      smallpox. It may come to that yet; for hygiene, as it forces its way into
+      our schools, is being taught as falsely as religion is taught there; but
+      in mathematics and physics the faith is still kept pure, and you may take
+      the law and leave the legends without suspicion of heresy. Accordingly,
+      the tower of the mathematician stands unshaken whilst the temple of the
+      priest rocks to its foundation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0048" id="link2H_4_0048"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE RELIGIOUS ART OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Creative Evolution is already a religion, and is indeed now unmistakeably
+      the religion of the twentieth century, newly arisen from the ashes of
+      pseudo-Christianity, of mere scepticism, and of the soulless affirmations
+      and blind negations of the Mechanists and Neo-Darwinians. But it cannot
+      become a popular religion until it has its legends, its parables, its
+      miracles. And when I say popular I do not mean apprehensible by villagers
+      only. I mean apprehensible by Cabinet Ministers as well. It is
+      unreasonable to look to the professional politician and administrator for
+      light and leading in religion. He is neither a philosopher nor a prophet:
+      if he were, he would be philosophizing and prophesying, and not neglecting
+      both for the drudgery of practical government. Socrates and Coleridge did
+      not remain soldiers, nor could John Stuart Mill remain the representative
+      of Westminster in the House of Commons even when he was willing. The
+      Westminster electors admired Mill for telling them that much of the
+      difficulty of dealing with them arose from their being inveterate liars.
+      But they would not vote a second time for the man who was not afraid to
+      break the crust of mendacity on which they were all dancing; for it seemed
+      to them that there was a volcanic abyss beneath, not having his
+      philosophic conviction that the truth is the solidest standing ground in
+      the end. Your front bench man will always be an exploiter of the popular
+      religion or irreligion. Not being an expert, he must take it as he finds
+      it; and before he can take it, he must have been told stories about it in
+      his childhood and had before him all his life an elaborate iconography of
+      it produced by writers, painters, sculptors, temple architects, and
+      artists of all the higher sorts. Even if, as sometimes happens, he is a
+      bit of an amateur in metaphysics as well as a professional politician, he
+      must still govern according to the popular iconography, and not according
+      to his own personal interpretations if these happen to be heterodox.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It will be seen then that the revival of religion on a scientific basis
+      does not mean the death of art, but a glorious rebirth of it. Indeed art
+      has never been great when it was not providing an iconography for a live
+      religion. And it has never been quite contemptible except when imitating
+      the iconography after the religion had become a superstition. Italian
+      painting from Giotto to Carpaccio is all religious painting; and it moves
+      us deeply and has real greatness. Compare with it the attempts of our
+      painters a century ago to achieve the effects of the old masters by
+      imitation when they should have been illustrating a faith of their own.
+      Contemplate, if you can bear it, the dull daubs of Hilton and Haydon, who
+      knew so much more about drawing and scumbling and glazing and perspective
+      and anatomy and 'marvellous foreshortening' than Giotto, the latchet of
+      whose shoe they were nevertheless not worthy to unloose. Compare Mozart's
+      Magic Flute, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Wagner's Ring, all of them
+      reachings-forward to the new Vitalist art, with the dreary pseudo-sacred
+      oratorios and cantatas which were produced for no better reason than that
+      Handel had formerly made splendid thunder in that way, and with the stale
+      confectionery, mostly too would-be pious to be even cheerfully toothsome,
+      of Spohr and Mendelssohn, Stainer and Parry, which spread indigestion at
+      our musical festivals until I publicly told Parry the bludgeoning truth
+      about his Job and woke him to conviction of sin. Compare Flaxman and
+      Thorwaldsen and Gibson with Phidias and Praxiteles, Stevens with Michael
+      Angelo, Bouguereau's Virgin with Cimabue's, or the best operatic Christs
+      of Scheffer and Müller with the worst Christs that the worst painters
+      could paint before the end of the fifteenth century, and you must feel
+      that until we have a great religious movement we cannot hope for a great
+      artistic one. The disillusioned Raphael could paint a mother and child,
+      but not a queen of Heaven as much less skilful men had done in the days of
+      his great-grandfather; yet he could reach forward to the twentieth century
+      and paint a Transfiguration of the Son of Man as they could not. Also,
+      please note, he could decorate a house of pleasure for a cardinal very
+      beautifully with voluptuous pictures of Cupid and Psyche; for this simple
+      sort of Vitalism is always with us, and, like portrait painting, keeps the
+      artist supplied with subject-matter in the intervals between the ages of
+      faith; so that your sceptical Rembrandts and Velasquezs are at least not
+      compelled to paint shop fronts for want of anything else to paint in which
+      they can really believe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0049" id="link2H_4_0049"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE ARTIST-PROPHETS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      And there are always certain rare but intensely interesting anticipations.
+      Michael Angelo could not very well believe in Julius II or Leo X, or in
+      much that they believed in; but he could paint the Superman three hundred
+      years before Nietzsche wrote Also Sprach Zarathustra and Strauss set it to
+      music. Michael Angelo won the primacy among all modern painters and
+      sculptors solely by his power of shewing us superhuman persons. On the
+      strength of his decoration and color alone he would hardly have survived
+      his own death twenty years; and even his design would have had only an
+      academic interest; but as a painter of prophets and sibyls he is greatest
+      among the very greatest in his craft, because we aspire to a world of
+      prophets and sibyls. Beethoven never heard of radioactivity nor of
+      electrons dancing in vortices of inconceivable energy; but pray can anyone
+      explain the last movement of his Hammerklavier Sonata, Opus 106, otherwise
+      than as a musical picture of these whirling electrons? His contemporaries
+      said he was mad, partly perhaps because the movement was so hard to play;
+      but we, who can make a pianola play it to us over and over until it is as
+      familiar as Pop Goes the Weasel, know that it is sane and methodical. As
+      such, it must represent something; and as all Beethoven's serious
+      compositions represent some process within himself, some nerve storm or
+      soul storm, and the storm here is clearly one of physical movement, I
+      should much like to know what other storm than the atomic storm could have
+      driven him to this oddest of all those many expressions of cyclonic energy
+      which have given him the same distinction among musicians that Michael
+      Angelo has among draughtsmen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Beethoven's day the business of art was held to be 'the sublime and
+      beautiful.' In our day it has fallen to be the imitative and voluptuous.
+      In both periods the word passionate has been freely employed; but in the
+      eighteenth century passion meant irresistible impulse of the loftiest
+      kind: for example, a passion for astronomy or for truth. For us it has
+      come to mean concupiscence and nothing else. One might say to the art of
+      Europe what Antony said to the corpse of Caesar: 'Are all thy conquests,
+      glories, triumphs, spoils, shrunk to this little measure?' But in fact it
+      is the mind of Europe that has shrunk, being, as we have seen, wholly
+      preoccupied with a busy spring-cleaning to get rid of its superstitions
+      before readjusting itself to the new conception of Evolution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0050" id="link2H_4_0050"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      EVOLUTION IN THE THEATRE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      On the stage (and here I come at last to my own particular function in the
+      matter), Comedy, as a destructive, derisory, critical, negative art, kept
+      the theatre open when sublime tragedy perished. From Molière to Oscar
+      Wilde we had a line of comedic playwrights who, if they had nothing
+      fundamentally positive to say, were at least in revolt against falsehood
+      and imposture, and were not only, as they claimed, 'chastening morals by
+      ridicule,' but, in Johnson's phrase, clearing our minds of cant, and
+      thereby shewing an uneasiness in the presence of error which is the surest
+      symptom of intellectual vitality. Meanwhile the name of Tragedy was
+      assumed by plays in which everyone was killed in the last act, just as, in
+      spite of Molière, plays in which everyone was married in the last act
+      called themselves comedies. Now neither tragedies nor comedies can be
+      produced according to a prescription which gives only the last moments of
+      the last act. Shakespear did not make Hamlet out of its final butchery,
+      nor Twelfth Night out of its final matrimony. And he could not become the
+      conscious iconographer of a religion because he had no conscious religion.
+      He had therefore to exercise his extraordinary natural gifts in the very
+      entertaining art of mimicry, giving us the famous 'delineation of
+      character' which makes his plays, like the novels of Scott, Dumas, and
+      Dickens, so delightful. Also, he developed that curious and questionable
+      art of building us a refuge from despair by disguising the cruelties of
+      Nature as jokes. But with all his gifts, the fact remains that he never
+      found the inspiration to write an original play. He furbished up old
+      plays, and adapted popular stories, and chapters of history from
+      Holinshed's Chronicle and Plutarch's biographies, to the stage. All this
+      he did (or did not; for there are minus quantities in the algebra of art)
+      with a recklessness which shewed that his trade lay far from his
+      conscience. It is true that he never takes his characters from the
+      borrowed story, because it was less trouble and more fun to him to create
+      them afresh; but none the less he heaps the murders and villainies of the
+      borrowed story on his own essentially gentle creations without scruple, no
+      matter how incongruous they may be. And all the time his vital need for a
+      philosophy drives him to seek one by the quaint professional method of
+      introducing philosophers as characters into his plays, and even of making
+      his heroes philosophers; but when they come on the stage they have no
+      philosophy to expound: they are only pessimists and railers; and their
+      occasional would-be philosophic speeches, such as The Seven Ages of Man
+      and The Soliloquy on Suicide, shew how deeply in the dark Shakespear was
+      as to what philosophy means. He forced himself in among the greatest of
+      playwrights without having once entered that region in which Michael
+      Angelo, Beethoven, Goethe, and the antique Athenian stage poets are great.
+      He would really not be great at all if it were not that he had religion
+      enough to be aware that his religionless condition was one of despair. His
+      towering King Lear would be only a melodrama were it not for its express
+      admission that if there is nothing more to be said of the universe than
+      Hamlet has to say, then 'as flies to wanton boys are we to the gods: they
+      kill us for their sport.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ever since Shakespear, playwrights have been struggling with the same lack
+      of religion; and many of them were forced to become mere panders and
+      sensation-mongers because, though they had higher ambitions, they could
+      find no better subject-matter. From Congreve to Sheridan they were so
+      sterile in spite of their wit that they did not achieve between them the
+      output of Molière's single lifetime; and they were all (not without
+      reason) ashamed of their profession, and preferred to be regarded as mere
+      men of fashion with a rakish hobby. Goldsmith's was the only saved soul in
+      that pandemonium.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The leaders among my own contemporaries (now veterans) snatched at minor
+      social problems rather than write entirely without any wider purpose than
+      to win money and fame. One of them expressed to me his envy of the ancient
+      Greek playwrights because the Athenians asked them, not for some 'new and
+      original' disguise of the half-dozen threadbare plots of the modern
+      theatre, but for the deepest lesson they could draw from the familiar and
+      sacred legends of their country. 'Let us all,' he said, 'write an Electra,
+      an Antigone, an Agamemnon, and shew what we can do with it.' But he did
+      not write any of them, because these legends are no longer religious:
+      Aphrodite and Artemis and Poseidon are deader than their statues. Another,
+      with a commanding position and every trick of British farce and Parisian
+      drama at his fingers' ends, finally could not write without a sermon to
+      preach, and yet could not find texts more fundamental than the hypocrisies
+      of sham Puritanism, or the matrimonial speculation which makes our young
+      actresses as careful of their reputations as of their complexions. A
+      third, too tenderhearted to break our spirits with the realities of a
+      bitter experience, coaxed a wistful pathos and a dainty fun out of the
+      fairy cloudland that lay between him and the empty heavens. The giants of
+      the theatre of our time, Ibsen and Strindberg, had no greater comfort for
+      the world than we: indeed much less; for they refused us even the
+      Shakespearian-Dickensian consolation of laughter at mischief, accurately
+      called comic relief. Our emancipated young successors scorn us, very
+      properly. But they will be able to do no better whilst the drama remains
+      pre-Evolutionist. Let them consider the great exception of Goethe. He, no
+      richer than Shakespear, Ibsen, or Strindberg in specific talent as a
+      playwright, is in the empyrean whilst they are gnashing their teeth in
+      impotent fury in the mud, or at best finding an acid enjoyment in the
+      irony of their predicament. Goethe is Olympian: the other giants are
+      infernal in everything but their veracity and their repudiation of the
+      irreligion of their time: that is, they are bitter and hopeless. It is not
+      a question of mere dates. Goethe was an Evolutionist in 1830: many
+      playwrights, even young ones, are still untouched by Creative Evolution in
+      1920. Ibsen was Darwinized to the extent of exploiting heredity on the
+      stage much as the ancient Athenian playwrights exploited the Eumenides;
+      but there is no trace in his plays of any faith in or knowledge of
+      Creative Evolution as a modern scientific fact. True, the poetic
+      aspiration is plain enough in his Emperor or Galilean; but it is one of
+      Ibsen's distinctions that nothing was valid for him but science; and he
+      left that vision of the future which his Roman seer calls 'the third
+      Empire' behind him as a Utopian dream when he settled down to his serious
+      grapple with realities in those plays of modern life with which he
+      overcame Europe, and broke the dusty windows of every dry-rotten theatre
+      in it from Moscow to Manchester.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0051" id="link2H_4_0051"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      MY OWN PART IN THE MATTER
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In my own activities as a playwright I found this state of things
+      intolerable. The fashionable theatre prescribed one serious subject:
+      clandestine adultery: the dullest of all subjects for a serious author,
+      whatever it may be for audiences who read the police intelligence and skip
+      the reviews and leading articles. I tried slum-landlordism, doctrinaire
+      Free Love (pseudo-Ibsenism), prostitution, militarism, marriage, history,
+      current politics, natural Christianity, national and individual character,
+      paradoxes of conventional society, husband hunting, questions of
+      conscience, professional delusions and impostures, all worked into a
+      series of comedies of manners in the classic fashion, which was then very
+      much out of fashion, the mechanical tricks of Parisian 'construction'
+      being <i>de rigueur</i> in the theatre. But this, though it occupied me
+      and established me professionally, did not constitute me an iconographer
+      of the religion of my time, and thus fulfil my natural function as an
+      artist. I was quite conscious of this; for I had always known that
+      civilization needs a religion as a matter of life or death; and as the
+      conception of Creative Evolution developed I saw that we were at last
+      within reach of a faith which complied with the first condition of all the
+      religions that have ever taken hold of humanity: namely, that it must be,
+      first and fundamentally, a science of metabiology. This was a crucial
+      point with me; for I had seen Bible fetichism, after standing up to all
+      the rationalistic batteries of Hume, Voltaire, and the rest, collapse
+      before the onslaught of much less gifted Evolutionists, solely because
+      they discredited it as a biological document; so that from that moment it
+      lost its hold, and left literate Christendom faithless. My own Irish
+      eighteenth-centuryism made it impossible for me to believe anything until
+      I could conceive it as a scientific hypothesis, even though the
+      abominations, quackeries, impostures, venalities, credulities, and
+      delusions of the camp followers of science, and the brazen lies and
+      priestly pretensions of the pseudo-scientific cure-mongers, all sedulously
+      inculcated by modern 'secondary education,' were so monstrous that I was
+      sometimes forced to make a verbal distinction between science and
+      knowledge lest I should mislead my readers. But I never forgot that
+      without knowledge even wisdom is more dangerous than mere opportunist
+      ignorance, and that somebody must take the Garden of Eden in hand and weed
+      it properly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Accordingly, in 1901, I took the legend of Don Juan in its Mozartian form
+      and made it a dramatic parable of Creative Evolution. But being then at
+      the height of my invention and comedic talent, I decorated it too
+      brilliantly and lavishly. I surrounded it with a comedy of which it formed
+      only one act, and that act was so completely episodical (it was a dream
+      which did not affect the action of the piece) that the comedy could be
+      detached and played by itself: indeed it could hardly be played at full
+      length owing to the enormous length of the entire work, though that feat
+      has been performed a few times in Scotland by Mr Esme Percy, who led one
+      of the forlorn hopes of the advanced drama at that time. Also I supplied
+      the published work with an imposing framework consisting of a preface, an
+      appendix called The Revolutionist's Handbook, and a final display of
+      aphoristic fireworks. The effect was so vertiginous, apparently, that
+      nobody noticed the new religion in the centre of the intellectual
+      whirlpool. Now I protest I did not cut these cerebral capers in mere
+      inconsiderate exuberance. I did it because the worst convention of the
+      criticism of the theatre current at that time was that intellectual
+      seriousness is out of place on the stage; that the theatre is a place of
+      shallow amusement; that people go there to be soothed after the enormous
+      intellectual strain of a day in the city: in short, that a playwright is a
+      person whose business it is to make unwholesome confectionery out of cheap
+      emotions. My answer to this was to put all my intellectual goods in the
+      shop window under the sign of Man and Superman. That part of my design
+      succeeded. By good luck and acting, the comedy triumphed on the stage; and
+      the book was a good deal discussed. Since then the sweet-shop view of the
+      theatre has been out of countenance; and its critical exponents have been
+      driven to take an intellectual pose which, though often more trying than
+      their old intellectually nihilistic vulgarity, at least concedes the
+      dignity of the theatre, not to mention the usefulness of those who live by
+      criticizing it. And the younger playwrights are not only taking their art
+      seriously, but being taken seriously themselves. The critic who ought to
+      be a newsboy is now comparatively rare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I now find myself inspired to make a second legend of Creative Evolution
+      without distractions and embellishments. My sands are running out; the
+      exuberance of 1901 has aged into the garrulity of 1930; and the war has
+      been a stern intimation that the matter is not one to be trifled with. I
+      abandon the legend of Don Juan with its erotic associations, and go back
+      to the legend of the Garden of Eden. I exploit the eternal interest of the
+      philosopher's stone which enables men to live for ever. I am not, I hope,
+      under more illusion than is humanly inevitable as to the crudity of this
+      my beginning of a Bible for Creative Evolution. I am doing the best I can
+      at my age. My powers are waning; but so much the better for those who
+      found me unbearably brilliant when I was in my prime. It is my hope that a
+      hundred apter and more elegant parables by younger hands will soon leave
+      mine as far behind as the religious pictures of the fifteenth century left
+      behind the first attempts of the early Christians at iconography. In that
+      hope I withdraw and ring up the curtain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0052" id="link2H_4_0052"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BACK TO METHUSELAH.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART" id="link2H_PART"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART I&mdash;In the Beginning
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0054" id="link2H_4_0054"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      ACT I
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Garden of Eden. Afternoon. An immense serpent is sleeping with her
+      head buried in a thick bed of Johnswort, and her body coiled in apparently
+      endless rings through the branches of a tree, which is already well grown;
+      for the days of creation have been longer than our reckoning. She is not
+      yet visible to anyone unaware of her presence, as her colors of green and
+      brown make a perfect camouflage. Near her head a low rock shows above the
+      Johnswort. </i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rock and tree are on the border of a glade in which lies a dead fawn
+      all awry, its neck being broken. Adam, crouching with one hand on the
+      rock, is staring in consternation at the dead body. He has not noticed the
+      serpent on his left hand. He turns his face to his right and calls
+      excitedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Eve! Eve!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE'S VOICE. What is it, Adam?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Come here. Quick. Something has happened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>running in</i>] What? Where? [<i>Adam points to the fawn</i>]. Oh!
+      [<i>She goes to it; and he is emboldened to go with her</i>]. What is the
+      matter with its eyes?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. It is not only its eyes. Look. [<i>He kicks it.</i>]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Oh don't! Why doesn't it wake?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. I don't know. It is not asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Not asleep?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Try.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>trying to shake it and roll it over</i>] It is stiff and cold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Nothing will wake it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. It has a queer smell. Pah! [<i>She dusts her hands, and draws away
+      from it</i>]. Did you find it like that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. No. It was playing about; and it tripped and went head over heels.
+      It never stirred again. Its neck is wrong [<i>he stoops to lift the neck
+      and shew her</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Dont touch it. Come away from it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>They both retreat, and contemplate it from a few steps' distance with
+      growing repulsion.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Adam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Yes?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Suppose you were to trip and fall, would you go like that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Ugh! [<i>He shudders and sits down on the rock</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>throwing herself on the ground beside him, and grasping his knee</i>]
+      You must be careful. Promise me you will be careful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. What is the good of being careful? We have to live here for ever.
+      Think of what for ever means! Sooner or later I shall trip and fall. It
+      may be tomorrow; it may be after as many days as there are leaves in the
+      garden and grains of sand by the river. No matter: some day I shall forget
+      and stumble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. I too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>horrified</i>] Oh no, no. I should be alone. Alone for ever. You
+      must never put yourself in danger of stumbling. You must not move about.
+      You must sit still. I will take care of you and bring you what you want.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>turning away from him with a shrug, and hugging her ankles</i>] I
+      should soon get tired of that. Besides, if it happened to you, <i>I</i>
+      should be alone. I could not sit still then. And at last it would happen
+      to me too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. And then?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Then we should be no more. There would be only the things on all
+      fours, and the birds, and the snakes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. That must not be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Yes: that must not be. But it might be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. No. I tell you it must not be. I know that it must not be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. We both know it. How do we know it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. There is a voice in the garden that tells me things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. The garden is full of voices sometimes. They put all sorts of
+      thoughts into my head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. To me there is only one voice. It is very low; but it is so near
+      that it is like a whisper from within myself. There is no mistaking it for
+      any voice of the birds or beasts, or for your voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. It is strange that I should hear voices from all sides and you only
+      one from within. But I have some thoughts that come from within me and not
+      from the voices. The thought that we must not cease to be comes from
+      within.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>despairingly</i>] But we shall cease to be. We shall fall like
+      the fawn and be broken. [<i>Rising and moving about in his agitation</i>].
+      I cannot bear this knowledge. I will not have it. It must not be, I tell
+      you. Yet I do not know how to prevent it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. That is just what I feel; but it is very strange that you should say
+      so: there is no pleasing you. You change your mind so often.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>scolding her</i>] Why do you say that? How have I changed my
+      mind?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. You say we must not cease to exist. But you used to complain of
+      having to exist always and for ever. You sometimes sit for hours brooding
+      and silent, hating me in your heart. When I ask you what I have done to
+      you, you say you are not thinking of me, but of the horror of having to be
+      here for ever. But I know very well that what you mean is the horror of
+      having to be here with me for ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Oh! That is what you think, is it? Well, you are wrong. [<i>He sits
+      down again, sulkily</i>]. It is the horror of having to be with myself for
+      ever. I like you; but I do not like myself. I want to be different; to be
+      better, to begin again and again; to shed myself as a snake sheds its
+      skin. I am tired of myself. And yet I must endure myself, not for a day or
+      for many days, but for ever. That is a dreadful thought. That is what
+      makes me sit brooding and silent and hateful. Do you never think of that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. No: I do not think about myself: what is the use? I am what I am:
+      nothing can alter that. I think about you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. You should not. You are always spying on me. I can never be alone.
+      You always want to know what I have been doing. It is a burden. You should
+      try to have an existence of your own, instead of occupying yourself with
+      my existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. I <i>have</i> to think about you. You are lazy: you are dirty: you
+      neglect yourself: you are always dreaming: you would eat bad food and
+      become disgusting if I did not watch you and occupy myself with you. And
+      now some day, in spite of all my care, you will fall on your head and
+      become dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Dead? What word is that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>pointing to the fawn</i>] Like that. I call it dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>rising and approaching it slowly</i>] There is something uncanny
+      about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>joining him</i>] Oh! It is changing into little white worms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Throw it into the river. It is unbearable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. I dare not touch it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Then I must, though I loathe it. It is poisoning the air. [<i>He
+      gathers its hooves in his hand and carries it away in the direction from
+      which Eve came, holding it as far from him as possible</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eve looks after them for a moment; then, with a shiver of disgust, sits
+      down on the rock, brooding. The body of the serpent becomes visible,
+      glowing with wonderful new colors. She rears her head slowly from the bed
+      of Johnswort, and speaks into Eve's ear in a strange seductively musical
+      whisper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Eve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>startled</i>] Who is that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. It is I. I have come to shew you my beautiful new hood. See [<i>she
+      spreads a magnificent amethystine hood</i>]!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>admiring it</i>] Oh! But who taught you to speak?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. You and Adam. I have crept through the grass, and hidden, and
+      listened to you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. That was wonderfully clever of you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. I am the most subtle of all the creatures of the field.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Your hood is most lovely. [<i>She strokes it and pets the serpent</i>].
+      Pretty thing! Do you love your godmother Eve?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. I adore her. [<i>She licks Eve's neck with her double tongue</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>petting her</i>] Eve's wonderful darling snake. Eve will never be
+      lonely now that her snake can talk to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SNAKE. I can talk of many things. I am very wise. It was I who
+      whispered the word to you that you did not know. Dead. Death. Die.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>shuddering</i>] Why do you remind me of it? I forgot it when I saw
+      your beautiful hood. You must not remind me of unhappy things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Death is not an unhappy thing when you have learnt how to
+      conquer it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. How can I conquer it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. By another thing, called birth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. What? [<i>Trying to pronounce it</i>] B-birth?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Yes, birth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. What is birth?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. The serpent never dies. Some day you shall see me come out of
+      this beautiful skin, a new snake with a new and lovelier skin. That is
+      birth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. I have seen that. It is wonderful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. If I can do that, what can I not do? I tell you I am very
+      subtle. When you and Adam talk, I hear you say 'Why?' Always 'Why?' You
+      see things; and you say 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I
+      say 'Why not?' I made the word dead to describe my old skin that I cast
+      when I am renewed. I call that renewal being born.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Born is a beautiful word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Why not be born again and again as I am, new and beautiful
+      every time?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. I! It does not happen: that is why.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. That is how; but it is not why. Why not?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. But I should not like it. It would be nice to be new again; but my
+      old skin would lie on the ground looking just like me; and Adam would see
+      it shrivel up and&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. No. He need not. There is a second birth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. A second birth?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Listen. I will tell you a great secret. I am very subtle; and
+      I have thought and thought and thought. And I am very wilful, and must
+      have what I want; and I have willed and willed and willed. And I have
+      eaten strange things: stones and apples that you are afraid to eat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. You dared!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. I dared everything. And at last I found a way of gathering
+      together a part of the life in my body&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. What is the life?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. That which makes the difference between the dead fawn and the
+      live one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. What a beautiful word! And what a wonderful thing! Life is the
+      loveliest of all the new words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Yes: it was by meditating on Life that I gained the power to
+      do miracles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Miracles? Another new word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. A miracle is an impossible thing that is nevertheless
+      possible. Something that never could happen, and yet does happen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Tell me some miracle that you have done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. I gathered a part of the life in my body, and shut it into a
+      tiny white case made of the stones I had eaten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. And what good was that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. I shewed the little case to the sun, and left it in its
+      warmth. And it burst; and a little snake came out; and it became bigger
+      and bigger from day to day until it was as big as I. That was the second
+      birth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Oh! That is too wonderful. It stirs inside me. It hurts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. It nearly tore me asunder. Yet I am alive, and can burst my
+      skin and renew myself as before. Soon there will be as many snakes in Eden
+      as there are scales on my body. Then death will not matter: this snake and
+      that snake will die; but the snakes will live.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. But the rest of us will die sooner or later, like the fawn. And then
+      there will be nothing but snakes, snakes, snakes everywhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. That must not be. I worship you, Eve. I must have something
+      to worship. Something quite different to myself, like you. There must be
+      something greater than the snake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Yes: it must not be. Adam must not perish. You are very subtle: tell
+      me what to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Think. Will. Eat the dust. Lick the white stone: bite the
+      apple you dread. The sun will give life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. I do not trust the sun. I will give life myself. I will tear. another
+      Adam from my body if I tear my body to pieces in the act.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Do. Dare it. Everything is possible: everything. Listen. I am
+      old. I am the old serpent, older than Adam, older than Eve. I remember
+      Lilith, who came before Adam and Eve. I was her darling as I am yours. She
+      was alone: there was no man with her. She saw death as you saw it when the
+      fawn fell; and she knew then that she must find out how to renew herself
+      and cast the skin like me. She had a mighty will: she strove and strove
+      and willed and willed for more moons than there are leaves on all the
+      trees of the garden. Her pangs were terrible: her groans drove sleep from
+      Eden. She said it must never be again: that the burden of renewing life
+      was past bearing: that it was too much for one. And when she cast the
+      skin, lo! there was not one new Lilith but two: one like herself, the
+      other like Adam. You were the one: Adam was the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. But why did she divide into two, and make us different?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. I tell you the labor is too much for one. Two must share it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Do you mean that Adam must share it with me? He will not. He cannot
+      bear pain, nor take trouble with his body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. He need not. There will be no pain for him. He will implore
+      you to let him do his share. He will be in your power through his desire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Then I will do it. But how? How did Lilith work this miracle?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. She imagined it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. What is imagined?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. She told it to me as a marvellous story of something that
+      never happened to a Lilith that never was. She did not know then that
+      imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire; you
+      will what you imagine; and at last you create what you will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. How can I create out of nothing?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Everything must have been created out of nothing. Look at
+      that thick roll of hard flesh on your strong arm! That was not always
+      there: you could not climb a tree when I first saw you. But you willed and
+      tried and willed and tried; and your will created out of nothing the roll
+      on your arm until you had your desire, and could draw yourself up with one
+      hand and seat yourself on the bough that was above your head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. That was practice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Things wear out by practice: they do not grow by it. Your
+      hair streams in the wind as if it were trying to stretch itself further
+      and further. But it does not grow longer for all its practice in
+      streaming, because you have not willed it so. When Lilith told me what she
+      had imagined in our silent language (for there were no words then) I bade
+      her desire it and will it; and then, to our great wonder, the thing she
+      had desired and willed created itself in her under the urging of her will.
+      Then I too willed to renew myself as two instead of one; and after many
+      days the miracle happened, and I burst from my skin another snake
+      interlaced with me; and now there are two imaginations, two desires, two
+      wills to create with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. To desire, to imagine, to will, to create. That is too long a story.
+      Find me one word for it all: you, who are so clever at words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. In one word, to conceive. That is the word that means both
+      the beginning in imagination and the end in creation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Find me a word for the story Lilith imagined and told you in your
+      silent language: the story that was too wonderful to be true, and yet came
+      true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. A poem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Find me another word for what Lilith was to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. She was your mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. And Adam's mother?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>about to rise</i>] I will go and tell Adam to conceive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT [<i>laughs</i>]!!!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>jarred and startled</i>] What a hateful noise! What is the matter
+      with you? No one has ever uttered such a sound before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Adam cannot conceive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Why?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Lilith did not imagine him so. He can imagine: he can will:
+      he can desire: he can gather his life together for a great spring towards
+      creation: he can create all things except one; and that one is his own
+      kind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Why did Lilith keep this from him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Because if he could do that he could do without Eve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. That is true. It is I who must conceive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Yes. By that he is tied to you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. And I to him!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Yes, until you create another Adam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. I had not thought of that. You are very subtle. But if I create
+      another Eve he may turn to her and do without me. I will not create any
+      Eves, only Adams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. They cannot renew themselves without Eves. Sooner or later
+      you will die like the fawn; and the new Adams will be unable to create
+      without new Eves. You can imagine such an end; but you cannot desire it,
+      therefore cannot will it, therefore cannot create Adams only.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. If I am to die like the fawn, why should not the rest die too? What
+      do I care?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Life must not cease. That comes before everything. It is
+      silly to say you do not care. You do care. It is that care that will
+      prompt your imagination; inflame your desires; make your will
+      irresistible; and create out of nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>thoughtfully</i>] There can be no such thing as nothing. The
+      garden is full, not empty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. I had not thought of that. That is a great thought. Yes:
+      there is no such thing as nothing, only things we cannot see. The
+      chameleon eats the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. I have another thought: I must tell it to Adam. [<i>Calling</i>]
+      Adam! Adam! Coo-ee!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM'S VOICE. Coo-ee!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. This will please him, and cure his fits of melancholy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Do not tell him yet. I have not told you the great secret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. What more is there to tell? It is I who have to do the miracle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. No: he, too, must desire and will. But he must give his
+      desire and his will to you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. How?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. That is the great secret. Hush! he is coming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>returning</i>] Is there another voice in the garden besides our
+      voices and the Voice? I heard a new voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>rising and running to him</i>] Only think, Adam! Our snake has
+      learnt to speak by listening to us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>delighted</i>] Is it so? [<i>He goes past her to the stone, and
+      fondles the serpent</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT [<i>responding affectionately</i>] It is so, dear Adam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. But I have more wonderful news than that. Adam: we need not live for
+      ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>dropping the snake's head in his excitement</i>] What! Eve: do
+      not play with me about this. If only there may be an end some day, and yet
+      no end! If only I can be relieved of the horror of having to endure myself
+      for ever! If only the care of this terrible garden may pass on to some
+      other gardener! If only the sentinel set by the Voice can be relieved! If
+      only the rest and sleep that enable me to bear it from day to day could
+      grow after many days into an eternal rest, an eternal sleep, then I could
+      face my days, however long they may last. Only, there must be some end,
+      some end: I am not strong enough to bear eternity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. You need not live to see another summer; and yet there shall
+      be no end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. That cannot be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. It can be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. It shall be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. It is. Kill me; and you will find another snake in the garden
+      tomorrow. You will find more snakes than there are fingers on your hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. I will make other Adams, other Eves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. I tell you you must not make up stories about this. It cannot
+      happen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. I can remember when you were yourself a thing that could not
+      happen. Yet you are.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>struck</i>] That must be true. [<i>He sits down on the stone</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. I will tell Eve the secret; and she will tell it to you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. The secret! [<i>He turns quickly towards the serpent, and in doing
+      so puts his foot on something sharp</i>]. Oh!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. What is it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>rubbing his foot</i>] A thistle. And there, next to it, a briar.
+      And nettles, too! I am tired of pulling these things up to keep the garden
+      pleasant for us for ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. They do not grow very fast. They will not overrun the whole
+      garden for a long time: not until you have laid down your burden and gone
+      to sleep for ever. Why should you trouble yourself? Let the new Adams
+      clear a place for themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. That is very true. You must tell us your secret. You see, Eve, what
+      a splendid thing it is not to have to live for ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>throwing herself down discontentedly and plucking at the grass</i>]
+      That is so like a man. The moment you find we need not last for ever, you
+      talk as if we were going to end today. You must clear away some of those
+      horrid things, or we shall be scratched and stung whenever we forget to
+      look where we are stepping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Oh yes, some of them, of course. But only some. I will clear them
+      away tomorrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT [<i>laughs</i>]!!!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. That is a funny noise to make. I like it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. I do not. Why do you make it again?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Adam has invented something new. He has invented tomorrow.
+      You will invent things every day now that the burden of immortality is
+      lifted from you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Immortality? What is that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. My new word for having to live for ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. The serpent has made a beautiful word for being. Living.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Make me a beautiful word for doing things tomorrow; for that surely
+      is a great and blessed invention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Procrastination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. That is a sweet word. I wish I had a serpent's tongue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. That may come too. Everything is possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>springing up in sudden terror</i>] Oh!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. What is the matter now?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. My rest! My escape from life!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Death. That is the word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. There is a terrible danger in this procrastination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. What danger?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. If I put off death until tomorrow, I shall never die. There is no
+      such day as tomorrow, and never can be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. I am very subtle; but Man is deeper in his thought than I am.
+      The woman knows that there is no such thing as nothing: the man knows that
+      there is no such day as tomorrow. I do well to worship them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. If I am to overtake death, I must appoint a real day, not a
+      tomorrow. When shall I die?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. You may die when I have made another Adam. Not before. But then, as
+      soon as you like. [<i>She rises, and passing behind him, strolls off
+      carelessly to the tree and leans against it, stroking a ring of the snake</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. There need be no hurry even then.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. I see you will put it off until tomorrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. And you? Will you die the moment you have made a new Eve?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Why should I? Are you eager to be rid of me? Only just now you wanted
+      me to sit still and never move lest I should stumble and die like the
+      fawn. Now you no longer care.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. It does not matter so much now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>angrily to the snake</i>] This death that you have brought into
+      the garden is an evil thing. He wants me to die.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT [<i>to Adam</i>] Do you want her to die?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. No. It is I who am to die. Eve must not die before me. I should be
+      lonely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. You could get one of the new Eves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. That is true. But they might not be quite the same. They could not:
+      I feel sure of that. They would not have the same memories. They would be&mdash;I
+      want a word for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Strangers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Yes: that is a good hard word. Strangers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. When there are new Adams and new Eves we shall live in a garden of
+      strangers. We shall need each other. [<i>She comes quickly behind him and
+      turns up his face to her</i>]. Do not forget that, Adam. Never forget it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Why should I forget it? It is I who have thought of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. I, too, have thought of something. The fawn stumbled and fell and
+      died. But you could come softly up behind me and [<i>she suddenly pounces
+      on his shoulders and throws him forward on his face</i>] throw me down so
+      that I should die. I should not dare to sleep if there were no reason why
+      you should not make me die.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>scrambling up in horror</i>] Make you die!!! What a frightful
+      thought!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Kill, kill, kill, kill. That is the word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. The new Adams and Eves might kill us. I shall not make them. [<i>She
+      sits on the rock and pulls him down beside her, clasping him to her with
+      her right arm</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. You must. For if you do not there will be an end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. No: they will not kill us: they will feel as I do. There is
+      something against it. The Voice in the garden will tell them that they
+      must not kill, as it tells me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. The voice in the garden is your own voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. It is; and it is not. It is something greater than me: I am only a
+      part of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. The Voice does not tell me not to kill you. Yet I do not want you to
+      die before me. No voice is needed to make me feel that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>throwing his arm round her shoulder with an expression of anguish</i>]
+      Oh no: that is plain without any voice. There is something that holds us
+      together, something that has no word&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Love. Love. Love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. That is too short a word for so long a thing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT [<i>laughs</i>]!!!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>turning impatiently to the snake</i>] That heart-biting sound
+      again! Do not do it. Why do you do it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Love may be too long a word for so short a thing soon. But
+      when it is short it will be very sweet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>ruminating</i>] You puzzle me. My old trouble was heavy; but it
+      was simple. These wonders that you promise to do may tangle up my being
+      before they bring me the gift of death. I was troubled with the burden of
+      eternal being; but I was not confused in my mind. If I did not know that I
+      loved Eve, at least I did not know that she might cease to love me, and
+      come to love some other Adam and desire my death. Can you find a name for
+      that knowledge?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Jealousy. Jealousy. Jealousy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. A hideous word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>shaking him</i>] Adam: you must not brood. You think too much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>angrily</i>] How can I help brooding when the future has become
+      uncertain? Anything is better than uncertainty. Life has become uncertain.
+      Love is uncertain. Have you a word for this new misery?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Fear. Fear. Fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Have you a remedy for it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Yes. Hope. Hope. Hope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. What is hope?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. As long as you do not know the future you do not know that it
+      will not be happier than the past. That is hope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. It does not console me. Fear is stronger in me than hope. I must
+      have certainty. [<i>He rises threateningly</i>]. Give it to me; or I will
+      kill you when next I catch you asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>throwing her arms round the serpent</i>] My beautiful snake. Oh
+      no. How can you even think such a horror?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Fear will drive me to anything. The serpent gave me fear. Let it now
+      give me certainty or go in fear of me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Bind the future by your will. Make a vow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. What is a vow?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Choose a day for your death; and resolve to die on that day.
+      Then death is no longer uncertain but certain. Let Eve vow to love you
+      until your death. Then love will be no longer uncertain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Yes: that is splendid: that will bind the future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>displeased, turning away from the serpent</i>] But it will destroy
+      hope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>angrily</i>] Be silent, woman. Hope is wicked. Happiness is
+      wicked. Certainty is blessed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. What is wicked? You have invented a word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Whatever I fear to do is wicked. Listen to me, Eve; and you, snake,
+      listen too, that your memory may hold my vow. I will live a thousand sets
+      of the four seasons&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. Years. Years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. I will live a thousand years; and then I will endure no more: I will
+      die and take my rest. And I will love Eve all that time and no other
+      woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. And if Adam keeps his vow I will love no other man until he dies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. You have both invented marriage. And what he will be to you
+      and not to any other woman is husband; and what you will be to him and not
+      to any other man is wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>instinctively moving his hand towards her</i>] Husband and wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>slipping her hand into his</i>] Wife and husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT [<i>laughs</i>]!!!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>snatching herself loose from Adam</i>] Do not make that odious
+      noise, I tell you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Do not listen to her: the noise is good: it lightens my heart. You
+      are a jolly snake. But you have not made a vow yet. What vow do you make?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. I make no vows. I take my chance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Chance? What does that mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. It means that I fear certainty as you fear uncertainty. It
+      means that nothing is certain but uncertainty. If I bind the future I bind
+      my will. If I bind my will I strangle creation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Creation must not be strangled. I tell you I will create, though I
+      tear myself to pieces in the act.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Be silent, both of you. I <i>will</i> bind the future. I will be
+      delivered from fear. [<i>To Eve</i>] We have made our vows; and if you
+      must create, you shall create within the bounds of those vows. You shall
+      not listen to that snake any more. Come [<i>he seizes her by the hair to
+      drag her away</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Let me go, you fool. It has not yet told me the secret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>releasing her</i>] That is true. What is a fool?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. I do not know: the word came to me. It is what you are when you
+      forget and brood and are filled with fear. Let us listen to the snake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. No: I am afraid of it. I feel as if the ground were giving way under
+      my feet when it speaks. Do you stay and listen to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT [<i>laughs</i>]!!!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>brightening</i>] That noise takes away fear. Funny. The snake and
+      the woman are going to whisper secrets. [<i>He chuckles and goes away
+      slowly, laughing his first laugh</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Now the secret. The secret. [<i>She sits on the rock and throws her
+      arms round the serpent, who begins whispering to her</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Eve's face lights up with intense interest, which increases until an
+      expression of overwhelming repugnance takes its place. She buries her face
+      in her hands</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0055" id="link2H_4_0055"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      ACT II
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>A few centuries later. Morning. An oasis in Mesopotamia. Close at hand
+      the end of a log house abuts on a kitchen garden. Adam is digging in the
+      middle of the garden. On his right, Eve sits on a stool in the shadow of a
+      tree by the doorway, spinning flax. Her wheel, which she turns by hand, is
+      a large disc of heavy wood, practically a flywheel. At the opposite side
+      of the garden is a thorn brake with a passage through it barred by a
+      hurdle. </i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two are scantily and carelessly dressed in rough linen and leaves.
+      They have lost their youth and grace; and Adam has an unkempt beard and
+      jaggedly cut hair; but they are strong and in the prime of life. Adam
+      looks worried, like a farmer. Eve, better humored (having given up
+      worrying), sits and spins and thinks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A MAN'S VOICE. Hallo, mother!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>looking across the garden towards the hurdle</i>] Here is Cain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>uttering a grunt of disgust</i>]!!! [<i>He goes on digging
+      without raising his head</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Cain kicks the hurdle out of his way, and strides into the garden. In
+      pose, voice, and dress he is insistently warlike. He is equipped with huge
+      spear and broad brass-bound leather shield; his casque is a tiger's head
+      with bull's horns; he wears a scarlet cloak with gold brooch over a lion's
+      skin with the claws dangling; his feet are in sandals with brass
+      ornaments; his shins are in brass greaves; and his bristling military
+      moustache glistens with oil. To his parents he has the self-assertive,
+      not-quite-at-ease manner of a revolted son who knows that he is not
+      forgiven nor approved of.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN [<i>to Adam</i>] Still digging? Always dig, dig, dig. Sticking in the
+      old furrow. No progress! no advanced ideas! no adventures! What should I
+      be if I had stuck to the digging you taught me?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. What are you now, with your shield and spear, and your brother's
+      blood crying from the ground against you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. I am the first murderer: you are only the first man. Anybody could
+      be the first man: it is as easy as to be the first cabbage. To be the
+      first murderer one must be a man of spirit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Begone. Leave us in peace. The world is wide enough to keep us
+      apart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Why do you want to drive him away? He is mine. I made him out of my
+      own body. I want to see my work sometimes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. You made Abel also. He killed Abel. Can you bear to look at him
+      after that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. Whose fault was it that I killed Abel? Who invented killing? Did I?
+      No: he invented it himself. I followed your teaching. I dug and dug and
+      dug. I cleared away the thistles and briars. I ate the fruits of the
+      earth. I lived in the sweat of my brow, as you do. I was a fool. But Abel
+      was a discoverer, a man of ideas, of spirit: a true Progressive. He was
+      the discoverer of blood. He was the inventor of killing. He found out that
+      the fire of the sun could be brought down by a dewdrop. He invented the
+      altar to keep the fire alive. He changed the beasts he killed into meat by
+      the fire on the altar. He kept himself alive by eating meat. His meal cost
+      him a day's glorious health-giving sport and an hour's amusing play with
+      the fire. You learnt nothing from him: you drudged and drudged and
+      drudged, and dug and dug and dug, and made me do the same. I envied his
+      happiness, his freedom. I despised myself for not doing as he did instead
+      of what you did. He became so happy that he shared his meal with the Voice
+      that had whispered all his inventions to him. He said that the Voice was
+      the voice of the fire that cooked his food, and that the fire that could
+      cook could also eat. It was true: I saw the fire consume the food on his
+      altar. Then I, too, made an altar, and offered my food on it, my grains,
+      my roots, my fruit. Useless: nothing happened. He laughed at me; and then
+      came my great idea: why not kill him as he killed the beasts? I struck;
+      and he died, just as they did. Then I gave up your old silly drudging
+      ways, and lived as he had lived, by the chase, by the killing, and by the
+      fire. Am I not better than you? stronger, happier, freer?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. You are not stronger: you are shorter in the wind: you cannot
+      endure. You have made the beasts afraid of us; and the snake has invented
+      poison to protect herself against you. I fear you myself. If you take a
+      step towards your mother with that spear of yours I will strike you with
+      my spade as you struck Abel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. He will not strike me. He loves me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. He loved his brother. But he killed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. I do not want to kill women. I do not want to kill my mother. And
+      for her sake I will not kill you, though I could send this spear through
+      you without coming within reach of your spade. But for her, I could not
+      resist the sport of trying to kill you, in spite of my fear that you would
+      kill me. I have striven with a boar and with a lion as to which of us
+      should kill the other. I have striven with a man: spear to spear and
+      shield to shield. It is terrible; but there is no joy like it. I call it
+      fighting. He who has never fought has never lived. That is what has
+      brought me to my mother today.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. What have you to do with one another now? She is the creator, you
+      the destroyer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. How can I destroy unless she creates? I want her to create more and
+      more men: aye, and more and more women, that they may in turn create more
+      men. I have imagined a glorious poem of many men, of more men than there
+      are leaves on a thousand trees. I will divide them into two great hosts.
+      One of them I will lead; and the other will be led by the man I fear most
+      and desire to fight and kill most. And each host shall try to kill the
+      other host. Think of that! all those multitudes of men fighting, fighting,
+      killing, killing! The four rivers running with blood! The shouts of
+      triumph! the howls of rage! the curses of despair! the shrieks of torment!
+      That will be life indeed: life lived to the very marrow: burning,
+      overwhelming life. Every man who has not seen it, heard it, felt it,
+      risked it, will feel a humbled fool in the presence of the man who has.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. And I! I am to be a mere convenience to make men for you to kill!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Or to kill you, you fool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. Mother: the making of men is your right, your risk, your agony, your
+      glory, your triumph. You make my father here your mere convenience, as you
+      call it, for that. He has to dig for you, sweat for you, plod for you,
+      like the ox who helps him to tear up the ground or the ass who carries his
+      burdens for him. No woman shall make me live my father's life. I will
+      hunt: I will fight and strive to the very bursting of my sinews. When I
+      have slain the boar at the risk of my life, I will throw it to my woman to
+      cook, and give her a morsel of it for her pains. She shall have no other
+      food; and that will make her my slave. And the man that slays me shall
+      have her for his booty. Man shall be the master of Woman, not her baby and
+      her drudge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Adam throws down his spade, and stands looking darkly at Eve.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Are you tempted, Adam? Does this seem a better thing to you than love
+      between us?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. What does he know of love? Only when he has fought, when he has
+      faced terror and death, when he has striven to the spending of the last
+      rally of his strength, can he know what it is to rest in love in the arms
+      of a woman. Ask that woman whom you made, who is also my wife, whether she
+      would have me as I was in the days when I followed the ways of Adam, and
+      was a digger and a drudge?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>angrily throwing down her distaff</i>] What! You dare come here
+      boasting about that good-for-nothing Lua, the worst of daughters and the
+      worst of wives! You her master! You are more her slave than Adam's ox or
+      your own sheepdog. Forsooth, when you have slain the boar at the risk of
+      your life, you will throw her a morsel of it for her pains! Ha! Poor
+      wretch: do you think I do not know her, and know you, better than that? Do
+      you risk your life when you trap the ermine and the sable and the blue fox
+      to hang on her lazy shoulders and make her look more like an animal than a
+      woman? When you have to snare the little tender birds because it is too
+      much trouble for her to chew honest food, how much of a great warrior do
+      you feel then? You slay the tiger at the risk of your life; but who gets
+      the striped skin you have run that risk for? She takes it to lie on, and
+      flings you the carrion flesh you cannot eat. You fight because you think
+      that your fighting makes her admire and desire you. Fool: she makes you
+      fight because you bring her the ornaments and the treasures of those you
+      have slain, and because she is courted and propitiated with power and gold
+      by the people who fear you. You say that I make a mere convenience of
+      Adam: I who spin and keep the house, and bear and rear children, and am a
+      woman and not a pet animal to please men and prey on them! What are you,
+      you poor slave of a painted face and a bundle of skunk's fur? You were a
+      man-child when I bore you. Lua was a woman-child when I bore her. What
+      have you made of yourselves?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN [<i>letting his spear fall into the crook of his shield arm, and
+      twirling his moustache</i>] There is something higher than man. There is
+      hero and superman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Superman! You are no superman: you are Anti-Man: you are to other men
+      what the stoat is to the rabbit; and she is to you what the leech is to
+      the stoat. You despise your father; but when he dies the world will be the
+      richer because he lived. When you die, men will say, 'He was a great
+      warrior; but it would have been better for the world if he had never been
+      born.' And of Lua they will say nothing; but when they think of her they
+      will spit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. She is a better sort of woman to live with than you. If Lua nagged
+      at me as you are nagging, and as you nag at Adam, I would beat her black
+      and blue from head to foot. I have done it too, slave as you say I am.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Yes, because she looked at another man. And then you grovelled at her
+      feet, and cried, and begged her to forgive you, and were ten times more
+      her slave than ever; and she, when she had finished screaming and the pain
+      went off a little, she forgave you, did she not?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. She loved me more than ever. That is the true nature of woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>now pitying him maternally</i>] Love! You call that love! You call
+      that the nature of woman! My boy: this is neither man nor woman nor love
+      nor life. You have no real strength in your bones nor sap in your flesh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. Ha! [<i>he seizes his spear and swings it muscularly</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Yes: you have to twirl a stick to feel your strength: you cannot
+      taste life without making it bitter and boiling hot: you cannot love Lua
+      until her face is painted, nor feel the natural warmth of her flesh until
+      you have stuck a squirrel's fur on it. You can feel nothing but a torment,
+      and believe nothing but a lie. You will not raise your head to look at all
+      the miracles of life that surround you; but you will run ten miles to see
+      a fight or a death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Enough said. Let the boy alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. Boy! Ha! ha!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>to Adam</i>] You think, perhaps, that his way of life may be
+      better than yours after all. You are still tempted. Well, will you pamper
+      me as he pampers his woman? Will you kill tigers and bears until I have a
+      heap of their skins to lounge on? Shall I paint my face and let my arms
+      waste into pretty softness, and eat partridges and doves, and the flesh of
+      kids whose milk you will steal for me?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. You are hard enough to bear with as you are. Stay as you are; and I
+      will stay as I am.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. You neither of you know anything about life. You are simple country
+      folk. You are the nurses and valets of the oxen and dogs and asses you
+      have tamed to work for you. I can raise you out of that. I have a plan.
+      Why not tame men and women to work for us? Why not bring them up from
+      childhood never to know any other lot, so that they may believe that we
+      are gods, and that they are here only to make life glorious for us?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>impressed</i>] That is a great thought, certainly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>contemptuously</i>] Great thought!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Well, as the serpent used to say, why not?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Because I would not have such wretches in my house. Because I hate
+      creatures with two heads, or with withered limbs, or that are distorted
+      and perverted and unnatural. I have told Cain already that he is not a man
+      and that Lua is not a woman: they are monsters. And now you want to make
+      still more unnatural monsters, so that you may be utterly lazy and
+      worthless, and that your tamed human animals may find work a blasting
+      curse. A fine dream, truly! [<i>To Cain</i>] Your father is a fool skin
+      deep; but you are a fool to your very marrow; and your baggage of a wife
+      is worse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Why am I a fool? How am I a greater fool than you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. You said there would be no killing because the Voice would tell our
+      children that they must not kill. Why did it not tell Cain that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. It did; but I am not a child to be afraid of a Voice. The Voice
+      thought I was nothing but my brother's keeper. It found that I was myself,
+      and that it was for Abel to be himself also, and look to himself. He was
+      not my keeper any more than I was his: why did he not kill me? There was
+      no more to prevent him than there was to prevent me: it was man to man;
+      and I won. I was the first conqueror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. What did the Voice say to you when you thought all that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. Why, it gave me right. It said that my deed was as a mark on me, a
+      burnt-in mark such as Abel put on his sheep, that no man should slay me.
+      And here I stand unslain, whilst the cowards who have never slain, the men
+      who are content to be their brothers' keepers instead of their masters,
+      are despised and rejected, and slain like rabbits. He who bears the brand
+      of Cain shall rule the earth. When he falls, he shall be avenged
+      sevenfold: the Voice has said it; so beware how you plot against me, you
+      and all the rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Cease your boasting and bullying, and tell the truth. Does not the
+      Voice tell you that as no man dare slay you for murdering your brother,
+      you ought to slay yourself?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. No.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Then there is no such thing as divine justice, unless you are lying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. I am not lying: I dare all truths. There is divine justice. For the
+      Voice tells me that I must offer myself to every man to be killed if he
+      can kill me. Without danger I cannot be great. That is how I pay for
+      Abel's blood. Danger and fear follow my steps everywhere. Without them
+      courage would have no sense. And it is courage, courage, courage, that
+      raises the blood of life to crimson splendor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>picking up his spade and preparing to dig again</i>] Take
+      yourself off then. This splendid life of yours does not last for a
+      thousand years; and I must last for a thousand years. When you fighters do
+      not get killed in fighting one another or fighting the beasts, you die
+      from mere evil in yourselves. Your flesh ceases to grow like man's flesh:
+      it grows like a fungus on a tree. Instead of breathing you sneeze, or
+      cough up your insides, and wither and perish. Your bowels become rotten;
+      your hair falls from you; your teeth blacken and drop out; and you die
+      before your time, not because you will, but because you must. I will dig,
+      and live.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. And pray, what use is this thousand years of life to you, you old
+      vegetable? Do you dig any better because you have been digging for
+      hundreds of years? I have not lived as long as you; but I know all there
+      is to be known of the craft of digging. By quitting it I have set myself
+      free to learn nobler crafts of which you know nothing. I know the craft of
+      fighting and of hunting: in a word, the craft of killing. What certainty
+      have you of your thousand years? I could kill both of you; and you could
+      no more defend yourselves than a couple of sheep. I spare you; but others
+      may kill you. Why not live bravely, and die early and make room for
+      others? Why, I&mdash;I! that know many more crafts than either of you, am
+      tired of myself when I am not fighting or hunting. Sooner than face a
+      thousand years of it I should kill myself, as the Voice sometimes tempts
+      me to do already.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Liar: you denied just now that it called on you to pay for Abel's
+      life with your own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. The Voice does not speak to me as it does to you. I am a man: you
+      are only a grown-up child. One does not speak to a child as to a man. And
+      a man does not listen and tremble in silence. He replies: he makes the
+      Voice respect him: in the end he dictates what the Voice shall say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. May your tongue be accurst for such blasphemy!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Keep a guard on your own tongue; and do not curse my son. It was
+      Lilith who did wrong when she shared the labor of creation so unequally
+      between man and wife. If you, Cain, had had the trouble of making Abel, or
+      had had to make another man to replace him when he was gone, you would not
+      have killed him: you would have risked your own life to save his. That is
+      why all this empty talk of yours, which tempted Adam just now when he
+      threw down his spade and listened to you for a while, went by me like foul
+      wind that has passed over a dead body. That is why there is enmity between
+      Woman the creator and Man the destroyer. I know you: I am your mother. You
+      are idle: you are selfish. It is long and hard and painful to create life:
+      it is short and easy to steal the life others have made. When you dug, you
+      made the earth live and bring forth as I live and bring forth. It was for
+      that that Lilith set you free from the travail of women, not for theft and
+      murder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. The Devil thank her for it! I can make better use of my time than to
+      play the husband to the clay beneath my feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Devil? What new word is that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. Hearken to me, old fool. I have never in my soul listened willingly
+      when you have told me of the Voice that whispers to you. There must be two
+      Voices: one that gulls and despises you, and another that trusts and
+      respects me. I call yours the Devil. Mine I call the Voice of God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Mine is the Voice of Life: yours the Voice of Death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. Be it so. For it whispers to me that death is not really death: that
+      it is the gate of another life: a life infinitely splendid and intense: a
+      life of the soul alone: a life without clods or spades, hunger or fatigue&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Selfish and idle, Cain. I know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. Selfish, yes: a life in which no man is his brother's keeper,
+      because his brother can keep himself. But am I idle? In rejecting your
+      drudgery, have I not embraced evils and agonies of which you know nothing?
+      The arrow is lighter in the hand than the spade; but the energy that
+      drives it through the breast of a fighter is as fire to water compared
+      with the strength that drives the spade into the harmless dirty clay. My
+      strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. What is that word? What is pure?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. Turned from the clay. Turned upward to the sun, to the clear clean
+      heavens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. The heavens are empty, child. The earth is fruitful. The earth feeds
+      us. It gives us the strength by which we made you and all mankind. Cut off
+      from the clay which you despise, you would perish miserably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. I revolt against the clay. I revolt against the food. You say it
+      gives us strength: does it not also turn into filth and smite us with
+      diseases? I revolt against these births that you and mother are so proud
+      of. They drag us down to the level of the beasts. If that is to be the
+      last thing as it has been the first, let mankind perish. If I am to eat
+      like a bear, if Lua is to bring forth cubs like a bear, then I had rather
+      be a bear than a man; for the bear is not ashamed: he knows no better. If
+      you are content, like the bear, I am not. Stay with the woman who gives
+      you children: I will go to the woman who gives me dreams. Grope in the
+      ground for your food: I will bring it from the skies with my arrows, or
+      strike it down as it roams the earth in the pride of its life. If I must
+      have food or die, I will at least have it at as far a remove from the
+      earth as I can. The ox shall make it something nobler than grass before it
+      comes to me. And as the man is nobler than the ox, I shall some day let my
+      enemy eat the ox; and then I will slay and eat him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Monster! You hear this, Eve?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. So that is what comes of turning your face to the clean clear
+      heavens! Man-eating! Child-eating! For that is what it would come to, just
+      as it came to lambs and kids when Abel began with sheep and goats. You are
+      a poor silly creature after all. Do you think I never have these thoughts:
+      I! who have the labor of the child-bearing: I! who have the drudgery of
+      preparing the food? I thought for a moment that perhaps this strong brave
+      son of mine, who could imagine something better, and could desire what he
+      imagined, might also be able to will what he desired until he created it.
+      And all that comes of it is that he wants to be a bear and eat children.
+      Even a bear would not eat a man if it could get honey instead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. I do not want to be a bear. I do not want to eat children. I do not
+      know what I want, except that I want to be something higher and nobler
+      than this stupid old digger whom Lilith made to help you to bring me into
+      the world, and whom you despise now that he has served your turn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>in sullen rage</i>] I have half a mind to shew you that my spade
+      can split your undutiful head open, in spite of your spear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. Undutiful! Ha! ha! [<i>Flourishing his spear</i>] Try it, old
+      everybody's father. Try a taste of fighting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Peace, peace, you two fools. Sit down and be quiet; and listen to me.
+      [<i>Adam, with a weary shrug, throws down his spade. Cain, with a laughing
+      one, throws down his shield and spear. Both sit on the ground</i>]. I
+      hardly know which of you satisfies me least, you with your dirty digging,
+      or he with his dirty killing. I cannot think it was for either of these
+      cheap ways of life that Lilith set you free. [<i>To Adam</i>] You dig
+      roots and coax grains out of the earth: why do you not draw down a divine
+      sustenance from the skies? He steals and kills for his food; and makes up
+      idle poems of life after death; and dresses up his terror-ridden life with
+      fine words and his disease-ridden body with fine clothes, so that men may
+      glorify and honor him instead of cursing him as murderer and thief. All
+      you men, except only Adam, are my sons, or my sons' sons, or my sons'
+      sons' sons: you all come to see me: you all shew off before me: all your
+      little wisdoms and accomplishments are trotted out before mother Eve. The
+      diggers come: the fighters and killers come: they are both very dull; for
+      they either complain to me of the last harvest, or boast to me of the last
+      fight; and one harvest is just like another, and the last fight only a
+      repetition of the first. Oh, I have heard it all a thousand times. They
+      tell me too of their last-born: the clever thing the darling child said
+      yesterday, and how much more wonderful or witty or quaint it is than any
+      child that ever was born before. And I have to pretend to be surprised,
+      delighted, interested; though the last child is like the first, and has
+      said and done nothing that did not delight Adam and me when you and Abel
+      said it. For you were the first children in the world, and filled us with
+      such wonder and delight as no couple can ever again feel while the world
+      lasts. When I can bear no more, I go to our old garden, that is now a mass
+      of nettles and thistles, in the hope of finding the serpent to talk to.
+      But you have made the serpent our enemy: she has left the garden, or is
+      dead: I never see her now. So I have to come back and listen to Adam
+      saying the same thing for the ten-thousandth time, or to receive a visit
+      from the last great-great-grandson who has grown up and wants to impress
+      me with his importance. Oh, it is dreary, dreary! And there is yet nearly
+      seven hundred years of it to endure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. Poor mother! You see, life is too long. One tires of everything.
+      There is nothing new under the sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>to Eve, grumpily</i>] Why do you live on, if you can find nothing
+      better to do than complain?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Because there is still hope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. Of what?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Of the coming true of your dreams and mine. Of newly created things.
+      Of better things. My sons and my son's sons are not all diggers and
+      fighters. Some of them will neither dig nor fight: they are more useless
+      than either of you: they are weaklings and cowards: they are vain; yet
+      they are dirty and will not take the trouble to cut their hair. They
+      borrow and never pay; but one gives them what they want, because they tell
+      beautiful lies in beautiful words. They can remember their dreams. They
+      can dream without sleeping. They have not will enough to create instead of
+      dreaming; but the serpent said that every dream could be willed into
+      creation by those strong enough to believe in it. There are others who cut
+      reeds of different lengths and blow through them, making lovely patterns
+      of sound in the air; and some of them can weave the patterns together,
+      sounding three reeds at the same time, and raising my soul to things for
+      which I have no words. And others make little mammoths out of clay, or
+      make faces appear on flat stones, and ask me to create women for them with
+      such faces. I have watched those faces and willed; and then I have made a
+      woman-child that has grown up quite like them. And others think of numbers
+      without having to count on their fingers, and watch the sky at night, and
+      give names to the stars, and can foretell when the sun will be covered
+      with a black saucepan lid. And there is Tubal, who made this wheel for me
+      which has saved me so much labor. And there is Enoch, who walks on the
+      hills, and hears the Voice continually, and has given up his will to do
+      the will of the Voice, and has some of the Voice's greatness. When they
+      come, there is always some new wonder, or some new hope: something to live
+      for. They never want to die, because they are always learning and always
+      creating either things or wisdom, or at least dreaming of them. And then
+      you, Cain, come to me with your stupid fighting and destroying, and your
+      foolish boasting; and you want me to tell you that it is all splendid, and
+      that you are heroic, and that nothing but death or the dread of death
+      makes life worth living. Away with you, naughty child; and do you, Adam,
+      go on with your work and not waste your time listening to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. I am not, perhaps, very clever; but&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>interrupting him</i>] Perhaps not; but do not begin to boast of
+      that. It is no credit to you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. For all that, mother, I have an instinct which tells me that death
+      plays its part in life. Tell me this: who invented death?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Adam springs to his feet. Eve drops her distaff. Both shew the greatest
+      consternation.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. What is the matter with you both?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Boy: you have asked us a terrible question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. You invented murder. Let that be enough for you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. Murder is not death. You know what I mean. Those whom I slay would
+      die if I spared them. If I am not slain, yet I shall die. Who put this
+      upon me? I say, who invented death?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Be reasonable, boy. Could you bear to live for ever? You think you
+      could, because you know that you will never have to make your thought
+      good. But I have known what it is to sit and brood under the terror of
+      eternity, of immortality. Think of it, man: to have no escape! to be Adam,
+      Adam, Adam through more days than there are grains of sand by the two
+      rivers, and then be as far from the end as ever! I, who have so much in me
+      that I hate and long to cast off! Be thankful to your parents, who enabled
+      you to hand on your burden to new and better men, and won for you an
+      eternal rest; for it was we who invented death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN [<i>rising</i>] You did well: I, too, do not want to live for ever.
+      But if you invented death, why do you blame me, who am a minister of
+      death?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. I do not blame you. Go in peace. Leave me to my digging, and your
+      mother to her spinning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. Well, I will leave you to it, though I have shewn you a better way.
+      [<i>He picks up his shield and spear</i>]. I will go back to my brave
+      warrior friends and their splendid women. [<i>He strides to the thorn
+      brake</i>]. When Adam delved and Eve span, where was then the gentleman? [<i>He
+      goes away roaring with laughter, which ceases as he cries from the
+      distance</i>] Goodbye, mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM [<i>grumbling</i>] He might have put the hurdle back, lazy hound! [<i>He
+      replaces the hurdle across the passage</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Through him and his like, death is gaining on life. Already most of
+      our grandchildren die before they have sense enough to know how to live.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. No matter. [<i>He spits on his hands, and takes up the spade again</i>].
+      Life is still long enough to learn to dig, short as they are making it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>musing</i>] Yes, to dig. And to fight. But is it long enough for
+      the other things, the great things? Will they live long enough to eat
+      manna?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. What is manna?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Food drawn down from heaven, made out of the air, not dug dirtily
+      from the earth. Will they learn all the ways of all the stars in their
+      little time? It took Enoch two hundred years to learn to interpret the
+      will of the Voice. When he was a mere child of eighty, his babyish
+      attempts to understand the Voice were more dangerous than the wrath of
+      Cain. If they shorten their lives, they will dig and fight and kill and
+      die; and their baby Enochs will tell them that it is the will of the Voice
+      that they should dig and fight and kill and die for ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. If they are lazy and have a will towards death I cannot help it. I
+      will live my thousand years: if they will not, let them die and be damned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Damned? What is that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. The state of them that love death more than life. Go on with your
+      spinning; and do not sit there idle while I am straining my muscles for
+      you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>slowly taking up her distaff</i>] If you were not a fool you would
+      find something better for both of us to live by than this spinning and
+      digging.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Go on with your work, I tell you; or you shall go without bread.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Man need not always live by bread alone. There is something else. We
+      do not yet know what it is; but some day we shall find out; and then we
+      will live on that alone; and there shall be no more digging nor spinning,
+      nor fighting nor killing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>She spins resignedly; he digs impatiently.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART2" id="link2H_PART2"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART II&mdash;The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>In the first years after the war an impressive-looking gentleman of 50
+      is seated writing in a well-furnished spacious study. He is dressed in
+      black. His coat is a frock-coat; his tie is white; and his waistcoat,
+      though it is not quite a clergyman's waistcoat, and his collar, though it
+      buttons in front instead of behind, combine with the prosperity indicated
+      by his surroundings, and his air of personal distinction, to suggest the
+      clerical dignitary. Still, he is clearly neither dean nor bishop; he is
+      rather too starkly intellectual for a popular Free Church enthusiast; and
+      he is not careworn enough to be a great headmaster. </i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The study windows, which have broad comfortable window seats, overlook
+      Hampstead Heath towards London. Consequently, it being a fine afternoon in
+      spring, the room is sunny. As you face these windows, you have on your
+      right the fireplace, with a few logs smouldering in it, and a couple of
+      comfortable library chairs on the hearthrug; beyond it and beside it the
+      door; before you the writing-table, at which the clerical gentleman sits a
+      little to your left facing the door with his right profile presented to
+      you; on your left a settee; and on your right a couple of Chippendale
+      chairs. There is also an upholstered square stool in the middle of the
+      room, against the writing-table. The walls are covered with bookshelves
+      above and lockers beneath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door opens; and another gentleman, shorter than the clerical one,
+      within a year or two of the same age, dressed in a well-worn tweed lounge
+      suit, with a short beard and much less style in his bearing and carriage,
+      looks in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE CLERICAL GENTLEMAN [<i>familiar and by no means cordial</i>] Hallo! I
+      didn't expect you until the five o'clock train.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE TWEEDED GENTLEMAN [<i>coming in very slowly</i>] I have something on
+      my mind. I thought I'd come early.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE CLERICAL GENTLEMAN [<i>throwing down his pen</i>] What is on your
+      mind?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE TWEEDED GENTLEMAN [<i>sitting down on the stool, heavily preoccupied
+      with his thought</i>] I have made up my mind at last about the time. I
+      make it three hundred years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE CLERICAL GENTLEMAN [<i>sitting up energetically</i>] Now that is
+      extraordinary. Most extraordinary. The very last words I wrote when you
+      interrupted me were 'at least three centuries.' [<i>He snatches up his
+      manuscript, and points to it</i>]. Here it is: [<i>reading</i>] 'the term
+      of human life must be extended to at least three centuries.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE TWEEDED GENTLEMAN. How did you arrive at it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>A parlor maid opens the door, ushering in a young clergyman.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE PARLOR MAID. Mr Haslam. [<i>She withdraws</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The visitor is so very unwelcome that his host forgets to rise; and the
+      two brothers stare at the intruder, quite unable to conceal their dismay.
+      Haslam, who has nothing clerical about him except his collar, and wears a
+      snuff-colored suit, smiles with a frank school-boyishness that makes it
+      impossible to be unkind to him, and explodes into obviously unpremeditated
+      speech.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. I'm afraid I'm an awful nuisance. I'm the rector; and I suppose
+      one ought to call on people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE TWEEDED GENTLEMAN [<i>in ghostly tones</i>] We're not Church people,
+      you know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Oh, I don't mind that, if you don't. The Church people here are
+      mostly as dull as ditch-water. I have heard such a lot about you; and
+      there are so jolly few people to talk to. I thought you perhaps wouldn't
+      mind. <i>Do</i> you mind? for of course I'll go like a shot if I'm in the
+      way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE CLERICAL GENTLEMAN [<i>rising, disarmed</i>] Sit down, Mr&mdash;er?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Haslam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE CLERICAL GENTLEMAN. Mr Haslam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE TWEEDED GENTLEMAN [<i>rising and offering him the stool</i>] Sit down.
+      [<i>He retreats towards the Chippendale chairs</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM [<i>sitting down on the stool</i>] Thanks awfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE CLERICAL GENTLEMAN [<i>resuming his seat</i>] This is my brother
+      Conrad, Professor of Biology at Jarrowfields University: Dr. Conrad
+      Barnabas. My name is Franklyn: Franklyn Barnabas. I was in the Church
+      myself for some years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM [<i>sympathizing</i>] Yes: one cant help it. If theres a living in
+      the family, or one's Governor knows a patron, one gets shoved into the
+      Church by one's parents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>sitting down on the furthest Chippendale with a snort of
+      amusement</i>] Mp!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. One gets shoved out of it, sometimes, by one's conscience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Oh yes; but where is a chap like me to go? I'm afraid I'm not
+      intellectual enough to split straws when theres a job in front of me, and
+      nothing better for me to do. I daresay the Church was a bit thick for you;
+      but it's good enough for me. It will last my time, anyhow [<i>he laughs
+      good-humoredly</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN [<i>with renewed energy</i>] There again! You see, Con. It will
+      last his time. Life is too short for men to take it seriously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Thats a way of looking at it, certainly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. I was not shoved into the Church, Mr Haslam: I felt it to be my
+      vocation to walk with God, like Enoch. After twenty years of it I realized
+      that I was walking with my own ignorance and self-conceit, and that I was
+      not within a hundred and fifty years of the experience and wisdom I was
+      pretending to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Now I come to think of it, old Methuselah must have had to think
+      twice before he took on anything for life. If I thought I was going to
+      live nine hundred and sixty years, I don't think I should stay in the
+      Church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. If men lived even a third of that time, the Church would be very
+      different from the thing it is.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. If I could count on nine hundred and sixty years I could make
+      myself a real biologist, instead of what I am now: a child trying to walk.
+      Are you sure you might not become a good clergyman if you had a few
+      centuries to do it in?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Oh, theres nothing much the matter with <i>me</i>: it's quite easy
+      to be a decent parson. It's the Church that chokes me off. I couldnt stick
+      it for nine hundred years. I should chuck it. You know, sometimes, when
+      the bishop, who is the most priceless of fossils, lets off something more
+      than usually out-of-date, the bird starts in my garden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. The bird?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Oh yes. Theres a bird there that keeps on singing 'Stick it or
+      chuck it: stick it or chuck it'&mdash;just like that&mdash;for an hour on
+      end in the spring. I wish my father had found some other shop for me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The parlor maid comes back.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE PARLOR MAID. Any letters for the post, sir?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. These. [<i>He proffers a basket of letters. She comes to the
+      table and takes them</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM [<i>to the maid</i>] Have you told Mr Barnabas yet?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE PARLOR MAID [<i>flinching a little</i>] No, sir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Told me what?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. She is going to leave you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Indeed? I'm sorry. Is it our fault, Mr Haslam?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Not a bit. She is jolly well off here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE PARLOR MAID [<i>reddening</i>] I have never denied it, sir: I couldnt
+      ask for a better place. But I have only one life to live; and I maynt get
+      a second chance. Excuse me, sir; but the letters must go to catch the
+      post. [<i>She goes out with the letters.</i>]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The two brothers look inquiringly at Haslam.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Silly girl! Going to marry a village woodman and live in a hovel
+      with him and a lot of kids tumbling over one another, just because the
+      fellow has poetic-looking eyes and a moustache.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>demurring</i>] She said it was because she had only one life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Same thing, poor girl! The fellow persuaded her to chuck it; and
+      when she marries him she'll have to stick it. Rotten state of things, I
+      call it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. You see, she hasnt time to find out what life really means. She
+      has to die before she knows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM [<i>agreeably</i>] Thats it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. She hasnt time to form a well-instructed conscience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM [<i>still more cheerfully</i>] Quite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. It goes deeper. She hasnt time to form a genuine conscience at
+      all. Some romantic points of honor and a few conventions. A world without
+      conscience: that is the horror of our condition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM [<i>beaming</i>] Simply fatuous. [<i>Rising</i>] Well, I suppose
+      I'd better be going. It's most awfully good of you to put up with my
+      calling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>in his former low ghostly tone</i>] You neednt go, you know, if
+      you are really interested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM [<i>fed up</i>] Well, I'm afraid I ought to&mdash;I really must get
+      back&mdash;I have something to do in the&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN [<i>smiling benignly and rising to proffer his hand</i>] Goodbye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>gruffly, giving him up as a bad job</i>] Goodbye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Goodbye. Sorry&mdash;er&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>As the rector moves to shake hands with Franklyn, feeling that he is
+      making a frightful mess of his departure, a vigorous sunburnt young lady
+      with hazel hair cut to the level of her neck, like an Italian youth in a
+      Gozzoli picture, comes in impetuously. She seems to have nothing on but
+      her short skirt, her blouse, her stockings, and a pair of Norwegian shoes:
+      in short, she is a Simple-Lifer.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SIMPLE-LIFER [<i>swooping on Conrad and kissing him</i>] Hallo, Nunk.
+      Youre before your time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Behave yourself. Theres a visitor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>She turns quickly and sees the rector. She instinctively switches at
+      her Gozzoli fringe with her fingers, but gives it up as hopeless.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Mr Haslam, our new rector. [<i>To Haslam</i>] My daughter
+      Cynthia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Usually called Savvy, short for Savage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. I usually call Mr Haslam Bill, short for William. [<i>She strolls
+      to the hearthrug, and surveys them calmly from that commanding position</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. You know him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Rather. Sit down, Bill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Mr Haslam is going, Savvy. He has an engagement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. I know. I'm the engagement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. In that case, would you mind taking him into the garden while I
+      talk to your father?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY [<i>to Haslam</i>] Tennis?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Rather!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Come on. [<i>She dances out. He runs boyishly after her</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN [<i>leaving his table and beginning to walk up and down the room
+      discontentedly</i>] Savvy's manners jar on me. They would have horrified
+      her grandmother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>obstinately</i>] They are happier manners than Mother's
+      manners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Yes: they are franker, wholesomer, better in a hundred ways. And
+      yet I squirm at them. I cannot get it out of my head that Mother was a
+      well-mannered woman, and that Savvy has no manners at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. There wasnt any pleasure in Mother's fine manners. That makes a
+      biological difference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. But there was beauty in Mother's manners, grace in them, style
+      in them: above all, decision in them. Savvy is such a cub.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. So she ought to be, at her age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. There it comes again! Her age! her age!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. You want her to be fully grown at eighteen. You want to force her
+      into a stuck-up, artificial, premature self-possession before she has any
+      self to possess. You just let her alone: she is right enough for her
+      years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. I have let her alone; and look at the result! Like all the other
+      young people who have been let alone, she becomes a Socialist. That is,
+      she becomes hopelessly demoralized.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Well, arnt you a Socialist?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Yes; but that is not the same thing. You and I were brought up
+      in the old bourgeois morality. We were taught bourgeois manners and
+      bourgeois points of honor. Bourgeois manners may be snobbish manners:
+      there may be no pleasure in them, as you say; but they are better than no
+      manners. Many bourgeois points of honor may be false; but at least they
+      exist. The women know what to expect and what is expected of them. Savvy
+      doesn't. She is a Bolshevist and nothing else. She has to improvise her
+      manners and her conduct as she goes along. It's often charming, no doubt;
+      but sometimes she puts her foot in it frightfully; and then I feel that
+      she is blaming me for not teaching her better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Well, you have something better to teach her now, at all events.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Yes: but it is too late. She doesn't trust me now. She doesn't
+      talk about such things to me. She doesnt read anything I write. She never
+      comes to hear me lecture. I am out of it as far as Savvy is concerned. [<i>He
+      resumes his seat at the writing-table</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. I must have a talk to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Perhaps she will listen to you. You are not her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. I sent her my last book. I can break the ice by asking her what
+      she made of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. When she heard you were coming, she asked me whether all the
+      leaves were cut, in case it fell into your hands. She hasnt read a word of
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>rising indignantly</i>] What!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN [<i>inexorably</i>] Not a word of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>beaten</i>] Well, I suppose it's only natural. Biology is a dry
+      subject for a girl; and I am a pretty dry old codger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      [<i>He sits down again resignedly</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Brother: if that is so; if biology as you have worked at it, and
+      religion as I have worked at it, are dry subjects like the old stuff they
+      taught under these names, and we two are dry old codgers, like the old
+      preachers and professors, then the Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas is a
+      delusion. Unless this withered thing religion, and this dry thing science,
+      have come alive in our hands, alive and intensely interesting, we may just
+      as well go out and dig the garden until it is time to dig our graves. [<i>The
+      parlor maid returns. Franklyn is impatient at the interruption</i>]. Well?
+      what is it now?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE PARLOR MAID. Mr Joyce Burge on the telephone, sir. He wants to speak
+      to you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN [<i>astonished</i>] Mr Joyce Burge!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE PARLOR MAID. Yes, sir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN [<i>to Conrad</i>] What on earth does this mean? I havnt heard
+      from him nor exchanged a word with him for years. I resigned the
+      chairmanship of the Liberal Association and shook the dust of party
+      politics from my feet before he was Prime Minister in the Coalition. Of
+      course, he dropped me like a hot potato.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Well, now that the Coalition has chucked him out, and he is only
+      one of the half-dozen leaders of the Opposition, perhaps he wants to pick
+      you up again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE PARLOR MAID [<i>warningly</i>] He is holding the line, sir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Yes: all right [<i>he hurries out</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The parlor maid goes to the hearthrug to make up the fire. Conrad rises
+      and strolls to the middle of the room, where he stops and looks
+      quizzically down at her.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. So you have only one life to live, eh?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE PARLOR MAID [<i>dropping on her knees in consternation</i>] I meant no
+      offence, sir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. You didn't give any. But you know you could live a devil of a long
+      life if you really wanted to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE PARLOR MAID [<i>sitting down on her heels</i>] Oh, dont say that, sir.
+      It's so unsettling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Why? Have you been thinking about it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE PARLOR MAID. It would never have come into my head if you hadnt put it
+      there, sir. Me and cook had a look at your book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. What!
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   You and cook
+   Had a look
+   At my book!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And my niece wouldn't open it! The prophet is without honor in his own
+      family. Well, what do you think of living for several hundred years? Are
+      you going to have a try for it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE PARLOR MAID. Well, of course youre not in earnest, sir. But it does
+      set one thinking, especially when one is going to be married.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. What has that to do with it? He may live as long as you, you know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE PARLOR MAID. Thats just it, sir. You see, he must take me for better
+      for worse, til death do us part. Do you think he would be so ready to do
+      that, sir, if he thought it might be for several hundred years?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Thats true. And what about yourself?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE PARLOR MAID. Oh, I tell you straight out, sir, I'd never promise to
+      live with the same man as long as that. I wouldnt put up with my own
+      children as long as that. Why, cook figured it out, sir, that when you
+      were only 200, you might marry your own
+      great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson and not even know who he was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Well, why not? For all you know, the man you are going to marry
+      may be your great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother's
+      great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE PARLOR MAID. But do you think it would ever be thought respectable,
+      sir?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. My good girl, all biological necessities have to be made
+      respectable whether we like it or not; so you neednt worry yourself about
+      that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Franklyn returns and crosses the room to his chair, but does not sit
+      down. The parlor maid goes out.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Well, what does Joyce Burge want?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Oh, a silly misunderstanding. I have promised to address a
+      meeting in Middlesborough; and some fool has put it into the papers that I
+      am 'coming to Middlesborough,' without any explanation. Of course, now
+      that we are on the eve of a general election, political people think I am
+      coming there to contest the parliamentary seat. Burge knows that I have a
+      following, and thinks I could get into the House of Commons and head a
+      group there. So he insists on coming to see me. He is staying with some
+      people at Dollis Hill, and can be here in five or ten minutes, he says.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. But didn't you tell him that it's a false alarm?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Of course I did; but he wont believe me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Called you a liar, in fact?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. No: I wish he had: any sort of plain speaking is better than the
+      nauseous sham good fellowship our democratic public men get up for shop
+      use. He pretends to believe me, and assures me his visit is quite
+      disinterested; but why should he come if he has no axe to grind? These
+      chaps never believe anything they say themselves; and naturally they
+      cannot believe anything anyone else says.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>rising</i>] Well, I shall clear out. It was hard enough to
+      stand the party politicians before the war; but now that they have managed
+      to half kill Europe between them, I cant be civil to them, and I dont see
+      why I should be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Wait a bit. We have to find out how the world will take our new
+      gospel. [<i>Conrad sits down again</i>]. Party politicians are still
+      unfortunately an important part of the world. Suppose we try it on Joyce
+      Burge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. How can you? You can tell things only to people who can listen.
+      Joyce Burge has talked so much that he has lost the power of listening. He
+      doesnt listen even in the House of Commons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Savvy rushes in breathless, followed by Haslam, who remains timidly
+      just inside the door.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY [<i>running to Franklyn</i>] I say! Who do you think has just driven
+      up in a big car?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Mr Joyce Burge, perhaps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY [<i>disappointed</i>] Oh, they know, Bill. Why didnt you tell us he
+      was coming? I have nothing on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. I'd better go, hadnt I?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. You just wait here, both of you. When you start yawning, Joyce
+      Burge will take the hint, perhaps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY [<i>to Franklyn</i>] May we?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Yes, if you promise to behave yourself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY [<i>making a wry face</i>] That will be a treat, wont it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE PARLOR MAID [<i>entering and announcing</i>] Mr Joyce Burge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Haslam hastily moves to the fireplace; and the parlor maid goes out and
+      shuts the door when the visitor has passed in.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN [<i>hurrying past Savvy to his guest with the false cordiality he
+      has just been denouncing</i>] Oh! Here you are. Delighted to see you. [<i>He
+      shakes Burge's hand, and introduces Savvy</i>] My daughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY [<i>not daring to approach</i>] Very kind of you to come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Joyce Burge stands fast and says nothing; but he screws up his cheeks
+      into a smile at each introduction, and makes his eyes shine in a very
+      winning manner. He is a well-fed man turned fifty, with broad forehead,
+      and grey hair which, his neck being short, falls almost to his collar.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Mr Haslam, our rector.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Burge conveys an impression of shining like a church window; and Haslam
+      seizes the nearest library chair on the hearth, and swings it round for
+      Burge between the stool and Conrad. He then retires to the window seat at
+      the other side of the room, and is joined by Savvy. They sit there, side
+      by side, hunched up with their elbows on their knees and their chins on
+      their hands, providing Burge with a sort of Stranger's Gallery during the
+      ensuing sitting.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. I forget whether you know my brother Conrad. He is a biologist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>suddenly bursting into energetic action and shaking hands
+      heartily with Conrad</i>] By reputation only, but very well, of course.
+      How I wish I could have devoted myself to biology! I have always been
+      interested in rocks and strata and volcanoes and so forth: they throw such
+      a light on the age of the earth. [<i>With conviction</i>] There is nothing
+      like biology. 'The cloud-capped towers, the solemn binnacles, the gorgeous
+      temples, the great globe itself: yea, all that it inherit shall dissolve,
+      and, like this influential pageant faded, leave not a rack behind.' Thats
+      biology, you know: good sound biology. [<i>He sits down. So do the others,
+      Franklyn on the stool, and Conrad on his Chippendale</i>]. Well, my dear
+      Barnabas, what do you think of the situation? Dont you think the time has
+      come for us to make a move?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. The time has always come to make a move.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. How true! But what is the move to be? You are a man of enormous
+      influence. We know that. Weve always known it. We have to consult you
+      whether we like it or not. We&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN [<i>interrupting firmly</i>] I never meddle in party politics
+      now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. It's no use saying you have no influence, daddy. Heaps of people
+      swear by you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>shining at her</i>] Of course they do. Come! let me prove to you
+      what we think of you. Shall we find you a first-rate constituency to
+      contest at the next election? One that wont cost you a penny. A
+      metropolitan seat. What do you say to the Strand?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. My dear Burge, I am not a child. Why do you go on wasting your
+      party funds on the Strand? You know you cannot win it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. We cannot win it; but you&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Oh, please!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. The Strand's no use, Mr Burge. I once canvassed for a Socialist
+      there. Cheese it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Cheese it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM [<i>spluttering with suppressed laughter</i>] Priceless!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Well, I suppose I shouldnt say cheese it to a Right Honorable. But
+      the Strand, you know! Do come off it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. You must excuse my daughter's shocking manners, Burge; but I
+      agree with her that popular democratic statesmen soon come to believe that
+      everyone they speak to is an ignorant dupe and a born fool into the
+      bargain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>laughing genially</i>] You old aristocrat, you! But believe me,
+      the instinct of the people is sound&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>cutting in sharply</i>] Then why are you in the Opposition
+      instead of in the Government?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>shewing signs of temper under this heckling</i>] I deny that I
+      am in the Opposition <i>morally</i>. The Government does not represent the
+      country. I was chucked out of the Coalition by a Tory conspiracy. The
+      people want me back. I dont want to go back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN [<i>gently remonstrant</i>] My dear Burge: of course you do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>turning on him</i>] Not a bit of it. I want to cultivate my
+      garden. I am not interested in politics: I am interested in roses. I havnt
+      a scrap of ambition. I went into politics because my wife shoved me into
+      them, bless her! But I want to serve my country. What else am I for? I
+      want to save my country from the Tories. They dont represent the people.
+      The man they have made Prime Minister has never represented the people;
+      and you know it. Lord Dunreen is the bitterest old Tory left alive. What
+      has he to offer to the people?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN [<i>cutting in before Burge can proceed&mdash;as he evidently
+      intends&mdash;to answer his own question</i>] I will tell you. He has
+      ascertainable beliefs and principles to offer. The people know where they
+      are with Lord Dunreen. They know what he thinks right and what he thinks
+      wrong. With your followers they never know where they are. With you they
+      never know where they are.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>amazed</i>] With me!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Well, where are you? What are you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Barnabas: you must be mad. You ask me what I am?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. I do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. I am, if I mistake not, Joyce Burge, pretty well known throughout
+      Europe, and indeed throughout the world, as the man who&mdash;unworthily
+      perhaps, but not quite unsuccessfully&mdash;held the helm when the ship of
+      State weathered the mightiest hurricane that has ever burst with
+      earth-shaking violence on the land of our fathers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. I know that. I know who you are. And the earth-shaking part of
+      it to me is that though you were placed in that enormously responsible
+      position, neither I nor anyone else knows what your beliefs are, or even
+      whether you have either beliefs or principles. What we did know was that
+      your Government was formed largely of men who regarded you as a robber of
+      henroosts, and whom you regarded as enemies of the people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>adroitly, as he thinks</i>] I agree with you. I agree with you
+      absolutely. I dont believe in coalition governments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Precisely. Yet you formed two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Why? Because we were at war. That is what you fellows never would
+      realize. The Hun was at the gate. Our country, our lives, the honor of our
+      wives and mothers and daughters, the tender flesh of our innocent babes,
+      were at stake. Was that a time to argue about principles?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. I should say it was the time of all others to confirm the
+      resolution of our own men and gain the confidence and support of public
+      opinion throughout the world by a declaration of principle. Do you think
+      the Hun would ever have come to the gate if he had known that it would be
+      shut in his face on principle? Did he not hold his own against you until
+      America boldly affirmed the democratic principle and came to our rescue?
+      Why did you let America snatch that honor from England?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Barnabas: America was carried away by words, and had to eat them at
+      the Peace Conference. Beware of eloquence: it is the bane of popular
+      speakers like you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN} [<i>exclaiming</i>]{Well!!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY} [<i>all</i>]{I like that!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM} [<i>together</i>]{Priceless!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>continuing remorselessly</i>] Come down to facts. It wasn't
+      principle that won the war: it was the British fleet and the blockade.
+      America found the talk: I found the shells. You cannot win wars by
+      principles; but you <i>can</i> win elections by them. There I am with you.
+      You want the next election to be fought on principles: that is what it
+      comes to, doesnt it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. I dont want it to be fought at all! An election is a moral
+      horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood: a mud bath for every soul
+      concerned in it. You know very well that it will not be fought on
+      principle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. On the contrary it will be fought on nothing else. I believe a
+      program is a mistake. I agree with you that principle is what we want.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Principle without program, eh?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Exactly. There it is in three words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Why not in one word? Platitudes. That is what principle without
+      program means.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>puzzled but patient, trying to get at Franklyn's drift in order
+      to ascertain his price</i>] I have not made myself clear. Listen. I am
+      agreeing with you. I am on your side. I am accepting your proposal. There
+      isnt going to be any more coalition. This time there wont be a Tory in the
+      Cabinet. Every candidate will have to pledge himself to Free Trade,
+      slightly modified by consideration for our Overseas Dominions; to
+      Disestablishment; to Reform of the House of Lords; to a revised scheme of
+      Taxation of Land Values; and to doing something or other to keep the Irish
+      quiet. Does that satisfy you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. It does not even interest me. Suppose your friends do commit
+      themselves to all this! What does it prove about them except that they are
+      hopelessly out of date even in party politics? that they have learnt
+      nothing and forgotten nothing since 1885? What is it to me that they hate
+      the Church and hate the landed gentry; that they are jealous of the
+      nobility, and have shipping shares instead of manufacturing businesses in
+      the Midlands? I can find you hundreds of the most sordid rascals, or the
+      most densely stupid reactionaries, with all these qualifications.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Personal abuse proves nothing. Do you suppose the Tories are all
+      angels because they are all members of the Church of England?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. No; but they stand together as members of the Church of England,
+      whereas your people, in attacking the Church, are all over the shop. The
+      supporters of the Church are of one mind about religion: its enemies are
+      of a dozen minds. The Churchmen are a phalanx: your people are a mob in
+      which atheists are jostled by Plymouth Brethren, and Positivists by
+      Pillars of Fire. You have with you all the crudest unbelievers and all the
+      crudest fanatics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. We stand, as Cromwell did, for liberty of conscience, if that is
+      what you mean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. How can you talk such rubbish over the graves of your
+      conscientious objectors? All law limits liberty of conscience: if a man's
+      conscience allows him to steal your watch or to shirk military service,
+      how much liberty do you allow it? Liberty of conscience is not my point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>testily</i>] I wish you would come to your point. Half the time
+      you are saying that you must have principles; and when I offer you
+      principles you say they wont work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. You have not offered me any principles. Your party shibboleths
+      are not principles. If you get into power again you will find yourself at
+      the head of a rabble of Socialists and anti-Socialists, of Jingo
+      Imperialists and Little Englanders, of cast-iron Materialists and ecstatic
+      Quakers, of Christian Scientists and Compulsory Inoculationists, of
+      Syndicalists and Bureaucrats: in short, of men differing fiercely and
+      irreconcilably on every principle that goes to the root of human society
+      and destiny; and the impossibility of keeping such a team together will
+      force you to sell the pass again to the solid Conservative Opposition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>rising in wrath</i>] Sell the pass again! You accuse me of
+      having sold the pass!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. When the terrible impact of real warfare swept your
+      parliamentary sham warfare into the dustbin, you had to go behind the
+      backs of your followers and make a secret agreement with the leaders of
+      the Opposition to keep you in power on condition that you dropped all
+      legislation of which they did not approve. And you could not even hold
+      them to their bargain; for they presently betrayed the secret and forced
+      the coalition on you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. I solemnly declare that this is a false and monstrous accusation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Do you deny that the thing occurred? Were the uncontradicted
+      reports false? Were the published letters forgeries?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Certainly not. But <i>I</i> did not do it. I was not Prime Minister
+      then. It was that old dotard, that played-out old humbug Lubin. He was
+      Prime Minister then, not I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Do you mean to say you did not know?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>sitting down again with a shrug</i>] Oh, I had to be told. But
+      what could I do? If we had refused we might have had to go out of office.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Precisely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Well, could we desert the country at such a crisis? The Hun was at
+      the gate. Everyone has to make sacrifices for the sake of the country at
+      such moments. We had to rise above party; and I am proud to say we never
+      gave party a second thought. We stuck to&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Office?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE [<i>turning on him</i>] Yes, sir, to office: that is, to
+      responsibility, to danger, to heart-sickening toil, to abuse and
+      misunderstanding, to a martyrdom that made us envy the very soldiers in
+      the trenches. If you had had to live for months on aspirin and bromide of
+      potassium to get a wink of sleep, you wouldn't talk about office as if it
+      were a catch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Still, you admit that under our parliamentary system Lubin could
+      not have helped himself?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. On that subject my lips are closed. Nothing will induce me to say
+      one word against the old man. I never have; and I never will. Lubin is
+      old: he has never been a real statesman: he is as lazy as a cat on a
+      hearthrug: you cant get him to attend to anything: he is good for nothing
+      but getting up and making speeches with a peroration that goes down with
+      the back benches. But I say nothing against him. I gather that you do not
+      think much of me as a statesman; but at all events I can get things done.
+      I can hustle: even you will admit that. But Lubin! Oh my stars, Lubin!! If
+      you only knew&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The parlor maid opens the door and announces a visitor.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE PARLOR MAID. Mr Lubin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE [<i>bounding from his chair</i>] Lubin! Is this a conspiracy?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>They all rise in amazement, staring at the door. Lubin enters: a man at
+      the end of his sixties, a Yorkshireman with the last traces of
+      Scandinavian flax still in his white hair, undistinguished in stature,
+      unassuming in his manner, and taking his simple dignity for granted, but
+      wonderfully comfortable and quite self-assured in contrast to the
+      intellectual restlessness of Franklyn and the mesmeric self-assertiveness
+      of Burge. His presence suddenly brings out the fact that they are unhappy
+      men, ill at ease, square pegs in round holes, whilst he flourishes like a
+      primrose. </i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The parlor maid withdraws.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>coming to Franklyn</i>] How do you do, Mr Barnabas? [<i>He
+      speaks very comfortably and kindly, much as if he were the host, and
+      Franklyn an embarrassed but welcome guest</i>]. I had the pleasure of
+      meeting you once at the Mansion House. I think it was to celebrate the
+      conclusion of the hundred years peace with America.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN [<i>shaking hands</i>] It was long before that: a meeting about
+      Venezuela, when we were on the point of going to war with America.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>not at all put out</i>] Yes: you are quite right. I knew it was
+      something about America. [<i>He pats Franklyn's hand</i>]. And how have
+      you been all this time? Well, eh?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN [<i>smiling to soften the sarcasm</i>] A few vicissitudes of
+      health naturally in so long a time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Just so. Just so. [<i>Looking round at Savvy</i>] The young lady is&mdash;?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. My daughter, Savvy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Savvy comes from the window between her father and Lubin.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>taking her hand affectionately in both his</i>] And why has she
+      never come to see us?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. I don't know whether you have noticed, Lubin, that I am present.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Savvy takes advantage of this diversion to slip away to the settee,
+      where she is stealthily joined by Haslam, who sits down on her left.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>seating himself in Burge's chair with ineffable comfortableness</i>]
+      My dear Burge: if you imagine that it is possible to be within ten miles
+      of your energetic presence without being acutely aware of it, you do
+      yourself the greatest injustice. How are you? And how are your good
+      newspaper friends? [<i>Burge makes an explosive movement; but Lubin goes
+      on calmly and sweetly</i>] And what are you doing here with my old friend
+      Barnabas, if I may ask?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>sitting down in Conrad's chair, leaving him standing uneasily in
+      the corner</i>] Well, just what you are doing, if you want to know. I am
+      trying to enlist Mr Barnabas's valuable support for my party.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Your party, eh? The newspaper party?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. The Liberal Party. The party of which I have the honor to be
+      leader.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Have you now? Thats very interesting; for I thought <i>I</i> was
+      the leader of the Liberal Party. However, it is very kind of you to take
+      it off my hands, if the party will let you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Do you suggest that I have not the support and confidence of the
+      party?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. I dont suggest anything, my dear Burge. Mr Barnabas will tell you
+      that we all think very highly of you. The country owes you a great deal.
+      During the war, you did very creditably over the munitions; and if you
+      were not quite so successful with the peace, nobody doubted that you meant
+      well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Very kind of you, Lubin. Let me remark that you cannot lead a
+      progressive party without getting a move on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. You mean you cannot. I did it for ten years without the least
+      difficulty. And very comfortable, prosperous, pleasant years they were.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Yes; but what did they end in?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. In you, Burge. You don't complain of that, do you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>fiercely</i>] In plague, pestilence, and famine; battle, murder,
+      and sudden death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>with an appreciative chuckle</i>] The Nonconformist can quote
+      the prayer-book for his own purposes, I see. How you enjoyed yourself over
+      that business, Burge! Do you remember the Knock-Out Blow?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. It came off: don't forget that. Do <i>you</i> remember fighting to
+      the last drop of your blood?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>unruffled, to Franklyn</i>] By the way, I remember your brother
+      Conrad&mdash;a wonderful brain and a dear good fellow&mdash;explaining to
+      me that I couldn't fight to the last drop of my blood, because I should be
+      dead long before I came to it. Most interesting, and quite true. He was
+      introduced to me at a meeting where the suffragettes kept disturbing me.
+      They had to be carried out kicking and making a horrid disturbance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. No: it was later, at a meeting to support the Franchise Bill which
+      gave them the vote.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>discovering Conrad's presence for the first time</i>] Youre
+      right: it was. I knew it had something to do with women. My memory never
+      deceives me. Thank you. Will you introduce me to this gentleman, Barnabas?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>not at all affably</i>] I am the Conrad in question. [<i>He
+      sits down in dudgeon on the vacant Chippendale</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Are you? [<i>Looking at him pleasantly</i>] Yes: of course you are.
+      I never forget a face. But [<i>with an arch turn of his eyes to Savvy</i>]
+      your pretty niece engaged all my powers of vision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. I wish youd be serious, Lubin. God knows we have passed through
+      times terrible enough to make any man serious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. I do not think I need to be reminded of that. In peace time I used
+      to keep myself fresh for my work by banishing all worldly considerations
+      from my mind on Sundays; but war has no respect for the Sabbath; and there
+      have been Sundays within the last few years on which I have had to play as
+      many as sixty-six games of bridge to keep my mind off the news from the
+      front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>scandalized</i>] Sixty-six games of bridge on Sunday!!!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. You probably sang sixty-six hymns. But as I cannot boast either
+      your admirable voice or your spiritual fervor, I had to fall back on
+      bridge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. If I may go back to the subject of your visit, it seems to me
+      that you may both be completely superseded by the Labor Party.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. But I am in the truest sense myself a Labor leader. I&mdash;[<i>he
+      stops, as Lubin has risen with a half-suppressed yawn, and is already
+      talking calmly, but without a pretence of interest</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. The Labor Party! Oh no, Mr Barnabas. No, no, no, no, no. [<i>He
+      moves in Savvy's direction</i>]. There will be no trouble about that. Of
+      course we must give them a few seats: more, I quite admit, than we should
+      have dreamt of leaving to them before the war; but&mdash;[<i>by this time
+      he has reached the sofa where Savvy and Haslam are seated. He sits down
+      between them; takes her hand; and drops the subject of Labor</i>]. Well,
+      my dear young lady? What is the latest news? Whats going on? Have you seen
+      Shoddy's new play? Tell me all about it, and all about the latest books,
+      and all about everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. You have not met Mr Haslam. Our Rector.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>who has quite overlooked Haslam</i>] Never heard of him. Is he
+      any good?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. I was introducing him. This is Mr Haslam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. How d'ye do?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. I beg your pardon, Mr Haslam. Delighted to meet you. [<i>To Savvy</i>]
+      Well, now, how many books have you written?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY [<i>rather overwhelmed but attracted</i>] None. I don't write.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. You dont say so; Well, what do you do? Music? Skirt-dancing?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. I dont do anything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Thank God! You and I were born for one another. Who is your
+      favorite poet, Sally?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Savvy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Savvy! I never heard of him. Tell me all about him. Keep me up to
+      date.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. It's not a poet. <i>I</i> am Savvy, not Sally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Savvy! Thats a funny name, and very pretty. Savvy. It sounds
+      Chinese. What does it mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Short for Savage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>patting her hand</i>] La belle Sauvage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM [<i>rising and surrendering Savvy to Lubin by crossing to the
+      fireplace</i>] I suppose the Church is out of it as far as progressive
+      politics are concerned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Nonsense! That notion about the Church being unprogressive is one
+      of those shibboleths that our party must drop. The Church is all right
+      essentially. Get rid of the establishment; get rid of the bishops; get rid
+      of the candlesticks; get rid of the 39 articles; and the Church of England
+      is just as good as any other Church; and I don't care who hears me say so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. It doesn't matter a bit who hears you say so, my dear Burge. [<i>To
+      Savvy</i>] Who did you say your favorite poet was?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. I dont make pets of poets. Who's yours?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Horace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Horace who?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Quintus Horatius Flaccus: the noblest Roman of them all, my dear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Oh, if he is dead, that explains it. I have a theory that all the
+      dead people we feel especially interested in must have been ourselves. You
+      must be Horace's reincarnation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>delighted</i>] That is the very most charming and penetrating
+      and intelligent thing that has ever been said to me. Barnabas: will you
+      exchange daughters with me? I can give you your choice of two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Man proposes. Savvy disposes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. What does Savvy say?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Lubin: I came here to talk politics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Yes: you have only one subject, Burge. I came here to talk to
+      Savvy. Take Burge into the next room, Barnabas; and let him rip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>half-angry, half-indulgent</i>] No; but really, Lubin, we are at
+      a crisis&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. My dear Burge, life is a disease; and the only difference between
+      one man and another is the stage of the disease at which he lives. You are
+      always at the crisis; I am always in the convalescent stage. I enjoy
+      convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worth while.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY [<i>half-rising</i>] Perhaps I'd better run away. I am distracting
+      you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>making her sit down again</i>] Not at all, my dear. You are only
+      distracting Burge. Jolly good thing for him to be distracted by a pretty
+      girl. Just what he needs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. I sometimes envy you, Lubin. The great movement of mankind, the
+      giant sweep of the ages, passes you by and leaves you standing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. It leaves me sitting, and quite comfortable, thank you. Go on
+      sweeping. When you are tired of it, come back; and you will find England
+      where it was, and me in my accustomed place, with Miss Savvy telling me
+      all sorts of interesting things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY [<i>who has been growing more and more restless</i>] Dont let him
+      shut you up, Mr Burge. You know, Mr Lubin, I am frightfully interested in
+      the Labor movement, and in Theosophy, and in reconstruction after the war,
+      and all sorts of things. I daresay the flappers in your smart set are
+      tremendously flattered when you sit beside them and are nice to them as
+      you are being nice to me; but I am not smart; and I am no use as a
+      flapper. I am dowdy and serious. I want you to be serious. If you refuse,
+      I shall go and sit beside Mr Burge, and ask him to hold my hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. He wouldnt know how to do it, my dear. Burge has a reputation as a
+      profligate&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>starting</i>] Lubin: this is monstrous. I&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>continuing</i>]&mdash;but he is really a model of domesticity.
+      His name is coupled with all the most celebrated beauties; but for him
+      there is only one woman; and that is not you, my dear, but his very
+      charming wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. You are destroying my character in the act of pretending to save
+      it. Have the goodness to confine yourself to your own character and your
+      own wife. Both of them need all your attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. I have the privilege of my age and of my transparent innocence. I
+      have not to struggle with your volcanic energy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>with an immense sense of power</i>] No, by George!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. I think I shall speak both for my brother and myself, and
+      possibly also for my daughter, if I say that since the object of your
+      visit and Mr Joyce Burge's is to some extent political, we should hear
+      with great interest something about your political aims, Mr Lubin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>assenting with complete good humor, and becoming attentive,
+      clear, and businesslike in his tone</i>] By all means, Mr Barnabas. What
+      we have to consider first, I take it, is what prospect there is of our
+      finding you beside us in the House after the next election.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. When I speak of politics, Mr Lubin, I am not thinking of
+      elections, or available seats, or party funds, or the registers, or even,
+      I am sorry to have to add, of parliament as it exists at present. I had
+      much rather you talked about bridge than about electioneering: it is the
+      more interesting game of the two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. He wants to discuss principles, Lubin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>very cool and clear</i>] I understand Mr Barnabas quite well.
+      But elections are unsettled things; principles are settled things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>impatiently</i>] Great Heavens!&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>interrupting him with quiet authority</i>] One moment, Dr
+      Barnabas. The main principles on which modern civilized society is founded
+      are pretty well understood among educated people. That is what our
+      dangerously half-educated masses and their pet demagogues&mdash;if Burge
+      will excuse that expression&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Dont mind me. Go on. I shall have something to say presently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN.&mdash;that is what our dangerously half-educated people do not
+      realize. Take all this fuss about the Labor Party, with its imaginary new
+      principles and new politics. The Labor members will find that the
+      immutable laws of political economy take no more notice of their ambitions
+      and aspirations than the law of gravitation. I speak, if I may say so,
+      with knowledge; for I have made a special, study of the Labor question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN [<i>with interest and some surprise</i>] Indeed?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Yes. It occurred quite at the beginning of my career. I was asked
+      to deliver an address to the students at the Working Men's College; and I
+      was strongly advised to comply, as Gladstone and Morley and others were
+      doing that sort of thing at the moment. It was rather a troublesome job,
+      because I had not gone into political economy at the time. As you know, at
+      the university I was a classical scholar; and my profession was the Law.
+      But I looked up the text-books, and got up the case most carefully. I
+      found that the correct view is that all this Trade Unionism and Socialism
+      and so forth is founded on the ignorant delusion that wages and the
+      production and distribution of wealth can be controlled by legislation or
+      by any human action whatever. They obey fixed scientific laws, which have
+      been ascertained and settled finally by the highest economic authorities.
+      Naturally I do not at this distance of time remember the exact process of
+      reasoning; but I can get up the case again at any time in a couple of
+      days; and you may rely on me absolutely, should the occasion arise, to
+      deal with all these ignorant and unpractical people in a conclusive and
+      convincing way, except, of course, as far as it may be advisable to
+      indulge and flatter them a little so as to let them down without creating
+      ill feeling in the working-class electorate. In short, I can get that
+      lecture up again almost at a moment's notice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. But, Mr Lubin, I have had a university education too; and all this
+      about wages and distribution being fixed by immutable laws of political
+      economy is obsolete rot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN [<i>shocked</i>] Oh, my dear! That is not polite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. No, no, no. Dont scold her. She mustnt be scolded. [<i>To Savvy</i>]
+      I understand. You are a disciple of Karl Marx.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. No, no. Karl Marx's economics are all rot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>at last a little taken aback</i>] Dear me!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. You must excuse me, Mr Lubin; but it's like hearing a man talk
+      about the Garden of Eden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Why shouldnt he talk about the Garden of Eden? It was a first
+      attempt at biology anyhow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>recovering his self-possession</i>] I am sound on the Garden of
+      Eden. I have heard of Darwin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. But Darwin is all rot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. What! Already!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. It's no good your smiling at me like a Cheshire cat, Mr Lubin; and
+      I am not going to sit here mumchance like an old-fashioned goody goody
+      wife while you men monopolize the conversation and pay out the very
+      ghastliest exploded drivel as the latest thing in politics. I am not
+      giving you my own ideas, Mr Lubin, but just the regular orthodox science
+      of today. Only the most awful old fossils think that Socialism is bad
+      economics and that Darwin invented Evolution. Ask Papa. Ask Uncle. Ask the
+      first person you meet in the street. [<i>She rises and crosses to Haslam</i>].
+      Give me a cigaret, Bill, will you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Priceless. [<i>He complies</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Savvy has not lived long enough to have any manners, Mr Lubin;
+      but that is where you stand with the younger generation. Dont smoke, dear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Savvy, with a shrug of rather mutinous resignation, throws the cigaret
+      into the fire. Haslam, on the point of lighting one for himself, changes
+      his mind.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>shrewd and serious</i>] Mr Barnabas: I confess I am surprised;
+      and I will not pretend that I am convinced. But I am open to conviction. I
+      may be wrong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>in a burst of irony</i>] Oh no. Impossible! Impossible!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Yes, Mr Barnabas, though I do not possess Burge's genius for being
+      always wrong, I have been in that position once or twice. I could not
+      conceal from you, even if I wished to, that my time has been so completely
+      filled by my professional work as a lawyer, and later on by my duties as
+      leader of the House of Commons in the days when Prime Ministers were also
+      leaders&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>stung</i>] Not to mention bridge and smart society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN.&mdash;not to mention the continual and trying effort to make Burge
+      behave himself, that I have not been able to keep my academic reading up
+      to date. I have kept my classics brushed up out of sheer love for them;
+      but my economics and my science, such as they were, may possibly be a
+      little rusty. Yet I think I may say that if you and your brother will be
+      so good as to put me on the track of the necessary documents, I will
+      undertake to put the case to the House or to the country to your entire
+      satisfaction. You see, as long as you can shew these troublesome
+      half-educated people who want to turn the world upside down that they are
+      talking nonsense, it really does not matter very much whether you do it in
+      terms of what Miss Barnabas calls obsolete rot or in terms of what her
+      granddaughter will probably call unmitigated tosh. I have no objection
+      whatever to denounce Karl Marx. Anything I can say against Darwin will
+      please a large body of sincerely pious voters. If it will be easier to
+      carry on the business of the country on the understanding that the present
+      state of things is to be called Socialism, I have no objection in the
+      world to call it Socialism. There is the precedent of the Emperor
+      Constantine, who saved the society of his own day by agreeing to call his
+      Imperialism Christianity. Mind: I must not go ahead of the electorate. You
+      must not call a voter a Socialist until&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Until he is a Socialist. Agreed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Oh, not at all. You need not wait for that. You must not call him a
+      Socialist until he wishes to be called a Socialist: that is all. Surely
+      you would not say that I must not address my constituents as gentlemen
+      until they are gentlemen. I address them as gentlemen because they wish to
+      be so addressed. [<i>He rises from the sofa and goes to Franklyn, placing
+      a reassuring hand on his shoulder</i>]. Do not be afraid of Socialism, Mr
+      Barnabas. You need not tremble for your property or your position or your
+      dignity. England will remain what England is, no matter what new political
+      names may come into vogue. I do not intend to resist the transition to
+      Socialism. You may depend on me to guide it, to lead it, to give suitable
+      expression to its aspirations, and to steer it clear of Utopian
+      absurdities. I can honestly ask for your support on the most advanced
+      Socialist grounds no less than on the soundest Liberal ones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. In short, Lubin, youre incorrigible. You dont believe anything is
+      going to change. The millions are still to toil&mdash;the people&mdash;my
+      people&mdash;for I am a man of the people&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>interrupting him contemptuously</i>] Dont be ridiculous, Burge.
+      You are a country solicitor, further removed from the people, more foreign
+      to them, more jealous of letting them up to your level, than any duke or
+      any archbishop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>hotly</i>] I deny it. You think I have never been poor. You
+      think I have never cleaned my own boots. You think my fingers have never
+      come out through the soles when I was cleaning them. You think&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. I think you fall into the very common mistake of supposing that it
+      is poverty that makes the proletarian and money that makes the gentleman.
+      You are quite wrong. You never belonged to the people: you belonged to the
+      impecunious. Impecuniosity and broken boots are the lot of the
+      unsuccessful middle class, and the commonplaces of the early struggles of
+      the professional and younger son class. I defy you to find a farm laborer
+      in England with broken boots. Call a mechanic one of the poor, and he'll
+      punch your head. When you talk to your constituents about the toiling
+      millions, they don't consider that you are referring to them. They are all
+      third cousins of somebody with a title or a park. I am a Yorkshireman, my
+      friend. I know England; and you don't. If you did you would know&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE. What do you know that I don't know?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. I know that we are taking up too much of Mr Barnabas's time. [<i>Franklyn
+      rises</i>]. May I take it, my dear Barnabas, that I may count on your
+      support if we succeed in forcing an election before the new register is in
+      full working order?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE [<i>rising also</i>] May the party count on your support? I say
+      nothing about myself. Can the party depend on you? Is there any question
+      of yours that I have left unanswered?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. We havnt asked you any, you know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. May I take that as a mark of confidence?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. If I were a laborer in your constituency, I should ask you a
+      biological question?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. No you wouldnt, my dear Doctor. Laborers never ask questions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Ask it now. I have never flinched from being heckled. Out with it.
+      Is it about the land?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. No.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE. Is it about the Church?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. No.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Is it about the House of Lords?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. No.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Is it about Proportional Representation?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. No.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE. Is it about Free Trade?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. No.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE. Is it about the priest in the school?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. No.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Is it about Ireland?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. No.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Is it about Germany?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. No.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Well, is it about Republicanism? Come! I wont flinch. Is it about
+      the Monarchy?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. No.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE. Well, what the devil is it about, then?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. You understand that I am asking the question in the character of a
+      laborer who earned thirteen shillings a week before the war and earns
+      thirty now, when he can get it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Yes: I understand that. I am ready for you. Out with it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. And whom you propose to represent n parliament?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE. Yes, yes, yes. Come on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. The question is this. Would you allow your son to marry my
+      daughter, or your daughter to marry my son?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>taken aback</i>] Oh, come! Thats not a political question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Then, as a biologist, I don't take the slightest interest in your
+      politics; and I shall not walk across the street to vote for you or anyone
+      else at the election. Good evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Serve you right, Burge! Dr Barnabas: you have my assurance that my
+      daughter shall marry the man of her choice, whether he be lord or laborer.
+      May <i>I</i> count on your support?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE [<i>hurling the epithet at him</i>] Humbug!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Stop. [<i>They all stop short in the movement of leave-taking to
+      look at her</i>]. Daddy: are you going to let them off like this? How are
+      they to know anything if nobody ever tells them? If you don't, I will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. You cant. You didn't read my book; and you know nothing about it.
+      You just hold your tongue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. I just wont, Nunk. I shall have a vote when I am thirty; and I
+      ought to have it now. Why are these two ridiculous people to be allowed to
+      come in and walk over us as if the world existed only to play their silly
+      parliamentary game?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN [<i>severely</i>] Savvy: you really must not be uncivil to our
+      guests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. I'm sorry. But Mr Lubin didn't stand on much ceremony with me, did
+      he? And Mr Burge hasnt addressed a single word to me. I'm not going to
+      stand it. You and Nunk have a much better program than either of them.
+      It's the only one we are going to vote for; and they ought to be told
+      about it for the credit of the family and the good of their own souls. You
+      just tip them a chapter from the gospel of the brothers Barnabas, Daddy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Lubin and Burge turn inquiringly to Franklyn, suspecting a move to form
+      a new party.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. It is quite true, Mr Lubin, that I and my brother have a little
+      program of our own which&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>interrupting</i>] It's not a little program: it's an almighty
+      big one. It's not our own: it's the program of the whole of civilization.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Then why split the party before you have put it to us? For God's
+      sake let us have no more splits. I am here to learn. I am here to gather
+      your opinions and represent them. I invite you to put your views before
+      me. I offer myself to be heckled. You have asked me only an absurd
+      non-political question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Candidly, I fear our program will be thrown away on you. It
+      would not interest you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>with challenging audacity</i>] Try. Lubin can go if he likes;
+      but I am still open to new ideas, if only I can find them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN [<i>to Lubin</i>] Are you prepared to listen, Mr Lubin; or shall
+      I thank you for your very kind and welcome visit, and say good evening?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>sitting down resignedly on the settee, but involuntarily making
+      a movement which looks like the stifling of a yawn</i>] With pleasure, Mr
+      Barnabas. Of course you know that before I can adopt any new plank in the
+      party platform, it will have to reach me through the National Liberal
+      Federation, which you can approach through your local Liberal and Radical
+      Association.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. I could recall to you several instances of the addition to your
+      party program of measures of which no local branch of your Federation had
+      ever dreamt. But I understand that you are not really interested. I will
+      spare you, and drop the subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>waking up a little</i>] You quite misunderstand me. Please do
+      not take it in that way. I only&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>talking him down</i>] Never mind the Federation: <i>I</i> will
+      answer for the Federation. Go on, Barnabas: go on. Never mind Lubin [<i>he
+      sits down in the chair from which Lubin first displaced him</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Our program is only that the term of human life shall be
+      extended to three hundred years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>softly</i>] Eh?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>explosively</i>] What!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Our election cry is 'Back to Methuselah!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Priceless!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Lubin and Surge look at one another.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. No. We are not mad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Theyre not joking either. They mean it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>cautiously</i>] Assuming that, in some sense which I am for the
+      moment unable to fathom, you are in earnest, Mr Barnabas, may I ask what
+      this has to do with politics?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. The connection is very evident. You are now, Mr Lubin, within
+      immediate reach of your seventieth year. Mr Joyce Surge is your junior by
+      about eleven years. You will go down to posterity as one of a European
+      group of immature statesmen and monarchs who, doing the very best for your
+      respective countries of which you were capable, succeeded in
+      all-but-wrecking the civilization of Europe, and did, in effect, wipe out
+      of existence many millions of its inhabitants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Less than a million.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. That was our loss alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Oh, if you count foreigners&mdash;!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HAS LAM. God counts foreigners, you know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY [<i>with intense satisfaction</i>] Well said, Bill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. I am not blaming you. Your task was beyond human capacity. What
+      with our huge armaments, our terrible engines of destruction, our systems
+      of coercion manned by an irresistible police, you were called on to
+      control powers so gigantic that one shudders at the thought of their being
+      entrusted even to an infinitely experienced and benevolent God, much less
+      to mortal men whose whole life does not last a hundred years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. We won the war: don't forget that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. No: the soldiers and sailors won it, and left you to finish it.
+      And you were so utterly incompetent that the multitudes of children slain
+      by hunger in the first years of peace made us all wish we were at war
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. It's no use arguing about it. It is now absolutely certain that
+      the political and social problems raised by our civilization cannot be
+      solved by mere human mushrooms who decay and die when they are just
+      beginning to have a glimmer of the wisdom and knowledge needed for their
+      own government.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Quite an interesting idea, Doctor. Extravagant. Fantastic. But
+      quite interesting. When I was young I used to feel my human limitations
+      very acutely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. God knows I have often felt that I could not go on if it had not
+      been for the sense that I was only an instrument in the hands of a Power
+      above us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. I'm glad you both agree with us, and with one another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. I have not gone so far as that, I think. After all, we have had
+      many very able political leaders even within your recollection and mine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Have you read the recent biographies&mdash;Dilke's, for instance&mdash;which
+      revealed the truth about them?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. I did not discover any new truth revealed in these books, Mr
+      Barnabas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. What! Not the truth that England was governed all that time by a
+      little woman who knew her own mind?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Hear, hear!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. That often happens. Which woman do you mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Queen Victoria, to whom your Prime Ministers stood in the
+      relation of naughty children whose heads she knocked together when their
+      tempers and quarrels became intolerable. Within thirteen years of her
+      death Europe became a hell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE. Quite true. That was because she was piously brought up, and
+      regarded herself as an instrument. If a statesman remembers that he is
+      only an instrument, and feels quite sure that he is rightly interpreting
+      the divine purpose, he will come out all right, you know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. The Kaiser felt like that. Did he come out all right?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE. Well, let us be fair, even to the Kaiser. Let us be fair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Were you fair to him when you won an election on the program of
+      hanging him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE. Stuff! I am the last man alive to hang anybody; but the people
+      wouldnt listen to reason. Besides, I knew the Dutch wouldnt give him up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Oh, don't start arguing about poor old Bill. Stick to our point.
+      Let these two gentlemen settle the question for themselves. Mr Burge: do
+      you think Mr Lubin is fit to govern England?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE. No. Frankly, I dont.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>remonstrant</i>] Really!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Why?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Because he has no conscience: thats why.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>shocked and amazed</i>] Oh!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Mr Lubin: do you consider Joyce Burge qualified to govern
+      England?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>with dignified emotion, wounded, but without bitterness</i>]
+      Excuse me, Mr Barnabas; but before I answer that question I want to say
+      this. Burge: we have had differences of opinion; and your newspaper
+      friends have said hard things of me. But we worked together for years; and
+      I hope I have done nothing to justify you in the amazing accusation you
+      have just brought against me. Do you realize that you said that I have no
+      conscience?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Lubin: I am very accessible to an appeal to my emotions; and you
+      are very cunning in making such appeals. I will meet you to this extent. I
+      dont mean that you are a bad man. I dont mean that I dislike you, in spite
+      of your continual attempts to discourage and depress me. But you have a
+      mind like a looking-glass. You are very clear and smooth and lucid as to
+      what is standing in front of you. But you have no foresight and no
+      hindsight. You have no vision and no memory. You have no continuity; and a
+      man without continuity can have neither conscience nor honor from one day
+      to another. The result is that you have always been a damned bad minister;
+      and you have sometimes been a damned bad friend. Now you can answer
+      Barnabas's question and take it out of me to your heart's content. He
+      asked you was I fit to govern England.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>recovering himself</i>] After what has just passed I sincerely
+      wish I could honestly say yes, Burge. But it seems to me that you have
+      condemned yourself out of your own mouth. You represent something which
+      has had far too much influence and popularity in this country since Joseph
+      Chamberlain set the fashion; and that is mere energy without intellect and
+      without knowledge. Your mind is not a trained mind: it has not been stored
+      with the best information, nor cultivated by intercourse with educated
+      minds at any of our great seats of learning. As I happen to have enjoyed
+      that advantage, it follows that you do not understand my mind. Candidly, I
+      think that disqualifies you. The peace found out your weaknesses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Oh! What did it find out in you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. You and your newspaper confederates took the peace out of my hands.
+      The peace did not find me out because it did not find me in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Come! Confess, both of you! You were only flies on the wheel.
+      The war went England's way; but the peace went its own way, and not
+      England's way nor any of the ways you had so glibly appointed for it. Your
+      peace treaty was a scrap of paper before the ink dried on it. The
+      statesmen of Europe were incapable of governing Europe. What they needed
+      was a couple of hundred years training and experience: what they had
+      actually had was a few years at the bar or in a counting-house or on the
+      grouse moors and golf courses. And now we are waiting, with monster
+      cannons trained on every city and seaport, and huge aeroplanes ready to
+      spring into the air and drop bombs every one of which will obliterate a
+      whole street, and poison gases that will strike multitudes dead with a
+      breath, until one of you gentlemen rises in his helplessness to tell us,
+      who are as helpless as himself, that we are at war again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Aha! What consolation will it be for us then that you two are able
+      to tell off one another's defects so cleverly in your afternoon chat?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>angrily</i>] If you come to that, what consolation will it be
+      that you two can sit there and tell both of us off? you, who have had no
+      responsibility! you, who havnt lifted a finger, as far as I know, to help
+      us through this awful crisis which has left me ten years older than my
+      proper age! Can you tell me a single thing you did to help us during the
+      whole infernal business?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. We're not blaming you: you hadnt lived long enough. No more had
+      we. Cant you see that three-score-and-ten, though it may be long enough
+      for a very crude sort of village life, isnt long enough for a complicated
+      civilization like ours? Flinders Petrie has counted nine attempts at
+      civilization made by people exactly like us; and every one of them failed
+      just as ours is failing. They failed because the citizens and statesmen
+      died of old age or over-eating before they had grown out of schoolboy
+      games and savage sports and cigars and champagne. The signs of the end are
+      always the same: Democracy, Socialism, and Votes for Women. We shall go to
+      smash within the lifetime of men now living unless we recognize that we
+      must live longer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. I am glad you agree with me that Socialism and Votes for Women are
+      signs of decay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Not at all: they are only the difficulties that overtax your
+      capacity. If you cannot organize Socialism you cannot organize civilized
+      life; and you will relapse into barbarism accordingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Hear, hear!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE. A useful point. We cannot put back the clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. <i>I</i> can. Ive often done it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Tut tut! My dear Burge: what are you dreaming of? Mr Barnabas: I am
+      a very patient man. But will you tell me what earthly use or interest
+      there is in a conclusion that cannot be realized? I grant you that if we
+      could live three hundred years we should all be, perhaps wiser, certainly
+      older. You will grant me in return, I hope, that if the sky fell we should
+      all catch larks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Your turn now, Conrad. Go ahead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. I don't think it's any good. I don't think they want to live
+      longer than usual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Although I am a mere child of 69, I am old enough to have lost, the
+      habit of crying for the moon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Have you discovered the elixir of life or have you not? If not, I
+      agree with Lubin that you are wasting our time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Is your time of any value?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE [<i>unable to believe his ears</i>] My time of any value! What do
+      you mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>smiling comfortably</i>] From your high scientific point of
+      view, I daresay, none whatever, Professor. In any case I think a little
+      perfectly idle discussion would do Burge good. After all, we might as well
+      hear about the elixir of life as read novels, or whatever Burge does when
+      he is not playing golf on Walton Heath. What is your elixir, Dr Barnabas?
+      Lemons? Sour milk? Or what is the latest?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE. We were just beginning to talk seriously; and now you snatch at the
+      chance of talking rot. [<i>He rises</i>]. Good evening. [<i>He turns to
+      the door</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>rudely</i>] Die as soon as you like. Good evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>hesitating</i>] Look here. I took sour milk twice a day until
+      Metchnikoff died. He thought it would keep him alive for ever; and he died
+      of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. You might as well have taken sour beer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. You believe in lemons?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. I wouldn't eat a lemon for ten pounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>sitting down again</i>] What do you recommend?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>rising with a gesture of despair</i>] Whats the use of going
+      on, Frank? Because I am a doctor, and because they think I have a bottle
+      to give them that will make them live for ever, they are listening to me
+      for the first time with their mouths open and their eyes shut. Thats their
+      notion of science.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Steady, Nunk! Hold the fort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>growls and sits down</i>]!!!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. You volunteered the consultation, Doctor. I may tell you that, far
+      from sharing the credulity as to science which is now the fashion, I am
+      prepared to demonstrate that during the last fifty years, though the
+      Church has often been wrong, and even the Liberal Party has not been
+      infallible, the men of science have always been wrong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Yes: the fellows you call men of science. The people who make
+      money by it, and their medical hangers-on. But has anybody been right?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. The poets and story tellers, especially the classical poets and
+      story tellers, have been, in the main, right. I will ask you not to repeat
+      this as my opinion outside; for the vote of the medical profession and its
+      worshippers is not to be trifled with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. You are quite right: the poem is our real clue to biological
+      science. The most scientific document we possess at present is, as your
+      grandmother would have told you quite truly, the story of the Garden of
+      Eden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>pricking up his ears</i>] Whats that? If you can establish that,
+      Barnabas, I am prepared to hear you out with my very best attention. I am
+      listening. Go on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Well, you remember, don't you, that in the Garden of Eden Adam
+      and Eve were not created mortal, and that natural death, as we call it,
+      was not a part of life, but a later and quite separate invention?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE. Now you mention it, thats true. Death came afterwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. What about accidental death? That was always possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Precisely. Adam and Eve were hung up between two frightful
+      possibilities. One was the extinction of mankind by their accidental
+      death. The other was the prospect of living for ever. They could bear
+      neither. They decided that they would just take a short turn of a thousand
+      years, and meanwhile hand on their work to a new pair. Consequently, they
+      had to invent natural birth and natural death, which are, after all, only
+      modes of perpetuating life without putting on any single creature the
+      terrible burden of immortality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. I see. The old must make room for the new.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE. Death is nothing but making room. Thats all there is in it or ever
+      has been in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Yes; but the old must not desert their posts until the new are
+      ripe for them. They desert them now two hundred years too soon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. I believe the old people are the new people reincarnated, Nunk. I
+      suspect I am Eve. I am very fond of apples; and they always disagree with
+      me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. You are Eve, in a sense. The Eternal Life persists; only It wears
+      out Its bodies and minds and gets new ones, like new clothes. You are only
+      a new hat and frock on Eve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Yes. Bodies and minds ever better and better fitted to carry out
+      Its eternal pursuit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>with quiet scepticism</i>] What pursuit, may one ask, Mr
+      Barnabas?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. The pursuit of omnipotence and omniscience. Greater power and
+      greater knowledge: these are what we are all pursuing even at the risk of
+      our lives and the sacrifice of our pleasures. Evolution is that pursuit
+      and nothing else. It is the path to godhead. A man differs from a microbe
+      only in being further on the path.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. And how soon do you expect this modest end to be reached?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Never, thank God! As there is no limit to power and knowledge
+      there can be no end. 'The power and the glory, world without end': have
+      those words meant nothing to you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>pulling out an old envelope</i>] I should like to make a note of
+      that. [<i>He does so</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. There will always be something to live for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE [<i>pocketing his envelope and becoming more and more businesslike</i>]
+      Right: I have got that. Now what about sin? What about the Fall? How do
+      you work them in?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. I don't work in the Fall. The Fall is outside Science. But I
+      daresay Frank can work it in for you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE [<i>to Franklyn</i>] I wish you would, you know. It's important.
+      Very important.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Well, consider it this way. It is clear that when Adam and Eve
+      were immortal it was necessary that they should make the earth an
+      extremely comfortable place to live in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. True. If you take a house on a ninety-nine years lease, you spend a
+      good deal of money on it. If you take it for three months you generally
+      have a bill for dilapidations to pay at the end of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Just so. Consequently, when Adam had the Garden of Eden on a
+      lease for ever, he took care to make it what the house agents call a
+      highly desirable country residence. But the moment he invented death, and
+      became a tenant for life only, the place was no longer worth the trouble.
+      It was then that he let the thistles grow. Life was so short that it was
+      no longer worth his while to do anything thoroughly well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Do you think that is enough to constitute what an average elector
+      would consider a Fall? Is it tragic enough?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. That is only the first step of the Fall. Adam did not fall down
+      that step only: he fell down a whole flight. For instance, before he
+      invented birth he dared not have lost his temper; for if he had killed Eve
+      he would have been lonely and barren to all eternity. But when he invented
+      birth, and anyone who was killed could be replaced, he could afford to let
+      himself go. He undoubtedly invented wife-beating; and that was another
+      step down. One of his sons invented meat-eating. The other was horrified
+      at the innovation. With the ferocity which is still characteristic of
+      bulls and other vegetarians, he slew his beefsteak-eating brother, and
+      thus invented murder. That was a very steep step. It was so exciting that
+      all the others began to kill one another for sport, and thus invented war,
+      the steepest step of all. They even took to killing animals as a means of
+      killing time, and then, of course, ate them to save the long and difficult
+      labor of agriculture. I ask you to contemplate our fathers as they came
+      crashing down all the steps of this Jacob's ladder that reached from
+      paradise to a hell on earth in which they had multiplied the chances of
+      death from violence, accident, and disease until they could hardly count
+      on three score and ten years of life, much less the thousand that Adam had
+      been ready to face! With that picture before you, will you now ask me
+      where was the Fall? You might as well stand at the foot of Snowdon and ask
+      me where is the mountain. The very children see it so plainly that they
+      compress its history into a two line epic:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    Old Daddy Long Legs wouldn't say his prayers:
+    Take him by the hind legs and throw him downstairs.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>still immovably sceptical</i>] And what does Science say to this
+      fairy tale, Doctor Barnabas? Surely Science knows nothing of Genesis, or
+      of Adam and Eve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Then it isnt Science: thats all. Science has to account for
+      everything; and everything includes the Bible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. The Book of Genesis is a part of nature like any other part of
+      nature. The fact that the tale of the Garden of Eden has survived and held
+      the imagination of men spellbound for centuries, whilst hundreds of much
+      more plausible and amusing stories have gone out of fashion and perished
+      like last year's popular song, is a scientific fact; and Science is bound
+      to explain it. You tell me that Science knows nothing of it. Then Science
+      is more ignorant than the children at any village school.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Of course if you think it more scientific to say that what we are
+      discussing is not Adam and Eve and Eden, but the phylogeny of the
+      blastoderm&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. You neednt swear, Nunk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Shut up, you: I am not swearing. [<i>To Lubin</i>] If you want the
+      professional humbug of rewriting the Bible in words of four syllables, and
+      pretending it's something new, I can humbug you to your heart's content. I
+      can call Genesis Phylogenesis. Let the Creator say, if you like, 'I will
+      establish an antipathetic symbiosis between thee and the female, and
+      between thy blastoderm and her blastoderm.' Nobody will understand you;
+      and Savvy will think you are swearing. The meaning is the same.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Priceless. But it's quite simple. The one version is poetry: the
+      other is science.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. The one is classroom jargon: the other is inspired human
+      language.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>calmly reminiscent</i>] One of the few modern authors into whom
+      I have occasionally glanced is Rousseau, who was a sort of Deist like
+      Burge&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>interrupting him forcibly</i>] Lubin: has this stupendously
+      important communication which Professor Barnabas has just made to us: a
+      communication for which I shall be indebted to him all my life long: has
+      this, I say, no deeper effect on you than to set you pulling my leg by
+      trying to make out that I am an infidel?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. It's very interesting and amusing, Burge; and I think I see a case
+      in it. I think I could undertake to argue it in an ecclesiastical court.
+      But important is hardly a word I should attach to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Good God! Here is this professor: a man utterly removed from the
+      turmoil of our political life: devoted to pure learning in its most
+      abstract phases; and I solemnly declare he is the greatest politician, the
+      most inspired party leader, in the kingdom. I take off my hat to him. I,
+      Joyce Burge, give him best. And you sit there purring like an Angora cat,
+      and can see nothing in it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>opening his eyes widely</i>] Hallo! What have I done to deserve
+      this tribute?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE. Done! You have put the Liberal Party into power for the next thirty
+      years, Doctor: thats what you've done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. God forbid!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. It's all up with the Church now. Thanks to you, we go to the
+      country with one cry and one only. Back to the Bible! Think of the effect
+      on the Nonconformist vote. You gather that in with one hand; and you
+      gather in the modern scientific sceptical professional vote with the
+      other. The village atheist and the first cornet in the local Salvation
+      Army band meet on the village green and shake hands. You take your school
+      children, your Bible class under the Cowper-Temple clause, into the
+      museum. You shew the kids the Piltdown skull; and you say, 'Thats Adam.
+      Thats Eve's husband.' You take the spectacled science student from the
+      laboratory in Owens College; and when he asks you for a truly scientific
+      history of Evolution, you put into his hand The Pilgrim's Progress. You&mdash;[<i>Savvy
+      and Haslam explode into shrieks of merriment</i>]. What are you two
+      laughing at?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Oh, go on, Mr Burge. Dont stop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Priceless!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Would thirty years of office for the Liberal Party seem so
+      important to you, Mr Burge, if you had another two and a half centuries to
+      live?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>decisively</i>] No. You will have to drop that part of it. The
+      constituencies wont swallow it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>seriously</i>] I am not so sure of that, Burge. I am not sure
+      that it may not prove the only point they will swallow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. It will be no use to us even if they do. It's not a party point.
+      It's as good for the other side as for us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Not necessarily. If we get in first with it, it will be associated
+      in the public mind with our party. Suppose I put it forward as a plank in
+      our program that we advocate the extension of human life to three hundred
+      years! Dunreen, as leader of the opposite party, will be bound to oppose
+      me: to denounce me as a visionary and so forth. By doing so he will place
+      himself in the position of wanting to rob the people of two hundred and
+      thirty years of their natural life. The Unionists will become the party of
+      Premature Death; and we shall become the Longevity party.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>shaken</i>] You really think the electorate would swallow it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. My dear Burge: is there anything the electorate will not swallow if
+      it is judiciously put to them? But we must make sure of our ground. We
+      must have the support of the men of science. Is there serious agreement
+      among them, Doctor, as to the possibility of such an evolution as you have
+      described?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Yes. Ever since the reaction against Darwin set in at the
+      beginning of the present century, all scientific opinion worth counting
+      has been converging rapidly upon Creative Evolution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Poetry has been converging on it: philosophy has been converging
+      on it: religion has been converging on it. It is going to be the religion
+      of the twentieth century: a religion that has its intellectual roots in
+      philosophy and science just as medieval Christianity had its intellectual
+      roots in Aristotle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. But surely any change would be so extremely gradual that&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Dont deceive yourself. It's only the politicians who improve the
+      world so gradually that nobody can see the improvement. The notion that
+      Nature does not proceed by jumps is only one of the budget of plausible
+      lies that we call classical education. Nature always proceeds by jumps.
+      She may spend twenty thousand years making up her mind to jump; but when
+      she makes it up at last, the jump is big enough to take us into a new age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>impressed</i>] Fancy my being leader of the party for the next
+      three hundred years!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. What!!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Perhaps hard on some of the younger men. I think in fairness I
+      shall have to step aside to make room after another century or so: that
+      is, if Mimi can be persuaded to give up Downing Street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. This is too much. Your colossal conceit blinds you to the most
+      obvious necessity of the political situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. You mean my retirement. I really cannot see that it is a necessity.
+      I could not see it when I was almost an old man&mdash;or at least an
+      elderly one. Now that it appears that I am a young man, the case for it
+      breaks down completely. [<i>To Conrad</i>] May I ask are there any
+      alternative theories? Is there a scientific Opposition?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Well, some authorities hold that the human race is a failure, and
+      that a new form of life, better adapted to high civilization, will
+      supersede us as we have superseded the ape and the elephant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. The superman: eh!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. No. Some being quite different from us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Is that altogether desirable?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. I fear so. However that may be, we may be quite sure of one
+      thing. We shall not be let alone. The force behind evolution, call it what
+      you will, is determined to solve the problem of civilization; and if it
+      cannot do it through us, it will produce some more capable agents. Man is
+      not God's last word: God can still create. If you cannot do His work He
+      will produce some being who can.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>with zealous reverence</i>] What do we know about Him, Barnabas?
+      What does anyone know about Him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. We know this about Him with absolute certainty. The power my
+      brother calls God proceeds by the method of Trial and Error; and if we
+      turn out to be one of the errors, we shall go the way of the mastodon and
+      the megatherium and all the other scrapped experiments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>rising and beginning to walk up and down the room with his
+      considering cap on</i>] I admit that I am impressed, gentlemen. I will go
+      so far as to say that your theory is likely to prove more interesting than
+      ever Welsh Disestablishment was. But as a practical politician&mdash;hm!
+      Eh, Burge?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. We are not practical politicians. We are out to get something
+      done. Practical politicians are people who have mastered the art of using
+      parliament to prevent anything being done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. When we get matured statesmen and citizens&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>stopping short</i>] Citizens! Oh! Are the citizens to live three
+      hundred years as well as the statesmen?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Of course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. I confess that had not occurred to me [<i>he sits down abruptly,
+      evidently very unfavorably affected by this new light</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Savvy and Haslam look at one another with unspeakable feelings.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Do you think it would be wise to go quite so far at first? Surely
+      it would be more prudent to begin with the best men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. You need not be anxious about that. It will begin with the best
+      men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. I am glad to hear you say so. You see, we must put this into a
+      practical parliamentary shape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. We shall have to draft a Bill: that is the long and the short of
+      it. Until you have your Bill drafted you don't know what you are really
+      doing: that is my experience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Quite so. My idea is that whilst we should interest the electorate
+      in this as a sort of religious aspiration and personal hope, using it at
+      the same time to remove their prejudices against those of us who are
+      getting on in years, it would be in the last degree upsetting and even
+      dangerous to enable everyone to live longer than usual. Take the mere
+      question of the manufacture of the specific, whatever it may be! There are
+      forty millions of people in the country. Let me assume for the sake of
+      illustration that each person would have to consume, say, five ounces a
+      day of the elixir. That would be&mdash;let me see&mdash;five times three
+      hundred and sixty-five is&mdash;um&mdash;twenty-five&mdash;thirty-two&mdash;eighteen&mdash;eighteen
+      hundred and twenty-five ounces a year: just two ounces over the
+      hundredweight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Two million tons a year, in round numbers, of stuff that everyone
+      would clamor for: that men would trample down women and children in the
+      streets to get at. You couldnt produce it. There would be blue murder.
+      It's out of the question. We must keep the actual secret to ourselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>staring at them</i>] The actual secret! What on earth is the
+      man talking about?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. The stuff. The powder. The bottle. The tabloid. Whatever it is. You
+      said it wasnt lemons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. My good sir: I have no powder, no bottle, no tabloid. I am not a
+      quack: I am a biologist. This is a thing thats going to happen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>completely let down</i>] Going to happen! Oh! Is that all? [<i>He
+      looks at his watch</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Going to happen! What do you mean? Do you mean that you cant make
+      it happen?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. No more than I could have made you happen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. We can put it into men's heads that there is nothing to prevent
+      its happening but their own will to die before their work is done, and
+      their own ignorance of the splendid work there is for them to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Spread that knowledge and that conviction; and as surely as the
+      sun will rise tomorrow, the thing will happen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. We don't know where or when or to whom it will happen. It may
+      happen first to someone in this room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. It wont happen to me: thats jolly sure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. It might happen to anyone. It might happen to the parlor maid. How
+      do we know?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. The parlor maid! Oh, thats nonsense, Nunk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>once more quite comfortable</i>] I think Miss Savvy has
+      delivered the final verdict.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Do you mean to say that you have nothing more practical to offer
+      than the mere wish to live longer? Why, if people could live by merely
+      wishing to, we should all be living for ever already! Everybody would like
+      to live for ever. Why don't they?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Pshaw! Everybody would like to have a million of money. Why havnt
+      they? Because the men who would like to be millionaires wont save sixpence
+      even with the chance of starvation staring them in the face. The men who
+      want to live for ever wont cut off a glass of beer or a pipe of tobacco,
+      though they believe the teetotallers and non-smokers live longer. That
+      sort of liking is not willing. See what they do when they know they must.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Do not mistake mere idle fancies for the tremendous
+      miracle-working force of Will nerved to creation by a conviction of
+      Necessity. I tell you men capable of such willing, and realizing its
+      necessity, will do it reluctantly, under inner compulsion, as all great
+      efforts are made. They will hide what they are doing from themselves: they
+      will take care not to know what they are doing. They will live three
+      hundred years, not because they would like to, but because the soul deep
+      down in them will know that they must, if the world is to be saved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>turning to Franklyn and patting him almost paternally</i>] Well,
+      my dear Barnabas, for the last thirty years the post has brought me at
+      least once a week a plan from some crank or other for the establishment of
+      the millennium. I think you are the maddest of all the cranks; but you are
+      much the most interesting. I am conscious of a very curious mixture of
+      relief and disappointment in finding that your plan is all moonshine, and
+      that you have nothing practical to offer us. But what a pity! It is such a
+      fascinating idea! I think you are too hard on us practical men; but there
+      are men in every Government, even on the Front Bench, who deserve all you
+      say. And now, before dropping the subject, may I put just one question to
+      you? An idle question, since nothing can come of it; but still&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Ask your question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Why do you fix three hundred years as the exact figure?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Because we must fix some figure. Less would not be enough; and
+      more would be more than we dare as yet face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. Pooh! I am quite prepared to face three thousand, not to say three
+      million.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Yes, because you don't believe you Will be called on to make good
+      your word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN [<i>gently</i>] Also, perhaps, because you have never been
+      troubled much by vision of the future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>with intense conviction</i>] The future does not exist for Henry
+      Hopkins Lubin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. If by the future you mean the millennial delusions which you use as
+      a bunch of carrots to lure the uneducated British donkey to the polling
+      booth to vote for you, it certainly does not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SURGE. I can see the future not only because, if I may say so in all
+      humility, I have been gifted with a certain power of spiritual vision, but
+      because I have practised as a solicitor. A solicitor has to advise
+      families. He has to think of the future and know the past. His office is
+      the real modern confessional. Among other things he has to make people's
+      wills for them. He has to shew them how to provide for their daughters
+      after their deaths. Has it occurred to you, Lubin, that if you live three
+      hundred years, your daughters will have to wait a devilish long time for
+      their money?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. The money may not wait for them. Few investments flourish for
+      three hundred years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. And what about before your death? Suppose they didn't get married!
+      Imagine a girl living at home with her mother and on her father for three
+      hundred years! Theyd murder her if she didn't murder them first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN. By the way, Barnabas, is your daughter to keep her good looks all
+      the time?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Will it matter? Can you conceive the most hardened flirt going
+      on flirting for three centuries? At the end of half the time we shall
+      hardly notice whether it is a woman or a man we are speaking to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>not quite relishing this ascetic prospect</i>] Hm! [<i>He rises</i>].
+      Ah, well: you must come and tell my wife and my young people all about it;
+      and you will bring your daughter with you, of course. [<i>He shakes hands
+      with Savvy</i>]. Goodbye. [<i>He shakes hands with Franklyn</i>]. Goodbye,
+      Doctor. [<i>He shakes hands with Conrad</i>]. Come on, Burge: you must
+      really tell me what line you are going to take about the Church at the
+      election?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE. Havnt you heard? Havnt you taken in the revelation that has been
+      vouchsafed to us? The line I am going to take is Back to Methuselah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LUBIN [<i>decisively</i>] Dont be ridiculous, Burge. You don't suppose, do
+      you, that our friends here are in earnest, or that our very pleasant
+      conversation has had anything to do with practical politics! They have
+      just been pulling our legs very wittily. Come along. [<i>He goes out,
+      Franklyn politely going with him, but shaking his head in mute protest</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE [<i>shaking Conrad's hand</i>] It's beyond the old man, Doctor. No
+      spiritual side to him: only a sort of classical side that goes down with
+      his own set. Besides, he's done, gone, past, burnt out, burst up; thinks
+      he is our leader and is only our rag and bottle department. But you may
+      depend on me. I will work this stunt of yours in. I see its value. [<i>He
+      begins moving towards the door with Conrad</i>]. Of course I cant put it
+      exactly in your way; but you are quite right about our needing something
+      fresh; and I believe an election can be fought on the death rate and on
+      Adam and Eve as scientific facts. It will take the Opposition right out of
+      its depth. And if we win there will be an O.M. for somebody when the first
+      honors list comes round [<i>by this time he has talked himself out of the
+      room and out of earshot, Conrad accompanying him</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Savvy and Haslam, left alone, seize each other in an ecstasy of
+      amusement, and jazz to the settee, where they sit down again side by side.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM [<i>caressing her</i>] Darling! what a priceless humbug old Lubin
+      is!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Oh, sweet old thing! I love him. Burge is a flaming fraud if you
+      like.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Did you notice one thing? It struck me as rather curious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. What?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Lubin and your father have both survived the war. But their sons
+      were killed in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY [<i>sobered</i>] Yes. Jim's death killed mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. And they never said a word about it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Well, why should they? The subject didn't come up. <i>I</i> forgot
+      about it too; and I was very fond of Jim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. <i>I</i> didn't forget it, because I'm of military age; and if I
+      hadnt been a parson I'd have had to go out and be killed too. To me the
+      awful thing about their political incompetence was that they had to kill
+      their own sons. It was the war casualty lists and the starvation
+      afterwards that finished me up with politics and the Church and everything
+      else except you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Oh, I was just as bad as any of them. I sold flags in the streets
+      in my best clothes; and&mdash;hsh! [<i>she jumps up and pretends to be
+      looking for a book on the shelves behind the settee</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Franklyn and Conrad return, looking weary and glum.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. Well, thats how the gospel of the brothers Barnabas is going to be
+      received! [<i>He drops into Burge's chair</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN [<i>going back to his seat at the table</i>] It's no use. Were
+      you convinced, Mr Haslam?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. About our being able to live three hundred years? Frankly no.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>to Savvy</i>] Nor you, I suppose?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Oh, I don't know. I thought I was for a moment. I can believe, in a
+      sort of way, that people might live for three hundred years. But when you
+      came down to tin tacks, and said that the parlor maid might, then I saw
+      how absurd it was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. Just so. We had better hold our tongues about it, Con. We should
+      only be laughed at, and lose the little credit we earned on false
+      pretences in the days of our ignorance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. I daresay. But Creative Evolution doesnt stop while people are
+      laughing. Laughing may even lubricate its job.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. What does that mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD. It means that the first man to live three hundred years maynt have
+      the slightest notion that he is going to do it, and may be the loudest
+      laugher of the lot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVVY. Or the first woman?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONRAD [<i>assenting</i>] Or the first woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HASLAM. Well, it wont be one of us, anyhow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANKLYN. How do you know?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>This is unanswerable. None of them have anything more to say.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART3" id="link2H_PART3"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART III&mdash;The Thing Happens
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>A summer afternoon in the year 2170 A.D. The official parlor of the
+      President of the British Islands. A board table, long enough for three
+      chairs at each side besides the presidential chair at the head and an
+      ordinary chair at the foot, occupies the breadth of the room. On the
+      table, opposite every chair, a small switchboard with a dial. There is no
+      fireplace. The end wall is a silvery screen nearly as large as a pair of
+      folding doors. The door is on your left as you face the screen; and there
+      is a row of thick pegs, padded and covered with velvet, beside it. </i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A stoutish middle-aged man, good-looking and breezily genial, dressed in a
+      silk smock, stockings, handsomely ornamented sandals, and a gold fillet
+      round his brows, comes in. He is like Joyce Burge, yet also like Lubin, as
+      if Nature had made a composite photograph of the two men. He takes off the
+      fillet and hangs it on a peg; then sits down in the presidential chair at
+      the head of the table, which is at the end farthest from the door. He puts
+      a peg into his switchboard; turns the pointer on the dial; puts another
+      peg in; and presses a button. Immediately the silvery screen vanishes; and
+      in its place appears, in reverse from right to left, another office
+      similarly furnished, with a thin, unamiable man similarly dressed, but in
+      duller colors, turning over some documents at the table. His gold fillet
+      is hanging up on a similar peg beside the door. He is rather like Conrad
+      Barnabas, but younger, and much more commonplace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Hallo, Barnabas!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS [<i>without looking round</i>] What number?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Five double x three two gamma. Burge-Lubin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Barnabas puts a plug in number five; turns his pointer to double x; and
+      another plug in 32; presses a button and looks round at Burge-Lubin, who
+      is now visible to him as well as audible.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS [<i>curtly</i>] Oh! That you, President?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Yes. They told me you wanted me to ring you up. Anything
+      wrong?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS [<i>harsh and querulous</i>] I wish to make a protest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>good-humored and mocking</i>] What! Another protest! Whats
+      wrong now?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. If you only knew all the protests I havnt made, you would be
+      surprised at my patience. It is you who are always treating me with the
+      grossest want of consideration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. What have I done now?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. You have put me down to go to the Record Office today to receive
+      that American fellow, and do the honors of a ridiculous cinema show. That
+      is not the business of the Accountant General: it is the business of the
+      President. It is an outrageous waste of my time, and an unjustifiable
+      shirking of your duty at my expense. I refuse to go. You must go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. My dear boy, nothing would give me greater pleasure than to
+      take the job off your hands&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Then do it. Thats all I want [<i>he is about to switch off</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Dont switch off. Listen. This American has invented a method
+      of breathing under water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. What do I care? I don't want to breathe under water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. You may, my dear Barnabas, at any time. You know you never
+      look where you are going when you are immersed in your calculations. Some
+      day you will walk into the Serpentine. This man's invention may save your
+      life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS [<i>angrily</i>] Will you tell me what that has to do with your
+      putting your ceremonial duties on to my shoulders? I will not be trifled [<i>he
+      vanishes and is replaced by the blank screen</i>]&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>indignantly holding down his button</i>] Dont cut us off,
+      please: we have not finished. I am the President, speaking to the
+      Accountant General. What are you dreaming of?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A WOMAN'S VOICE. Sorry. [<i>The screen shews Barnabas as before</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Since you take it that way, I will go in your place. It's a
+      pity, because, you see, this American thinks you are the greatest living
+      authority on the duration of human life; and&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS [<i>interrupting</i>] The American thinks! What do you mean? I am
+      the greatest living authority on the duration of human life. Who dares
+      dispute it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Nobody, dear lad, nobody. Dont fly out at me. It is evident
+      that you have not read the American's book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Dont tell me that you have, or that you have read any book
+      except a novel for the last twenty years; for I wont believe you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Quite right, dear old fellow: I havnt read it. But I have
+      read what The Times Literary Supplement says about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. I don't care two straws what it says about it. Does it say
+      anything about me?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Oh, does it? What?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. It points out that an extraordinary number of first-rate
+      persons like you and me have died by drowning during the last two
+      centuries, and that when this invention of breathing under water takes
+      effect, your estimate of the average duration of human life will be upset.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS [<i>alarmed</i>] Upset my estimate! Gracious Heavens! Does the
+      fool realize what that means? Do you realize what that means?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. I suppose it means that we shall have to amend the Act.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Amend my Act! Monstrous!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. But we must. We cant ask people to go on working until they
+      are forty-three unless our figures are unchallengeable. You know what a
+      row there was over those last three years, and how nearly the
+      too-old-at-forty people won.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. They would have made the British Islands bankrupt if theyd won.
+      But you dont care for that; you care for nothing but being popular.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Oh, well: I shouldn't worry if I were you; for most people
+      complain that there is not enough work for them, and would be only too
+      glad to stick on instead of retiring at forty-three, if only they were
+      asked as a favor instead of having to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Thank you: I need no consolation. [<i>He rises determinedly and
+      puts on his fillet</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Are you off? Where are you going to?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. To that cinema tomfoolery, of course. I shall put this American
+      impostor in his place. [<i>He goes out</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>calling after him</i>] God bless you, dear old chap! [<i>With
+      a chuckle, he switches off; and the screen becomes blank. He presses a
+      button and holds it down while he calls</i>] Hallo!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A WOMAN'S VOICE. Hallo!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>formally</i>] The President respectfully solicits the
+      privilege of an interview with the Chief Secretary, and holds himself
+      entirely at his honor's august disposal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A CHINESE VOICE. He is coming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Oh! That you, Confucius? So good of you. Come along [<i>he
+      releases the button</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>A man in a yellow gown, presenting the general appearance of a Chinese
+      sage, enters.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>jocularly</i>] Well, illustrious Sage-&amp;-Onions, how
+      are your poor sore feet?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS [<i>gravely</i>] I thank you for your kind inquiries. I am well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Thats right. Sit down and make yourself comfortable. Any
+      business for me today?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS [<i>sitting down on the first chair round the corner of the
+      table to the President's right</i>] None.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Have you heard the result of the bye-election?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. A walk-over. Only one candidate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Any good?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. He was released from the County Lunatic Asylum a fortnight ago.
+      Not mad enough for the lethal chamber: not sane enough for any place but
+      the division lobby. A very popular speaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. I wish the people would take a serious interest in politics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. I do not agree. The Englishman is not fitted by nature to
+      understand politics. Ever since the public services have been manned by
+      Chinese, the country has been well and honestly governed. What more is
+      needed?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. What I cant make out is that China is one of the worst
+      governed countries on earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. No. It was badly governed twenty years ago; but since we
+      forbade any Chinaman to take part in our public services, and imported
+      natives of Scotland for that purpose, we have done well. Your information
+      here is always twenty years out of date.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. People don't seem to be able to govern themselves. I cant
+      understand it. Why should it be so?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Justice is impartiality. Only strangers are impartial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. It ends in the public services being so good that the
+      Government has nothing to do but think.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Were it otherwise, the Government would have too much to do to
+      think.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Is that any excuse for the English people electing a
+      parliament of lunatics?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. The English people always did elect parliaments of lunatics.
+      What does it matter if your permanent officials are honest and competent?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. You do not know the history of this country. What would my
+      ancestors have said to the menagerie of degenerates that is still called
+      the House of Commons? Confucius: you will not believe me; and I do not
+      blame you for it; but England once saved the liberties of the world by
+      inventing parliamentary government, which was her peculiar and supreme
+      glory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. I know the history of your country perfectly well. It proves
+      the exact contrary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. How do you make that out?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. The only power your parliament ever had was the power of
+      withholding supplies from the king.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Precisely. That great Englishman Simon de Montfort&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. He was not an Englishman: he was a Frenchman. He imported
+      parliaments from France.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>surprised</i>] You dont say so!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. The king and his loyal subjects killed Simon for forcing his
+      French parliament on them. The first thing British parliaments always did
+      was to grant supplies to the king for life with enthusiastic expressions
+      of loyalty, lest they should have any real power, and be expected to do
+      something.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Look here, Confucius: you know more history than I do, of
+      course; but democracy&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. An institution peculiar to China. And it was never really a
+      success there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. But the Habeas Corpus Act!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. The English always suspended it when it threatened to be of the
+      slightest use.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Well, trial by jury: you cant deny that we established that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. All cases that were dangerous to the governing classes were
+      tried in the Star Chamber or by Court Martial, except when the prisoner
+      was not tried at all, but executed after calling him names enough to make
+      him unpopular.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Oh, bother! You may be right in these little details; but in
+      the large we have managed to hold our own as a great race. Well, people
+      who could do nothing couldnt have done that, you know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. I did not say you could do nothing. You could fight. You could
+      eat. You could drink. Until the twentieth century you could produce
+      children. You could play games. You could work when you were forced to.
+      But you could not govern yourselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Then how did we get our reputation as the pioneers of
+      liberty?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. By your steadfast refusal to be governed at all. A horse that
+      kicks everyone who tries to harness and guide him may be a pioneer of
+      liberty; but he is not a pioneer of government. In China he would be shot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Stuff! Do you imply that the administration of which I am
+      president is no Government?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. I do. <i>I</i> am the Government.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. You! You!! You fat yellow lump of conceit!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Only an Englishman could be so ignorant of the nature of
+      government as to suppose that a capable statesman cannot be fat, yellow,
+      and conceited. Many Englishmen are slim, red-nosed, and modest. Put them
+      in my place, and within a year you will be back in the anarchy and chaos
+      of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Oh, if you go back to the dark ages, I have nothing more to
+      say. But we did not perish. We extricated ourselves from that chaos. We
+      are now the best governed country in the world. How did we manage that if
+      we are such fools as you pretend?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. You did not do it until the slaughter and ruin produced by your
+      anarchy forced you at last to recognize two inexorable facts. First, that
+      government is absolutely necessary to civilization, and that you could not
+      maintain civilization by merely doing down your neighbor, as you called
+      it, and cutting off the head of your king whenever he happened to be a
+      logical Scot and tried to take his position seriously. Second, that
+      government is an art of which you are congenitally incapable. Accordingly,
+      you imported educated negresses and Chinese to govern you. Since then you
+      have done very well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. So have you, you old humbug. All the same, I don't know how
+      you stand the work you do. You seem to me positively to like public
+      business. Why wont you let me take you down to the coast some week-end and
+      teach you marine golf?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. It does not interest me. I am not a barbarian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. You mean that I am?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. That is evident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. How?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. People like you. They like cheerful goodnatured barbarians.
+      They have elected you President five times in succession. They will elect
+      you five times more. <i>I</i> like you. You are better company than a dog
+      or a horse because you can speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Am I a barbarian because you like me?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Surely. Nobody likes me: I am held in awe. Capable persons are
+      never liked. I am not likeable; but I am indispensable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Oh, cheer up, old man: theres nothing so disagreeable about
+      you as all that. I don't dislike you; and if you think I'm afraid of you,
+      you jolly well don't know Burge-Lubin: thats all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. You are brave: yes. It is a form of stupidity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. You may not be brave: one doesn't expect it from a Chink. But
+      you have the devil's own cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. I have the assured certainty of the man who sees and knows.
+      Your genial bluster, your cheery self-confidence, are pleasant, like the
+      open air. But they are blind: they are vain. I seem to see a great dog wag
+      his tail and bark joyously. But if he leaves my heel he is lost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Thank you for a handsome compliment. I have a big dog; and he
+      is the best fellow I know. If you knew how much uglier you are than a
+      chow, you wouldn't start those comparisons, though. [<i>Rising</i>] Well,
+      if you have nothing for me to do, I am going to leave your heel for the
+      rest of the day and enjoy myself. What would you recommend me to do with
+      myself?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Give yourself up to contemplation; and great thoughts will come
+      to you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Will they? If you think I am going to sit here on a fine day
+      like this with my legs crossed waiting for great thoughts, you exaggerate
+      my taste for them. I prefer marine golf. [<i>Stopping short</i>] Oh, by
+      the way, I forgot something. I have a word or two to say to the Minister
+      of health. [<i>He goes back to his chair</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Her number is&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. I know it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS [<i>rising</i>] I cannot understand her attraction for you. For
+      me a woman who is not yellow does not exist, save as an official. [<i>He
+      goes out</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Burge-Lubin operates his switchboard as before. The screen vanishes:
+      and a dainty room with a bed, a wardrobe, and a dressing-table with a
+      mirror and a switch on it, appears. Seated at it a handsome negress is
+      trying on a brilliant head scarf. Her dressing-gown is thrown back from
+      her shoulders to her chair. She is in corset, knickers, and silk
+      stockings.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>horrified</i>] I beg your pardon a thousand times&mdash;[<i>The
+      startled negress snatches the peg out of her switchboard and vanishes</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEGRESS'S VOICE. Who is it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Me. The President. Burge-Lubin. I had no idea your bedroom
+      switch was in. I beg your pardon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The negress reappears. She has pulled the dressing-gown perfunctorily
+      over her shoulders, and continues her experiments with the scarf, not at
+      all put out, and rather amused by Surge's prudery.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEGRESS. Stupid of me. I was talking to another lady this morning; and
+      I left the peg in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. But I am so sorry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEGRESS [<i>sunnily: still busy with the scarf</i>] Why? It was my
+      fault.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>embarrassed</i>] Well&mdash;er&mdash;But I suppose you
+      were used to it in Africa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEGRESS. Your delicacy is very touching, Mr President. It would be
+      funny if it were not so unpleasant, because, like all white delicacy, it
+      is in the wrong place. How do you think this suits my complexion?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. How can any really vivid color go wrong with a black satin
+      skin? It is our women's wretched pale faces that have to be matched and
+      lighted. Yours is always right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEGRESS. Yes: it is a pity your white beauties have all the same ashy
+      faces, the same colorless drab, the same age. But look at their beautiful
+      noses and little lips! They are physically insipid: they have no beauty:
+      you cannot love them; but how elegant!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Cant you find an official pretext for coming to see me? Isnt
+      it ridiculous that we have never met? It's so tantalizing to see you and
+      talk to you, and to know all the time that you are two hundred miles away,
+      and that I cant touch you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEGRESS. I cannot live on the East Coast: it is hard enough to keep my
+      blood warm here. Besides, my friend, it would not be safe. These distant
+      flirtations are very charming; and they teach self-control.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Damn self-control! I want to hold you in my arms&mdash;to&mdash;[<i>the
+      negress snatches out the peg from the switchboard and vanishes. She is
+      still heard laughing</i>]. Black devil! [<i>He snatches out his peg
+      furiously: her laugh is no longer heard</i>]. Oh, these sex episodes! Why
+      can I not resist them? Disgraceful!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Confucius returns.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. I forgot. There is something for you to do this morning. You
+      have to go to the Record Office to receive the American barbarian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Confucius: once for all, I object to this Chinese habit of
+      describing white men as barbarians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS [<i>standing formally at the end of the table with his hands
+      palm to palm</i>] I make a mental note that you do not wish the Americans
+      to be described as barbarians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Not at all. The Americans are barbarians. But we are not. I
+      suppose the particular barbarian you are speaking of is the American who
+      has invented a means of breathing under water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. He says he has invented such a method. For some reason which is
+      not intelligible in China, Englishmen always believe any statement made by
+      an American inventor, especially one who has never invented anything.
+      Therefore you believe this person and have given him a public reception.
+      Today the Record Office is entertaining him with a display of the
+      cinematographic records of all the eminent Englishmen who have lost their
+      lives by drowning since the cinema was invented. Why not go to see it if
+      you are at a loss for something to do?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. What earthly interest is there in looking at a moving picture
+      of a lot of people merely because they were drowned? If they had had any
+      sense, they would not have been drowned, probably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. That is not so. It has never been noticed before; but the
+      Record Office has just made two remarkable discoveries about the public
+      men and women who have displayed extraordinary ability during the past
+      century. One is that they retained unusual youthfulness up to an advanced
+      age. The other is that they all met their death by drowning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Yes: I know. Can you explain it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. It cannot be explained. It is not reasonable. Therefore I do
+      not believe it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Accountant General rushes in, looking ghastly. He staggers to the
+      middle of the table.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Whats the matter? Are you ill?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS [<i>choking</i>] No. I&mdash;[<i>he collapses into the middle
+      chair</i>]. I must speak to you in private.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Confucius calmly withdraws.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. What on earth is it? Have some oxygen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. I have had some. Go to the Record Office. You will see men
+      fainting there again and again, and being revived with oxygen, as I have
+      been. They have seen with their own eyes as I have.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Seen what?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Seen the Archbishop of York.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Well, why shouldn't they see the Archbishop of York? What are
+      they fainting for? Has he been murdered?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. No: he has been drowned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Good God! Where? When? How? Poor fellow!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Poor fellow! Poor thief! Poor swindler! Poor robber of his
+      country's Exchequer! Poor fellow indeed! Wait til I catch him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. How can you catch him when he is dead? Youre mad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Dead! Who said he was dead?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. You did. Drowned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS [<i>exasperated</i>] Will you listen to me? Was old Archbishop
+      Haslam, the present man's last predecessor but four, drowned or not?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. I don't know. Look him up in the Encyclopedia Britannica.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Yah! Was Archbishop Stickit, who wrote Stickit on the Psalms,
+      drowned or not?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Yes, mercifully. He deserved it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Was President Dickenson drowned? Was General Bullyboy drowned?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Who is denying it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Well, wave had moving pictures of all four put on the screen
+      today for this American; and they and the Archbishop are the same man. Now
+      tell me I am mad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. I do tell you you are mad. Stark raving mad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Am I to believe my own eyes or am I not?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. You can do as you please. All I can tell you is that <i>I</i>
+      don't believe your eyes if they cant see any difference between a live
+      archbishop and two dead ones. [<i>The apparatus rings, he holds the button
+      down</i>]. Yes?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN'S VOICE. The Archbishop of York, to see the President.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS [<i>hoarse with rage</i>] Have him in. I'll talk to the
+      scoundrel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>releasing the button</i>] Not while you are in this state.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS [<i>reaching furiously for his button and holding it down</i>]
+      Send the Archbishop in at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. If you lose your temper, Barnabas, remember that we shall be
+      two to one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Archbishop enters. He has a white band round his throat, set in a
+      black stock. He wears a sort of kilt of black ribbons, and soft black
+      boots that button high up on his calves. His costume does not differ
+      otherwise from that of the President and the Accountant General; but its
+      color scheme is black and white. He is older than the Reverend Bill Haslam
+      was when he wooed Miss Savvy Barnabas; but he is recognizably the same
+      man. He does not look a day over fifty, and is very well preserved even at
+      that; but his boyishness of manner is quite gone: he now has complete
+      authority and self-possession: in fact the President is a little afraid of
+      him; and it seems quite natural and inevitable that he should speak fast.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Good day, Mr President.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Good day, Mr Archbishop. Be seated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP [<i>sitting down between them</i>] Good day, Mr Accountant
+      General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS [<i>malevolently</i>] Good day to you. I have a question to put
+      to you, if you don't mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP [<i>looking curiously at him, jarred by his uncivil tone</i>]
+      Certainly. What is it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. What is your definition of a thief?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Rather an old-fashioned word, is it not?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. It survives officially in my department.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Our departments are full of survivals. Look at my tie! my
+      apron! my boots! They are all mere survivals; yet it seems that without
+      them I cannot be a proper Archbishop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Indeed! Well, in my department the word thief survives, because
+      in the community the thing thief survives. And a very despicable and
+      dishonorable thing he is, too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP [<i>coolly</i>] I daresay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. In my department, sir, a thief is a person who lives longer than
+      the statutory expectation of life entitles him to, and goes on drawing
+      public money when, if he were an honest man, he would be dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Then let me say, sir, that your department does not
+      understand its own business. If you have miscalculated the duration of
+      human life, that is not the fault of the persons whose longevity you have
+      miscalculated. And if they continue to work and produce, they pay their
+      way, even if they live two or three centuries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. I know nothing about their working and producing. That is not
+      the business of my department. I am concerned with their expectation of
+      life; and I say that no man has any right to go on living and drawing
+      money when he ought to be dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. You do not comprehend the relation between income and
+      production.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. I understand my own department.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. That is not enough. Your department is part of a synthesis
+      which embraces all the departments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Synthesis! This is an intellectual difficulty. This is a job
+      for Confucius. I heard him use that very word the other day; and I
+      wondered what the devil he meant. [<i>Switching on</i>] Hallo! Put me
+      through to the Chief Secretary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS'S VOICE. You are speaking to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. An intellectual difficulty, old man. Something we don't
+      understand. Come and help us out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. May I ask how the question has arisen?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Ah! You begin to smell a rat, do you? You thought yourself
+      pretty safe. You&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Steady, Barnabas. Dont be in a hurry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Confucius enters.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP [<i>rising</i>] Good morning, Mr Chief Secretary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>rising in instinctive imitation of the Archbishop</i>]
+      Honor us by taking a seat, O sage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Ceremony is needless. [<i>He bows to the company, and takes the
+      chair at the foot of the table</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The President and the Archbishop resume their seats.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. We wish to put a case to you, Confucius. Suppose a man,
+      instead of conforming to the official estimate of his expectation of life,
+      were to live for more than two centuries and a half, would the Accountant
+      General be justified in calling him a thief?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. No. He would be justified in calling him a liar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. I think not, Mr Chief Secretary. What do you suppose my
+      age is?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Fifty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. You don't look it. Forty-five; and young for your age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. My age is two hundred and eighty-three.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS [<i>morosely triumphant</i>] Hmp! Mad, am I?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Youre both mad. Excuse me, Archbishop; but this is getting a
+      bit&mdash;well&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP [<i>to Confucius</i>] Mr Chief Secretary: will you, to
+      oblige me, assume that I have lived nearly three centuries? As a
+      hypothesis?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. What is a hypothesis?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. It does not matter. I understand. [To <i>the Archbishop</i>] Am
+      I to assume that you have lived in your ancestors, or by metempsychosis&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Met&mdash;Emp&mdash;Sy&mdash;Good Lord! What a brain,
+      Confucius! What a brain!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Nothing of that kind. Assume in the ordinary sense that I
+      was born in the year 1887, and that I have worked continuously in one
+      profession or another since the year 1910. Am I a thief?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. I do not know. Was that one of your professions?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. No. I have been nothing worse than an Archbishop, a
+      President, and a General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Has he or has he not robbed the Exchequer by drawing five or six
+      incomes when he was only entitled to one? Answer me that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Certainly not. The hypothesis is that he has worked
+      continuously since 1910. We are now in the year 2170. What is the official
+      lifetime?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Seventy-eight. Of course it's an average; and we don't mind a
+      man here and there going on to ninety, or even, as a curiosity, becoming a
+      centenarian. But I say that a man who goes beyond that is a swindler.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Seventy-eight into two hundred and eighty-three goes more than
+      three and a half times. Your department owes the Archbishop two and a half
+      educations and three and a half retiring pensions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Stuff! How can that be?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. At what age do your people begin to work for the community?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Three. They do certain things every day when they are three.
+      Just to break them in, you know. But they become self-supporting, or
+      nearly so, at thirteen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. And at what age do they retire?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Forty-three.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. That is, they do thirty years' work; and they receive
+      maintenance and education, without working, for thirteen years of
+      childhood and thirty-five years of superannuation, forty-eight years in
+      all, for each thirty years' work. The Archbishop has given you 260 years'
+      work, and has received only one education and no superannuation. You
+      therefore owe him over 300 years of leisure and nearly eight educations.
+      You are thus heavily in his debt. In other words, he has effected an
+      enormous national economy by living so long; and you, by living only
+      seventy-eight years, are profiting at his expense. He is the benefactor:
+      you are the thief. [<i>Half rising</i>] May I now withdraw and return to
+      my serious business, as my own span is comparatively short?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Dont be in a hurry, old chap. [<i>Confucius sits down again</i>].
+      This hypothecary, or whatever you call it, is put up seriously. I don't
+      believe it; but if the Archbishop and the Accountant General are going to
+      insist that it's true, we shall have either to lock them up or to see the
+      thing through.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. It's no use trying these Chinese subtleties on me. I'm a plain
+      man; and though I don't understand metaphysics, and don't believe in them,
+      I understand figures; and if the Archbishop is only entitled to
+      seventy-eight years, and he takes 283, I say he takes more than he is
+      entitled to. Get over that if you can.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. I have not taken 283 years: I have taken 23 and given 260.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Do your accounts shew a deficiency or a surplus?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. A surplus. Thats what I cant make out. Thats the artfulness of
+      these people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. That settles it. Whats the use of arguing? The Chink says you
+      are wrong; and theres an end of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. I say nothing against the Chink's arguments. But what about my
+      facts?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. If your facts include a case of a man living 283 years, I
+      advise you to take a few weeks at the seaside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Let there be an end of this hinting that I am out of my mind.
+      Come and look at the cinema record. I tell you this man is Archbishop
+      Haslam, Archbishop Stickit, President Dickenson, General Bullyboy and
+      himself into the bargain; all five of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. I do not deny it. I never have denied it. Nobody has ever
+      asked me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. But damn it, man&mdash;I beg your pardon, Archbishop; but
+      really, really&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Dont mention it. What were you going to say?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Well, you were drowned four times over. You are not a cat,
+      you know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. That is very easy to understand. Consider my situation
+      when I first made the amazing discovery that I was destined to live three
+      hundred years! I&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS [<i>interrupting him</i>] Pardon me. Such a discovery was
+      impossible. You have not made it yet. You may live a million years if you
+      have already lived two hundred. There is no question of three hundred
+      years. You have made a slip at the very beginning of your fairy tale, Mr
+      Archbishop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Good, Confucius! [<i>To the Archbishop</i>] He has you there.
+      I don't see how you can get over that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Yes: it is quite a good point. But if the Accountant
+      General will go to the British Museum library, and search the catalogue,
+      he will find under his own name a curious and now forgotten book, dated
+      1924, entitled The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas. That gospel was that
+      men must live three hundred years if civilization is to be saved. It
+      shewed that this extension of individual human life was possible, and how
+      it was likely to come about. I married the daughter of one of the
+      brothers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Do you mean to say you claim to be a connection of mine?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. I claim nothing. As I have by this time perhaps three or
+      four million cousins of one degree or another, I have ceased to call on
+      the family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Gracious heavens! Four million relatives! Is that calculation
+      correct, Confucius?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. In China it might be forty millions if there were no checks on
+      population.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. This is a staggerer. It brings home to one&mdash;but [<i>recovering</i>]
+      it isnt true, you know. Let us keep sane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS [<i>to the Archbishop</i>] You wish us to understand that the
+      illustrious ancestors of the Accountant General communicated to you a
+      secret by which you could attain the age of three hundred years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. No. Nothing of the kind. They simply believed that mankind
+      could live any length of time it knew to be absolutely necessary to save
+      civilization from extinction. I did not share their belief: at least I was
+      not conscious of sharing it: I thought I was only amused by it. To me my
+      father-in-law and his brother were a pair of clever cranks who had talked
+      one another into a fixed idea which had become a monomania with them. It
+      was not until I got into serious difficulties with the pension authorities
+      after turning seventy that I began to suspect the truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. The truth?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Yes, Mr Chief Secretary: the truth. Like all revolutionary
+      truths, it began as a joke. As I shewed no signs of ageing after
+      forty-five, my wife used to make fun of me by saying that I was certainly
+      going to live three hundred years. She was sixty-eight when she died; and
+      the last thing she said to me, as I sat by her bedside holding her hand,
+      was 'Bill: you really don't look fifty. I wonder&mdash;' She broke off,
+      and fell asleep wondering, and never awoke. Then I began to wonder too.
+      That is the explanation of the three hundred years, Mr Secretary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. It is very ingenious, Mr Archbishop. And very well told.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Of course you understand that <i>I</i> don't for a moment
+      suggest the very faintest doubt of your absolute veracity, Archbishop. You
+      know that, don't you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Quite, Mr President. Only you don't believe me: that is
+      all. I do not expect you to. In your place I should not believe. You had
+      better have a look at the films. [<i>Pointing to the Accountant General</i>]
+      He believes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. But the drowning? What about the drowning? A man might get
+      drowned once, or even twice if he was exceptionally careless. But he
+      couldn't be drowned four times. He would run away from water like a mad
+      dog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Perhaps Mr Chief Secretary can guess the explanation of
+      that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. To keep your secret, you had to die.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. But dash it all, man, he isn't dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. It is socially impossible not to do what everybody else does.
+      One must die at the usual time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Of course. A simple point of honour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Not at all. A simple necessity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Well, I'm hanged if I see it. I should jolly well live for
+      ever if I could.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. It is not so easy as you think. You, Mr Chief Secretary,
+      have grasped the difficulties of the position. Let me remind you, Mr
+      President, that I was over eighty before the 1969 Act for the
+      Redistribution of Income entitled me to a handsome retiring pension. Owing
+      to my youthful appearance I was prosecuted for attempting to obtain public
+      money on false pretences when I claimed it. I could prove nothing; for the
+      register of my birth had been blown to pieces by a bomb dropped on a
+      village church years before in the first of the big modern wars. I was
+      ordered back to work as a man of forty, and had to work for fifteen years
+      more, the retiring age being then fifty-five.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. As late as fifty-five! How did people stand it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. They made difficulties about letting me go even then, I
+      still looked so young. For some years I was in continual trouble. The
+      industrial police rounded me up again and again, refusing to believe that
+      I was over age. They began to call me The Wandering Jew. You see how
+      impossible my position was. I foresaw that in twenty years more my
+      official record would prove me to be seventy-five; my appearance would
+      make it impossible to believe that I was more than forty-five; and my real
+      age would be one hundred and seventeen. What was I to do? Bleach my hair?
+      Hobble about on two sticks? Mimic the voice of a centenarian? Better have
+      killed myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. You ought to have killed yourself. As an honest man you were
+      entitled to no more than an honest man's expectation of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. I did kill myself. It was quite easy. I left a suit of
+      clothes by the seashore during the bathing season, with documents in the
+      pockets to identify me. I then turned up in a strange place, pretending
+      that I had lost my memory, and did not know my name or my age or anything
+      about myself. Under treatment I recovered my health, but not my memory. I
+      have had several careers since I began this routine of life and death. I
+      have been an archbishop three times. When I persuaded the authorities to
+      knock down all our towns and rebuild them from the foundations, or move
+      them, I went into the artillery, and became a general. I have been
+      President.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Dickenson?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. But they found Dickenson's body: its ashes are buried in St
+      Paul's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. They almost always found the body. During the bathing
+      season there are plenty of bodies. I have been cremated again and again.
+      At first I used to attend my own funeral in disguise, because I had read
+      about a man doing that in an old romance by an author named Bennett, from
+      whom I remember borrowing five pounds in 1912. But I got tired of that. I
+      would not cross the street now to read my latest epitaph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Chief Secretary and the President look very glum. Their incredulity
+      is vanquished at last.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Look here. Do you chaps realize how awful this is? Here we
+      are sitting calmly in the presence of a man whose death is overdue by two
+      centuries. He may crumble into dust before our eyes at any moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Not he. He'll go on drawing his pension until the end of the
+      world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Not quite that. My expectation of life is only three
+      hundred years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. You will last out my time anyhow: that's enough for me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP [<i>coolly</i>] How do you know?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS [<i>taken aback</i>] How do I know!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Yes: how do you know? I did not begin even to suspect
+      until I was nearly seventy. I was only vain of my youthful appearance. I
+      was not quite serious about it until I was ninety. Even now I am not sure
+      from one moment to another, though I have given you my reason for thinking
+      that I have quite unintentionally committed myself to a lifetime of three
+      hundred years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. But how do you do it? Is it lemons? Is it Soya beans? Is it&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. I do not do it. It happens. It may happen to anyone. It
+      may happen to you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>the full significance of this for himself dawning on him</i>]
+      Then we three may be in the same boat with you, for all we know?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. You may. Therefore I advise you to be very careful how you
+      take any step that will make my position uncomfortable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Well, I'm dashed! One of my secretaries was remarking only
+      this morning how well and young I am looking. Barnabas: I have an absolute
+      conviction that I am one of the&mdash;the&mdash;shall I say one of the
+      victims?&mdash;of this strange destiny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Your great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather
+      formed the same conviction when he was between sixty and seventy. I knew
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>depressed</i>] Ah! But he died.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. No.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>hopefully</i>] Do you mean to say he is still alive?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. No. He was shot. Under the influence of his belief that he
+      was going to live three hundred years he became a changed man. He began to
+      tell people the truth; and they disliked it so much that they took
+      advantage of certain clauses of an Act of Parliament he had himself passed
+      during the Four Years War, and had purposely forgotten to repeal
+      afterwards. They took him to the Tower of London and shot him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The apparatus rings.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS [<i>answering</i>] Yes? [<i>He listens</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A WOMAN'S VOICE. The Domestic Minister has called.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>not quite catching the answer</i>] Who does she say has
+      called?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. The Domestic Minister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Oh, dash it! That awful woman!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. She certainly is a bit of a terror. I don't exactly know why;
+      for she is not at all bad-looking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS [<i>out of patience</i>] For Heaven's sake, don't be frivolous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. He cannot help it, Mr Accountant General. Three of his
+      sixteen great-great-great-grandfathers married Lubins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Tut tut! I am not frivolling. <i>I</i> did not ask the lady
+      here. Which of you did?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. It is her official duty to report personally to the President
+      once a quarter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Oh, that. Then I suppose it's my official duty to receive
+      her. Theyd better send her in. You don't mind, do you? She will bring us
+      back to real life. I don't know how you fellows feel; but I'm just going
+      dotty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS [<i>into the telephone</i>] The President will receive the
+      Domestic Minister at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>They watch the door in silence for the entrance of the Domestic
+      Minister.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>suddenly, to the Archbishop</i>] I suppose you have been
+      married over and over again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Once. You do not make vows until death when death is three
+      hundred years off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>They relapse into uneasy silence. The Domestic Minister enters. She is
+      a handsome woman, apparently in the prime of life, with elegant, tense,
+      well held-up figure, and the walk of a goddess. Her expression and
+      deportment are grave, swift, decisive, awful, unanswerable. She wears a
+      Dianesque tunic instead of a blouse, and a silver coronet instead of a
+      gold fillet. Her dress otherwise is not markedly different from that of
+      the men, who rise as she enters, and incline their heads with instinctive
+      awe. She comes to the vacant chair between Barnabas and Confucius.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>resolutely genial and gallant</i>] Delighted to see you,
+      Mrs Lutestring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. We are honored by your celestial presence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Good day, madam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. I have not had the pleasure of meeting you before. I am
+      the Archbishop of York.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. Surely we have met, Mr Archbishop. I remember your face.
+      We&mdash;[<i>she checks herself suddenly</i>] Ah, no: I remember now: it
+      was someone else. [<i>She sits down</i>]. They all sit down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP [<i>also puzzled</i>] Are you sure you are mistaken? I also
+      have some association with your face, Mrs Lutestring. Something like a
+      door opening continually and revealing you. And a smile of welcome when
+      you recognized me. Did you ever open a door for me, I wonder?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. I often opened a door for the person you have just
+      reminded me of. But he has been dead many years. The rest, except the
+      Archbishop, look at one another quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. May I ask how many years?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING [<i>struck by his tone, looks at him for a moment with some
+      displeasure; then replies</i>] It does not matter. A long time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. You mustnt rush to conclusions about the Archbishop, Mrs
+      Lutestring. He is an older bird than you think. Older than you, at all
+      events.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING [<i>with a melancholy smile</i>] I think not, Mr President.
+      But the subject is a delicate one. I had rather not pursue it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. There is a question which has not been asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING [<i>very decisively</i>] If it is a question about my age,
+      Mr Chief Secretary, it had better not be asked. All that concerns you
+      about my personal affairs can be found in the books of the Accountant
+      General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. The question I was thinking of will not be addressed to you.
+      But let me say that your sensitiveness on the point is very strange,
+      coming from a woman so superior to all common weaknesses as we know you to
+      be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. I may have reasons which have nothing to do with common
+      weaknesses, Mr Chief Secretary. I hope you will respect them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS [<i>after bowing to her in assent</i>] I will now put my
+      question. Have you, Mr Archbishop, any ground for assuming, as you seem to
+      do, that what has happened to you has not happened to other people as
+      well?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Yes, by George! I never thought of that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. I have never met any case but my own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. How do you know?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Well, no one has ever told me that they were in this
+      extraordinary position.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. That proves nothing. Did you ever tell anybody that you were in
+      it? You never told us. Why did you never tell us?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. I am surprised at the question, coming from so astute a
+      mind as yours, Mr Secretary. When you reach the age I reached before I
+      discovered what was happening to me, I was old enough to know and fear the
+      ferocious hatred with which human animals, like all other animals, turn
+      upon any unhappy individual who has the misfortune to be unlike themselves
+      in every respect: to be unnatural, as they call it. You will still find,
+      among the tales of that twentieth-century classic, Wells, a story of a
+      race of men who grew twice as big as their fellows, and another story of a
+      man who fell into the hands of a race of blind men. The big people had to
+      fight the little people for their lives; and the man with eyes would have
+      had his eyes put out by the blind had he not fled to the desert, where he
+      perished miserably. Wells's teaching, on that and other matters, was not
+      lost on me. By the way, he lent me five pounds once which I never repaid;
+      and it still troubles my conscience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. And were you the only reader of Wells? If there were others
+      like you, had they not the same reason for keeping the secret?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. That is true. But I should know. You short-lived people
+      are so childish. If I met a man of my own age I should recognize him at
+      once. I have never done so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. Would you recognize a woman of your age, do you think?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. I&mdash;[<i>He stops and turns upon her with a searching
+      look, startled by the suggestion and the suspicion it rouses</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. What is your age, Mr Archbishop?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Two hundred and eighty-three, he says. That is his little
+      joke. Do you know, Mrs Lutestring, he had almost talked us into believing
+      him when you came in and cleared the air with your robust common sense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. Do you really feel that, Mr President? I hear the note of
+      breezy assertion in your voice. I miss the note of conviction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>jumping up</i>] Look here. Let us stop talking damned
+      nonsense. I don't wish to be disagreeable; but it's getting on my nerves.
+      The best joke won't bear being pushed beyond a certain point. That point
+      has been reached. I&mdash;I'm rather busy this morning. We all have our
+      hands pretty full. Confucius here will tell you that I have a heavy day
+      before me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Have you anything more important than this thing, if it's true?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Oh, if if, if it's true! But it isn't true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Have you anything at all to do?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Anything to do! Have you forgotten, Barnabas, that I happen
+      to be President, and that the weight of the entire public business of this
+      country is on my shoulders?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Has he anything to do, Confucius?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. He has to be President.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. That means that he has nothing to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>sulkily</i>] Very well, Barnabas. Go on making a fool of
+      yourself. [<i>He sits down</i>]. Go on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. I am not going to leave this room until we get to the bottom of
+      this swindle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING [<i>turning with deadly gravity on the Accountant General</i>]
+      This what, did you say?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. These expressions cannot be sustained. You obscure the
+      discussion in using them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS [<i>glad to escape from her gaze by addressing Confucius</i>]
+      Well, this unnatural horror. Will that satisfy you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. That is in order. But we do not commit ourselves to the
+      implications of the word horror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. By the word horror the Accountant General means only
+      something unusual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. I notice that the honorable Domestic Minister, on learning the
+      advanced age of the venerable prelate, shews no sign of surprise or
+      incredulity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. She doesn't take it seriously. Who would? Eh, Mrs Lutestring?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. I take it very seriously indeed, Mr President. I see now
+      that I was not mistaken at first. I have met the Archbishop before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. I felt sure of it. This vision of a door opening to me,
+      and a woman's face welcoming me, must be a reminiscence of something that
+      really happened; though I see it now as an angel opening the gate of
+      heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. Or a parlor maid opening the door of the house of the
+      young woman you were in love with?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP [<i>making a wry face</i>] Is that the reality? How these
+      things grow in our imagination! But may I say, Mrs Lutestring, that the
+      transfiguration of a parlor maid to an angel is not more amazing than her
+      transfiguration to the very dignified and able Domestic Minister I am
+      addressing. I recognize the angel in you. Frankly, I do not recognize the
+      parlor maid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Whats a parlor maid?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. An extinct species. A woman in a black dress and white
+      apron, who opened the house door when people knocked or rang, and was
+      either your tyrant or your slave. I was a parlor maid in the house of one
+      of the Accountant General's remote ancestors. [<i>To Confucius</i>] You
+      asked me my age, Mr Chief Secretary, I am two hundred and seventy-four.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>gallantly</i>] You don't look it. You really don't look
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING [<i>turning her face gravely towards him</i>] Look again,
+      Mr President.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>looking at her bravely until the smile fades from his
+      face, and he suddenly covers his eyes with his hands</i>] Yes: you do look
+      it. I am convinced. It's true. Now call up the Lunatic Asylum, Confucius;
+      and tell them to send an ambulance for me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING [<i>to the Archbishop</i>] Why have you given away your
+      secret? our secret?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. They found it out. The cinema records betrayed me. But I
+      never dreamt that there were others. Did you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. I knew one other. She was a cook. She grew tired, and
+      killed herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Dear me! However, her death simplifies the situation, as I
+      have been able to convince these gentlemen that the matter had better go
+      no further.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. What! When the President knows! It will be all over the
+      place before the end of the week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>injured</i>] Really, Mrs Lutestring! You speak as if I
+      were a notoriously indiscreet person. Barnabas: have I such a reputation?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS [<i>resignedly</i>] It cant be helped. It's constitutional.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. It is utterly unconstitutional. But, as you say, it cannot be
+      helped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>solemnly</i>] I deny that a secret of State has ever
+      passed my lips&mdash;except perhaps to the Minister of Health, who is
+      discretion personified. People think, because she is a negress&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. It does not matter much now. Once, it would have mattered
+      a great deal. But my children are all dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Yes: the children must have been a terrible difficulty.
+      Fortunately for me, I had none.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. There was one daughter who was the child of my very heart.
+      Some years after my first drowning I learnt that she had lost her sight. I
+      went to her. She was an old woman of ninety-six, blind. She asked me to
+      sit and talk with her because my voice was like the voice of her dead
+      mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. The complications must be frightful. Really I hardly know
+      whether I do want to live much longer than other people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. You can always kill yourself, as cook did; but that was
+      influenza. Long life is complicated, and even terrible; but it is glorious
+      all the same. I would no more change places with an ordinary woman than
+      with a mayfly that lives only an hour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. What set you thinking of it first?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. Conrad Barnabas's book. Your wife told me it was more
+      wonderful than Napoleon's Book of Fate and Old Moore's Almanac, which cook
+      and I used to read. I was very ignorant: it did not seem so impossible to
+      me as to an educated woman. Yet I forgot all about it, and married and
+      drudged as a poor man's wife, and brought up children, and looked twenty
+      years older than I really was, until one day, long after my husband died
+      and my children were out in the world working for themselves, I noticed
+      that I looked twenty years younger than I really was. The truth came to me
+      in a flash.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. An amazing moment. Your feelings must have been beyond
+      description. What was your first thought?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. Pure terror. I saw that the little money I had laid up
+      would not last, and that I must go out and: work again. They had things
+      called Old Age Pensions then: miserable pittances for worn-out old
+      laborers to die on. I thought I should be found out if I went on drawing
+      it too long. The horror of facing another lifetime of drudgery, of missing
+      my hard-earned rest and losing my poor little savings, drove everything
+      else out of my mind. You people nowadays can have no conception of the
+      dread of poverty that hung over us then, or of the utter tiredness of
+      forty years' unending overwork and striving to make a shilling do the work
+      of a pound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. I wonder you did not kill yourself. I often wonder why the
+      poor in those evil old times did not kill themselves. They did not even
+      kill other people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. You never kill yourself, because you always may as well
+      wait until tomorrow. And you have not energy or conviction enough to kill
+      the others. Besides, how can you blame them when you would do as they do
+      if you were in their place?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Devilish poor consolation, that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. There were other consolations in those days for people
+      like me. We drank preparations of alcohol to relieve the strain of living
+      and give us an artificial happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN {[[<i>all together,</i>]} Alcohol!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS {[<i>making</i>] } Pfff...!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS {[<i>wry faces</i>]] } Disgusting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. A little alcohol would improve your temper and manners,
+      and make you much easier to live with, Mr Accountant General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>laughing</i>] By George, I believe you! Try it, Barnabas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. No. Try tea. It is the more civilized poison of the two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. You, Mr President, were born intoxicated with your own
+      well-fed natural exuberance. You cannot imagine what alcohol was to an
+      underfed poor woman. I had carefully arranged my little savings so that I
+      could get drunk, as we called it, once a week; and my only pleasure was
+      looking forward to that poor little debauch. That is what saved me from
+      suicide. I could not bear to miss my next carouse. But when I stopped
+      working, and lived on my pension, the fatigue of my life's drudgery began
+      to wear off, because, you see, I was not really old. I recuperated. I
+      looked younger and younger. And at last I was rested enough to have
+      courage and strength to begin life again. Besides, political changes were
+      making it easier: life was a little better worth living for the
+      nine-tenths of the people who used to be mere drudges. After that, I never
+      turned back or faltered. My only regret now is that I shall die when I am
+      three hundred or thereabouts. There was only one thing that made life
+      hard; and that is gone now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. May we ask what that was?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. Perhaps you will be offended if I tell you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Offended! My dear lady, do you suppose, after such a
+      stupendous revelation, that anything short of a blow from a sledge-hammer
+      could produce the smallest impression on any of us?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. Well, you see, it has been so hard on me never to meet a
+      grown-up person. You are all such children. And I never was very fond of
+      children, except that one girl who woke up the mother passion in me. I
+      have been very lonely sometimes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>again gallant</i>] But surely, Mrs Lutestring, that has
+      been your own fault. If I may say so, a lady of your attractions need
+      never have been lonely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. Why?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Why! Well&mdash;. Well, er&mdash;. Well, er er&mdash;. Well!
+      [<i>he gives it up</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. He means that you might have married. Curious, how little
+      they understand our position.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. I did marry. I married again on my hundred and first
+      birthday. But of course I had to marry an elderly man: a man over sixty.
+      He was a great painter. On his deathbed he said to me 'It has taken me
+      fifty years to learn my trade, and to paint all the foolish pictures a man
+      must paint and get rid of before he comes through them to the great things
+      he ought to paint. And now that my foot is at last on the threshold of the
+      temple I find that it is also the threshold of my tomb.' That man would
+      have been the greatest painter of all time if he could have lived as long
+      as I. I saw him die of old age whilst he was still, as he said himself, a
+      gentleman amateur, like all modern painters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. But why had you to marry an elderly man? Why not marry a
+      young one? or shall I say a middle-aged one? If my own affections were not
+      already engaged; and if, to tell the truth, I were not a little afraid of
+      you&mdash;for you are a very superior woman, as we all acknowledge&mdash;I
+      should esteem myself happy in&mdash;er&mdash;er&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. Mr President: have you ever tried to take advantage of the
+      innocence of a little child for the gratification of your senses?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Good Heavens, madam, what do you take me for? What right have
+      you to ask me such a question?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. I am at present in my two hundred and seventy-fifth year.
+      You suggest that I should take advantage of the innocence of a child of
+      thirty, and marry it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Can you shortlived people not understand that as the
+      confusion and immaturity and primitive animalism in which we live for the
+      first hundred years of our life is worse in this matter of sex than in any
+      other, you are intolerable to us in that relation?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Do you mean to say, Mrs Lutestring, that you regard me as a
+      child?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. Do you expect me to regard you as a completed soul? Oh,
+      you may well be afraid of me. There are moments when your levity, your
+      ingratitude, your shallow jollity, make my gorge rise so against you that
+      if I could not remind myself that you are a child I should be tempted to
+      doubt your right to live at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Do you grudge us the few years we have? you who have three
+      hundred!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. You accuse me of levity! Must I remind you, madam, that I am
+      the President, and that you are only the head of a department?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Ingratitude too! You draw a pension for three hundred years when
+      we owe you only seventy-eight; and you call us ungrateful!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. I do. When I think of the blessings that have been
+      showered on you, and contrast them with the poverty! the humiliations! the
+      anxieties! the heartbreak! the insolence and tyranny that were the daily
+      lot of mankind when I was learning to suffer instead of learning to live!
+      when I see how lightly you take it all! how you quarrel over the crumpled
+      leaves in your beds of roses! how you are so dainty about your work that
+      unless it is made either interesting or delightful to you you leave it to
+      negresses and Chinamen, I ask myself whether even three hundred years of
+      thought and experience can save you from being superseded by the Power
+      that created you and put you on your trial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. My dear lady: our Chinese and colored friends are perfectly
+      happy. They are twenty times better off here than they would be in China
+      or Liberia. They do their work admirably; and in doing it they set us free
+      for higher employments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP [<i>who has caught the infection of her indignation</i>]
+      What higher employments are you capable of? you that are superannuated at
+      seventy and dead at eighty!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. You are not really doing higher work. You are supposed to
+      make the decisions and give the orders; but the negresses and the Chinese
+      make up your minds for you and tell you what orders to give, just as my
+      brother, who was a sergeant in the Guards, used to prompt his officers in
+      the old days. When I want to get anything done at the Health Ministry I do
+      not come to you: I go to the black lady who has been the real president
+      during your present term of office, or to Confucius, who goes on for ever
+      while presidents come and presidents go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. This is outrageous. This is treason to the white race. And
+      let me tell you, madam, that I have never in my life met the Minister of
+      Health, and that I protest against the vulgar color prejudice which
+      disparages her great ability and her eminent services to the State. My
+      relations with her are purely telephonic, gramophonic, photophonic, and,
+      may I add, platonic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. There is no reason why you should be ashamed of them in
+      any case, Mr President. But let us look at the position impersonally. Can
+      you deny that what is happening is that the English people have become a
+      Joint Stock Company admitting Asiatics and Africans as shareholders?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Nothing like it. I know all about the old joint stock companies.
+      The shareholders did no work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. That is true; but we, like them, get our dividends whether
+      we work or not. We work partly because we know there would be no dividends
+      if we did not, and partly because if we refuse we are regarded as mentally
+      deficient and put into a lethal chamber. But what do we work at? Before
+      the few changes we were forced to make by the revolutions that followed
+      the Four Years War, our governing classes had been so rich, as it was
+      called, that they had become the most intellectually lazy and fat-headed
+      people on the face of the earth. There is a good deal of that fat still
+      clinging to us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. As President, I must not listen to unpatriotic criticisms of
+      our national character, Mr Archbishop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. As Archbishop, Mr President, it is my official duty to
+      criticize the national character unsparingly. At the canonization of Saint
+      Henrik Ibsen, you yourself unveiled the monument to him which bears on its
+      pedestal the noble inscription, 'I came not to call sinners, but the
+      righteous, to repentance.' The proof of what I say is that our routine
+      work, and what may be called our ornamental and figure-head work, is being
+      more and more sought after by the English; whilst the thinking,
+      organizing, calculating, directing work is done by yellow brains, brown
+      brains, and black brains, just as it was done in my early days by Jewish
+      brains, Scottish brains, Italian brains, German brains. The only white men
+      who still do serious work are those who, like the Accountant General, have
+      no capacity for enjoyment, and no social gifts to make them welcome
+      outside their offices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Confound your impudence! I had gifts enough to find you out,
+      anyhow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP [<i>disregarding this outburst</i>] If you were to kill me
+      as I stand here, you would have to appoint an Indian to succeed me. I take
+      precedence today not as an Englishman, but as a man with more than a
+      century and a half of fully adult experience. We are letting all the power
+      slip into the hands of the colored people. In another hundred years we
+      shall be simply their household pets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>reacting buoyantly</i>] Not the least danger of it. I
+      grant you we leave the most troublesome part of the labor of the nation to
+      them. And a good job too: why should we drudge at it? But think of the
+      activities of our leisure! Is there a jollier place on earth to live in
+      than England out of office hours? And to whom do we owe that? To
+      ourselves, not to the niggers. The nigger and the Chink are all right from
+      Tuesday to Friday; but from Friday to Tuesday they are simply nowhere; and
+      the real life of England is from Friday to Tuesday.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. That is terribly true. In devising brainless amusements;
+      in pursuing them with enormous vigor, and taking them with eager
+      seriousness, our English people are the wonder of the world. They always
+      were. And it is just as well; for otherwise their sensuality would become
+      morbid and destroy them. What appals me is that their amusements should
+      amuse them. They are the amusements of boys and girls. They are pardonable
+      up to the age of fifty or sixty: after that they are ridiculous. I tell
+      you, what is wrong with us is that we are a non-adult race; and the Irish
+      and the Scots, and the niggers and Chinks, as you call them, though their
+      lifetime is as short as ours, or shorter, yet do somehow contrive to grow
+      up a little before they die. We die in boyhood: the maturity that should
+      make us the greatest of all the nations lies beyond the grave for us.
+      Either we shall go under as greybeards with golf clubs in our hands, or we
+      must will to live longer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. Yes: that is it. I could not have expressed it in words;
+      but you have expressed it for me. I felt, even when I was an ignorant
+      domestic slave, that we had the possibility of becoming a great nation
+      within us; but our faults and follies drove me to cynical hopelessness. We
+      all ended then like that. It is the highest creatures who take the longest
+      to mature, and are the most helpless during their immaturity. I know now
+      that it took me a whole century to grow up. I began my serious life when I
+      was a hundred and twenty. Asiatics cannot control me: I am not a child in
+      their hands, as you are, Mr President. Neither, I am sure, is the
+      Archbishop. They respect me. You are not grown up enough even for that,
+      though you were kind enough to say that I frighten you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Honestly, you do. And will you think me very rude if I say
+      that if I must choose between a white woman old enough to be my
+      great-grandmother and a black woman of my own age, I shall probably find
+      the black woman more sympathetic?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. And more attractive in color, perhaps?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Yes. Since you ask me, more&mdash;well, not more attractive:
+      I do not deny that you have an excellent appearance&mdash;but I will say,
+      richer. More Venetian. Tropical. 'The shadowed livery of the burnished
+      sun.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. Our women, and their favorite story writers, begin already
+      to talk about men with golden complexions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS [<i>expanding into a smile all across both face and body</i>]
+      A-a-a-a-a-h!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Well, what of it, madam? Have you read a very interesting
+      book by the librarian of the Biological Society suggesting that the future
+      of the world lies with the Mulatto?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING [<i>rising</i>] Mr Archbishop: if the white race is to be
+      saved, our destiny is apparent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. Yes: our duty is pretty clear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. Have you time to come home with me and discuss the matter?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP [<i>rising</i>] With pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS [<i>rising also and rushing past Mrs Lutestring to the door,
+      where he turns to bar her way</i>] No you don't. Burge: you understand,
+      don't you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. No. What is it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. These two are going to marry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Why shouldn't they, if they want to?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. They don't want to. They will do it in cold blood because their
+      children will live three hundred years. It mustnt be allowed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. You cannot prevent it. There is no law that gives you power to
+      interfere with them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. If they force me to it I will obtain legislation against
+      marriages above the age of seventy-eight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. There is not time for that before we are married, Mr
+      Accountant General. Be good enough to get out of the lady's way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. There is time to send the lady to the lethal chamber before
+      anything comes of your marriage. Dont forget that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MRS LUTESTRING. What nonsense, Mr Accountant General! Good afternoon, Mr
+      President. Good afternoon, Mr Chief Secretary. [<i>They rise and
+      acknowledge her salutation with bows. She walks straight at the Accountant
+      General, who instinctively shrinks out of her way as she leaves the room</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ARCHBISHOP. I am surprised at you, Mr Barnabas. Your tone was like an
+      echo from the Dark Ages. [<i>He follows the Domestic Minister</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Confucius, shaking his head and clucking with his tongue in deprecation
+      of this painful episode, moves to the chair just vacated by the Archbishop
+      and stands behind it with folded palms, looking at the President. The
+      Accountant General shakes his fist after the departed visitors, and bursts
+      into savage abuse of them.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Thieves! Cursed thieves! Vampires! What are you going to do,
+      Burge?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Do?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Yes, do. There must be dozens of these people in existence. Are
+      you going to let them do what the two who have just left us mean to do,
+      and crowd us off the face of the earth?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>sitting down</i>] Oh, come, Barnabas! What harm are they
+      doing? Arnt you interested in them? Dont you like them?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Like them! I hate them. They are monsters, unnatural monsters.
+      They are poison to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. What possible objection can there be to their living as long
+      as they can? It does not shorten our lives, does it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. If I have to die when I am seventy-eight, I don't see why
+      another man should be privileged to live to be two hundred and
+      seventy-eight. It does shorten my life, relatively. It makes us
+      ridiculous. If they grew to be twelve feet high they would make us all
+      dwarfs. They talked to us as if we were children. There is no love lost
+      between us: their hatred of us came out soon enough. You heard what the
+      woman said, and how the Archbishop backed her up?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. But what can we do to them?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Kill them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Nonsense!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Lock them up. Sterilize them somehow, anyhow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. But what reason could we give?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. What reason can you give for killing a snake? Nature tells you
+      to do it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. My dear Barnabas, you are out of your mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Havnt you said that once too often already this morning?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. I don't believe you will carry a single soul with you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. I understand. I know you. You think you are one of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Mr Accountant General: you may be one of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. How dare you accuse me of such a thing? I am an honest man, not
+      a monster. I won my place in public life by demonstrating that the true
+      expectation of human life is seventy-eight point six. And I will resist
+      any attempt to alter or upset it to the last drop of my blood if need be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Oh, tut tut! Come, come! Pull yourself together. How can you,
+      a descendant of the great Conrad Barnabas, the man who is still remembered
+      by his masterly Biography of a Black Beetle, be so absurd?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. You had better go and write the autobiography of a jackass. I am
+      going to raise the country against this horror, and against you, if you
+      shew the slightest sign of weakness about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS [<i>very impressively</i>] You will regret it if you do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. What is to make me regret it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Every mortal man and woman in the community will begin to count
+      on living for three centuries. Things will happen which you do not
+      foresee: terrible things. The family will dissolve: parents and children
+      will be no longer the old and the young: brothers and sisters will meet as
+      strangers after a hundred years separation: the ties of blood will lose
+      their innocence. The imaginations of men, let loose over the possibilities
+      of three centuries of life, will drive them mad and wreck human society.
+      This discovery must be kept a dead secret. [<i>He sits down</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. And if I refuse to keep the secret?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. I shall have you safe in a lunatic asylum the day after you
+      blab.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. You forget that I can produce the Archbishop to prove my
+      statement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. So can I. Which of us do you think he will support when I
+      explain to him that your object in revealing his age is to get him killed?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS [<i>desperate</i>] Burge: are you going to back up this yellow
+      abomination against me? Are we public men and members of the Government?
+      or are we damned blackguards?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS [<i>unmoved</i>] Have you ever known a public man who was not
+      what vituperative people called a damned blackguard when some
+      inconsiderate person wanted to tell the public more than was good for it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Hold your tongue, you insolent heathen. Burge: I spoke to you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Well, you know, my dear Barnabas, Confucius is a very
+      long-headed chap. I see his point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. Do you? Then let me tell you that, except officially, I will
+      never speak to you again. Do you hear?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>cheerfully</i>] You will. You will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. And don't you ever dare speak to me again. Do you hear? [<i>He
+      turns to the door</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. I will. I will. Goodbye, Barnabas. God bless you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BARNABAS. May you live forever, and be the laughingstock of the whole
+      world! [<i>he dashes out in a fury</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>laughing indulgently</i>] He will keep the secret all
+      right. I know Barnabas. You neednt worry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS [<i>troubled and grave</i>] There are no secrets except the
+      secrets that keep themselves. Consider. There are those films at the
+      Record Office. We have no power to prevent the Master of the Records from
+      publishing this discovery made in his department. We cannot silence the
+      American&mdash;who can silence an American?&mdash;nor the people who were
+      there today to receive him. Fortunately, a film can prove nothing but a
+      resemblance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Thats very true. After all, the whole thing is confounded
+      nonsense, isnt it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS [<i>raising his head to look at him</i>] You have decided not to
+      believe it now that you realize its inconveniences. That is the English
+      method. It may not work in this case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. English be hanged! It's common sense. You know, those two
+      people got us hypnotized: not a doubt of it. They must have been kidding
+      us. They were, werent they?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. You looked into that woman's face; and you believed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Just so. Thats where she had me. I shouldn't have believed
+      her a bit if she'd turned her back to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS [<i>shakes his head slowly and repeatedly</i>]???
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. You really think&mdash;? [<i>he hesitates</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. The Archbishop has always been a puzzle to me. Ever since I
+      learnt to distinguish between one English face and another I have noticed
+      what the woman pointed out: that the English face is not an adult face,
+      just as the English mind is not an adult mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Stow it, John Chinaman. If ever there was a race divinely
+      appointed to take charge of the non-adult races and guide them and train
+      them and keep them out of mischief until they grow up to be capable of
+      adopting our institutions, that race is the English race. It is the only
+      race in the world that has that characteristic. Now!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. That is the fancy of a child nursing a doll. But it is ten
+      times more childish of you to dispute the highest compliment ever paid
+      you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. You call it a compliment to class us as grown-up children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Not grown-up children, children at fifty, sixty, seventy. Your
+      maturity is so late that you never attain to it. You have to be governed
+      by races which are mature at forty. That means that you are potentially
+      the most highly developed race on earth, and would be actually the
+      greatest if you could live long enough to attain to maturity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>grasping the idea at last</i>] By George, Confucius, youre
+      right! I never thought of that. That explains everything. We are just a
+      lot of schoolboys: theres no denying it. Talk to an Englishman about
+      anything serious, and he listens to you curiously for a moment just as he
+      listens to a chap playing classical music. Then he goes back to his marine
+      golf, or motoring, or flying, or women, just like a bit of stretched
+      elastic when you let it go. [<i>Soaring to the height of his theme</i>]
+      Oh, youre quite right. We are only in our infancy. I ought to be in a
+      perambulator, with a nurse shoving me along. It's true: it's absolutely
+      true. But some day we'll grow up; and then, by Jingo, we'll shew em.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. The Archbishop is an adult. When I was a child I was dominated
+      and intimidated by people whom I now know to have been weaker and sillier
+      than I, because there was some mysterious quality in their mere age that
+      overawed me. I confess that, though I have kept up appearances, I have
+      always been afraid of the Archbishop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Between ourselves, Confucius, so have I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. It is this that convinced me. It was this in the woman's face
+      that convinced you. Their new departure in the history of the race is no
+      fraud. It does not even surprise me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Oh, come! Not surprise you! It's your pose never to be
+      surprised at anything; but if you are not surprised at this you are not
+      human.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. I am staggered, just as a man may be staggered by an explosion
+      for which he has himself laid the charge and lighted the fuse. But I am
+      not surprised, because, as a philosopher and a student of evolutionary
+      biology, I have come to regard some such development as this as
+      inevitable. If I had not thus prepared myself to be credulous, no mere
+      evidence of films and well-told tales would have persuaded me to believe.
+      As it is, I do believe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Well, that being settled, what the devil is to happen next?
+      Whats the next move for us?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. We do not make the next move. The next move will be made by the
+      Archbishop and the woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Their marriage?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. More than that. They have made the momentous discovery that
+      they are not alone in the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. You think there are others?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. There must be many others. Each of them believes that he or she
+      is the only one to whom the miracle has happened. But the Archbishop knows
+      better now. He will advertise in terms which only the longlived people
+      will understand. He will bring them together and organize them. They will
+      hasten from all parts of the earth. They will become a great Power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>a little alarmed</i>] I say, will they? I suppose they
+      will. I wonder is Barnabas right after all? Ought we to allow it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Nothing that we can do will stop it. We cannot in our souls
+      really want to stop it: the vital force that has produced this change
+      would paralyse our opposition to it, if we were mad enough to oppose. But
+      we will not oppose. You and I may be of the elect, too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Yes: thats what gets us every time. What the deuce ought we
+      to do? Something must be done about it, you know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Let us sit still, and meditate in silence on the vistas before
+      us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. By George, I believe youre right. Let us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>They sit meditating, the Chinaman naturally, the President with visible
+      effort and intensity. He is positively glaring into the future when the
+      voice of the Negress is heard.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEGRESS. Mr President.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>joyfully</i>] Yes. [<i>Taking up a peg</i>] Are you at
+      home?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEGRESS. No. Omega, zero, x squared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The President rapidly puts the peg in the switchboard; works the dial;
+      and presses the button. The screen becomes transparent; and the Negress,
+      brilliantly dressed, appears on what looks like the bridge of a steam
+      yacht in glorious sea weather. The installation with which she is
+      communicating is beside the binnacle.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS [<i>looking round, and recoiling with a shriek of disgust</i>]
+      Ach! Avaunt! Avaunt! [<i>He rushes from the room</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. What part of the coast is that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEGRESS. Fishguard Bay. Why not run over and join me for the
+      afternoon? I am disposed to be approachable at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. But Fishguard! Two hundred and seventy miles!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEGRESS. There is a lightning express on the Irish Air Service at
+      half-past sixteen. They will drop you by a parachute in the bay. The dip
+      will do you good. I will pick you up and dry you and give you a first-rate
+      time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Delightful. But a little risky, isnt it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEGRESS. Risky! I thought you were afraid of nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. I am not exactly afraid; but&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEGRESS [<i>offended</i>] But you think it is not good enough. Very
+      well [<i>she raises her hand to take the peg out of her switchboard</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>imploringly</i>] No: stop: let me explain: hold the line
+      just one moment. Oh, please.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEGRESS [<i>waiting with her hand poised over the peg</i>] Well?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. The fact is, I have been behaving very recklessly for some
+      time past under the impression that my life would be so short that it was
+      not worth bothering about. But I have just learnt that I may live&mdash;well,
+      much longer than I expected. I am sure your good sense will tell you that
+      this alters the case. I&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEGRESS [<i>with suppressed rage</i>] Oh, quite. Pray don't risk your
+      precious, life on my account. Sorry for troubling you. Goodbye. [<i>She
+      snatches out her peg and vanishes</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>urgently</i>] No: please hold on. I can convince you&mdash;[<i>a
+      loud buzz-uzz-uzz</i>]. Engaged! Who is she calling up now? [<i>Represses
+      the button and calls</i>] The Chief Secretary. Say I want to see him
+      again, just for a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS'S VOICE. Is the woman gone?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Yes, yes: it's all right. Just a moment, if&mdash;[<i>Confucius
+      returns</i>] Confucius: I have some important business at Fishguard. The
+      Irish Air Service can drop me in the bay by parachute. I suppose it's
+      quite safe, isnt it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Nothing is quite safe. The air service is as safe as any other
+      travelling service. The parachute is safe. But the water is not safe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Why? They will give me an unsinkable tunic, wont they?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. You will not sink; but the sea is very cold. You may get
+      rheumatism for life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. For life! That settles it: I wont risk it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. Good. You have at last become prudent: you are no longer what
+      you call a sportsman: you are a sensible coward, almost a grown-up man. I
+      congratulate you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN [<i>resolutely</i>] Coward or no coward, I will not face an
+      eternity of rheumatism for any woman that ever was born. [<i>He rises and
+      goes to the rack for his fillet</i>] I have changed my mind: I am going
+      home. [<i>He cocks the fillet rakishly</i>] Good evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS. So early? If the Minister of Health rings you up, what shall I
+      tell her?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BURGE-LUBIN. Tell her to go to the devil. [<i>He goes out</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONFUCIUS [<i>shaking his head, shocked at the President's impoliteness</i>]
+      No. No, no, no, no, no. Oh, these English! these crude young
+      civilizations! Their manners! Hogs. Hogs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART4" id="link2H_PART4"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART IV&mdash;Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0059" id="link2H_4_0059"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      ACT I
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>Burrin pier on the south shore of Galway Bay in Ireland, a region of
+      stone-capped hills and granite fields. It is a fine summer day in the year
+      3000 A.D. On an ancient stone stump, about three feet thick and three feet
+      high, used for securing ships by ropes to the shore, and called a bollard
+      or holdfast, an elderly gentleman sits facing the land with his head bowed
+      and his face in his hands, sobbing. His sunburnt skin contrasts with his
+      white whiskers and eyebrows. He wears a black frock-coat, a white
+      waistcoat, lavender trousers, a brilliant silk cravat with a jewelled pin
+      stuck in it, a tall hat of grey felt, and patent leather boots with white
+      spats. His starched linen cuffs protrude from his coat sleeves; and his
+      collar, also of starched white linen, is Gladstonian. On his right, three
+      or four full sacks, lying side by side on the flags, suggest that the
+      pier, unlike many remote Irish piers, is occasionally useful as well as
+      romantic. On his left, behind him, a flight of stone steps descends out of
+      sight to the sea level. </i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A woman in a silk tunic and sandals, wearing little else except a cap with
+      the number 2 on it in gold, comes up the steps from the sea, and stares in
+      astonishment at the sobbing man. Her age cannot be guessed: her face is
+      firm and chiselled like a young face; but her expression is unyouthful in
+      its severity and determination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. What is the matter?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The elderly gentleman looks up; hastily pulls himself together; takes
+      out a silk handkerchief and dries his tears lightly with a brave attempt
+      to smile through them; and tries to rise gallantly, but sinks back.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. Do you need assistance?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No. Thank you very much. No. Nothing. The heat. [<i>He
+      punctuates with sniffs, and dabs with his handkerchief at his eyes and
+      nose.</i>] Hay fever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. You are a foreigner, are you not?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No. You must not regard me as a foreigner. I am a
+      Briton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. You come from some part of the British Commonwealth?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>amiably pompous</i>] From its capital, madam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. From Baghdad?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Yes. You may not be aware, madam, that these
+      islands were once the centre of the British Commonwealth, during a period
+      now known as The Exile. They were its headquarters a thousand years ago.
+      Few people know this interesting circumstance now; but I assure you it is
+      true. I have come here on a pious pilgrimage to one of the numerous lands
+      of my fathers. We are of the same stock, you and I. Blood is thicker than
+      water. We are cousins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. I do not understand. You say you have come here on a pious
+      pilgrimage. Is that some new means of transport?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>again shewing signs of distress</i>] I find it
+      very difficult to make myself understood here. I was not referring to a
+      machine, but to a&mdash;a&mdash;a sentimental journey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. I am afraid I am as much in the dark as before. You said also
+      that blood is thicker than water. No doubt it is; but what of it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Its meaning is obvious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. Perfectly. But I assure you I am quite aware that blood is
+      thicker than water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>sniffing: almost in tears again</i>] We will
+      leave it at that, madam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN [going <i>nearer to him and scrutinizing him with some concern</i>]
+      I am afraid you are not well. Were you not warned that it is dangerous for
+      shortlived people to come to this country? There is a deadly disease
+      called discouragement, against which shortlived people have to take very
+      strict precautions. Intercourse with us puts too great a strain on them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>pulling himself together huffily</i>] It has no
+      effect on me, madam. I fear my conversation does not interest you. If not,
+      the remedy is in your own hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN [<i>looking at her hands, and then looking inquiringly at him</i>]
+      Where?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>breaking down</i>] Oh, this is dreadful. No
+      understanding, no intelligence, no sympathy&mdash;[<i>his sobs choke him</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. You see, you are ill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>nerved by indignation</i>] I am not ill. I have
+      never had a day's illness in my life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. May I advise you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I have no need of a lady doctor, thank you, madam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN [<i>shaking her head</i>] I am afraid I do not understand. I
+      said nothing about a butterfly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Well, <i>I</i> said nothing about a butterfly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. You spoke of a lady doctor. The word is known here only as the
+      name of a butterfly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>insanely</i>] I give up. I can bear this no
+      longer. It is easier to go out of my mind at once. [<i>He rises and dances
+      about, singing</i>]
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    I'd be a butterfly, born in a bower,
+    Making apple dumplings without any flour.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN [<i>smiling gravely</i>] It must be at least a hundred and fifty
+      years since I last laughed. But if you do that any more I shall certainly
+      break out like a primary of sixty. Your dress is so extraordinarily
+      ridiculous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>halting abruptly in his antics</i>] My dress
+      ridiculous! I may not be dressed like a Foreign Office clerk; but my
+      clothes are perfectly in fashion in my native metropolis, where yours&mdash;pardon
+      my saying so&mdash;would be considered extremely unusual and hardly
+      decent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. Decent? There is no such word in our language. What does it
+      mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. It would not be decent for me to explain. Decency
+      cannot be discussed without indecency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. I cannot understand you at all. I fear you have not been
+      observing the rules laid down for shortlived visitors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Surely, madam, they do not apply to persons of my
+      age and standing. I am not a child, nor an agricultural laborer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN [<i>severely</i>] They apply to you very strictly. You are
+      expected to confine yourself to the society of children under sixty. You
+      are absolutely forbidden to approach fully adult natives under any
+      circumstances. You cannot converse with persons of my age for long without
+      bringing on a dangerous attack of discouragement. Do you realize that you
+      are already shewing grave symptoms of that very distressing and usually
+      fatal complaint?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Certainly not, madam. I am fortunately in no danger
+      of contracting it. I am quite accustomed to converse intimately and at the
+      greatest length with the most distinguished persons. If you cannot
+      discriminate between hay fever and imbecility, I can only say that your
+      advanced years carry with them the inevitable penalty of dotage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. I am one of the guardians of this district; and I am
+      responsible for your welfare&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. The Guardians! Do you take me for a pauper?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. I do not know what a pauper is. You must tell me who you are,
+      if it is possible for you to express yourself intelligibly&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>snorts indignantly</i>]!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN [<i>continuing</i>]&mdash;and why you are wandering here alone
+      without a nurse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>outraged</i>] Nurse!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. Shortlived visitors are not allowed to go about here without
+      nurses. Do you not know that rules are meant to be kept?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. By the lower classes, no doubt. But to persons in
+      my position there are certain courtesies which are never denied by
+      well-bred people; and&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. There are only two human classes here: the shortlived and the
+      normal. The rules apply to the shortlived, and are for their own
+      protection. Now tell me at once who you are.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>impressively</i>] Madam, I am a retired
+      gentleman, formerly Chairman of the All-British Synthetic Egg and
+      Vegetable Cheese Trust in Baghdad, and now President of the British
+      Historical and Archaeological Society, and a Vice-President of the
+      Travellers' Club.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. All that does not matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>again snorting</i>] Hm! Indeed!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. Have you been sent here to make your mind flexible?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. What an extraordinary question! Pray do you find my
+      mind noticeably stiff?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. Perhaps you do not know that you are on the west coast of
+      Ireland, and that it is the practice among natives of the Eastern Island
+      to spend some years here to acquire mental flexibility. The climate has
+      that effect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>haughtily</i>] I was born, not in the Eastern
+      Island, but, thank God, in dear old British Baghdad; and I am not in need
+      of a mental health resort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. Then why are you here?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Am I trespassing? I was not aware of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. Trespassing? I do not understand the word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Is this land private property? If so, I make no
+      claim. I proffer a shilling in satisfaction of damage (if any), and am
+      ready to withdraw if you will be good enough to shew me the nearest way. [<i>He
+      offers her a shilling</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN [<i>taking it and examining it without much interest</i>] I do
+      not understand a single word of what you have just said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I am speaking the plainest English. Are you the
+      landlord?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN [<i>shaking her head</i>] There is a tradition in this part of
+      the country of an animal with a name like that. It used to be hunted and
+      shot in the barbarous ages. It is quite extinct now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>breaking down again</i>] It is a dreadful thing
+      to be in a country where nobody understands civilized institutions. [<i>He
+      collapses on the bollard, struggling with his rising sobs</i>]. Excuse me.
+      Hay fever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN [<i>taking a tuning-fork from her girdle and holding it to her
+      ear; then speaking into space on one note, like a chorister intoning a
+      psalm</i>] Burrin Pier Galway please send someone to take charge of a
+      discouraged shortliver who has escaped from his nurse male harmless
+      babbles unintelligibly with moments of sense distressed hysterical foreign
+      dress very funny has curious fringe of white sea-weed under his chin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE GENTLEMAN. This is a gross impertinence. An insult.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN [<i>replacing her tuning-fork and addressing the elderly
+      gentleman</i>] These words mean nothing to me. In what capacity are you
+      here? How did you obtain permission to visit us?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>importantly</i>] Our Prime Minister, Mr Badger
+      Bluebin, has come to consult the oracle. He is my son-in-law. We are
+      accompanied by his wife and daughter: my daughter and granddaughter. I may
+      mention that General Aufsteig, who is one of our party, is really the
+      Emperor of Turania travelling incognito. I understand he has a question to
+      put to the oracle informally. I have come solely to visit the country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. Why should you come to a place where you have no business?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Great Heavens, madam, can anything be more natural?
+      I shall be the only member of the Travellers' Club who has set foot on
+      these shores. Think of that! My position will be unique.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. Is that an advantage? We have a person here who has lost both
+      legs in an accident. His position is unique. But he would much rather be
+      like everyone else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. This is maddening. There is no analogy whatever
+      between the two cases.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. They are both unique.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Conversation in this place seems to consist of
+      ridiculous quibbles. I am heartily tired of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. I conclude that your Travellers' Club is an assembly of persons
+      who wish to be able to say that they have been in some place where nobody
+      else has been.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Of Course if you wish to sneer at us&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. What is sneer?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>with a wild sob</i>] I shall drown myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>He makes desperately for the edge of the pier, but is confronted by a
+      man with the number one on his cap, who comes up the steps and intercepts
+      him. He is dressed like the woman, but a slight moustache proclaims his
+      sex.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN [<i>to the elderly gentleman</i>] Ah, here you are. I shall really
+      have to put a collar and lead on you if you persist in giving me the slip
+      like this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN. Are you this stranger's nurse?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN. Yes. I am very tired of him. If I take my eyes off him for a
+      moment, he runs away and talks to everybody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WOMAN [<i>after taking out her tuning-fork and sounding it, intones as
+      before</i>] Burrin Pier. Wash out. [<i>She puts up the fork, and addresses
+      the man</i>]. I sent a call for someone to take care of him. I have been
+      trying to talk to him; but I can understand very little of what he says.
+      You must take better care of him: he is badly discouraged already. If I
+      can be of any further use, Fusima, Gort, will find me. [<i>She goes away</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Any further use! She has been of no use to me. She
+      spoke to me without any introduction, like any improper female. And she
+      has made off with my shilling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN. Please speak slowly. I cannot follow. What is a shilling? What is
+      an introduction? Improper female doesnt make sense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Nothing seems to make sense here. All I can tell
+      you is that she was the most impenetrably stupid woman I have ever met in
+      the whole course of my life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN. That cannot be. She cannot appear stupid to you. She is a
+      secondary, and getting on for a tertiary at that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. What is a tertiary? Everybody here keeps talking to
+      me about primaries and secondaries and tertiaries as if people were
+      geological strata.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN. The primaries are in their first century. The secondaries are in
+      their second century. I am still classed as a primary [<i>he points to his
+      number</i>]; but I may almost call myself a secondary, as I shall be
+      ninety-five next January. The tertiaries are in their third century. Did
+      you not see the number two on her badge? She is an advanced secondary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. That accounts for it. She is in her second
+      childhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN. Her second childhood! She is in her fifth childhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>again resorting to the bollard</i>] Oh! I cannot
+      bear these unnatural arrangements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN [<i>impatient and helpless</i>] You shouldn't have come among us.
+      This is no place for you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>nerved by indignation</i>] May I ask why? I am a
+      Vice-President of the Travellers' Club. I have been everywhere: I hold the
+      record in the Club for civilized countries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN. What is a civilized country?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. It is&mdash;well, it is a civilized country. [<i>Desperately</i>]
+      I don't know: I&mdash;I&mdash;I&mdash;I shall go mad if you keep on asking
+      me to tell you things that everybody knows. Countries where you can travel
+      comfortably. Where there are good hotels. Excuse me; but, though you say
+      you are ninety-four, you are worse company than a child of five with your
+      eternal questions. Why not call me Daddy at once?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN. I did not know your name was Daddy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. My name is Joseph Popham Bolge Bluebin Barlow, O.M.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN. That is five men's names. Daddy is shorter. And O.M. will not do
+      here. It is our name for certain wild creatures, descendants of the
+      aboriginal inhabitants of this coast. They used to be called the
+      O'Mulligans. We will stick to Daddy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. People will think I am your father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN [<i>shocked</i>] Sh-sh! People here never allude to such
+      relationships. It is not quite delicate, is it? What does it matter
+      whether you are my father or not?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. My worthy nonagenarian friend: your faculties are
+      totally decayed. Could you not find me a guide of my own age?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN. A young person?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Certainly not. I cannot go about with a young
+      person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN. Why?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Why! Why!! Why!!! Have you no moral sense?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN. I shall have to give you up. I cannot understand you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. But you meant a young woman, didn't you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN. I meant simply somebody of your own age. What difference does it
+      make whether the person is a man or a woman?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I could not have believed in the existence of such
+      scandalous insensibility to the elementary decencies of human intercourse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN. What are decencies?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>shrieking</i>] Everyone asks me that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN [<i>taking out a tuning-fork and using it as the woman did</i>]
+      Zozim on Burrin Pier to Zoo Ennistymon I have found the discouraged
+      shortliver he has been talking to a secondary and is much worse I am too
+      old he is asking for someone of his own age or younger come if you can. [<i>He
+      puts up his fork and turns to the Elderly Gentleman</i>]. Zoo is a girl of
+      fifty, and rather childish at that. So perhaps she may make you happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Make me happy! A bluestocking of fifty! Thank you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN. Bluestocking? The effort to make out your meaning is fatiguing.
+      Besides, you are talking too much to me: I am old enough to discourage
+      you. Let us be silent until Zoo comes. [<i>He turns his back on the
+      Elderly Gentleman, and sits down on the edge of the pier, with his legs
+      dangling over the water</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Certainly. I have no wish to force my conversation
+      on any man who does not desire it. Perhaps you would like to take a nap.
+      If so, pray do not stand on ceremony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN. What is a nap?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>exasperated, going to him and speaking with
+      great precision and distinctness</i>] A nap, my friend, is a brief period
+      of sleep which overtakes superannuated persons when they endeavor to
+      entertain unwelcome visitors or to listen to scientific lectures. Sleep.
+      Sleep. [<i>Bawling into his ear</i>] Sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN. I tell you I am nearly a secondary. I never sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>awestruck</i>] Good Heavens!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>A young woman with the number one on her cap arrives by land. She looks
+      no older than Savvy Barnabas, whom she somewhat resembles, looked a
+      thousand years before. Younger, if anything.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUNG WOMAN. Is this the patient?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN [<i>scrambling up</i>] This is Zoo. [<i>To Zoo</i>] Call him
+      Daddy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>vehemently</i>] No.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAN [<i>ignoring the interruption</i>] Bless you for taking him off my
+      hands! I have had as much of him as I can bear. [<i>He goes down the steps
+      and disappears</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>ironically taking off his hat and making a
+      sweeping bow from the edge of the pier in the direction of the Atlantic
+      Ocean</i>] Good afternoon, sir; and thank you very much for your
+      extraordinary politeness, your exquisite consideration for my feelings,
+      your courtly manners. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. [<i>Clapping
+      his hat on again</i>] Pig! Ass!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>laughs very heartily at him</i>]!!!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>turning sharply on her</i>] Good afternoon,
+      madam. I am sorry to have had to put your friend in his place; but I find
+      that here as elsewhere it is necessary to assert myself if I am to be
+      treated with proper consideration. I had hoped that my position as a guest
+      would protect me from insult.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Putting my friend in his place. That is some poetic expression, is it
+      not? What does it mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Pray, is there no one in these islands who
+      understands plain English?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Well, nobody except the oracles. They have to make a special
+      historical study of what we call the dead thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Dead thought! I have heard of the dead languages,
+      but never of the dead thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Well, thoughts die sooner than languages. I understand your language;
+      but I do not always understand your thought. The oracles will understand
+      you perfectly. Have you had your consultation yet?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I did not come to consult the oracle, madam. I am
+      here simply as a gentleman travelling for pleasure in the company of my
+      daughter, who is the wife of the British Prime Minister, and of General
+      Aufsteig, who, I may tell you in confidence, is really the Emperor of
+      Turania, the greatest military genius of the age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Why should you travel for pleasure! Can you not enjoy yourself at
+      home?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I wish to see the World.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. It is too big. You can see a bit of it anywhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>out of patience</i>] Damn it, madam, you don't
+      want to spend your life looking at the same bit of it! [<i>Checking
+      himself</i>] I beg your pardon for swearing in your presence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Oh! That is swearing, is it? I have read about that. It sounds quite
+      pretty. Dammitmaddam, dammitmaddam, dammitmaddam, dammitmaddam. Say it as
+      often as you please: I like it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>expanding with intense relief</i>] Bless you for
+      those profane but familiar words! Thank you, thank you. For the first time
+      since I landed in this terrible country I begin to feel at home. The
+      strain which was driving me mad relaxes: I feel almost as if I were at the
+      club. Excuse my taking the only available seat: I am not so young as I
+      was. [<i>He sits on the bollard</i>]. Promise me that you will not hand me
+      over to one of these dreadful tertiaries or secondaries or whatever you
+      call them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Never fear. They had no business to give you in charge to Zozim. You
+      see he is just on the verge of becoming a secondary; and these adolescents
+      will give themselves the airs of tertiaries. You naturally feel more at
+      home with a flapper like me. [<i>She makes herself comfortable on the
+      sacks</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Flapper? What does that mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. It is an archaic word which we still use to describe a female who is
+      no longer a girl and is not yet quite adult.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. A very agreeable age to associate with, I find. I
+      am recovering rapidly. I have a sense of blossoming like a flower. May I
+      ask your name?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Zoo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Miss Zoo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Not Miss Zoo. Zoo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Precisely. Er&mdash;Zoo what?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. No. Not Zoo What. Zoo. Nothing but Zoo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>puzzled</i>] Mrs Zoo, perhaps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. No. Zoo. Cant you catch it? Zoo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Of course. Believe me, I did not really think you
+      were married: you are obviously too young; but here it is so hard to feel
+      sure&mdash;er&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>hopelessly puzzled</i>] What?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Marriage makes a difference, you know. One can say
+      things to a married lady that would perhaps be in questionable taste to
+      anyone without that experience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. You are getting out of my depth: I dont understand a word you are
+      saying. Married and questionable taste convey nothing to me. Stop, though.
+      Is married an old form of the word mothered?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Very likely. Let us drop the subject. Pardon me for
+      embarrassing you. I should not have mentioned it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. What does embarrassing mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Well, really! I should have thought that so natural
+      and common a condition would be understood as long as human nature lasted.
+      To embarrass is to bring a blush to the cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. What is a blush?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>amazed</i>] Dont you blush???
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Never heard of it. We have a word flush, meaning a rush of blood to
+      the skin. I have noticed it in my babies, but not after the age of two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Your babies!!! I fear I am treading on very
+      delicate ground; but your appearance is extremely youthful; and if I may
+      ask how many&mdash;?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Only four as yet. It is a long business with us. I specialize in
+      babies. My first was such a success that they made me go on. I&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>reeling on the bollard</i>] Oh! dear!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Whats the matter? Anything wrong?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. In Heaven's name, madam, how old are you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Fifty-six.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. My knees are trembling. I fear I am really ill. Not
+      so young as I was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. I noticed that you are not strong on your legs yet. You have many of
+      the ways and weaknesses of a baby. No doubt that is why I feel called on
+      to mother you. You certainly are a very silly little Daddy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>stimulated by indignation</i>] My name, I
+      repeat, is Joseph Popham Bolge Bluebin Barlow, O.M.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. What a ridiculously long name! I cant call you all that. What did
+      your mother call you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. You recall the bitterest struggles of my childhood.
+      I was sensitive on the point. Children suffer greatly from absurd
+      nicknames. My mother thoughtlessly called me Iddy Toodles. I was called
+      Iddy until I went to school, when I made my first stand for children's
+      rights by insisting on being called at least Joe. At fifteen I refused to
+      answer to anything shorter than Joseph. At eighteen I discovered that the
+      name Joseph was supposed to indicate an unmanly prudery because of some
+      old story about a Joseph who rejected the advances of his employer's wife:
+      very properly in my opinion. I then became Popham to my family and
+      intimate friends, and Mister Barlow to the rest of the world. My mother
+      slipped back into Iddy when her faculties began to fail her, poor woman;
+      but I could not resent that, at her age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Do you mean to say that your mother bothered about you after you were
+      ten?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Naturally, madam. She was my mother. What would you
+      have had her do?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Go on to the next, of course. After eight or nine children become
+      quite uninteresting, except to themselves. I shouldnt know my two eldest
+      if I met them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>again drooping</i>] I am dying. Let me die. I
+      wish to die.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>going to him quickly and supporting him</i>] Hold up. Sit up
+      straight. Whats the matter?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>faintly</i>] My spine, I think. Shock.
+      Concussion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>maternally</i>] Pow wow wow! What is there to shock you? [<i>Shaking
+      him playfully</i>] There! Sit up; and be good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>still feebly</i>] Thank you. I am better now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>resuming her seat on the sacks</i>] But what was all the rest of
+      that long name for? There was a lot more of it. Blops Booby or something.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>impressively</i>] Bolge Bluebin, madam: a
+      historical name. Let me inform you that I can trace my family back for
+      more than a thousand years, from the Eastern Empire to its ancient seat in
+      these islands, to a time when two of my ancestors, Joyce Bolge and Hengist
+      Horsa Bluebin, wrestled with one another for the prime ministership of the
+      British Empire, and occupied that position successively with a glory of
+      which we can in these degenerate days form but a faint conception. When I
+      think of these mighty men, lions in war, sages in peace, not babblers and
+      charlatans like the pigmies who now occupy their places in Baghdad, but
+      strong silent men, ruling an empire on which the sun never set, my eyes
+      fill with tears: my heart bursts with emotion: I feel that to have lived
+      but to the dawn of manhood in their day, and then died for them, would
+      have been a nobler and happier lot than the ignominious ease of my present
+      longevity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Longevity! [<i>she laughs</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Yes, madam, relative longevity. As it is, I have to
+      be content and proud to know that I am descended from both those heroes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. You must be descended from every Briton who was alive in their time.
+      Dont you know that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Do not quibble, madam. I bear their names, Bolge
+      and Bluebin; and I hope I have inherited something of their majestic
+      spirit. Well, they were born in these islands. I repeat, these islands
+      were then, incredible as it now seems, the centre of the British Empire.
+      When that centre shifted to Baghdad, and the Englishman at last returned
+      to the true cradle of his race in Mesopotamia, the western islands were
+      cast off, as they had been before by the Roman Empire. But it was to the
+      British race, and in these islands, that the greatest miracle in history
+      occurred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Miracle?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Yes: the first man to live three hundred years was
+      an Englishman. The first, that is, since the contemporaries of Methuselah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Oh, that!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Yes, that, as you call it so flippantly. Are you
+      aware, madam, that at that immortal moment the English race had lost
+      intellectual credit to such an extent that they habitually spoke of one
+      another as fatheads? Yet England is now a sacred grove to which statesmen
+      from all over the earth come to consult English sages who speak with the
+      experience of two and a half centuries of life. The land that once
+      exported cotton shirts and hardware now exports nothing but wisdom. You
+      see before you, madam, a man utterly weary of the week-end riverside
+      hotels of the Euphrates, the minstrels and pierrots on the sands of the
+      Persian Gulf, the toboggans and funiculars of the Hindoo Koosh. Can you
+      wonder that I turn, with a hungry heart, to the mystery and beauty of
+      these haunted islands, thronged with spectres from a magic past, made holy
+      by the footsteps of the wise men of the West. Consider this island on
+      which we stand, the last foothold of man on this side of the Atlantic:
+      this Ireland, described by the earliest bards as an emerald gem set in a
+      silver sea! Can I, a scion of the illustrious British race, ever forget
+      that when the Empire transferred its seat to the East, and said to the
+      turbulent Irish race which it had oppressed but never conquered, 'At last
+      we leave you to yourselves; and much good may it do you,' the Irish as one
+      man uttered the historic shout 'No: we'll be damned if you do,' and
+      emigrated to the countries where there was still a Nationalist question,
+      to India, Persia, and Corea, to Morocco, Tunis, and Tripoli. In these
+      countries they were ever foremost in the struggle for national
+      independence; and the world rang continually with the story of their
+      sufferings and wrongs. And what poem can do justice to the end, when it
+      came at last? Hardly two hundred years had elapsed when the claims of
+      nationality were so universally conceded that there was no longer a single
+      country on the face of the earth with a national grievance or a national
+      movement. Think of the position of the Irish, who had lost all their
+      political faculties by disuse except that of nationalist agitation, and
+      who owed their position as the most interesting race on earth solely to
+      their sufferings! The very countries they had helped to set free boycotted
+      them as intolerable bores. The communities which had once idolized them as
+      the incarnation of all that is adorable in the warm heart and witty brain,
+      fled from them as from a pestilence. To regain their lost prestige, the
+      Irish claimed the city of Jerusalem, on the ground that they were the lost
+      tribes of Israel; but on their approach the Jews abandoned the city and
+      redistributed themselves throughout Europe. It was then that these devoted
+      Irishmen, not one of whom had ever seen Ireland, were counselled by an
+      English Archbishop, the father of the oracles, to go back to their own
+      country. This had never once occurred to them, because there was nothing
+      to prevent them and nobody to forbid them. They jumped at the suggestion.
+      They landed here: here in Galway Bay, on this very ground. When they
+      reached the shore the older men and women flung themselves down and
+      passionately kissed the soil of Ireland, calling on the young to embrace
+      the earth that had borne their ancestors. But the young looked gloomily
+      on, and said 'There is no earth, only stone.' You will see by looking
+      round you why they said that: the fields here are of stone: the hills are
+      capped with granite. They all left for England next day; and no Irishman
+      ever again confessed to being Irish, even to his own children; so that
+      when that generation passed away the Irish race vanished from human
+      knowledge. And the dispersed Jews did the same lest they should be sent
+      back to Palestine. Since then the world, bereft of its Jews and its Irish,
+      has been a tame dull place. Is there no pathos for you in this story? Can
+      you not understand now why I am come to visit the scene of this tragic
+      effacement of a race of heroes and poets?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. We still tell our little children stories like that, to help them to
+      understand. But such things do not happen really. That scene of the Irish
+      landing here and kissing the ground might have happened to a hundred
+      people. It couldn't have happened to a hundred thousand: you know that as
+      well as I do. And what a ridiculous thing to call people Irish because
+      they live in Ireland! you might as well call them Airish because they live
+      in air. They must be just the same as other people. Why do you shortlivers
+      persist in making up silly stories about the world and trying to act as if
+      they were true? Contact with truth hurts and frightens you: you escape
+      from it into an imaginary vacuum in which you can indulge your desires and
+      hopes and loves and hates without any obstruction from the solid facts of
+      life. You love to throw dust in your own eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. It is my turn now, madam, to inform you that I do
+      not understand a single word you are saying. I should have thought that
+      the use of a vacuum for removing dust was a mark of civilization rather
+      than of savagery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>giving him up as hopeless</i>] Oh, Daddy, Daddy: I can hardly
+      believe that you are human, you are so stupid. It was well said of your
+      people in the olden days, 'Dust thou art; and to dust thou shalt return.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>nobly</i>] My body is dust, madam: not my soul.
+      What does it matter what my body is made of? the dust of the ground, the
+      particles of the air, or even the slime of the ditch? The important thing
+      is that when my Creator took it, whatever it was, He breathed into its
+      nostrils the breath of life; and Man became a living soul. Yes, madam, a
+      living soul. I am not the dust of the ground: I am a living soul. That is
+      an exalting, a magnificent thought. It is also a great scientific fact. I
+      am not interested in the chemicals and the microbes: I leave them to the
+      chumps and noodles, to the blockheads and the muckrakers who are incapable
+      of their own glorious destiny, and unconscious of their own divinity. They
+      tell me there are leucocytes in my blood, and sodium and carbon in my
+      flesh. I thank them for the information, and tell them that there are
+      blackbeetles in my kitchen, washing soda in my laundry, and coal in my
+      cellar. I do not deny their existence; but I keep them in their proper
+      place, which is not, if I may be allowed to use an antiquated form of
+      expression, the temple of the Holy Ghost. No doubt you think me behind the
+      times; but I rejoice in my enlightenment; and I recoil from your
+      ignorance, your blindness, your imbecility. Humanly I pity you.
+      Intellectually I despise you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Bravo, Daddy! You have the root of the matter in you. You will not
+      die of discouragement after all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I have not the smallest intention of doing so,
+      madam. I am no longer young; and I have moments of weakness; but when I
+      approach this subject the divine spark in me kindles and glows, the
+      corruptible becomes incorruptible, and the mortal Bolge Bluebin Barlow
+      puts on immortality. On this ground I am your equal, even if you survive
+      me by ten thousand years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Yes; but what do we know about this breath of life that puffs you up
+      so exaltedly? Just nothing. So let us shake hands as cultivated Agnostics,
+      and change the subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Cultivated fiddlesticks, madam! You cannot change
+      this subject until the heavens and the earth pass away. I am not an
+      Agnostic: I am a gentleman. When I believe a thing I say I believe it:
+      when I don't believe it I say I don't believe it. I do not shirk my
+      responsibilities by pretending that I know nothing and therefore can
+      believe nothing. We cannot disclaim knowledge and shirk responsibility. We
+      must proceed on assumptions of some sort or we cannot form a human
+      society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. The assumptions must be scientific, Daddy. We must live by science in
+      the long run.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I have the utmost respect, madam, for the
+      magnificent discoveries which we owe to science. But any fool can make a
+      discovery. Every baby has to discover more in the first years of its life
+      than Roger Bacon ever discovered in his laboratory. When I was seven years
+      old I discovered the sting of the wasp. But I do not ask you to worship me
+      on that account. I assure you, madam, the merest mediocrities can discover
+      the most surprising facts about the physical universe as soon as they are
+      civilized enough to have time to study these things, and to invent
+      instruments and apparatus for research. But what is the consequence? Their
+      discoveries discredit the simple stories of our religion. At first we had
+      no idea of astronomical space. We believed the sky to be only the ceiling
+      of a room as large as the earth, with another room on top of it. Death was
+      to us a going upstairs into that room, or, if we did not obey the priests,
+      going downstairs into the coal cellar. We founded our religion, our
+      morality, our laws, our lessons, our poems, our prayers, on that simple
+      belief. Well, the moment men became astronomers and made telescopes, their
+      belief perished. When they could no longer believe in the sky, they found
+      that they could no longer believe in their Deity, because they had always
+      thought of him as living in the sky. When the priests themselves ceased to
+      believe in their Deity and began to believe in astronomy, they changed
+      their name and their dress, and called themselves doctors and men of
+      science. They set up a new religion in which there was no Deity, but only
+      wonders and miracles, with scientific instruments and apparatus as the
+      wonder workers. Instead of worshipping the greatness and wisdom of the
+      Deity, men gaped foolishly at the million billion miles of space and
+      worshipped the astronomer as infallible and omniscient. They built temples
+      for his telescopes. Then they looked into their own bodies with
+      microscopes, and found there, not the soul they had formerly believed in,
+      but millions of micro-organisms; so they gaped at these as foolishly as at
+      the millions of miles, and built microscope temples in which horrible
+      sacrifices were offered. They even gave their own bodies to be sacrificed
+      by the microscope man, who was worshipped, like the astronomer, as
+      infallible and omniscient. Thus our discoveries instead of increasing our
+      wisdom, only destroyed the little childish wisdom we had. All I can grant
+      you is that they increased our knowledge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Nonsense! Consciousness of a fact is not knowledge of it: if it were,
+      the fish would know more of the sea than the geographers and the
+      naturalists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. That is an extremely acute remark, madam. The
+      dullest fish could not possibly know less of the majesty of the ocean than
+      many geographers and naturalists of my acquaintance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Just so. And the greatest fool on earth, by merely looking at a
+      mariners' compass, may become conscious of the fact that the needle turns
+      always to the pole. Is he any the less a fool with that consciousness than
+      he was without it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Only a more conceited one, madam, no doubt. Still,
+      I do not quite see how you can be aware of the existence of a thing
+      without knowing it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Well, you can see a man without knowing him, can you not?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>illuminated</i>] Oh how true! Of course, of
+      course. There is a member of the Travellers' Club who has questioned the
+      veracity of an experience of mine at the South Pole. I see that man almost
+      every day when I am at home. But I refuse to know him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. If you could see him much more distinctly through a magnifying glass,
+      or examine a drop of his blood through a microscope, or dissect out all
+      his organs and analyze them chemically, would you know him then?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Certainly not. Any such investigation could only
+      increase the disgust with which he inspires me, and make me more
+      determined than ever not to know him on any terms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Yet you would be much more conscious of him, would you not?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I should not allow that to commit me to any
+      familiarity with the fellow. I have been twice at the Summer Sports at the
+      South Pole; and this man pretended he had been to the North Pole, which
+      can hardly be said to exist, as it is in the middle of the sea. He
+      declared he had hung his hat on it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>laughing</i>] He knew that travellers are amusing only when they
+      are telling lies. Perhaps if you looked at that man through a microscope
+      you would find some good in him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I do not want to find any good in him. Besides,
+      madam, what you have just said encourages me to utter an opinion of mine
+      which is so advanced! so intellectually daring! that I have never ventured
+      to confess to it before, lest I should be imprisoned for blasphemy, or
+      even burnt alive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Indeed! What opinion is that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>after looking cautiously round</i>] I do not
+      approve of microscopes. I never have.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. You call that advanced! Oh, Daddy, that is pure obscurantism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Call it so if you will, madam; but I maintain that
+      it is dangerous to shew too much to people who do not know what they are
+      looking at. I think that a man who is sane as long as he looks at the
+      world through his own eyes is very likely to become a dangerous madman if
+      he takes to looking at the world through telescopes and microscopes. Even
+      when he is telling fairy stories about giants and dwarfs, the giants had
+      better not be too big nor the dwarfs too small and too malicious. Before
+      the microscope came, our fairy stories only made the children's flesh
+      creep pleasantly, and did not frighten grown-up persons at all. But the
+      microscope men terrified themselves and everyone else out of their wits
+      with the invisible monsters they saw: poor harmless little things that die
+      at the touch of a ray of sunshine, and are themselves the victims of all
+      the diseases they are supposed to produce! Whatever the scientific people
+      may say, imagination without microscopes was kindly and often courageous,
+      because it worked on things of which it had some real knowledge. But
+      imagination with microscopes, working on a terrifying spectacle of
+      millions of grotesque creatures of whose nature it had no knowledge,
+      became a cruel, terror-stricken, persecuting delirium. Are you aware,
+      madam, that a general massacre of men of science took place in the
+      twenty-first century of the pseudo-Christian era, when all their
+      laboratories were demolished, and all their apparatus destroyed?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Yes: the shortlived are as savage in their advances as in their
+      relapses. But when Science crept back, it had been taught its place. The
+      mere collectors of anatomical or chemical facts were not supposed to know
+      more about Science than the collector of used postage stamps about
+      international trade or literature. The scientific terrorist who was afraid
+      to use a spoon or a tumbler until he had dipt it in some poisonous acid to
+      kill the microbes, was no longer given titles, pensions, and monstrous
+      powers over the bodies of other people: he was sent to an asylum, and
+      treated there until his recovery. But all that is an old story: the
+      extension of life to three hundred years has provided the human race with
+      capable leaders, and made short work of such childish stuff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>pettishly</i>] You seem to credit every advance
+      in civilization to your inordinately long lives. Do you not know that this
+      question was familiar to men who died before they had reached my own age?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Oh yes: one or two of them hinted at it in a feeble way. An ancient
+      writer whose name has come down to us in several forms, such as
+      Shakespear, Shelley, Sheridan, and Shoddy, has a remarkable passage about
+      your dispositions being horridly shaken by thoughts beyond the reaches of
+      your souls. That does not come to much, does it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. At all events, madam, I may remind you, if you come
+      to capping ages, that whatever your secondaries and tertiaries may be, you
+      are younger than I am.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Yes, Daddy; but it is not the number of years we have behind us, but
+      the number we have before us, that makes us careful and responsible and
+      determined to find out the truth about everything. What does it matter to
+      you whether anything is true or not? your flesh is as grass: you come up
+      like a flower, and wither in your second childhood. A lie will last your
+      time: it will not last mine. If I knew I had to die in twenty years it
+      would not be worth my while to educate myself: I should not bother about
+      anything but having a little pleasure while I lasted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Young woman: you are mistaken. Shortlived as we
+      are, we&mdash;the best of us, I mean&mdash;regard civilization and
+      learning, art and science, as an ever-burning torch, which passes from the
+      hand of one generation to the hand of the next, each generation kindling
+      it to a brighter, prouder flame. Thus each lifetime, however short,
+      contributes a brick to a vast and growing edifice, a page to a sacred
+      volume, a chapter to a Bible, a Bible to a literature. We may be insects;
+      but like the coral insect we build islands which become continents: like
+      the bee we store sustenance for future communities. The individual
+      perishes; but the race is immortal. The acorn of today is the oak of the
+      next millennium. I throw my stone on the cairn and die; but later comers
+      add another stone and yet another; and lo! a mountain. I&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>interrupts him by laughing heartily at him</i>]!!!!!!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>with offended dignity</i>] May I ask what I have
+      said that calls for this merriment?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Oh, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, you are a funny little man, with your
+      torches, and your flames, and your bricks and edifices and pages and
+      volumes and chapters and coral insects and bees and acorns and stones and
+      mountains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Metaphors, madam. Metaphors merely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Images, images, images. I was talking about men, not about images.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I was illustrating&mdash;not, I hope, quite
+      infelicitously&mdash;the great march of Progress. I was shewing you how,
+      shortlived as we orientals are, mankind gains in stature from generation
+      to generation, from epoch to epoch, from barbarism to civilization, from
+      civilization to perfection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. I see. The father grows to be six feet high, and hands on his six
+      feet to his son, who adds another six feet and becomes twelve feet high,
+      and hands his twelve feet on to his son, who is full-grown at eighteen
+      feet, and so on. In a thousand years you would all be three or four miles
+      high. At that rate your ancestors Bilge and Bluebeard, whom you call
+      giants, must have been about quarter of an inch high.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I am not here to bandy quibbles and paradoxes with
+      a girl who blunders over the greatest names in history. I am in earnest. I
+      am treating a solemn theme seriously. I never said that the son of a man
+      six feet high would be twelve feet high.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. You didn't mean that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Most certainly not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Then you didn't mean anything. Now listen to me, you little ephemeral
+      thing. I knew quite well what you meant by your torch handed on from
+      generation to generation. But every time that torch is handed on, it dies
+      down to the tiniest spark; and the man who gets it can rekindle it only by
+      his own light. You are no taller than Bilge or Bluebeard; and you are no
+      wiser. Their wisdom, such as it was, perished with them: so did their
+      strength, if their strength ever existed outside your imagination. I do
+      not know how old you are: you look about five hundred&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Five hundred! Really, madam&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>continuing</i>]; but I know, of course, that you are an ordinary
+      shortliver. Well, your wisdom is only such wisdom as a man can have before
+      he has had experience enough to distinguish his wisdom from his folly, his
+      destiny from his delusions, his&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. In short, such wisdom as your own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. No, no, no, no. How often must I tell you that we are made wise not
+      by the recollections of our past, but by the responsibilities of our
+      future. I shall be more reckless when I am a tertiary than I am today. If
+      you cannot understand that, at least you must admit that I have learnt
+      from tertiaries. I have seen their work and lived under their
+      institutions. Like all young things I rebelled against them; and in their
+      hunger for new lights and new ideas they listened to me and encouraged me
+      to rebel. But my ways did not work; and theirs did; and they were able to
+      tell me why. They have no power over me except that power: they refuse all
+      other power; and the consequence is that there are no limits to their
+      power except the limits they set themselves. You are a child governed by
+      children, who make so many mistakes and are so naughty that you are in
+      continual rebellion against them; and as they can never convince you that
+      they are right: they can govern you only by beating you, imprisoning you,
+      torturing you, killing you if you disobey them without being strong enough
+      to kill or torture them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. That may be an unfortunate fact. I condemn it and
+      deplore it. But our minds are greater than the facts. We know better. The
+      greatest ancient teachers, followed by the galaxy of Christs who arose in
+      the twentieth century, not to mention such comparatively modern spiritual
+      leaders as Blitherinjam, Tosh, and Spiffkins, all taught that punishment
+      and revenge, coercion and militarism, are mistakes, and that the golden
+      rule&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. [<i>interrupting</i>] Yes, yes, yes, Daddy: we longlived people know
+      that quite well. But did any of their disciples ever succeed in governing
+      you for a single day on their Christ-like principles? It is not enough to
+      know what is good: you must be able to do it. They couldn't do it because
+      they did not live long enough to find out how to do it, or to outlive the
+      childish passions that prevented them from really wanting to do it. You
+      know very well that they could only keep order&mdash;such as it was&mdash;by
+      the very coercion and militarism they were denouncing and deploring. They
+      had actually to kill one another for preaching their own gospel, or be
+      killed themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. The blood of the martyrs, madam, is the seed of the
+      Church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. More images, Daddy! The blood of the shortlived falls on stony
+      ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>rising, very testy</i>] You are simply mad on
+      the subject of longevity. I wish you would change it. It is rather
+      personal and in bad taste. Human nature is human nature, longlived or
+      shortlived, and always will be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Then you give up the idea of progress? You cry off the torch, and the
+      brick, and the acorn, and all the rest of it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I do nothing of the sort. I stand for progress and
+      for freedom broadening down from precedent to precedent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. You are certainly a true Briton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I am proud of it. But in your mouth I feel that the
+      compliment hides some insult; so I do not thank you for it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. All I meant was that though Britons sometimes say quite clever things
+      and deep things as well as silly and shallow things, they always forget
+      them ten minutes after they have uttered them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Leave it at that, madam: leave it at that. [<i>He
+      sits down again</i>]. Even a Pope is not expected to be continually
+      pontificating. Our flashes of inspiration shew that our hearts are in the
+      right place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Of course. You cannot keep your heart in any place but the right
+      place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Tcha!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. But you can keep your hands in the wrong place. In your neighbor's
+      pockets, for example. So, you see, it is your hands that really matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>exhausted</i>] Well, a woman must have the last
+      word. I will not dispute it with you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Good. Now let us go back to the really interesting subject of our
+      discussion. You remember? The slavery of the shortlived to images and
+      metaphors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>aghast</i>] Do you mean to say, madam, that
+      after having talked my head off, and reduced me to despair and silence by
+      your intolerable loquacity, you actually propose to begin all over again?
+      I shall leave you at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. You must not. I am your nurse; and you must stay with me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I absolutely decline to do anything of the sort [<i>he
+      rises and walks away with marked dignity</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>using her tuning-fork</i>] Zoo on Burrin Pier to Oracle Police at
+      Ennistymon have you got me?... What?... I am picking you up now but you
+      are flat to my pitch.... Just a shade sharper.... That's better: still a
+      little more.... Got you: right. Isolate Burrin Pier quick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>is heard to yell</i>] Oh!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>still intoning</i>] Thanks.... Oh nothing serious I am nursing a
+      shortliver and the silly creature has run away he has discouraged himself
+      very badly by gadding about and talking to secondaries and I must keep him
+      strictly to heel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Elderly Gentleman returns, indignant.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Here he is you can release the Pier thanks. Goodbye. [<i>She puts up
+      her tuning-fork</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. This is outrageous. When I tried to step off the
+      pier on to the road, I received a shock, followed by an attack of pins and
+      needles which ceased only when I stepped back on to the stones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Yes: there is an electric hedge there. It is a very old and very
+      crude method of keeping animals from straying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. We are perfectly familiar with it in Baghdad,
+      madam; but I little thought I should live to have it ignominiously applied
+      to myself. You have actually Kiplingized me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Kiplingized! What is that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. About a thousand years ago there were two authors
+      named Kipling. One was an eastern and a writer of merit: the other, being
+      a western, was of course only an amusing barbarian. He is said to have
+      invented the electric hedge. I consider that in using it on me you have
+      taken a very great liberty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. What is a liberty?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>exasperated</i>] I shall not explain, madam. I
+      believe you know as well as I do. [<i>He sits down on the bollard in
+      dudgeon</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. No: even you can tell me things I do not know. Havnt you noticed that
+      all the time you have been here we have been asking you questions?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Noticed it! It has almost driven me mad. Do you see
+      my white hair? It was hardly grey when I landed: there were patches of its
+      original auburn still distinctly discernible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. That is one of the symptoms of discouragement. But have you noticed
+      something much more important to yourself: that is, that you have never
+      asked us any questions, although we know so much more than you do?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I am not a child, madam. I believe I have had
+      occasion to say that before. And I am an experienced traveller. I know
+      that what the traveller observes must really exist, or he could not
+      observe it. But what the natives tell him is invariably pure fiction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Not here, Daddy. With us life is too long for telling lies. They all
+      get found out. Youd better ask me questions while you have the chance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. If I have occasion to consult the oracle I shall
+      address myself to a proper one: to a tertiary: not to a primary flapper
+      playing at being an oracle. If you are a nurserymaid, attend to your
+      duties; and do not presume to ape your elders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. [<i>rising ominously and reddening</i>] You silly&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>thundering</i>] Silence! Do you hear! Hold your
+      tongue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Something very disagreeable is happening to me. I feel hot all over.
+      I have a horrible impulse to injure you. What have you done to me?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>triumphant</i>] Aha! I have made you blush. Now
+      you know what blushing means. Blushing with shame!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Whatever you are doing, it is something so utterly evil that if you
+      do not stop I will kill you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>apprehending his danger</i>] Doubtless you think
+      it safe to threaten an old man&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>fiercely</i>] Old! You are a child: an evil child. We kill evil
+      children here. We do it even against our own wills by instinct. Take care.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>rising with crestfallen courtesy</i>] I did not
+      mean to hurt your feelings. I&mdash;[<i>swallowing the apology with an
+      effort</i>] I beg your pardon. [<i>He takes off his hat, and bows</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. What does that mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I withdraw what I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. How can you withdraw what you said?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I can say no more than that I am sorry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. You have reason to be. That hideous sensation you gave me is
+      subsiding; but you have had a very narrow escape. Do not attempt to kill
+      me again; for at the first sign in your voice or face I shall strike you
+      dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. <i>I</i> attempt to kill you! What a monstrous
+      accusation!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>frowns</i>]!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>prudently correcting himself</i>] I mean
+      misunderstanding. I never dreamt of such a thing. Surely you cannot
+      believe that I am a murderer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. I know you are a murderer. It is not merely that you threw words at
+      me as if they were stones, meaning to hurt me. It was the instinct to kill
+      that you roused in me. I did not know it was in my nature: never before
+      has it wakened and sprung out at me, warning me to kill or be killed. I
+      must now reconsider my whole political position. I am no longer a
+      Conservative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>dropping his hat</i>] Gracious Heavens! you have
+      lost your senses. I am at the mercy of a madwoman: I might have known it
+      from the beginning. I can bear no more of this. [<i>Offering his chest for
+      the sacrifice</i>] Kill me at once; and much good may my death do you!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. It would be useless unless all the other shortlivers were killed at
+      the same time. Besides, it is a measure which should be taken politically
+      and constitutionally, not privately. However, I am prepared to discuss it
+      with you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. What good have our counsels ever done you? You come to us for advice
+      when you know you are in difficulties. But you never know you are in
+      difficulties until twenty years after you have made the mistakes that led
+      to them; and then it is too late. You cannot understand our advice: you
+      often do more mischief by trying to act on it than if you had been left to
+      your own childish devices. If you were not childish you would not come to
+      us at all: you would learn from experience that your consultations of the
+      oracle are never of any real help to you. You draw wonderful imaginary
+      pictures of us, and write fictitious tales and poems about our beneficent
+      operations in the past, our wisdom, our justice, our mercy: stories in
+      which we often appear as sentimental dupes of your prayers and sacrifices;
+      but you do it only to conceal from yourselves the truth that you are
+      incapable of being helped by us. Your Prime Minister pretends that he has
+      come to be guided by the oracle; but we are not deceived: we know quite
+      well that he has come here so that when he goes back he may have the
+      authority and dignity of one who has visited the holy islands and spoken
+      face to face with the ineffable ones. He will pretend that all the
+      measures he wishes to take for his own purposes have been enjoined on him
+      by the oracle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. But you forget that the answers of the oracle
+      cannot be kept secret or misrepresented. They are written and promulgated.
+      The Leader of the Opposition can obtain copies. All the nations know them.
+      Secret diplomacy has been totally abolished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Yes: you publish documents; but they are garbled or forged. And even
+      if you published our real answers it would make no difference, because the
+      shortlived cannot interpret the plainest writings. Your scriptures command
+      you in the plainest terms to do exactly the contrary of everything your
+      own laws and chosen rulers command and execute. You cannot defy Nature. It
+      is a law of Nature that there is a fixed relation between conduct and
+      length of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No, no, no. I had much rather discuss your
+      intention of withdrawing from the Conservative party. How the
+      Conservatives have tolerated your opinions so far is more than I can
+      imagine: I can only conjecture that you have contributed very liberally to
+      the party funds. [<i>He picks up his hat, and sits down again</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Do not babble so senselessly: our chief political controversy is the
+      most momentous in the world for you and your like.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>interested</i>] Indeed? Pray, may I ask what it
+      is? I am a keen politician, and may perhaps be of some use. [<i>He puts on
+      his hat, cocking it slightly</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. We have two great parties: the Conservative party and the
+      Colonization party. The Colonizers are of opinion that we should increase
+      our numbers and colonize. The Conservatives hold that we should stay as we
+      are, confined to these islands, a race apart, wrapped up in the majesty of
+      our wisdom on a soil held as holy ground for us by an adoring world, with
+      our sacred frontier traced beyond dispute by the sea. They contend that it
+      is our destiny to rule the world, and that even when we were shortlived we
+      did so. They say that our power and our peace depend on our remoteness,
+      our exclusiveness, our separation, and the restriction of our numbers.
+      Five minutes ago that was my political faith. Now I do not think there
+      should be any shortlived people at all. [<i>She throws herself again
+      carelessly on the sacks</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Am I to infer that you deny my right to live
+      because I allowed myself&mdash;perhaps injudiciously&mdash;to give you a
+      slight scolding?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Is it worth living for so short a time? Are you any good to yourself?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>stupent</i>] Well, upon my soul!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. It is such a very little soul. You only encourage the sin of pride in
+      us, and keep us looking down at you instead of up to something higher than
+      ourselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Is not that a selfish view, madam? Think of the
+      good you do us by your oracular counsels!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I have never heard of any such law, madam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Well, you are hearing of it now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Let me tell you that we shortlivers, as you call
+      us, have lengthened our lives very considerably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. How?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. By saving time. By enabling men to cross the ocean
+      in an afternoon, and to see and speak to one another when they are
+      thousands of miles apart. We hope shortly to organize their labor, and
+      press natural forces into their service, so scientifically that the burden
+      of labor will cease to be perceptible, leaving common men more leisure
+      than they will know what to do with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Daddy: the man whose life is lengthened in this way may be busier
+      than a savage; but the difference between such men living seventy years
+      and those living three hundred would be all the greater; for to a
+      shortliver increase of years is only increase of sorrow; but to a
+      long-liver every extra year is a prospect which forces him to stretch his
+      faculties to the utmost to face it. Therefore I say that we who live three
+      hundred years can be of no use to you who live less than a hundred, and
+      that our true destiny is not to advise and govern you, but to supplant and
+      supersede you. In that faith I now declare myself a Colonizer and an
+      Exterminator.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Oh, steady! steady! Pray! pray! Reflect, I implore
+      you. It is possible to colonize without exterminating the natives. Would
+      you treat us less mercifully than our barbarous forefathers treated the
+      Redskin and the Negro? Are we not, as Britons, entitled at least to some
+      reservations?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. What is the use of prolonging the agony? You would perish slowly in
+      our presence, no matter what we did to preserve you. You were almost dead
+      when I took charge of you today, merely because you had talked for a few
+      minutes to a secondary. Besides, we have our own experience to go upon.
+      Have you never heard that our children occasionally revert to the
+      ancestral type, and are born shortlived?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>eagerly</i>] Never. I hope you will not be
+      offended if I say that it would be a great comfort to me if I could be
+      placed in charge of one of those normal individuals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Abnormal, you mean. What you ask is impossible: we weed them all out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. When you say that you weed them out, you send a
+      cold shiver down my spine. I hope you don't mean that you&mdash;that you&mdash;that
+      you assist Nature in any way?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Why not? Have you not heard the saying of the Chinese sage Dee Ning,
+      that a good garden needs weeding? But it is not necessary for us to
+      interfere. We are naturally rather particular as to the conditions on
+      which we consent to live. One does not mind the accidental loss of an arm
+      or a leg or an eye: after all, no one with two legs is unhappy because he
+      has not three; so why should a man with one be unhappy because he has not
+      two? But infirmities of mind and temper are quite another matter. If one
+      of us has no self-control, or is too weak to bear the strain of our
+      truthful life without wincing, or is tormented by depraved appetites and
+      superstitions, or is unable to keep free from pain and depression, he
+      naturally becomes discouraged, and refuses to live.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Good Lord! Cuts his throat, do you mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. No: why should he cut his throat? He simply dies. He wants to. He is
+      out of countenance, as we call it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Well!!! But suppose he is depraved enough not to
+      want to die, and to settle the difficulty by killing all the rest of you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Oh, he is one of the thoroughly degenerate shortlivers whom we
+      occasionally produce. He emigrates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. And what becomes of him then?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. You shortlived people always think very highly of him. You accept him
+      as what you call a great man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. You astonish me; and yet I must admit that what you
+      tell me accounts for a great deal of the little I know of the private life
+      of our great men. We must be very convenient to you as a dumping place for
+      your failures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. I admit that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Good. Then if you carry out your plan of
+      colonization, and leave no shortlived countries in the world, what will
+      you do with your undesirables?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Kill them. Our tertiaries are not at all squeamish about killing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Gracious Powers!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>glancing up at the sun</i>] Come. It is just sixteen o'clock; and
+      you have to join your party at half-past in the temple in Galway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>rising</i>] Galway! Shall I at last be able to
+      boast of having seen that magnificent city?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. You will be disappointed: we have no cities. There is a temple of the
+      oracle: that is all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Alas! and I came here to fulfil two long-cherished
+      dreams. One was to see Galway. It has been said, 'See Galway and die.' The
+      other was to contemplate the ruins of London.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Ruins! We do not tolerate ruins. Was London a place of any
+      importance?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>amazed</i>] What! London! It was the mightiest
+      city of antiquity. [<i>Rhetorically</i>] Situate just where the Dover Road
+      crosses the Thames, it&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>curtly interrupting</i>] There is nothing there now. Why should
+      anybody pitch on such a spot to live? The nearest houses are at a place
+      called Strand-on-the-Green: it is very old. Come. We shall go across the
+      water. [<i>She goes down the steps</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Sic transit gloria mundi!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>from below</i>] What did you say?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>despairingly</i>] Nothing. You would not
+      understand. [<i>He goes down the steps</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0060" id="link2H_4_0060"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      ACT II
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>A courtyard before the columned portico of a temple. The temple door is
+      in the middle of the portico. A veiled and robed woman of majestic
+      carriage passes along behind the columns towards the entrance. From the
+      opposite direction a man of compact figure, clean-shaven, saturnine, and
+      self-centred: in short, very like Napoleon I, and wearing a military
+      uniform of Napoleonic cut, marches with measured steps; places his hand in
+      his lapel in the traditional manner; and fixes the woman with his eye. She
+      stops, her attitude expressing haughty amazement at his audacity. He is on
+      her right: she on his left.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON [<i>impressively</i>] I am the Man of Destiny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE VEILED WOMAN [<i>unimpressed</i>] How did you get in here?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. I walked in. I go on until I am stopped. I never am stopped. I
+      tell you I am the Man of Destiny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE VEILED WOMAN. You will be a man of very short destiny if you wander
+      about here without one of our children to guide you. I suppose you belong
+      to the Baghdad envoy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. I came with him; but I do not belong to him. I belong to myself.
+      Direct me to the oracle if you can. If not, do not waste my time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE VEILED WOMAN. Your time, poor creature, is short. I will not waste it.
+      Your envoy and his party will be here presently. The consultation of the
+      oracle is arranged for them, and will take place according to the
+      prescribed ritual. You can wait here until they come [<i>she turns to go
+      into the temple</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. I never wait. [<i>She stops</i>]. The prescribed ritual is, I
+      believe, the classical one of the pythoness on her tripod, the
+      intoxicating fumes arising from the abyss, the convulsions of the
+      priestess as she delivers the message of the God, and so on. That sort of
+      thing does not impose on me: I use it myself to impose on simpletons. I
+      believe that what is, is. I know that what is not, is not. The antics of a
+      woman sitting on a tripod and pretending to be drunk do not interest me.
+      Her words are put into her mouth, not by a god, but by a man three hundred
+      years old, who has had the capacity to profit by his experience. I wish to
+      speak to that man face to face, without mummery or imposture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE VEILED WOMAN. You seem to be an unusually sensible person. But there
+      is no old man. I am the oracle on duty today. I am on my way to take my
+      place on the tripod, and go through the usual mummery, as you rightly call
+      it, to impress your friend the envoy. As you are superior to that kind of
+      thing, you may consult me now. [<i>She leads the way into the middle of
+      the courtyard</i>]. What do you want to know?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON [<i>following her</i>] Madam: I have not come all this way to
+      discuss matters of State with a woman. I must ask you to direct me to one
+      of your oldest and ablest men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. None of our oldest and ablest men or women would dream of
+      wasting their time on you. You would die of discouragement in their
+      presence in less than three hours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. You can keep this idle fable of discouragement for people
+      credulous enough to be intimidated by it, madam. I do not believe in
+      metaphysical forces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. No one asks you to. A field is something physical, is it not.
+      Well, I have a field.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. I have several million fields. I am Emperor of Turania.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. You do not understand. I am not speaking of an agricultural
+      field. Do you not know that every mass of matter in motion carries with it
+      an invisible gravitational field, every magnet an invisible magnetic
+      field, and every living organism a mesmeric field? Even you have a
+      perceptible mesmeric field. Feeble as it is, it is the strongest I have
+      yet observed in a shortliver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. By no means feeble, madam. I understand you now; and I may tell
+      you that the strongest characters blench in my presence, and submit to my
+      domination. But I do not call that a physical force.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. What else do you call it, pray? Our physicists deal with it.
+      Our mathematicians express its measurements in algebraic equations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. Do you mean that they could measure mine?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. Yes: by a figure infinitely near to zero. Even in us the force
+      is negligible during our first century of life. In our second it develops
+      quickly, and becomes dangerous to shortlivers who venture into its field.
+      If I were not veiled and robed in insulating material you could not endure
+      my presence; and I am still a young woman: one hundred and seventy if you
+      wish to know exactly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON [<i>folding his arms</i>] I am not intimidated: no woman alive,
+      old or young, can put me out of countenance. Unveil, madam. Disrobe. You
+      will move this temple as easily as shake me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. Very well [<i>she throws back her veil</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON [<i>shrieking, staggering, and covering his eyes</i>] No. Stop.
+      Hide your face again. [<i>Shutting his eyes and distractedly clutching at
+      his throat and heart</i>] Let me go. Help! I am dying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. Do you still wish to consult an older person?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. No, no. The veil, the veil, I beg you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE [<i>replacing the veil</i>] So.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. Ouf! One cannot always be at one's best. Twice before in my life
+      I have lost my nerve and behaved like a poltroon. But I warn you not to
+      judge my quality by these involuntary moments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. I have no occasion to judge of your quality. You want my
+      advice. Speak quickly; or I shall go about my business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON [<i>After a moment's hesitation, sinks respectfully on one knee</i>]
+      I&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. Oh, rise, rise. Are you so foolish as to offer me this mummery
+      which even you despise?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON [<i>rising</i>] I knelt in spite of myself. I compliment you on
+      your impressiveness, madam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE [<i>impatiently</i>] Time! time! time! time!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. You will not grudge me the necessary time, madam, when you know
+      my case. I am a man gifted with a certain specific talent in a degree
+      altogether extraordinary. I am not otherwise a very extraordinary person:
+      my family is not influential; and without this talent I should cut no
+      particular figure in the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. Why cut a figure in the world?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. Superiority will make itself felt, madam. But when I say I
+      possess this talent I do not express myself accurately. The truth is that
+      my talent possesses me. It is genius. It drives me to exercise it. I must
+      exercise it. I am great when I exercise it. At other moments I am nobody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. Well, exercise it. Do you need an oracle to tell you that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. Wait. This talent involves the shedding of human blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. Are you a surgeon, or a dentist?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. Psha! You do not appreciate me, madam. I mean the shedding of
+      oceans of blood, the death of millions of men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. They object, I suppose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. Not at all. They adore me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. Indeed!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. I have never shed blood with my own hand. They kill each other:
+      they die with shouts of triumph on their lips. Those who die cursing do
+      not curse me. My talent is to organize this slaughter; to give mankind
+      this terrible joy which they call glory; to let loose the devil in them
+      that peace has bound in chains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. And you? Do you share their joy?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. Not at all. What satisfaction is it to me to see one fool pierce
+      the entrails of another with a bayonet? I am a man of princely character,
+      but of simple personal tastes and habits. I have the virtues of a laborer:
+      industry and indifference to personal comfort. But I must rule, because I
+      am so superior to other men that it is intolerable to me to be misruled by
+      them. Yet only as a slayer can I become a ruler. I cannot be great as a
+      writer: I have tried and failed. I have no talent as a sculptor or
+      painter; and as lawyer, preacher, doctor, or actor, scores of second-rate
+      men can do as well as I, or better. I am not even a diplomatist: I can
+      only play my trump card of force. What I can do is to organize war. Look
+      at me! I seem a man like other men, because nine-tenths of me is common
+      humanity. But the other tenth is a faculty for seeing things as they are
+      that no other man possesses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. You mean that you have no imagination?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON [<i>forcibly</i>] I mean that I have the only imagination worth
+      having: the power of imagining things as they are, even when I cannot see
+      them. You feel yourself my superior, I know: nay, you are my superior:
+      have I not bowed my knee to you by instinct? Yet I challenge you to a test
+      of our respective powers. Can you calculate what the methematicians call
+      vectors, without putting a single algebraic symbol on paper? Can you
+      launch ten thousand men across a frontier and a chain of mountains and
+      know to a mile exactly where they will be at the end of seven weeks? The
+      rest is nothing: I got it all from the books at my military school. Now
+      this great game of war, this playing with armies as other men play with
+      bowls and skittles, is one which I must go on playing, partly because a
+      man must do what he can and not what he would like to do, and partly
+      because, if I stop, I immediately lose my power and become a beggar in the
+      land where I now make men drunk with glory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. No doubt then you wish to know how to extricate yourself from
+      this unfortunate position?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. It is not generally considered unfortunate, madam. Supremely
+      fortunate rather.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. If you think so, go on making them drunk with glory. Why
+      trouble me with their folly and your vectors?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. Unluckily, madam, men are not only heroes: they are also
+      cowards. They desire glory; but they dread death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. Why should they? Their lives are too short to be worth living.
+      That is why they think your game of war worth playing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. They do not look at it quite in that way. The most worthless
+      soldier wants to live for ever. To make him risk being killed by the enemy
+      I have to convince him that if he hesitates he will inevitably be shot at
+      dawn by his own comrades for cowardice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. And if his comrades refuse to shoot him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. They will be shot too, of course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. By whom?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. By their comrades.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. And if they refuse?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. Up to a certain point they do not refuse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. But when that point is reached, you have to do the shooting
+      yourself, eh?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. Unfortunately, madam, when that point is reached, they shoot me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. Mf! It seems to me they might as well shoot you first as last.
+      Why don't they?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. Because their love of fighting, their desire for glory, their
+      shame of being branded as dastards, their instinct to test themselves in
+      terrible trials, their fear of being killed or enslaved by the enemy,
+      their belief that they are defending their hearths and homes, overcome
+      their natural cowardice, and make them willing not only to risk their own
+      lives but to kill everyone who refuses to take that risk. But if war
+      continues too long, there comes a time when the soldiers, and also the
+      taxpayers who are supporting and munitioning them, reach a condition which
+      they describe as being fed up. The troops have proved their courage, and
+      want to go home and enjoy in peace the glory it has earned them. Besides,
+      the risk of death for each soldier becomes a certainty if the fighting
+      goes on for ever: he hopes to escape for six months, but knows he cannot
+      escape for six years. The risk of bankruptcy for the citizen becomes a
+      certainty in the same way. Now what does this mean for me?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. Does that matter in the midst of such calamity?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. Psha! madam: it is the only thing that matters: the value of
+      human life is the value of the greatest living man. Cut off that
+      infinitesimal layer of grey matter which distinguishes my brain from that
+      of the common man, and you cut down the stature of humanity from that of a
+      giant to that of a nobody. I matter supremely: my soldiers do not matter
+      at all: there are plenty more where they came from. If you kill me, or put
+      a stop to my activity (it is the same thing), the nobler part of human
+      life perishes. You must save the world from that catastrophe, madam. War
+      has made me popular, powerful, famous, historically immortal. But I
+      foresee that if I go on to the end it will leave me execrated, dethroned,
+      imprisoned, perhaps executed. Yet if I stop fighting I commit suicide as a
+      great man and become a common one. How am I to escape the horns of this
+      tragic dilemma? Victory I can guarantee: I am invincible. But the cost of
+      victory is the demoralization, the depopulation, the ruin of the victors
+      no less than of the vanquished. How am I to satisfy my genius by fighting
+      until I die? that is my question to you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. Were you not rash to venture into these sacred islands with
+      such a question on your lips? Warriors are not popular here, my friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. If a soldier were restrained by such a consideration, madam, he
+      would no longer be a soldier. Besides [<i>he produces a pistol</i>], I
+      have not come unarmed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. What is that thing?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. It is an instrument of my profession, madam. I raise this
+      hammer; I point the barrel at you; I pull this trigger that is against my
+      forefinger; and you fall dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. Shew it to me [<i>she puts out her hand to take it from him</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON [<i>retreating a step</i>] Pardon me, madam. I never trust my
+      life in the hands of a person over whom I have no control.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE [<i>sternly</i>] Give it to me [<i>she raises her hand to her
+      veil</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON [<i>dropping the pistol and covering his eyes</i>] Quarter!
+      Kamerad! Take it, madam [<i>he kicks it towards her</i>]: I surrender.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. Give me that thing. Do you expect me to stoop for it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON [<i>taking his hands from his eyes with an effort</i>] A poor
+      victory, madam [<i>he picks up the pistol and hands it to her</i>]: there
+      was no vector strategy needed to win it. [Making a pose of his
+      humiliation] But enjoy your triumph: you have made me&mdash;ME! Cain
+      Adamson Charles Napoleon! Emperor of Turania! cry for quarter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. The way out of your difficulty, Cain Adamson, is very simple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON [<i>eagerly</i>] Good. What is it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. To die before the tide of glory turns. Allow me [<i>she shoots
+      him</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>He falls with a shriek. She throws the pistol away and goes haughtily
+      into the temple.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON [<i>scrambling to his feet</i>] Murderess! Monster! She-devil!
+      Unnatural, inhuman wretch! You deserve to be hanged, guillotined, broken
+      on the wheel, burnt alive. No sense of the sacredness of human life! No
+      thought for my wife and children! Bitch! Sow! Wanton! [<i>He picks up the
+      pistol</i>]. And missed me at five yards! Thats a woman all over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>He is going away whence he came when Zoo arrives and confronts him at
+      the head of a party consisting of the British Envoy, the Elderly
+      Gentleman, the Envoy's wife, and her daughter, aged about eighteen. The
+      envoy, a typical politician, looks like an imperfectly reformed criminal
+      disguised by a good tailor. The dress of the ladies is coeval with that of
+      the Elderly Gentleman, and suitable for public official ceremonies in
+      western capitals at the XVIII-XIX fin de siècle.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>They file in under the portico. Zoo immediately comes out imperiously
+      to Napoleon's right, whilst the Envoy's wife hurries effusively to his
+      left. The Envoy meanwhile passes along behind the columns to the door,
+      followed by his daughter. The Elderly Gentleman stops just where he
+      entered, to see why Zoo has swooped so abruptly on the Emperor of Turania.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>to Napoleon, severely</i>] What are you doing here by yourself?
+      You have no business to go about here alone. What was that noise just now?
+      What is that in your hand?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Napoleon glares at her in speechless fury; pockets the pistol; and
+      produces a whistle.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY'S WIFE. Arnt you coming with us to the oracle, sire?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. To hell with the oracle, and with you too [<i>he turns to go</i>]!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY'S WIFE} [<i>together</i>] {Oh, sire!!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO} {Where are you going?}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NAPOLEON. To fetch the police. [<i>He goes out past Zoo, almost jostling
+      her, and blowing piercing blasts on his whistle</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>whipping out her tuning-fork and intoning</i>] Hallo Galway
+      Central. [<i>The whistling continues</i>]. Stand by to isolate. [<i>To the
+      Elderly Gentleman, who is staring after the whistling Emperor</i>] How far
+      has he gone?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. To that curious statue of a fat old man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>quickly, intoning</i>] Isolate the Falstaff monument isolate hard.
+      Paralyze&mdash;[<i>the whistling stops</i>]. Thank you. [<i>She puts up
+      her tuning-fork</i>]. He shall not move a muscle until I come to fetch
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY'S WIFE. Oh! he will be frightfully angry! Did you hear what he
+      said to me?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Much we care for his anger!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE DAUGHTER [<i>coming forward between her mother and Zoo</i>]. Please,
+      madam, whose statue is it? and where can I buy a picture postcard of it?
+      It is so funny. I will take a snapshot when we are coming back; but they
+      come out so badly sometimes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. They will give you pictures and toys in the temple to take away with
+      you. The story of the statue is too long. It would bore you [<i>she goes
+      past them across the courtyard to get rid of them</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WIFE [<i>gushing</i>] Oh no, I assure you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE DAUGHTER [<i>copying her mother</i>] We should be so interested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Nonsense! All I can tell you about it is that a thousand years ago,
+      when the whole world was given over to you shortlived people, there was a
+      war called the War to end War. In the war which followed it about ten
+      years later, hardly any soldiers were killed; but seven of the capital
+      cities of Europe were wiped out of existence. It seems to have been a
+      great joke: for the statesmen who thought they had sent ten million common
+      men to their deaths were themselves blown into fragments with their houses
+      and families, while the ten million men lay snugly in the caves they had
+      dug for themselves. Later on even the houses escaped; but their
+      inhabitants were poisoned by gas that spared no living soul. Of course the
+      soldiers starved and ran wild; and that was the end of pseudo-Christian
+      civilization. The last civilized thing that happened was that the
+      statesmen discovered that cowardice was a great patriotic virtue; and a
+      public monument was erected to its first preacher, an ancient and very fat
+      sage called Sir John Falstaff. Well [<i>pointing</i>], thats Falstaff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>coming from the portico to his granddaughter's
+      right</i>] Great Heavens! And at the base of this monstrous poltroon's
+      statue the War God of Turania is now gibbering impotently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Serve him right! War God indeed!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY [<i>coming between his wife and Zoo</i>] I don't know any
+      history: a modern Prime Minister has something better to do than sit
+      reading books; but&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>interrupting him encouragingly</i>] You make
+      history, Ambrose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. Well, perhaps I do; and perhaps history makes me. I hardly
+      recognize myself in the newspapers sometimes, though I suppose leading
+      articles are the materials of history, as you might say. But what I want
+      to know is, how did war come back again? and how did they make those
+      poisonous gases you speak of? We should be glad to know; for they might
+      come in very handy if we have to fight Turania. Of course I am all for
+      peace, and don't hold with the race of armaments in principle; still, we
+      must keep ahead or be wiped out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. You can make the gases for yourselves when your chemists find out
+      how. Then you will do as you did before: poison each other until there are
+      no chemists left, and no civilization. You will then begin all over again
+      as half-starved ignorant savages, and fight with boomerangs and poisoned
+      arrows until you work up to the poison gases and high explosives once
+      more, with the same result. That is, unless we have sense enough to make
+      an end of this ridiculous game by destroying you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY [<i>aghast</i>] Destroying us!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I told you, Ambrose. I warned you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. But&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>impatiently</i>] I wonder what Zozim is doing. He ought to be here
+      to receive you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Do you mean that rather insufferable young man whom
+      you found boring me on the pier?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Yes. He has to dress-up in a Druid's robe, and put on a wig and a
+      long false beard, to impress you silly people. I have to put on a purple
+      mantle. I have no patience with such mummery; but you expect it from us;
+      so I suppose it must be kept up. Will you wait here until Zozim comes,
+      please [<i>she turns to enter the temple</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. My good lady, is it worth while dressing-up and putting on
+      false beards for us if you tell us beforehand that it is all humbug?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. One would not think so; but if you wont believe in anyone who is not
+      dressed-up, why, we must dress-up for you. It was you who invented all
+      this nonsense, not we.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. But do you expect us to be impressed after this?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. I don't expect anything. I know, as a matter of experience, that you
+      will be impressed. The oracle will frighten you out of your wits. [<i>She
+      goes into the temple</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WIFE. These people treat us as if we were dirt beneath their feet. I
+      wonder at you putting up with it, Amby. It would serve them right if we
+      went home at once: wouldnt it, Eth?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE DAUGHTER. Yes, mamma. But perhaps they wouldnt mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. No use talking like that, Molly. Ive got to see this oracle.
+      The folks at home wont know how we have been treated: all theyll know is
+      that Ive stood face to face with the oracle and had the straight tip from
+      her. I hope this Zozim chap is not going to keep us waiting much longer;
+      for I feel far from comfortable about the approaching interview; and thats
+      the honest truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I never thought I should want to see that man
+      again; but now I wish he would take charge of us instead of Zoo. She was
+      charming at first: quite charming; but she turned into a fiend because I
+      had a few words with her. You would not believe: she very nearly killed
+      me. You heard what she said just now. She belongs to a party here which
+      wants to have us all killed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WIFE [<i>terrified</i>] Us! But we have done nothing: we have been as
+      nice to them as nice could be. Oh, Amby, come away, come away: there is
+      something dreadful about this place and these people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. There is, and no mistake. But youre safe with me: you ought to
+      have sense enough to know that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I am sorry to say, Molly, that it is not merely us
+      four poor weak creatures they want to kill, but the entire race of Man,
+      except themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. Not so poor neither, Poppa. Nor so weak, if you are going to
+      take in all the Powers. If it comes to killing, two can play at that game,
+      longlived or shortlived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No, Ambrose: we should have no chance. We are worms
+      beside these fearful people: mere worms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Zozim comes from the temple, robed majestically, and wearing a wreath
+      of mistletoe in his flowing white wig. His false beard reaches almost to
+      his waist. He carries a staff with a curiously carved top.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOZIM [<i>in the doorway, impressively</i>] Hail, strangers!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ALL [<i>reverently</i>] Hail!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOZIM. Are ye prepared?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. We are.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOZIM [<i>unexpectedly becoming conversational, and strolling down
+      carelessly to the middle of the group between the two ladies</i>] Well,
+      I'm sorry to say the oracle is not. She was delayed by some member of your
+      party who got loose; and as the show takes a bit of arranging, you will
+      have to wait a few minutes. The ladies can go inside and look round the
+      entrance hall and get pictures and things if they want them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WIFE} [<i>together</i>] {Thank you.} {I should like to,} [<i>They go
+      into</i>]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE DAUGHTER} {very much.} [<i>the temple</i>]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>in dignified rebuke of Zozim's levity</i>] Taken
+      in this spirit, sir, the show, as you call it, becomes almost an insult to
+      our common sense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOZIM. Quite, I should say. You need not keep it up with me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY [<i>suddenly making himself very agreeable</i>] Just so: just
+      so. We can wait as long as you please. And now, if I may be allowed to
+      seize the opportunity of a few minutes' friendly chat&mdash;?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOZIM. By all means, if only you will talk about things I can understand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. Well, about this colonizing plan of yours. My father-in-law
+      here has been telling me something about it; and he has just now let out
+      that you want not only to colonize us, but to&mdash;to&mdash;to&mdash;well,
+      shall we say to supersede us? Now why supersede us? Why not live and let
+      live? Theres not a scrap of ill-feeling on our side. We should welcome a
+      colony of immortals&mdash;we may almost call you that&mdash;in the British
+      Middle East. No doubt the Turanian Empire, with its Mahometan traditions,
+      overshadows us now. We have had to bring the Emperor with us on this
+      expedition, though of course you know as well as I do that he has imposed
+      himself on my party just to spy on me. I dont deny that he has the whip
+      hand of us to some extent, because if it came to a war none of our
+      generals could stand up against him. I give him best at that game: he is
+      the finest soldier in the world. Besides, he is an emperor and an
+      autocrat; and I am only an elected representative of the British
+      democracy. Not that our British democrats wont fight: they will fight the
+      heads off all the Turanians that ever walked; but then it takes so long to
+      work them up to it, while he has only to say the word and march. But you
+      people would never get on with him. Believe me, you would not be as
+      comfortable in Turania as you would be with us. We understand you. We like
+      you. We are easy-going people; and we are rich people. That will appeal to
+      you. Turania is a poor place when all is said. Five-eighths of it is
+      desert. They dont irrigate as we do. Besides&mdash;now I am sure this will
+      appeal to you and to all right-minded men&mdash;we are Christians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOZIM. The old uns prefer Mahometans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY [<i>shocked</i>] What!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOZIM [<i>distinctly</i>] They prefer Mahometans. Whats wrong with that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. Well, of all the disgraceful&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>diplomatically interrupting his scandalized
+      son-in-law</i>] There can be no doubt, I am afraid, that by clinging too
+      long to the obsolete features of the old pseudo-Christian Churches we
+      allowed the Mahometans to get ahead of us at a very critical period of the
+      development of the Eastern world. When the Mahometan Reformation took
+      place, it left its followers with the enormous advantage of having the
+      only established religion in the world in whose articles of faith any
+      intelligent and educated person could believe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. But what about our Reformation? Dont give the show away, Poppa.
+      We followed suit, didnt we?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Unfortunately, Ambrose, we could not follow suit
+      very rapidly. We had not only a religion to deal with, but a Church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOZIM. What is a Church?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. Not know what a Church is! Well!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. You must excuse me; but if I attempted to explain
+      you would only ask me what a bishop is; and that is a question that no
+      mortal man can answer. All I can tell you is that Mahomet was a truly wise
+      man; for he founded a religion without a Church; consequently when the
+      time came for a Reformation of the mosques there were no bishops and
+      priests to obstruct it. Our bishops and priests prevented us for two
+      hundred years from following suit; and we have never recovered the start
+      we lost then. I can only plead that we did reform our Church at last. No
+      doubt we had to make a few compromises as a matter of good taste; but
+      there is now very little in our Articles of Religion that is not accepted
+      as at least allegorically true by our Higher Criticism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY [<i>encouragingly</i>] Besides, does it matter? Why, <i>I</i>
+      have never read the Articles in my life; and I am Prime Minister! Come! if
+      my services in arranging for the reception of a colonizing party would be
+      acceptable, they are at your disposal. And when I say a reception I mean a
+      reception. Royal honors, mind you! A salute of a hundred and one guns! The
+      streets lined with troops! The Guards turned out at the Palace! Dinner at
+      the Guildhall!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOZIM. Discourage me if I know what youre talking about! I wish Zoo would
+      come: she understands these things. All I can tell you is that the general
+      opinion among the Colonizers is in favor of beginning in a country where
+      the people are of a different color from us; so that we can make short
+      work without any risk of mistakes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. What do you mean by short work? I hope&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOZIM [<i>with obviously feigned geniality</i>] Oh, nothing, nothing,
+      nothing. We are thinking of trying North America: thats all. You see, the
+      Red Men of that country used to be white. They passed through a period of
+      sallow complexions, followed by a period of no complexions at all, into
+      the red characteristic of their climate. Besides, several cases of long
+      life have occurred in North America. They joined us here; and their stock
+      soon reverted to the original white of these islands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. But have you considered the possibility of your
+      colony turning red?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOZIM. That wont matter. We are not particular about our pigmentation. The
+      old books mention red-faced Englishmen: they appear to have been common
+      objects at one time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>very persuasively</i>] But do you think you
+      would be popular in North America? It seems to me, if I may say so, that
+      on your own shewing you need a country in which society is organized in a
+      series of highly exclusive circles, in which the privacy of private life
+      is very jealously guarded, and in which no one presumes to speak to anyone
+      else without an introduction following a strict examination of social
+      credentials. It is only in such a country that persons of special tastes
+      and attainments can form a little world of their own, and protect
+      themselves absolutely from intrusion by common persons. I think I may
+      claim that our British society has developed this exclusiveness to
+      perfection. If you would pay us a visit and see the working of our caste
+      system, our club system, our guild system, you would admit that nowhere
+      else in the world, least of all, perhaps in North America, which has a
+      regrettable tradition of social promiscuity, could you keep yourselves so
+      entirely to yourselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOZIM [<i>good-naturedly embarrassed</i>] Look here. There is no good
+      discussing this. I had rather not explain; but it wont make any difference
+      to our Colonizers what sort of short-livers they come across. We shall
+      arrange all that. Never mind how. Let us join the ladies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>throwing off his diplomatic attitude and
+      abandoning himself to despair</i>] We understand you only too well, sir.
+      Well, kill us. End the lives you have made miserably unhappy by opening up
+      to us the possibility that any of us may live three hundred years. I
+      solemnly curse that possibility. To you it may be a blessing, because you
+      do live three hundred years. To us, who live less than a hundred, whose
+      flesh is as grass, it is the most unbearable burden our poor tortured
+      humanity has ever groaned under.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. Hullo, Poppa! Steady! How do you make that out?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOZIM. What is three hundred years? Short enough, if you ask me. Why, in
+      the old days you people lived on the assumption that you were going to
+      last out for ever and ever and ever. Immortal, you thought yourselves.
+      Were you any happier then?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. As President of the Baghdad Historical Society I am
+      in a position to inform you that the communities which took this monstrous
+      pretension seriously were the most wretched of which we have any record.
+      My Society has printed an editio princeps of the works of the father of
+      history, Thucyderodotus Macolly-buckle. Have you read his account of what
+      was blasphemously called the Perfect City of God, and the attempt made to
+      reproduce it in the northern part of these islands by Jonhobsnoxius,
+      called the Leviathan? Those misguided people sacrificed the fragment of
+      life that was granted to them to an imaginary immortality. They crucified
+      the prophet who told them to take no thought for the morrow, and that here
+      and now was their Australia: Australia being a term signifying paradise,
+      or an eternity of bliss. They tried to produce a condition of death in
+      life: to mortify the flesh, as they called it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOZIM. Well, you are not suffering from that, are you? You have not a
+      mortified air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Naturally we are not absolutely insane and
+      suicidal. Nevertheless we impose on ourselves abstinences and disciplines
+      and studies that are meant to prepare us for living three centuries. And
+      we seldom live one. My childhood was made unnecessarily painful, my
+      boyhood unnecessarily laborious, by ridiculous preparations for a length
+      of days which the chances were fifty thousand to one against my ever
+      attaining. I have been cheated out of the natural joys and freedoms of my
+      life by this dream to which the existence of these islands and their
+      oracles gives a delusive possibility of realization. I curse the day when
+      long life was invented, just as the victims of Jonhobsnoxius cursed the
+      day when eternal life was invented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOZIM. Pooh! You could live three centuries if you chose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. That is what the fortunate always say to the
+      unfortunate. Well, I do not choose. I accept my three score and ten years.
+      If they are filled with usefulness, with justice, with mercy, with
+      good-will: if they are the lifetime of a soul that never loses its honor
+      and a brain that never loses its eagerness, they are enough for me,
+      because these things are infinite and eternal, and can make ten of my
+      years as long as thirty of yours. I shall not conclude by saying live as
+      long as you like and be damned to you, because I have risen for the moment
+      far above any ill-will to you or to any fellow-creature; but I am your
+      equal before that eternity in which the difference between your lifetime
+      and mine is as the difference between one drop of water and three in the
+      eyes of the Almighty Power from which we have both proceeded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOZIM [<i>impressed</i>] You spoke that piece very well, Daddy. I couldnt
+      talk like that if I tried. It sounded fine. Ah! here comes the ladies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>To his relief, they have just appeared on the threshold of the temple.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>passing from exaltation to distress</i>] It
+      means nothing to him: in this land of discouragement the sublime has
+      become the ridiculous. [<i>Turning on the hopelessly puzzled Zozim</i>]
+      'Behold, thou hast made my days as it were a span long; and mine age is
+      even as nothing in respect of thee.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WIFE.} [<i>running</i>] {{Poppa, Poppa: dont look like that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE DAUGHTER.}[<i>to him</i>] {Oh, granpa, whats the matter?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOZIM [<i>with a shrug</i>] Discouragement!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>throwing off the women with a superb gesture</i>]
+      Liar! [<i>Recollecting himself, he adds, with noble courtesy, raising his
+      hat and bowing</i>] I beg your pardon, sir; but I am NOT discouraged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>A burst of orchestral music, through which a powerful gong sounds, is
+      heard from the temple. Zoo, in a purple robe, appears in the doorway.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Come. The oracle is ready.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Zozim motions them to the threshold with a wave of his staff. The Envoy
+      and the Elderly Gentleman take off their hats and go into the temple on
+      tiptoe, Zoo leading the way. The Wife and Daughter, frightened as they
+      are, raise their heads uppishly and follow flatfooted, sustained by a
+      sense of their Sunday clothes and social consequence. Zozim remains in the
+      portico, alone.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOZIM [<i>taking off his wig, beard, and robe, and bundling them under his
+      arm</i>] Ouf! [He goes home].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0061" id="link2H_4_0061"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      ACT III
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>Inside the temple. A gallery overhanging an abyss. Dead silence. The
+      gallery is brightly lighted; but beyond is a vast gloom, continually
+      changing in intensity. A shaft of violet light shoots upward; and a very
+      harmonious and silvery carillon chimes. When it ceases the violet ray
+      vanishes.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Zoo comes along the gallery, followed by the Envoy's daughter, his
+      wife, the Envoy himself, and the Elderly Gentleman. The two men are
+      holding their hats with the brims near their noses, as if prepared to pray
+      into them at a moment's notice. Zoo halts: they all follow her example.
+      They contemplate the void with awe. Organ music of the kind called sacred
+      in the nineteenth century begins. Their awe deepens. The violet ray, now a
+      diffused mist, rises again from the abyss.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WIFE [<i>to Zoo, in a reverent whisper</i>] Shall we kneel?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>loudly</i>] Yes, if you want to. You can stand on your head if you
+      like. [<i>She sits down carelessly on the gallery railing, with her back
+      to the abyss</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>jarred by her callousness</i>] We desire to
+      behave in a becoming manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Very well. Behave just as you feel. It doesn't matter how you behave.
+      But keep your wits about you when the pythoness ascends, or you will
+      forget the questions you have come to ask her.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+THE ENVOY}               {[[<i>very nervous, takes out a paper to</i>]
+              } [[<i>simul-</i>]   {[<i>refresh his memory</i>]] Ahem!
+THE DAUGHTER} [<i>taneously</i>]]{[[<i>alarmed</i>]] The pythoness? Is she
+              }               {a snake?
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Tch-ch! The priestess of the oracle. A sybil. A
+      prophetess. Not a snake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WIFE. How awful!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. I'm glad you think so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WIFE. Oh dear! Dont you think so?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. No. This sort of thing is got up to impress you, not to impress me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I wish you would let it impress us, then, madam. I
+      am deeply impressed; but you are spoiling the effect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. You just wait. All this business with colored lights and chords on
+      that old organ is only tomfoolery. Wait til you see the pythoness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Envoy's wife falls on her knees, and takes refuge in prayer.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE DAUGHTER [<i>trembling</i>] Are we really going to see a woman who has
+      lived three hundred years?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Stuff! Youd drop dead if a tertiary as much as looked at you. The
+      oracle is only a hundred and seventy; and you'll find it hard enough to
+      stand her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE DAUGHTER [<i>piteously</i>] Oh! [<i>she falls on her knees</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. Whew! Stand by me, Poppa. This is a little more than I
+      bargained for. Are you going to kneel; or how?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Perhaps it would be in better taste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The two men kneel.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The vapor of the abyss thickens; and a distant roll of thunder seems to
+      come from its depths. The pythoness, seated on her tripod, rises slowly
+      from it. She has discarded the insulating robe and veil in which she
+      conversed with Napoleon, and is now draped and hooded in voluminous folds
+      of a single piece of grey-white stuff. Something supernatural about her
+      terrifies the beholders, who throw themselves on their faces. Her outline
+      flows and waves: she is almost distinct at moments, and again vague and
+      shadowy: above all, she is larger than life-size, not enough to be
+      measured by the flustered congregation, but enough to affect them with a
+      dreadful sense of her supernaturalness.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Get up, get up. Do pull yourselves together, you people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Envoy and his family, by shuddering negatively, intimate that it is
+      impossible. The Elderly Gentleman manages to get on his hands and knees.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Come on, Daddy: you are not afraid. Speak to her. She wont wait here
+      all day for you, you know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>rising very deferentially to his feet</i>]
+      Madam: you will excuse my very natural nervousness in addressing, for the
+      first time in my life, a&mdash;a&mdash;a&mdash;a goddess. My friend and
+      relative the Envoy is unhinged. I throw myself upon your indulgence&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>interrupting him intolerantly</i>] Dont throw yourself on anything
+      belonging to her or you will go right through her and break your neck. She
+      isnt solid, like you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I was speaking figuratively&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. You have been told not to do it. Ask her what you want to know; and
+      be quick about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>stooping and taking the prostrate Envoy by the
+      shoulders</i>] Ambrose: you must make an effort. You cannot go back to
+      Baghdad without the answers to your questions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY [<i>rising to his knees</i>] I shall be only too glad to get
+      back alive on any terms. If my legs would support me I'd just do a bunk
+      straight for the ship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No, no. Remember: your dignity&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. Dignity be damned! I'm terrified. Take me away, for God's sake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>producing a brandy flask and taking the cap off</i>]
+      Try some of this. It is still nearly full, thank goodness!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY [<i>clutching it and drinking eagerly</i>] Ah! Thats better. [<i>He
+      tries to drink again. Finding that he has emptied it, he hands it back to
+      his father-in-law upside down</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>taking it</i>] Great heavens! He has swallowed
+      half-a-pint of neat brandy. [<i>Much perturbed, he screws the cap on
+      again, and pockets the flask</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY [<i>staggering to his feet; pulling a paper from his pocket; and
+      speaking with boisterous confidence</i>] Get up, Molly. Up with you, Eth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The two women rise to their knees.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. What I want to ask is this. [<i>He refers to the paper</i>].
+      Ahem! Civilization has reached a crisis. We are at the parting of the
+      ways. We stand on the brink of the Rubicon. Shall we take the plunge?
+      Already a leaf has been torn out of the book of the Sybil. Shall we wait
+      until the whole volume is consumed? On our right is the crater of the
+      volcano: on our left the precipice. One false step, and we go down to
+      annihilation dragging the whole human race with us. [<i>He pauses for
+      breath</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>recovering his spirits under the familiar
+      stimulus of political oratory</i>] Hear, hear!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. What are you raving about? Ask your question while you have the
+      chance. What is it you want to know?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY [<i>patronizing her in the manner of a Premier debating with a
+      very young member of the Opposition</i>] A young woman asks me a question.
+      I am always glad to see the young taking an interest in politics. It is an
+      impatient question; but it is a practical question, an intelligent
+      question. She asks why we seek to lift a corner of the veil that shrouds
+      the future from our feeble vision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. I don't. I ask you to tell the oracle what you want, and not keep her
+      sitting there all day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>warmly</i>] Order, order!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. What does 'Order, order!' mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. I ask the august oracle to listen to my voice&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. You people seem never to tire of listening to your voices; but it
+      doesn't amuse us. What do you want?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. I want, young woman, to be allowed to proceed without unseemly
+      interruptions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>A low roll of thunder comes from the abyss.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. There! Even the oracle is indignant. [<i>To the
+      Envoy</i>] Do not allow yourself to be put down by this lady's rude
+      clamor, Ambrose. Take no notice. Proceed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY'S WIFE. I cant bear this much longer, Amby. Remember: I havn't
+      had any brandy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HIS DAUGHTER [<i>trembling</i>] There are serpents curling in the vapor. I
+      am afraid of the lightning. Finish it, Papa; or I shall die.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY [<i>sternly</i>] Silence. The destiny of British civilization is
+      at stake. Trust me. I am not afraid. As I was saying&mdash;where was I?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. I don't know. Does anybody?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>tactfully</i>] You were just coming to the
+      election, I think.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY [<i>reassured</i>] Just so. The election. Now what we want to
+      know is this: ought we to dissolve in August, or put it off until next
+      spring?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. Dissolve? In what? [<i>Thunder</i>]. Oh! My fault this time. That
+      means that the oracle understands you, and desires me to hold my tongue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY [<i>fervently</i>] I thank the oracle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE WIFE [<i>to Zoo</i>] Serve you right!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Before the oracle replies, I should like to be
+      allowed to state a few of the reasons why, in my opinion, the Government
+      should hold on until the spring. In the first&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Terrific lightning and thunder. The Elderly Gentleman is knocked flat;
+      but as he immediately sits up again dazedly it is clear that he is none
+      the worse for the shock. The ladies cower in terror. The Envoy's hat is
+      blown off; but he seizes it just as it quits his temples, and holds it on
+      with both hands. He is recklessly drunk, but quite articulate, as he
+      seldom speaks in public without taking stimulants beforehand.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY [<i>taking one hand from his hat to make a gesture of stilling
+      the tempest</i>] Thats enough. We know how to take a hint. I'll put the
+      case in three words. I am the leader of the Potterbill party. My party is
+      in power. I am Prime Minister. The Opposition&mdash;the Rotterjacks&mdash;have
+      won every bye-election for the last six months. They&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>scrambling heatedly to his feet</i>] Not by fair
+      means. By bribery, by misrepresentation, by pandering to the vilest
+      prejudices [<i>muttered thunder</i>]&mdash;I beg your pardon [<i>he is
+      silent</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. Never mind the bribery and lies. The oracle knows all about
+      that. The point is that though our five years will not expire until the
+      year after next, our majority will be eaten away at the bye-elections by
+      about Easter. We can't wait: we must start some question that will excite
+      the public, and go to the country on it. But some of us say do it now.
+      Others say wait til the spring. We cant make up our minds one way or the
+      other. Which would you advise?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. But what is the question that is to excite your public?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. That doesnt matter. I dont know yet. We will find a question
+      all right enough. The oracle can foresee the future: we cannot. [<i>Thunder</i>].
+      What does that mean? What have I done now?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. [<i>severely</i>] How often must you be told that we cannot foresee
+      the future? There is no such thing as the future until it is the present.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Allow me to point out, madam, that when the
+      Potterbill party sent to consult the oracle fifteen years ago, the oracle
+      prophesied that the Potterbills would be victorious at the General
+      Election; and they were. So it is evident that the oracle can foresee the
+      future, and is sometimes willing to reveal it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. Quite true. Thank you, Poppa. I appeal now, over your head,
+      young woman, direct to the August Oracle, to repeat the signal favor
+      conferred on my illustrious predecessor, Sir Fuller Eastwind, and to
+      answer me exactly as he was answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The oracle raises her hands to command silence.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ALL. Sh-sh-sh!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Invisible trombones utter three solemn blasts in the manner of Die
+      Zauberflöte.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. May I&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO [<i>quickly</i>] Hush. The oracle is going to speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. Go home, poor fool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>She vanishes; and the atmosphere changes to prosaic daylight. Zoo comes
+      off the railing; throws off her robe; makes a bundle of it; and tucks it
+      under her arm. The magic and mystery are gone. The women rise to their
+      feet. The Envoy's party stare at one another helplessly.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZOO. The same reply, word for word, that your illustrious predecessor, as
+      you call him, got fifteen years ago. You asked for it; and you got it. And
+      just think of all the important questions you might have asked. She would
+      have answered them, you know. It is always like that. I will go and
+      arrange to have you sent home: you can wait for me in the entrance hall [<i>she
+      goes out</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. What possessed me to ask for the same answer old Eastwind got?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. But it was not the same answer. The answer to
+      Eastwind was an inspiration to our party for years. It won us the
+      election.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY'S DAUGHTER. I learnt it at school, granpa. It wasn't the same at
+      all. I can repeat it. [<i>She quotes</i>] 'When Britain was cradled in the
+      west, the east wind hardened her and made her great. Whilst the east wind
+      prevails Britain shall prosper. The east wind shall wither Britain's
+      enemies in the day of contest. Let the Rotterjacks look to it.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. The old man invented that. I see it all. He was a doddering old
+      ass when he came to consult the oracle. The oracle naturally said 'Go
+      home, poor fool.' There was no sense in saying that to me; but as that
+      girl said, I asked for it. What else could the poor old chap do but fake
+      up an answer fit for publication? There were whispers about it; but nobody
+      believed them. I believe them now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Oh, I cannot admit that Sir Fuller Eastwind was
+      capable of such a fraud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. He was capable of anything: I knew his private secretary. And
+      now what are we going to say? You don't suppose I am going back to Baghdad
+      to tell the British Empire that the oracle called me a fool, do you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Surely we must tell the truth, however painful it
+      may be to our feelings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. I am not thinking of my feelings: I am not so selfish as that,
+      thank God. I am thinking of the country: of our party. The truth, as you
+      call it, would put the Rotterjacks in for the next twenty years. It would
+      be the end of me politically. Not that I care for that: I am only too
+      willing to retire if you can find a better man. Dont hesitate on my
+      account.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No, Ambrose: you are indispensable. There is no one
+      else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. Very well, then. What are you going to do?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. My dear Ambrose, you are the leader of the party,
+      not I. What are you going to do?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY. I am going to tell the exact truth; thats what I'm going to do.
+      Do you take me for a liar?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>puzzled</i>] Oh. I beg your pardon. I understood
+      you to say&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ENVOY [<i>cutting him short</i>] You understood me to say that I am
+      going back to Baghdad to tell the British electorate that the oracle
+      repeated to me, word for word, what it said to Sir Fuller Eastwind fifteen
+      years ago. Molly and Ethel can bear me out. So must you, if you are an
+      honest man. Come on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>He goes out, followed by his wife and daughter.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [<i>left alone and shrinking into an old and
+      desolate figure</i>] What am I to do? I am a most perplexed and wretched
+      man. [<i>He falls on his knees, and stretches his hands in entreaty over
+      the abyss</i>]. I invoke the oracle. I cannot go back and connive at a
+      blasphemous lie. I implore guidance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Pythoness walks in on the gallery behind him, and touches him on
+      the shoulder. Her size is now natural. Her face is hidden by her hood. He
+      flinches as if from an electric shock; turns to her; and cowers, covering
+      his eyes in terror.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No: not close to me. I'm afraid I can't bear it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE [<i>with grave pity</i>] Come: look at me. I am my natural size
+      now: what you saw there was only a foolish picture of me thrown on a cloud
+      by a lantern. How can I help you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. They have gone back to lie about your answer. I
+      cannot go with them. I cannot live among people to whom nothing is real. I
+      have become incapable of it through my stay here. I implore to be allowed
+      to stay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. My friend: if you stay with us you will die of discouragement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. If I go back I shall die of disgust and despair. I
+      take the nobler risk. I beg you, do not cast me out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>He catches her robe and holds her.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. Take care. I have been here one hundred and seventy years.
+      Your death does not mean to me what it means to you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. It is the meaning of life, not of death, that makes
+      banishment so terrible to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE. Be it so, then. You may stay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>She offers him her hands. He grasps them and raises himself a little by
+      clinging to her. She looks steadily into his face. He stiffens; a little
+      convulsion shakes him; his grasp relaxes; and he falls dead.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ORACLE [<i>looking down at the body</i>] Poor shortlived thing! What
+      else could I do for you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART5" id="link2H_PART5"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART V.&mdash;As Far as Thought can Reach
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>Summer afternoon in the year 31,920 A.D. A sunlit glade at the southern
+      foot of a thickly wooded hill. On the west side of it, the steps and
+      columned porch of a dainty little classic temple. Between it and the hill,
+      a rising path to the wooded heights begins with rough steps of stones in
+      the moss. On the opposite side, a grove. In the middle of the glade, an
+      altar in the form of a low marble table as long as a man, set parallel to
+      the temple steps and pointing to the hill. Curved marble benches radiate
+      from it into the foreground; but they are not joined to it: there is
+      plenty of space to pass between the altar and the benches. </i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A dance of youths and maidens is in progress. The music is provided by a
+      few fluteplayers seated carelessly on the steps of the temple. There are
+      no children; and none of the dancers seems younger than eighteen. Some of
+      the youths have beards. Their dress, like the architecture of the theatre
+      and the design of the altar and curved seats, resembles Grecian of the
+      fourth century B.C., freely handled. They move with perfect balance and
+      remarkable grace, racing through a figure like a farandole. They neither
+      romp nor hug in our manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the first full close they clap their hands to stop the musicians, who
+      recommence with a saraband, during which a strange figure appears on the
+      path beyond the temple. He is deep in thought, with his eyes closed and
+      his feet feeling automatically for the rough irregular steps as he slowly
+      descends them. Except for a sort of linen kilt consisting mainly of a
+      girdle carrying a sporran and a few minor pockets, he is naked. In
+      physical hardihood and uprightness he seems to be in the prime of life;
+      and his eyes and mouth shew no signs of age; but his face, though fully
+      and firmly fleshed, bears a network of lines, varying from furrows to
+      hairbreadth reticulations, as if Time had worked over every inch of it
+      incessantly through whole geologic periods. His head is finely domed and
+      utterly bald. Except for his eyelashes he is quite hairless. He is
+      unconscious of his surroundings, and walks right into one of the dancing
+      couples, separating them. He wakes up and stares about him. The couple
+      stop indignantly. The rest stop. The music stops. The youth whom he has
+      jostled accosts him without malice, but without anything that we should
+      call manners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH. Now, then, ancient sleepwalker, why don't you keep your eyes
+      open and mind where you are going?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ANCIENT [<i>mild, bland, and indulgent</i>] I did not know there was a
+      nursery here, or I should not have turned my face in this direction. Such
+      accidents cannot always be avoided. Go on with your play: I will turn
+      back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH. Why not stay with us and enjoy life for once in a way? We will
+      teach you to dance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ANCIENT. No, thank you. I danced when I was a child like you. Dancing
+      is a very crude attempt to get into the rhythm of life. It would be
+      painful to me to go back from that rhythm to your babyish gambols: in fact
+      I could not do it if I tried. But at your age it is pleasant: and I am
+      sorry I disturbed you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH. Come! own up: arnt you very unhappy? It's dreadful to see you
+      ancients going about by yourselves, never noticing anything, never
+      dancing, never laughing, never singing, never getting anything out of
+      life. None of us are going to be like that when we grow up. It's a dog's
+      life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ANCIENT. Not at all. You repeat that old phrase without knowing that
+      there was once a creature on earth called a dog. Those who are interested
+      in extinct forms of life will tell you that it loved the sound of its own
+      voice and bounded about when it was happy, just as you are doing here. It
+      is you, my children, who are living the dog's life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH. The dog must have been a good sensible creature: it set you a
+      very wise example. You should let yourself go occasionally and have a good
+      time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ANCIENT. My children: be content to let us ancients go our ways and
+      enjoy ourselves in our own fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>He turns to go.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. But wait a moment. Why will you not tell us how you enjoy
+      yourself? You must have secret pleasures that you hide from us, and that
+      you never get tired of. I get tired of all our dances and all our tunes. I
+      get tired of all my partners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH [<i>suspiciously</i>] Do you? I shall bear that in mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>They all look at one another as if there were some sinister
+      significance in what she has said.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. We all do: what is the use of pretending we don't? It is
+      natural.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SEVERAL YOUNG PEOPLE. No, no. We don't. It is not natural.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ANCIENT. You are older than he is, I see. You are growing up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. How do you know? I do not look so much older, do I?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ANCIENT. Oh, I was not looking at you. Your looks do not interest me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. Thank you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>They all laugh.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH. You old fish! I believe you don't know the difference between a
+      man and a woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ANCIENT. It has long ceased to interest me in the way it interests
+      you. And when anything no longer interests us we no longer know it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. You havnt told me how I shew my age. That is what I want to
+      know. As a matter of fact I am older than this boy here: older than he
+      thinks. How did you find that out?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ANCIENT. Easily enough. You are ceasing to pretend that these childish
+      games&mdash;this dancing and singing and mating&mdash;do not become
+      tiresome and unsatisfying after a while. And you no longer care to pretend
+      that you are younger than you are. These are the signs of adolescence. And
+      then, see these fantastic rags with which you have draped yourself. [<i>He
+      takes up a piece of her draperies in his hand</i>]. It is rather badly
+      worn here. Why do you not get a new one?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. Oh, I did not notice it. Besides, it is too much trouble.
+      Clothes are a nuisance. I think I shall do without them some day, as you
+      ancients do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ANCIENT. Signs of maturity. Soon you will give up all these toys and
+      games and sweets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH. What! And be as miserable as you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE ANCIENT. Infant: one moment of the ecstasy of life as we live it would
+      strike you dead. [<i>He stalks gravely out through the grove</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>They stare after him, much damped.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH [<i>to the musicians</i>] Let us have another dance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The musicians shake their heads; get up from their seats on the steps;
+      and troop away into the temple. The others follow them, except the Maiden,
+      who sits down on the altar.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A MAIDEN [<i>as she goes</i>] There! The ancient has put them out of
+      countenance. It is your fault, Strephon, for provoking him. [<i>She
+      leaves, much disappointed</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A YOUTH. Why need you have cheeked him like that? [<i>He goes grumbling</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON [<i>calling after him</i>] I thought it was understood that we
+      are always to cheek the ancients on principle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ANOTHER YOUTH. Quite right too! There would be no holding them if we
+      didn't. [<i>He goes</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. Why don't you really stand up to them? <i>I</i> did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ANOTHER YOUTH. Sheer, abject, pusillanimous, dastardly cowardice. Thats
+      why. Face the filthy truth. [<i>He goes</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ANOTHER YOUTH [<i>turning on the steps as he goes out</i>] And don't you
+      forget, infant, that one moment of the ecstasy of life as I live it would
+      strike you dead. Haha!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON [<i>now the only one left, except the Maiden</i>] Arnt you
+      coming, Chloe?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN [<i>shakes her head</i>]!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH [<i>hurrying back to her</i>] What is the matter?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN [<i>tragically pensive</i>] I dont know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH. Then there is something the matter. Is that what you mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. Yes. Something is happening to me. I dont know what.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH. You no longer love me. I have seen it for a month past.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. Dont you think all that is rather silly? We cannot go on as if
+      this kind of thing, this dancing and sweethearting, were everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH. What is there better? What else is there worth living for?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. Oh, stuff! Dont be frivolous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH. Something horrible is happening to you. You are losing all
+      heart, all feeling. [<i>He sits on the altar beside her and buries his
+      face in his hands</i>]. I am bitterly unhappy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. Unhappy! Really, you must have a very empty head if there is
+      nothing in it but a dance with one girl who is no better than any of the
+      other girls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH. You did not always think so. You used to be vexed if I as much
+      as looked at another girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. What does it matter what I did when I was a baby? Nothing
+      existed for me then except what I tasted and touched and saw; and I wanted
+      all that for myself, just as I wanted the moon to play with. Now the world
+      is opening out for me. More than the world: the universe. Even little
+      things are turning out to be great things, and becoming intensely
+      interesting. Have you ever thought about the properties of numbers?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH [<i>sitting up, markedly disenchanted</i>] Numbers!!! I cannot
+      imagine anything drier or more repulsive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. They are fascinating, just fascinating. I want to get away
+      from our eternal dancing and music, and just sit down by myself and think
+      about numbers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH [<i>rising indignantly</i>] Oh, this is too much. I have
+      suspected you for some time past. We have all suspected you. All the girls
+      say that you have deceived us as to your age: that you are getting
+      flat-chested: that you are bored with us; that you talk to the ancients
+      when you get the chance. Tell me the truth: how old are you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. Just twice your age, my poor boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH. Twice my age! Do you mean to say you are four?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. Very nearly four.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH [<i>collapsing on the altar with a groan</i>] Oh!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. My poor Strephon: I pretended I was only two for your sake. I
+      was two when you were born. I saw you break from your shell; and you were
+      such a charming child! You ran round and talked to us all so prettily, and
+      were so handsome and well grown, that I lost my heart to you at once. But
+      now I seem to have lost it altogether: bigger things are taking possession
+      of me. Still, we were very happy in our childish way for the first year,
+      werent we?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. I was happy until you began cooling towards me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. Not towards you, but towards all the trivialities of our life
+      here. Just think. I have hundreds of years to live: perhaps thousands. Do
+      you suppose I can spend centuries dancing; listening to flutes ringing
+      changes on a few tunes and a few notes; raving about the beauty of a few
+      pillars and arches; making jingles with words; lying about with your arms
+      round me, which is really neither comfortable nor convenient;
+      everlastingly choosing colors for dresses, and putting them on, and
+      washing; making a business of sitting together at fixed hours to absorb
+      our nourishment; taking little poisons with it to make us delirious enough
+      to imagine we are enjoying ourselves; and then having to pass the nights
+      in shelters lying in cots and losing half our lives in a state of
+      unconsciousness. Sleep is a shameful thing: I have not slept at all for
+      weeks past. I have stolen out at night when you were all lying insensible&mdash;quite
+      disgusting, I call it&mdash;and wandered about the woods, thinking,
+      thinking, thinking; grasping the world; taking it to pieces; building it
+      up again; devising methods; planning experiments to test the methods; and
+      having a glorious time. Every morning I have come back here with greater
+      and greater reluctance; and I know that the time will soon come&mdash;perhaps
+      it has come already&mdash;when I shall not come back at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. How horribly cold and uncomfortable!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. Oh, don't talk to me of comfort! Life is not worth living if
+      you have to bother about comfort. Comfort makes winter a torture, spring
+      an illness, summer an oppression, and autumn only a respite. The ancients
+      could make life one long frowsty comfort if they chose. But they never
+      lift a finger to make themselves comfortable. They will not sleep under a
+      roof. They will not clothe themselves: a girdle with a few pockets hanging
+      to it to carry things about in is all they wear: they will sit down on the
+      wet moss or in a gorse bush when there is dry heather within two yards of
+      them. Two years ago, when you were born, I did not understand this. Now I
+      feel that I would not put myself to the trouble of walking two paces for
+      all the comfort in the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. But you don't know what this means to me. It means that you are
+      dying to me: yes, just dying. Listen to me [<i>he puts his arm around her</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN [<i>extricating herself</i>] Dont. We can talk quite as well
+      without touching one another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON [<i>horrified</i>] Chloe! Oh, this is the worst symptom of all!
+      The ancients never touch one another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. Why should they?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. Oh, I don't know. But don't you want to touch me? You used to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. Yes: that is true: I used to. We used to think it would be
+      nice to sleep in one another's arms; but we never could go to sleep
+      because our weight stopped our circulations just above the elbows. Then
+      somehow my feeling began to change bit by bit. I kept a sort of interest
+      in your head and arms long after I lost interest in your whole body. And
+      now that has gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. You no longer care for me at all, then?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. Nonsense! I care for you much more seriously than before;
+      though perhaps not so much for you in particular. I mean I care more for
+      everybody. But I don't want to touch you unnecessarily; and I certainly
+      don't want you to touch me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON [<i>rising decisively</i>] That finishes it. You dislike me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN [<i>impatiently</i>] I tell you again, I do not dislike you;
+      but you bore me when you cannot understand; and I think I shall be happier
+      by myself in future. You had better get a new companion. What about the
+      girl who is to be born today?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. I do not want the girl who is to be born today. How do I know
+      what she will be like? I want you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. You cannot have me. You must recognize facts and face them. It
+      is no use running after a woman twice your age. I cannot make my childhood
+      last to please you. The age of love is sweet; but it is short; and I must
+      pay nature's debt. You no longer attract me; and I no longer care to
+      attract you. Growth is too rapid at my age: I am maturing from week to
+      week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. You are maturing, as you call it&mdash;I call it ageing&mdash;from
+      minute to minute. You are going much further than you did when we began
+      this conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. It is not the ageing that is so rapid. It is the realization
+      of it when it has actually happened. Now that I have made up my mind to
+      the fact that I have left childhood behind me, it comes home to me in
+      leaps and bounds with every word you say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. But your vow. Have you forgotten that? We all swore together in
+      that temple: the temple of love. You were more earnest than any of us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN [<i>with a grim smile</i>] Never to let our hearts grow cold!
+      Never to become as the ancients! Never to let the sacred lamp be
+      extinguished! Never to change or forget! To be remembered for ever as the
+      first company of true lovers faithful to this vow so often made and broken
+      by past generations! Ha! ha! Oh, dear!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. Well, you need not laugh. It is a beautiful and holy compact;
+      and I will keep it whilst I live. Are you going to break it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. Dear child: it has broken itself. The change has come in spite
+      of my childish vow. [<i>She rises</i>]. Do you mind if I go into the woods
+      for a walk by myself? This chat of ours seems to me an unbearable waste of
+      time. I have so much to think of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON [<i>again collapsing on the altar and covering his eyes with his
+      hands</i>] My heart is broken. [<i>He weeps</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN [<i>with a shrug</i>] I have luckily got through my childhood
+      without that experience. It shews how wise I was to choose a lover half my
+      age. [<i>She goes towards the grove, and is disappearing among the trees,
+      when another youth, older and manlier than Strephon, with crisp hair and
+      firm arms, comes from the temple, and calls to her from the threshold</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE TEMPLE YOUTH. I say, Chloe. Is there any sign of the Ancient yet? The
+      hour of birth is overdue. The baby is kicking like mad. She will break her
+      shell prematurely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN [<i>looks across to the hill path; then points up it, and says</i>]
+      She is coming, Acis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Maiden turns away through the grove and is lost to sight among the
+      trees.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Acis [<i>coming to Strephon</i>] Whats the matter? Has Chloe been unkind?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. She has grown up in spite of all her promises. She deceived us
+      about her age. She is four.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Four! I am sorry, Strephon. I am getting on for three myself; and I
+      know what old age is. I hate to say 'I told you so'; but she was getting a
+      little hard set and flat-chested and thin on the top, wasn't she?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON [<i>breaking down</i>] Dont.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. You must pull yourself together. This is going to be a busy day.
+      First the birth. Then the Festival of the Artists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON [<i>rising</i>] What is the use of being born if we have to decay
+      into unnatural, heartless, loveless, joyless monsters in four short years?
+      What use are the artists if they cannot bring their beautiful creations to
+      life? I have a great mind to die and have done with it all. [<i>He moves
+      away to the corner of the curved seat farthest from the theatre, and
+      throws himself moodily into it</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>An Ancient Woman has descended the hill path during Strephon's lament,
+      and has heard most of it. She is like the He-Ancient, equally bald, and
+      equally without sexual charm, but intensely interesting and rather
+      terrifying. Her sex is discoverable only by her voice, as her breasts are
+      manly, and her figure otherwise not very different. She wears no clothes,
+      but has draped herself rather perfunctorily with a ceremonial robe, and
+      carries two implements like long slender saws. She comes to the altar
+      between the two young men.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT [<i>to Strephon</i>] Infant: you are only at the beginning
+      of it all. [<i>To Acis</i>] Is the child ready to be born?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. More than ready, Ancient. Shouting and kicking and cursing. We have
+      called to her to be quiet and wait until you come; but of course she only
+      half understands, and is very impatient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. Very well. Bring her out into the sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS [<i>going quickly into the temple</i>] All ready. Come along.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Joyous processional music strikes up in the temple.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT [<i>going close to Strephon</i>]. Look at me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON [<i>sulkily keeping his face </i>averted] Thank you; but I don't
+      want to be cured. I had rather be miserable in my own way than callous in
+      yours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. You like being miserable? You will soon grow out of that.
+      [<i>She returns to the altar</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The procession, headed by Acis, emerges from the temple. Six youths
+      carry on their shoulders a burden covered with a gorgeous but light pall.
+      Before them certain official maidens carry a new tunic, ewers of water,
+      silver dishes pierced with holes, cloths, and immense sponges. The rest
+      carry wands with ribbons, and strew flowers. The burden is deposited on
+      the altar, and the pall removed. It is a huge egg.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT [<i>freeing her arms from her robe, and placing her saws
+      on the altar ready to her hand in a businesslike manner</i>] A girl, I
+      think you said?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE TUNIC BEARER. It is a shame. Why cant we have more boys?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SEVERAL YOUTHS [<i>protesting</i>] Not at all. More girls. We want new
+      girls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A GIRL'S VOICE FROM THE EGG. Let me out. Let me out. I want to be born. I
+      want to be born. [<i>The egg rocks</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS [<i>snatching a wand from one of the others and whacking the egg with
+      it</i>] Be quiet, I tell you. Wait. You will be born presently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE EGG. No, no: at once, at once. I want to be born: I want to be born. [<i>Violent
+      kicking within the egg, which rocks so hard that it has to be held on the
+      altar by the bearers</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. Silence. [<i>The music stops; and the egg behaves itself</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The She-Ancient takes her two saws, and with a couple of strokes rips
+      the egg open. The Newly Born, a pretty girl who would have been guessed as
+      seventeen in our day, sits up in the broken shell, exquisitely fresh and
+      rosy, but with filaments of spare albumen clinging to her here and there.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN [<i>as the world bursts on her vision</i>] Oh! Oh!! Oh!!!
+      Oh!!!! [<i>She continues this ad libitum during the following
+      remonstrances</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Hold your noise, will you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The washing begins. The Newly Born shrieks and struggles.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A YOUTH. Lie quiet, you clammy little devil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A MAIDEN. You must be washed, dear. Now quiet, quiet, quiet: be good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Shut your mouth, or I'll shove the sponge in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. Shut your eyes. Itll hurt if you don't.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ANOTHER MAIDEN. Dont be silly. One would think nobody had ever been born
+      before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN [<i>yells</i>]!!!!!!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Serve you right! You were told to shut your eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE YOUTH. Dry her off quick. I can hardly hold her. Shut it, will you; or
+      I'll smack you into a pickled cabbage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The dressing begins. The Newly Born chuckles with delight.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MAIDEN. Your arms go here, dear. Isnt it pretty? Youll look lovely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN [<i>rapturously</i>] Oh! Oh!! Oh!!! Oh!!!!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ANOTHER YOUTH. No: the other arm: youre putting it on back to front. You
+      are a silly little beast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Here! Thats it. Now youre clean and decent. Up with you! Oopsh! [<i>He
+      hauls her to her feet. She cannot walk at first, but masters it after a
+      few steps</i>]. Now then: march. Here she is, Ancient: put her through the
+      catechism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. What name have you chosen for her?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Amaryllis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT [<i>to the Newly Born</i>] Your name is Amaryllis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. What does it mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A YOUTH. Love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A MAIDEN. Mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ANOTHER YOUTH. Lilies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN [<i>to Acis</i>] What is your name?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Acis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. I love you, Acis. I must have you all to myself. Take me
+      in your arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Steady, young one. I am three years old.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. What has that to do with it? I love you; and I must have
+      you or I will go back into my shell again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. You cant. It's broken. Look here [<i>pointing to Strephon, who has
+      remained in his seal without looking round at the birth, wrapped up in his
+      sorrow</i>]! Look at this poor fellow!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. What is the matter with him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. When he was born he chose a girl two years old for his sweetheart.
+      He is two years old now himself; and already his heart is broken because
+      she is four. That means that she has grown up like this Ancient here, and
+      has left him. If you choose me, we shall have only a year's happiness
+      before I break your heart by growing up. Better choose the youngest you
+      can find.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. I will not choose anyone but you. You must not grow up. We
+      will love one another for ever. [<i>They all laugh</i>]. What are you
+      laughing at?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. Listen, child&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Do not come near me, you dreadful old creature. You
+      frighten me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Just give her another moment. She is not quite reasonable yet. What
+      can you expect from a child less than five minutes old?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. I think I feel a little more reasonable now. Of course I
+      was rather young when I said that; but the inside of my head is changing
+      very rapidly. I should like to have things explained to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS [<i>to the She-Ancient</i>] Is she all right, do you think?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The She-Ancient looks at the Newly Born critically; feels her bumps
+      like a phrenologist; grips her muscles and shakes her limbs; examines her
+      teeth; looks into her eyes for a moment; and finally relinquishes her with
+      an air of having finished her job.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. She will do. She may live.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>They all wave their hands and shout for joy.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN [<i>indignant</i>] I may live! Suppose there had been
+      anything wrong with me?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. Children with anything wrong do not live here, my child.
+      Life is not cheap with us. But you would not have felt anything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. You mean that you would have murdered me!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. That is one of the funny words the newly born bring with
+      them out of the past. You will forget it tomorrow. Now listen. You have
+      four years of childhood before you. You will not be very happy; but you
+      will be interested and amused by the novelty of the world; and your
+      companions here will teach you how to keep up an imitation of happiness
+      during your four years by what they call arts and sports and pleasures.
+      The worst of your troubles is already over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. What! In five minutes?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. No: you have been growing for two years in the egg. You
+      began by being several sorts of creatures that no longer exist, though we
+      have fossils of them. Then you became human; and you passed in fifteen
+      months through a development that once cost human beings twenty years of
+      awkward stumbling immaturity after they were born. They had to spend fifty
+      years more in the sort of childhood you will complete in four years. And
+      then they died of decay. But you need not die until your accident comes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. What is my accident?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. Sooner or later you will fall and break your neck; or a
+      tree will fall on you; or you will be struck by lightning. Something or
+      other must make an end of you some day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. But why should any of these things happen to me?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. There is no why. They do. Everything happens to everybody
+      sooner or later if there is time enough. And with us there is eternity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Nothing need happen. I never heard such nonsense in all my
+      life. I shall know how to take care of myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. So you think.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. I don't think: I know. I shall enjoy life for ever and
+      ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. If you should turn out to be a person of infinite
+      capacity, you will no doubt find life infinitely interesting. However, all
+      you have to do now is to play with your companions. They have many pretty
+      toys, as you see: a playhouse, pictures, images, flowers, bright fabrics,
+      music: above all, themselves; for the most amusing child's toy is another
+      child. At the end of four years, your mind will change: you will become
+      wise; and then you will be entrusted with power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. But I want power now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. No doubt you do; so that you could play with the world by
+      tearing it to pieces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Only to see how it is made. I should put it all together
+      again much better than before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. There was a time when children were given the world to
+      play with because they promised to improve it. They did not improve it;
+      and they would have wrecked it had their power been as great as that which
+      you will wield when you are no longer a child. Until then your young
+      companions will instruct you in whatever is necessary. You are not
+      forbidden to speak to the ancients; but you had better not do so, as most
+      of them have long ago exhausted all the interest there is in observing
+      children and conversing with them. [<i>She turns to go</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Wait. Tell me some things that I ought to do and ought not
+      to do. I feel the need of education. They all laugh at her, except the
+      She-Ancient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. You will have grown out of that by tomorrow. Do what you
+      please. [<i>She goes away up the hill path</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The officials take their paraphernalia and the fragments of the egg
+      back into the temple.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Just fancy: that old girl has been going for seven hundred years and
+      hasnt had her fatal accident yet; and she is not a bit tired of it all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. How could anyone ever get tired of life?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. They do. That is, of the same life. They manage to change themselves
+      in a wonderful way. You meet them sometimes with a lot of extra heads and
+      arms and legs: they make you split laughing at them. Most of them have
+      forgotten how to speak: the ones that attend to us have to brush up their
+      knowledge of the language once a year or so. Nothing makes any difference
+      to them that I can see. They never enjoy themselves. I don't know how they
+      can stand it. They don't even come to our festivals of the arts. That old
+      one who saw you out of your shell has gone off to moodle about doing
+      nothing; though she knows that this is Festival Day?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. What is Festival Day?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Two of our greatest sculptors are bringing us their latest
+      masterpieces; and we are going to crown them with flowers and sing
+      dithyrambs to them and dance round them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. How jolly! What is a sculptor?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Listen here, young one. You must find out things for yourself, and
+      not ask questions. For the first day or two you must keep your eyes and
+      ears open and your mouth shut. Children should be seen and not heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Who are you calling a child? I am fully a quarter of an
+      hour old [<i>She sits down on the curved bench near Strephon with her
+      maturest air</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VOICES IN THE TEMPLE [<i>all expressing protest, disappointment, disgust</i>]
+      Oh! Oh! Scandalous. Shameful. Disgraceful. What filth! Is this a joke?
+      Why, theyre ancients! Ss-s-s-sss! Are you mad, Arjillax? This is an
+      outrage. An insult. Yah! etc. etc. etc. [<i>The malcontents appear on the
+      steps, grumbling</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Hullo: whats the matter? [<i>He goes to the steps of the temple</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The two sculptors issue from the temple. One has a beard two feet long:
+      the other is beardless. Between them comes a handsome nymph with marked
+      features, dark hair richly waved, and authoritative bearing.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE AUTHORITATIVE NYMPH [<i>swooping down to the centre of the glade with
+      the sculptors, between Acis and the Newly Born</i>] Do not try to browbeat
+      me, Arjillax, merely because you are clever with your hands. Can you play
+      the flute?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX [<i>the bearded sculptor on her right</i>] No, Ecrasia: I cannot.
+      What has that to do with it? [<i>He is half derisive, half impatient,
+      wholly resolved not to take her seriously in spite of her beauty and
+      imposing tone</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Well, have you ever hesitated to criticize our best flute
+      players, and to declare whether their music is good or bad? Pray have I
+      not the same right to criticize your busts, though I cannot make images
+      anymore than you can play?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Any fool can play the flute, or play anything else, if he
+      practises enough; but sculpture is a creative art, not a mere business of
+      whistling into a pipe. The sculptor must have something of the god in him.
+      From his hand comes a form which reflects a spirit. He does not make it to
+      please you, nor even to please himself, but because he must. You must take
+      what he gives you, or leave it if you are not worthy of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA [<i>scornfully</i>] Not worthy of it! Ho! May I not leave it
+      because it is not worthy of me?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Of you! Hold your silly tongue, you conceited humbug. What do
+      you know about it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. I know what every person of culture knows: that the business of
+      the artist is to create beauty. Until today your works have been full of
+      beauty; and I have been the first to point that out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Thank you for nothing. People have eyes, havnt they, to see what
+      is as plain as the sun in the heavens without your pointing it out?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. You were very glad to have it pointed out. You did not call me a
+      conceited humbug then. You stifled me with caresses. You modelled me as
+      the genius of art presiding over the infancy of your master here [<i>indicating
+      the other sculptor</i>], Martellus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS [<i>a silent and meditative listener, shudders and shakes his
+      head, but says nothing</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX [<i>quarrelsomely</i>] I was taken in by your talk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. I discovered your genius before anyone else did. Is that true, or
+      is it not?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Everybody knew I was an extraordinary person. When I was born my
+      beard was three feet long.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Yes; and it has shrunk from three feet to two. Your genius seems
+      to have been in the last foot of your beard; for you have lost both.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS [<i>with a short sardonic cachinnation</i>] Ha! My beard was
+      three and a half feet long when I was born; and a flash of lightning burnt
+      it off and killed the ancient who was delivering me. Without a hair on my
+      chin I became the greatest sculptor in ten generations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. And yet you come to us today with empty hands. We shall actually
+      have to crown Arjillax here because no other sculptor is exhibiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS [<i>returning from the temple steps to behind the curved seat on the
+      right of the three</i>] Whats the row, Ecrasia? Why have you fallen out
+      with Arjillax?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. He has insulted us! outraged us! profaned his art! You know how
+      much we hoped from the twelve busts he placed in the temple to be unveiled
+      today. Well, go in and look at them. That is all I have to say. [<i>She
+      sweeps to the curved seat, and sits down just where Acis is leaning over
+      it</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. I am no great judge of sculpture. Art is not my line. What is wrong
+      with the busts?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Wrong with them! Instead of being ideally beautiful nymphs and
+      youths, they are horribly realistic studies of&mdash;but I really cannot
+      bring my lips to utter it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Newly Born, full of curiosity, runs to the temple, and peeps in.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Oh, stow it, Ecrasia. Your lips are not so squeamish as all that.
+      Studies of what?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN [<i>from the temple steps</i>] Ancients.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS [<i>surprised but not scandalized</i>] Ancients!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Yes, ancients. The one subject that is by the universal consent
+      of all connoisseurs absolutely excluded from the fine arts. [<i>To
+      Arjillax</i>] How can you defend such a proceeding?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. If you come to that, what interest can you find in the statues
+      of smirking nymphs and posturing youths you stick up all over the place?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. You did not ask that when your hand was still skilful enough to
+      model them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Skilful! You high-nosed idiot, I could turn such things out by
+      the score with my eyes bandaged and one hand tied behind me. But what use
+      would they be? They would bore me; and they would bore you if you had any
+      sense. Go in and look at my busts. Look at them again and yet again until
+      you receive the full impression of the intensity of mind that is stamped
+      on them; and then go back to the pretty-pretty confectionery you call
+      sculpture, and see whether you can endure its vapid emptiness. [<i>He
+      mounts the altar impetuously</i>] Listen to me, all of you; and do you,
+      Ecrasia, be silent if you are capable of silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn. Scorn! That is
+      what I feel for your revolting busts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Fool: the busts are only the beginning of a mighty design.
+      Listen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Go ahead, old sport. We are listening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Martellus stretches himself on the sward beside the altar. The Newly
+      Born sits on the temple steps with her chin on her hands, ready to devour
+      the first oration she has ever heard. The rest sit or stand at ease.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. In the records which generations of children have rescued from
+      the stupid neglect of the ancients, there has come down to us a fable
+      which, like many fables, is not a thing that was done in the past, but a
+      thing that is to be done in the future. It is a legend of a supernatural
+      being called the Archangel Michael.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Is this a story? I want to hear a story. [<i>She runs down
+      the steps and sits on the altar at Arjillax's feet</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. The Archangel Michael was a mighty sculptor and painter. He
+      found in the centre of the world a temple erected to the goddess of the
+      centre, called Mediterranea. This temple was full of silly pictures of
+      pretty children, such as Ecrasia approves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Fair play, Arjillax! If she is to keep silent, let her alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. I shall not interrupt, Acis. Why should I not prefer youth and
+      beauty to age and ugliness?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Just so. Well, the Archangel Michael was of my opinion, not
+      yours. He began by painting on the ceiling the newly born in all their
+      childish beauty. But when he had done this he was not satisfied; for the
+      temple was no more impressive than it had been before, except that there
+      was a strength and promise of greater things about his newly born ones
+      than any other artist had attained to. So he painted all round these newly
+      born a company of ancients, who were in those days called prophets and
+      sybils, whose majesty was that of the mind alone at its intensest. And
+      this painting was acknowledged through ages and ages to be the summit and
+      masterpiece of art. Of course we cannot believe such a tale literally. It
+      is only a legend. We do not believe in archangels; and the notion that
+      thirty thousand years ago sculpture and painting existed, and had even
+      reached the glorious perfection they have reached with us, is absurd. But
+      what men cannot realize they can at least aspire to. They please
+      themselves by pretending that it was realized in a golden age of the past.
+      This splendid legend endured because it lived as a desire in the hearts of
+      the greatest artists. The temple of Mediterranea never was built in the
+      past, nor did Michael the Archangel exist. But today the temple is here [<i>he
+      points to the porch</i>]; and the man is here [<i>he slaps himself on the
+      chest</i>]. I, Arjillax, am the man. I will place in your theatre such
+      images of the newly born as must satisfy even Ecrasia's appetite for
+      beauty; and I will surround them with ancients more august than any who
+      walk through our woods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS [<i>as before</i>] Ha!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX [<i>stung</i>] Why do you laugh, you who have come empty-handed,
+      and, it seems, empty-headed?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA [<i>rising indignantly</i>] Oh, shame! You dare disparage
+      Martellus, twenty times your master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Be quiet, will you [<i>he seizes her shoulders and thrusts her back
+      into her seat</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Let him disparage his fill, Ecrasia. [<i>Sitting up</i>] My
+      poor Arjillax, I too had this dream. I too found one day that my images of
+      loveliness had become vapid, uninteresting, tedious, a waste of time and
+      material. I too lost my desire to model limbs, and retained only my
+      interest in heads and faces. I, too, made busts of ancients; but I had not
+      your courage: I made them in secret, and hid them from you all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX [<i>jumping down from the altar behind Martellus in his surprise
+      and excitement</i>] You made busts of ancients! Where are they, man? Will
+      you be talked out of your inspiration by Ecrasia and the fools who imagine
+      she speaks with authority? Let us have them all set up beside mine in the
+      theatre. I have opened the way for you; and you see I am none the worse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Impossible. They are all smashed. [<i>He rises, laughing</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ALL. Smashed!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Who smashed them?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. I did. That is why I laughed at you just now. You will smash
+      yours before you have completed a dozen of them. [<i>He goes to the end of
+      the altar and sits down beside the Newly Born</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. But why?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Because you cannot give them life. A live ancient is better
+      than a dead statue. [<i>He takes the Newly Born on his knee: she is
+      flattered and voluptuously responsive</i>]. Anything alive is better than
+      anything that is only pretending to be alive. [<i>To Arjillax</i>] Your
+      disillusion with your works of beauty is only the beginning of your
+      disillusion with images of all sorts. As your hand became more skilful and
+      your chisel cut deeper, you strove to get nearer and nearer to truth and
+      reality, discarding the fleeting fleshly lure, and making images of the
+      mind that fascinates to the end. But how can so noble an inspiration be
+      satisfied with any image, even an image of the truth? In the end the
+      intellectual conscience that tore you away from the fleeting in art to the
+      eternal must tear you away from art altogether, because art is false and
+      life alone is true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN [<i>flings her arms round his neck and kisses him
+      enthusiastically</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS [<i>rises; carries her to the curved bench on his left; deposits
+      her beside Strephon as if she were his overcoat; and continues without the
+      least change of tone</i>] Shape it as you will, marble remains marble, and
+      the graven image an idol. As I have broken my idols, and cast away my
+      chisel and modelling tools, so will you too break these busts of yours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Never.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Wait, my friend. I do not come empty-handed today, as you
+      imagined. On the contrary, I bring with me such a work of art as you have
+      never seen, and an artist who has surpassed both you and me further than
+      we have surpassed all our competitors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Impossible. The greatest things in art can never be surpassed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Who is this paragon whom you declare greater than I?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. I declare him greater than myself, Arjillax.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX [<i>frowning</i>] I understand. Sooner than not drown me, you are
+      willing to clasp me round the waist and jump overboard with me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Oh, stop squabbling. That is the worst of you artists. You are
+      always in little squabbling cliques; and the worst cliques are those which
+      consist of one man. Who is this new fellow you are throwing in one
+      another's teeth?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Ask Martellus: do not ask me. I know nothing of him. [<i>He
+      leaves Martellus, and sits down beside Ecrasia, on her left</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. You know him quite well. Pygmalion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA [<i>indignantly</i>] Pygmalion! That soulless creature! A
+      scientist! A laboratory person!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Pygmalion produce a work of art! You have lost your artistic
+      senses. The man is utterly incapable of modelling a thumb nail, let alone
+      a human figure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. That does not matter: I have done the modelling for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. What on earth do you mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS [<i>calling</i>] Pygmalion: come forth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Pygmalion, a square-fingered youth with his face laid out in horizontal
+      blocks, and a perpetual smile of eager benevolent interest in everything,
+      and expectation of equal interest from everybody else, comes from the
+      temple to the centre of the group, who regard him for the most part with
+      dismay, as dreading that he will bore them. Ecrasia is openly
+      contemptuous.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Friends: it is unfortunate that Pygmalion is constitutionally
+      incapable of exhibiting anything without first giving a lecture about it
+      to explain it; but I promise you that if you will be patient he will shew
+      you the two most wonderful works of art in the world, and that they will
+      contain some of my own very best workmanship. Let me add that they will
+      inspire a loathing that will cure you of the lunacy of art for ever. [<i>He
+      sits down next the Newly Born, who pouts and turns a very cold right
+      shoulder to him, a demonstration utterly lost on him</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Pygmalion, with the smile of a simpleton, and the eager confidence of a
+      fanatical scientist, climbs awkwardly on to the altar. They prepare for
+      the worst.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. My friends: I will omit the algebra&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Thank God!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION [<i>continuing</i>]&mdash;because Martellus has made me promise
+      to do so. To come to the point, I have succeeded in making artificial
+      human beings. Real live ones, I mean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      INCREDULOUS VOICES. Oh, come! Tell us another. Really, Pyg! Get out. You
+      havnt. What a lie!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. I tell you I have. I will shew them to you. It has been done
+      before. One of the very oldest documents we possess mentions a tradition
+      of a biologist who extracted certain unspecified minerals from the earth
+      and, as it quaintly expresses it, 'breathed into their nostrils the breath
+      of life.' This is the only tradition from the primitive ages which we can
+      regard as really scientific. There are later documents which specify the
+      minerals with great precision, even to their atomic weights; but they are
+      utterly unscientific, because they overlook the element of life which
+      makes all the difference between a mere mixture of salts and gases and a
+      living organism. These mixtures were made over and over again in the crude
+      laboratories of the Silly-Clever Ages; but nothing came of them until the
+      ingredient which the old chronicler called the breath of life was added by
+      this very remarkable early experimenter. In my view he was the founder of
+      biological science.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Is that all we know about him? It doesnt amount to very much,
+      does it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. There are some fragments of pictures and documents which
+      represent him as walking in a garden and advising people to cultivate
+      their gardens. His name has come down to us in several forms. One of them
+      is Jove. Another is Voltaire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. You are boring us to distraction with your Voltaire. What about
+      your human beings?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Aye: come to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. I assure you that these details are intensely interesting. [<i>Cries
+      of</i> No! They are not! Come to the human beings! Conspuez Voltaire! Cut
+      it short, Pyg! <i>interrupt him from all sides</i>]. You will see their
+      bearing presently. I promise you I will not detain you long. We know, we
+      children of science, that the universe is full of forces and powers and
+      energies of one kind and another. The sap rising in a tree, the stone
+      holding together in a definite crystalline structure, the thought of a
+      philosopher holding his brain in form and operation with an inconceivably
+      powerful grip, the urge of evolution: all these forces can be used by us.
+      For instance, I use the force of gravitation when I put a stone on my
+      tunic to prevent it being blown away when I am bathing. By substituting
+      appropriate machines for the stone we have made not only gravitation our
+      slave, but also electricity and magnetism, atomic attraction, repulsion,
+      polarization, and so forth. But hitherto the vital force has eluded us; so
+      it has had to create machinery for itself. It has created and developed
+      bony structures of the requisite strength, and clothed them with cellular
+      tissue of such amazing sensitiveness that the organs it forms will adapt
+      their action to all the normal variations in the air they breathe, the
+      food they digest, and the circumstances about which they have to think.
+      Yet, as these live bodies, as we call them, are only machines after all,
+      it must be possible to construct them mechanically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Everything is possible. Have you done it? that is the question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. Yes. But that is a mere fact. What is interesting is the
+      explanation of the fact. Forgive my saying so; but it is such a pity that
+      you artists have no intellect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA [<i>sententiously</i>] I do not admit that. The artist divines by
+      inspiration all the truths that the so-called scientist grubs up in his
+      laboratory slowly and stupidly long afterwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX [<i>to Ecrasia, quarrelsomely</i>] What do you know about it? You
+      are not an artist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Shut your heads, both of you. Let us have the artificial men. Trot
+      them out, Pygmalion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. It is a man and a woman. But I really must explain first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ALL [<i>groaning</i>]!!!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. Yes: I&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. We want results, not explanations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION [<i>hurt</i>] I see I am boring you. Not one of you takes the
+      least interest in science. Goodbye. [<i>He descends from the altar and
+      makes for the temple</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SEVERAL YOUTHS AND MAIDENS [<i>rising and rushing to him</i>] No, no. Dont
+      go. Dont be offended. We want to see the artificial pair. We will listen.
+      We are tremendously interested. Tell us all about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION [<i>relenting</i>] I shall not detain you two minutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ALL. Half an hour if you like. Please go on, Pygmalion. [<i>They rush him
+      back to the altar, and hoist him on to it</i>]. Up you go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>They return to their former places.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. As I told you, lots of attempts were made to produce protoplasm
+      in the laboratory. Why were these synthetic plasms, as they called them,
+      no use?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. We are waiting for you to tell us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN [<i>modelling herself on Ecrasia, and trying to outdo her
+      intellectually</i>] Clearly because they were dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. Not bad for a baby, my pet. But dead and alive are very loose
+      terms. You are not half as much alive as you will be in another month or
+      so. What was wrong with the synthetic protoplasm was that it could not fix
+      and conduct the Life Force. It was like a wooden magnet or a lightning
+      conductor made of silk: it would not take the current.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Nobody but a fool would make a wooden magnet, and expect it to
+      attract anything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. He might if he were so ignorant as not to be able to
+      distinguish between wood and soft iron. In those days they were very
+      ignorant of the differences between things, because their methods of
+      analysis were crude. They mixed up messes that were so like protoplasm
+      that they could not tell the difference. But the difference was there,
+      though their analysis was too superficial and incomplete to detect it. You
+      must remember that these poor devils were very little better than our
+      idiots: we should never dream of letting one of them survive the day of
+      its birth. Why, the Newly Born there already knows by instinct many things
+      that their greatest physicists could hardly arrive at by forty years of
+      strenuous study. Her simple direct sense of space-time and quantity
+      unconsciously solves problems which cost their most famous mathematicians
+      years of prolonged and laborious calculations requiring such intense
+      mental application that they frequently forgot to breathe when engaged in
+      them, and almost suffocated themselves in consequence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Leave these obscure prehistoric abortions; and come back to your
+      synthetic man and woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. When I undertook the task of making synthetic men, I did not
+      waste my time on protoplasm. It was evident to me that if it were possible
+      to make protoplasm in the laboratory, it must be equally possible to begin
+      higher up and make fully evolved muscular and nervous tissues, bone, and
+      so forth. Why make the seed when the making of the flower would be no
+      greater miracle? I tried thousands of combinations before I succeeded in
+      producing anything that would fix high-potential Life Force.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. High what?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. High-po-tential. The Life Force is not so simple as you think.
+      A high-potential current of it will turn a bit of dead tissue into a
+      philosopher's brain. A low-potential current will reduce the same bit of
+      tissue to a mass of corruption. Will you believe me when I tell you that,
+      even in man himself, the Life Force used to slip suddenly down from its
+      human level to that of a fungus, so that men found their flesh no longer
+      growing as flesh, but proliferating horribly in a lower form which was
+      called cancer, until the lower form of life killed the higher, and both
+      perished together miserably?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Keep off the primitive tribes, Pygmalion. They interest you;
+      but they bore these young things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. I am only trying to make you understand. There was the Life
+      Force raging all round me: there was I, trying to make organs that would
+      capture it as a battery captures electricity, and tissues that would
+      conduct it and operate it. It was easy enough to make eyes more perfect
+      than our own, and ears with a larger range of sound; but they could
+      neither see nor hear, because they were not susceptible to the Life Force.
+      But it was far worse when I discovered how to make them susceptible; for
+      the first thing that happened was that they ceased to be eyes and ears and
+      turned into heaps of maggots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Disgusting! Please stop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. If you don't want to hear, go away. You go ahead, Pyg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. I went ahead. You see, the lower potentials of the Life Force
+      could make maggots, but not human eyes or ears. I improved the tissue
+      until it was susceptible to a higher potential.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX [<i>intensely interested</i>] Yes; and then?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. Then the eyes and ears turned into cancers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Oh, hideous!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. Not at all. That was a great advance. It encouraged me so much
+      that I put aside the eyes and ears, and made a brain. It wouldn't take the
+      Life Force at all until I had altered its constitution a dozen times; but
+      when it did, it took a much higher potential, and did not dissolve; and
+      neither did the eyes and ears when I connected them up with the brain. I
+      was able to make a sort of monster: a thing without arms or legs; and it
+      really and truly lived for half-an-hour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Half-an-hour! What good was that? Why did it die?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. Its blood went wrong. But I got that right; and then I went
+      ahead with a complete human body: arms and legs and all. He was my first
+      man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Who modelled him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. I did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Do you mean to say you tried your own hand before you sent for
+      me?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. Bless you, yes, several times. My first man was the ghastliest
+      creature: a more dreadful mixture of horror and absurdity than you who
+      have not seen him can conceive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. If you modelled him, he must indeed have been a spectacle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. Oh, it was not his shape. You see I did not invent that. I took
+      actual measurements and moulds from my own body. Sculptors do that
+      sometimes, you know; though they pretend they don't.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Hm!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Hah!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. He was all right to look at, at first, or nearly so. But he
+      behaved in the most appalling manner; and the subsequent developments were
+      so disgusting that I really cannot describe them to you. He seized all
+      sorts of things and swallowed them. He drank every fluid in the
+      laboratory. I tried to explain to him that he must take nothing that he
+      could not digest and assimilate completely; but of course he could not
+      understand me. He assimilated a little of what he swallowed; but the
+      process left horrible residues which he had no means of getting rid of.
+      His blood turned to poison; and he perished in torments, howling. I then
+      perceived that I had produced a prehistoric man; for there are certain
+      traces in our own bodies of arrangements which enabled the earlier forms
+      of mankind to renew their bodies by swallowing flesh and grains and
+      vegetables and all sorts of unnatural and hideous foods, and getting rid
+      of what they could not digest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. But what a pity he died! What a glimpse of the past we have lost!
+      He could have told us stories of the Golden Age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. Not he. He was a most dangerous beast. He was afraid of me, and
+      actually tried to kill me by snatching up things and striking at me with
+      them. I had to give him two or three pretty severe shocks before I
+      convinced him that he was at my mercy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Why did you not make a woman instead of a man? She would
+      have known how to behave herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Why did you not make a man and a woman? Their children would
+      have been interesting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. I intended to make a woman; but after my experience with the
+      man it was out of the question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Pray why?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. Well, it is difficult to explain if you have not studied
+      prehistoric methods of reproduction. You see the only sort of men and
+      women I could make were men and women just like us as far as their bodies
+      were concerned. That was how I killed the poor beast of a man. I hadnt
+      provided for his horrible prehistoric methods of feeding himself. Suppose
+      the woman had reproduced in some prehistoric way instead of being
+      oviparous as we are? She couldn't have done it with a modern female body.
+      Besides, the experiment might have been painful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Then you have nothing to shew us at all?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. Oh yes I have. I am not so easily beaten as that. I set to work
+      again for months to find out how to make a digestive system that would
+      deal with waste products and a reproductive system capable of internal
+      nourishment and incubation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Why did you not find out how to make them like us?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON [<i>crying out in his grief for the first time</i>] Why did you
+      not make a woman whom you could love? That was the secret you needed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Oh yes. How true! How great of you, darling Strephon! [<i>She
+      kisses him impulsively</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON [<i>passionately</i>] Let me alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Control your reflexes, child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. My what!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Your reflexes. The things you do without thinking. Pygmalion is
+      going to shew you a pair of human creatures who are all reflexes and
+      nothing else. Take warning by them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. But wont they be alive, like us?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. That is a very difficult question to answer, my dear. I confess
+      I thought at first I had created living creatures; but Martellus declares
+      they are only automata. But then Martellus is a mystic: <i>I</i> am a man
+      of science. He draws a line between an automaton and a living organism. I
+      cannot draw that line to my own satisfaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Your artificial men have no self-control. They only respond to
+      stimuli from without.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. But they are conscious. I have taught them to talk and read;
+      and now they tell lies. That is so very lifelike.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Not at all. If they were alive they would tell the truth. You
+      can provoke them to tell any silly lie; and you can foresee exactly the
+      sort of lie they will tell. Give them a clip below the knee, and they will
+      jerk their foot forward. Give them a clip in their appetites or vanities
+      or any of their lusts and greeds, and they will boast and lie, and affirm
+      and deny, and hate and love without the slightest regard to the facts that
+      are staring them in the face, or to their own obvious limitations. That
+      proves that they are automata.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION [<i>unconvinced</i>] I know, dear old chap; but there really is
+      some evidence that we are descended from creatures quite as limited and
+      absurd as these. After all, the baby there is three-quarters an automaton.
+      Look at the way she has been going on!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN [<i>indignantly</i>] What do you mean? How have I been
+      going on?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. If they have no regard for truth, they can have no real vitality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. Truth is sometimes so artificial: so relative, as we say in the
+      scientific world, that it is very hard to feel quite sure that what is
+      false and even ridiculous to us may not be true to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. I ask you again, why did you not make them like us? Would any
+      true artist be content with less than the best?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. I couldnt. I tried. I failed. I am convinced that what I am
+      about to shew you is the very highest living organism that can be produced
+      in the laboratory. The best tissues we can manufacture will not take as
+      high potentials as the natural product: that is where Nature beats us. You
+      dont seem to understand, any of you, what an enormous triumph it was to
+      produce consciousness at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Cut the cackle; and come to the synthetic couple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SEVERAL YOUTHS AND MAIDENS. Yes, yes. No more talking. Let us have them.
+      Dry up, Pyg; and fetch them along. Come on: out with them! The synthetic
+      couple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION [<i>waving his hands to appease them</i>] Very well, very well.
+      Will you please whistle for them? They respond to the stimulus of a
+      whistle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>All who can, whistle like streetboys.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA [<i>makes a wry face and puts her fingers in her ears</i>]!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. Sh-sh-sh! Thats enough: thats enough: thats enough. [<i>Silence</i>].
+      Now let us have some music. A dance tune. Not too fast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The flutists play a quiet dance.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Prepare yourselves for something ghastly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Two figures, a man and woman of noble appearance, beautifully modelled
+      and splendidly attired, emerge hand in hand from the temple. Seeing that
+      all eyes are fixed on them, they halt on the steps, smiling with gratified
+      vanity. The woman is on the man's left.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION [<i>rubbing his hands with the purring satisfaction of a creator</i>]
+      This way, please.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Figures advance condescendingly and pose themselves centrally
+      between the curved seats.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. Now if you will be so good as to oblige us with a little
+      something. You dance so beautifully, you know. [<i>He sits down next
+      Martellus, and whispers to him</i>] It is extraordinary how sensitive they
+      are to the stimulus of flattery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Figures, with a gracious air, dance pompously, but very passably.
+      At the close they bow to one another.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ON ALL HANDS [<i>clapping</i>] Bravo! Thank you. Wonderful! Splendid.
+      Perfect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Figures acknowledge the applause in an obvious condition of swelled
+      head.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Can they make love?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. Yes: they can respond to every stimulus. They have all the
+      reflexes. Put your arm round the man's neck, and he will put his arm round
+      your body. He cannot help it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE FEMALE FIGURE [<i>frowning</i>] Round mine, you mean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. Yours, too, of course, if the stimulus comes from you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Cannot he do anything original?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. No. But then, you know, I do not admit that any of us can do
+      anything really original, though Martellus thinks we can.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Can he answer a question?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. Oh yes. A question is a stimulus, you know. Ask him one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS [<i>to the Male Figure</i>] What do you think of what you see around
+      you? Of us, for instance, and our ways and doings?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MALE FIGURE. I have not seen the newspaper today.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE FEMALE FIGURE. How can you expect my husband to know what to think of
+      you if you give him his breakfast without his paper?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. You see. He is a mere automaton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. I don't think I should like him to put his arm round my
+      neck. I don't like them. [<i>The Male Figure looks offended, and the
+      Female jealous</i>]. Oh, I thought they couldn't understand. Have they
+      feelings?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. Of course they have. I tell you they have all the reflexes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. But feelings are not reflexes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION. They are sensations. When the rays of light enter their eyes
+      and make a picture on their retinas, their brains become conscious of the
+      picture and they act accordingly. When the waves of sound started by your
+      speaking enter their ears and record a disparaging remark on their
+      keyboards, their brains become conscious of the disparagement and resent
+      it accordingly. If you did not disparage them they would not resent it.
+      They are merely responding to a stimulus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MALE FIGURE. We are part of a cosmic system. Free will is an illusion.
+      We are the children of Cause and Effect. We are the Unalterable, the
+      Irresistible, the Irresponsible, the Inevitable.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
+    Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <i>There is a general stir of curiosity at this.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. What the dickens does he mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MALE FIGURE. Silence, base accident of Nature. This [<i>taking the
+      hand of the Female Figure and introducing her</i>] is Cleopatra-Semiramis,
+      consort of the king of kings, and therefore queen of queens. Ye are things
+      hatched from eggs by the brainless sun and the blind fire; but the king of
+      kings and queen of queens are not accidents of the egg: they are
+      thought-out and hand-made to receive the sacred Life Force. There is one
+      person of the king and one of the queen; but the Life Force of the king
+      and queen is all one: the glory equal, the majesty co-eternal. Such as the
+      king is so is the queen, the king thought-out and hand-made, the queen
+      thought-out and hand-made. The actions of the king are caused, and
+      therefore determined, from the beginning of the world to the end; and the
+      actions of the queen are likewise. The king logical and predetermined and
+      inevitable, and the queen logical and predetermined and inevitable. And
+      yet they are not two logical and predetermined and inevitable, but one
+      logical and predetermined and inevitable. Therefore confound not the
+      persons, nor divide the substance: but worship us twain as one throne, two
+      in one and one in two, lest by error ye fall into irretrievable damnation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE FEMALE FIGURE. And if any say unto you 'Which one?' remember that
+      though there is one person of the king and one of the queen, yet these two
+      persons are not alike, but are woman and man, and that as woman was
+      created after man, the skill and practice gained in making him were added
+      to her, wherefore she is to be exalted above him in all personal respects,
+      and&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MALE FIGURE. Peace, woman; for this is a damnable heresy. Both Man and
+      Woman are what they are and must do what they must according to the
+      eternal laws of Cause and Effect. Look to your words; for if they enter my
+      ear and jar too repugnantly on my sensorium, who knows that the inevitable
+      response to that stimulus may not be a message to my muscles to snatch up
+      some heavy object and break you in pieces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Female Figure picks up a stone and is about to throw it at her
+      consort.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX [<i>springing up and shouting to Pygmalion, who is fondly
+      watching the Male Figure</i>] Look out, Pygmalion! Look at the woman!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Pygmalion, seeing what is happening, hurls himself on the Female Figure
+      and wrenches the stone out of her hand. All spring up in consternation.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. She meant to kill him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. This is horrible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE FEMALE FIGURE [<i>wrestling with Pygmalion</i>] Let me go. Let me go,
+      will you [<i>she bites his hand</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PYGMALION [<i>releasing her and staggering</i>] Oh!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>A general shriek of horror echoes his exclamation. He turns deadly
+      pale, and supports himself against the end of the curved seat.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE FEMALE FIGURE [<i>to her consort</i>] You would stand there and let me
+      be treated like this, you unmanly coward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Pygmalion falls dead.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Oh! Whats the matter? Why did he fall! What has happened
+      to him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>They look on anxiously as Martellus kneels down and examines the body
+      of Pygmalion.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. She has bitten a piece out of his hand nearly as large as a
+      finger nail: enough to kill ten men. There is no pulse, no breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. But his thumb is clinched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. No: it has just straightened out. See! He has gone. Poor
+      Pygmalion!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Oh! [<i>She weeps</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. Hush, dear: thats childish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN [<i>subsiding with a sniff</i>]!!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS [<i>rising</i>] Dead in his third year. What a loss to Science!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Who cares about Science? Serve him right for making that pair of
+      horrors!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MALE FIGURE [<i>glaring</i>] Ha!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE FEMALE FIGURE. Keep a civil tongue in your head, you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Oh, do not be so unkind, Arjillax. You will make water
+      come out of my eyes again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS [<i>contemplating the Figures</i>] Just look at these two
+      devils. I modelled them out of the stuff Pygmalion made for them. They are
+      masterpieces of art. And see what they have done! Does that convince you
+      of the value of art, Arjillax!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. They look dangerous. Keep away from them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. No need to tell us that, Strephon. Pf! They poison the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MALE FIGURE. Beware, woman. The wrath of Ozymandias strikes like the
+      lightning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE FEMALE FIGURE. You just say that again if you dare, you filthy
+      creature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. What are you going to do with them, Martellus? You are responsible
+      for them, now that Pygmalion has gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. If they were marble it would be simple enough: I could smash
+      them. As it is, how am I to kill them without making a horrible mess?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MALE FIGURE [<i>posing heroically</i>] Ha! [<i>He declaims</i>]
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    Come one: come all: this rock shall fly
+    From its firm base as soon as I.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      THE FEMALE FIGURE [<i>fondly</i>] My man! My hero husband! I am proud of
+      you. I love you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. We must send out a message for an ancient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Need we bother an ancient about such a trifle? It will take less
+      than half a second to reduce our poor Pygmalion to a pinch of dust. Why
+      not calcine the two along with him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. No: the two automata are trifles; but the use of our powers of
+      destruction is never a trifle. I had rather have the case judged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The He-Ancient emerges from the grove. The Figures are panic-stricken.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT [<i>mildly</i>] Am I wanted? I feel called. [<i>Seeing the
+      body of Pygmalion, and immediately taking a sterner tone</i>] What! A
+      child lost! A life wasted! How has this happened?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE FEMALE FIGURE [<i>frantically</i>] I didn't do it. It was not me. May
+      I be struck dead if I touched him! It was he [<i>pointing to the Male
+      Figure</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ALL [amazed at the lie] Oh!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MALE FIGURE. Liar. You bit him. Everyone here saw you do it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. Silence. [<i>Going between the Figures</i>] Who made these
+      two loathsome dolls?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MALE FIGURE [<i>trying to assert himself with his knees knocking</i>]
+      My name is Ozymandias, king of&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT [<i>with a contemptuous gesture</i>] Pooh!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MALE FIGURE [<i>falling on his knees</i>] Oh dont, sir. Dont. She did
+      it, sir: indeed she did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE FEMALE FIGURE [<i>howling lamentably</i>] Boohoo! oo! ooh!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. Silence, I say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>He knocks the Male Automaton upright by a very light flip under the
+      chin. The Female Automaton hardly dares to sob. The immortals contemplate
+      them with shame and loathing. The She-Ancient comes from the trees
+      opposite the temple.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. Somebody wants me. What is the matter? [<i>She comes to
+      the left hand of the Female Figure, not seeing the body of Pygmalion</i>].
+      Pf! [<i>Severely</i>] You have been making dolls. You must not: they are
+      not only disgusting: they are dangerous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE FEMALE FIGURE [<i>snivelling piteously</i>] I'm not a doll, mam. I'm
+      only poor Cleopatra-Semiramis, queen of queens. [<i>Covering her face with
+      her hands</i>] Oh, don't look at me like that, mam. I meant no harm. He
+      hurt me: indeed he did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. The creature has killed that poor youth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT [<i>seeing the body of Pygmalion</i>] What! This clever
+      child, who promised so well!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE FEMALE FIGURE. He made me. I had as much right to kill him as he had
+      to make me. And how was I to know that a little thing like that would kill
+      him? I shouldn't die if he cut off my arm or leg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. What nonsense!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. It may not be nonsense. I daresay if you cut off her leg she
+      would grow another, like the lobsters and the little lizards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. Did this dead boy make these two things?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. He made them in his laboratory. I moulded their limbs. I am
+      sorry. I was thoughtless: I did not foresee that they would kill and
+      pretend to be persons they were not, and declare things that were false,
+      and wish evil. I thought they would be merely mechanical fools.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MALE FIGURE. Do you blame us for our human nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE FEMALE FIGURE. We are flesh and blood and not angels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MALE FIGURE. Have you no hearts?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. They are mad as well as mischievous. May we not destroy them?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. We abhor them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. We loathe them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. They are noisome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. I don't want to be hard on the poor devils; but they are making me
+      feel uneasy in my inside. I never had such a sensation before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. I took a lot of trouble with them. But as far as I am
+      concerned, destroy them by all means. I loathed them from the beginning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ALL. Yes, yes: we all loathe them. Let us calcine them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE FEMALE FIGURE. Oh, don't be so cruel. I'm not fit to die. I will never
+      bite anyone again. I will tell the truth. I will do good. Is it my fault
+      if I was not made properly? Kill him; but spare me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MALE FIGURE. No! I have done no harm: she has. Kill her if you like:
+      you have no right to kill me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Do you hear that? They want to have one another killed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Monstrous! Kill them both.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. Silence. These things are mere automata: they cannot help
+      shrinking from death at any cost. You see that they have no self-control,
+      and are merely shuddering through a series of reflexes. Let us see whether
+      we cannot put a little more life into them. [<i>He takes the Male Figure
+      by the hand, and places his disengaged hand on its head</i>]. Now listen.
+      One of you two is to be destroyed. Which of you shall it be?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MALE FIGURE [<i>after a slight convulsion during which his eyes are
+      fixed on the He-Ancient</i>] Spare her; and kill me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. Thats better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Much better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT [<i>handling the Female Automaton in the same manner</i>]
+      Which of you shall we kill?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE FEMALE FIGURE. Kill us both. How could either of us live without the
+      other?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. The woman is more sensible than the man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Ancients release the Automata.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MALE FIGURE [<i>sinking to the ground</i>] I am discouraged. Life is
+      too heavy a burden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE FEMALE FIGURE [<i>collapsing</i>] I am dying. I am glad. I am afraid
+      to live.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. I think it would be nice to give the poor things a little
+      music.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Why?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. I don't know. But it would.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Musicians play.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE FEMALE FIGURE. Ozymandias: do you hear that? [<i>She rises on her
+      knees and looks raptly into space</i>] Queen of queens! [<i>She dies</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE MALE FIGURE [<i>crawling feebly towards her until he reaches her hand</i>]
+      I knew I was really a king of kings. [<i>To the others</i>] Illusions,
+      farewell: we are going to our thrones. [<i>He dies</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The music stops. There is dead silence for a moment.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. That was funny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. It was. Even the Ancients are smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Just a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT [<i>quickly recovering her grave and peremptory manner</i>]
+      Take these two abominations away to Pygmalion's laboratory, and destroy
+      them with the rest of the laboratory refuse. [<i>Some of them move to </i>obey].
+      Take care: do not touch their flesh: it is noxious: lift them by their
+      robes. Carry Pygmalion into the temple; and dispose of his remains in the
+      usual way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The three bodies are carried out as directed, Pygmalion into the temple
+      by his bare arms and legs, and the two Figures through the grove by their
+      clothes. Martellus superintends the removal of the Figures, Acis that of
+      Pygmalion. Ecrasia, Arjillax, Strephon, and the Newly Born sit down as
+      before, but on contrary benches; so that Strephon and the Newly Born now
+      face the grove, and Ecrasia and Arjillax the temple. The Ancients remain
+      standing at the altar.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA [<i>as she sits down</i>] Oh for a breeze from the hills!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. Or the wind from the sea at the turn of the tide!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. I want some clean air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. The air will be clean in a moment. This doll flesh that
+      children make decomposes quickly at best; but when it is shaken by such
+      passions as the creatures are capable of, it breaks up at once and becomes
+      horribly tainted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. Let it be a lesson to you all to be content with lifeless
+      toys, and not attempt to make living ones. What would you think of us
+      ancients if we made toys of you children?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN [<i>coaxingly</i>] Why do you not make toys of us? Then you
+      would play with us; and that would be very nice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. It would not amuse us. When you play with one another you
+      play with your bodies, and that makes you supple and strong; but if we
+      played with you we should play with your minds, and perhaps deform them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. You are a ghastly lot, you ancients. I shall kill myself when I
+      am four years old. What do you live for?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. You will find out when you grow up. You will not kill
+      yourself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. If you make me believe that, I shall kill myself now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Oh no. I want you. I love you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. I love someone else. And she has gone old, old. Lost to me for
+      ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. How old?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. You saw her when you barged into us as we were dancing. She is
+      four.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. How I should have hated her twenty minutes ago! But I have
+      grown out of that now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. Good. That hatred is called jealousy, the worst of our
+      childish complaints.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Martellus, dusting his hands and puffing, returns from the grove.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Ouf! [<i>He sits down next the Newly Born</i>] That job's
+      finished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Ancients: I should like to make a few studies of you. Not
+      portraits, of course: I shall idealize you a little. I have come to the
+      conclusion that you ancients are the most interesting subjects after all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. What! Have those two horrors, whose ashes I have just deposited
+      with peculiar pleasure in poor Pygmalion's dustbin, not cured you of this
+      silly image-making!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Why did you model them as young things, you fool? If Pygmalion
+      had come to me, I should have made ancients of them for him. Not that I
+      should have modelled them any better. I have always said that no one can
+      beat you at your best as far as handwork is concerned. But this job
+      required brains. That is where I should have come in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Well, my brainy boy, you are welcome to try your hand. There
+      are two of Pygmalion's pupils at the laboratory who helped him to
+      manufacture the bones and tissues and all the rest of it. They can turn
+      out a couple of new automatons; and you can model them as ancients if this
+      venerable pair will sit for you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA [<i>decisively</i>] No. No more automata. They are too disgusting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS [<i>returning from the temple</i>] Well, thats done. Poor old Pyg!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Only fancy, Acis! Arjillax wants to make more of those abominable
+      things, and to destroy even their artistic character by making ancients of
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. You wont sit for them, will you? Please dont.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. Children, listen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS [<i>striding down the steps to the bench and seating himself next
+      Ecrasia</i>] What! Even the Ancient wants to make a speech! Give it mouth,
+      O Sage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. For heaven's sake don't tell us that the earth was once
+      inhabited by Ozymandiases and Cleopatras. Life is hard enough for us as it
+      is.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage:
+      it can be delightful. What I wanted to tell you is that ever since men
+      existed, children have played with dolls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. You keep using that word. What are dolls, pray?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. What you call works of art. Images. We call them dolls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Just so. You have no sense of art; and you instinctively insult
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. Children have been known to make dolls out of rags, and to
+      caress them with the deepest fondness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. Eight centuries ago, when I was a child, I made a rag
+      doll. The rag doll is the dearest of all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN [<i>eagerly interested</i>] Oh! Have you got it still?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. I kept it a full week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Even in your childhood, then, you did not understand high art,
+      and adored your own amateur crudities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. How old are you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Eight months.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. When you have lived as long as I have&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA [<i>interrupting rudely</i>] I shall worship rag dolls, perhaps.
+      Thank heaven I am still in my prime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. You are still capable of thanking, though you do not know
+      what you thank. You are a thanking little animal, a blaming little animal,
+      a&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. A gushing little animal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. And, as she thinks, an artistic little animal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA [<i>nettled</i>] I am an animated being with a reasonable soul and
+      human flesh subsisting. If your Automata had been properly animated,
+      Martellus, they would have been more successful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. That is where you are wrong, my child. If those two
+      loathsome things had been rag dolls, they would have been amusing and
+      lovable. The Newly Born here would have played with them; and you would
+      all have laughed and played with them too until you had torn them to
+      pieces; and then you would have laughed more than ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Of course we should. Isnt that funny?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. When a thing is funny, search it for a hidden truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. Yes; and take all the fun out of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. Do not be so embittered because your sweetheart has
+      outgrown her love for you. The Newly Born will make amends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Oh yes: I will be more than she could ever have been.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. Psha! Jealous!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Oh no. I have grown out of that. I love her now because
+      she loved you, and because you love her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. That is the next stage. You are getting on very nicely, my
+      child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Come! what is the truth that was hidden in the rag doll?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. Well, consider why you are not content with the rag doll,
+      and must have something more closely resembling a real living creature. As
+      you grow up you make images and paint pictures. Those of you who cannot do
+      that make stories about imaginary dolls. Or you dress yourselves up as
+      dolls and act plays about them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. And, to deceive yourself the more completely, you take
+      them so very very seriously that Ecrasia here declares that the making of
+      dolls is the holiest work of creation, and the words you put into the
+      mouths of dolls the sacredest of scriptures and the noblest of utterances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Tush!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Tosh!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. Yet the more beautiful they become the further they
+      retreat from you. You cannot caress them as you caress the rag doll. You
+      cannot cry for them when they are broken or lost, or when you pretend they
+      have been unkind to you, as you could when you played with rag dolls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. At last, like Pygmalion, you demand from your dolls the
+      final perfection of resemblance to life. They must move and speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. They must love and hate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. They must think that they think.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. They must have soft flesh and warm, blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. And then, when you have achieved this as Pygmalion did;
+      when the marble masterpiece is dethroned by the automaton and the homo by
+      the homunculus; when the body and the brain, the reasonable soul and human
+      flesh subsisting, as Ecrasia says, stand before you unmasked as mere
+      machinery, and your impulses are shewn to be nothing but reflexes, you are
+      filled with horror and loathing, and would give worlds to be young enough
+      to play with your rag doll again, since every step away from it has been a
+      step away from love and happiness. Is it not true?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. Speak, Martellus: you who have travelled the whole path.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. It is true. With fierce joy I turned a temperature of a million
+      degrees on those two things I had modelled, and saw them vanish in an
+      instant into inoffensive dust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. Speak, Arjillax: you who have advanced from imitating the
+      lightly living child to the intensely living ancient. Is it true, so far?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. It is partly true: I cannot pretend to be satisfied now with
+      modelling pretty children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. And you, Ecrasia: you cling to your highly artistic dolls
+      as the noblest projections of the Life Force, do you not?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world
+      unbearable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN [<i>anticipating the She-Ancient, who is evidently going to
+      challenge her</i>] Now you are coming to me, because I am the latest
+      arrival. But I don't understand your art and your dolls at all. I want to
+      caress my darling Strephon, not to play with dolls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. I am in my fourth year; and I have got on very well without your
+      dolls. I had rather walk up a mountain and down again than look at all the
+      statues Martellus and Arjillax ever made. You prefer a statue to an
+      automaton, and a rag doll to a statue. So do I; but I prefer a man to a
+      rag doll. Give me friends, not dolls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. Yet I have seen you walking over the mountains alone. Have
+      you not found your best friend in yourself?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. What are you driving at, old one? What does all this lead to?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. It leads, young man, to the truth that you can create
+      nothing but yourself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS [<i>musing</i>] I can create nothing but myself. Ecrasia: you are
+      clever. Do you understand it? I don't.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. It is as easy to understand as any other ignorant error. What
+      artist is as great as his own works? He can create masterpieces; but he
+      cannot improve the shape of his own nose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. There! What have you to say to that, old one?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. He can alter the shape of his own soul. He could alter the
+      shape of his nose if the difference between a turned-up nose and a
+      turned-down one were worth the effort. One does not face the throes of
+      creation for trifles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. What have you to say to that, Ecrasia?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. I say that if the ancients had thoroughly grasped the theory of
+      fine art they would understand that the difference between a beautiful
+      nose and an ugly one is of supreme importance: that it is indeed the only
+      thing that matters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. That is, they would understand something they could not
+      believe, and that you do not believe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Just so, mam. Art is not honest: that is why I never could stand
+      much of it. It is all make-believe. Ecrasia never really says things: she
+      only rattles her teeth in her mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Acis: you are rude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. You mean that I wont play the game of make-believe. Well, I don't
+      ask you to play it with me; so why should you expect me to play it with
+      you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. You have no right to say that I am not sincere. I have found a
+      happiness in art that real life has never given me. I am intensely in
+      earnest about art. There is a magic and mystery in art that you know
+      nothing of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. Yes, child: art is the magic mirror you make to reflect
+      your invisible dreams in visible pictures. You use a glass mirror to see
+      your face: you use works of art to see your soul. But we who are older use
+      neither glass mirrors nor works of art. We have a direct sense of life.
+      When you gain that you will put aside your mirrors and statues, your toys
+      and your dolls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. Yet we too have our toys and our dolls. That is the
+      trouble of the ancients.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. What! The ancients have their troubles! It is the first time I
+      ever heard one of them confess it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. Look at us. Look at me. This is my body, my blood, my
+      brain; but it is not me. I am the eternal life, the perpetual
+      resurrection; but [<i>striking his body</i>] this structure, this
+      organism, this makeshift, can be made by a boy in a laboratory, and is
+      held back from dissolution only by my use of it. Worse still, it can be
+      broken by a slip of the foot, drowned by a cramp in the stomach, destroyed
+      by a flash from the clouds. Sooner or later, its destruction is certain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. Yes: this body is the last doll to be discarded. When I
+      was a child, Ecrasia, I, too, was an artist, like your sculptor friends
+      there, striving to create perfection in things outside myself. I made
+      statues: I painted pictures: I tried to worship them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. I had no such skill; but I, like Acis, sought perfection
+      in friends, in lovers, in nature, in things outside myself. Alas! I could
+      not create if. I could only imagine it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. I, like Arjillax, found out that my statues of bodily
+      beauty were no longer even beautiful to me; and I pressed on and made
+      statues and pictures of men and women of genius, like those in the old
+      fable of Michael Angelo. Like Martellus, I smashed them when I saw that
+      there was no life in them: that they were so dead that they would not even
+      dissolve as a dead body does.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. And I, like Acis, ceased to walk over the mountains with
+      my friends, and walked alone; for I found that I had creative power over
+      myself but none over my friends. And then I ceased to walk on the
+      mountains; for I saw that the mountains were dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS [<i>protesting vehemently</i>] No. I grant you about the friends
+      perhaps; but the mountains are still the mountains, each with its name,
+      its individuality, its upstanding strength and majesty, its beauty&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. What! Acis among the rhapsodists!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. Mere metaphor, my poor boy: the mountains are corpses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ALL THE YOUNG [<i>repelled</i>] Oh!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. Yes. In the hardpressed heart of the earth, where the
+      inconceivable heat of the sun still glows, the stone lives in fierce
+      atomic convulsion, as we live in our slower way. When it is cast out to
+      the surface it dies like deep-sea fish: what you see is only its cold dead
+      body. We have tapped that central heat as prehistoric man tapped water
+      springs; but nothing has come up alive from those flaming depths: your
+      landscapes, your mountains, are only the world's cast skins and decaying
+      teeth on which we live like microbes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Ancient: you blaspheme against Nature and against Man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. Child, child, how much enthusiasm will you have for man
+      when you have endured eight centuries of him, as I have, and seen him
+      perish by an empty mischance that is yet a certainty? When I discarded my
+      dolls as he discarded his friends and his mountains, it was to myself I
+      turned as to the final reality. Here, and here alone, I could shape and
+      create. When my arm was weak and I willed it to be strong, I could create
+      a roll of muscle on it; and when I understood that, I understood that I
+      could without any greater miracle give myself ten arms and three heads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. I also came to understand such miracles. For fifty years I
+      sat contemplating this power in myself and concentrating my will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. So did I; and for five more years I made myself into all
+      sorts of fantastic monsters. I walked upon a dozen legs: I worked with
+      twenty hands and a hundred fingers: I looked to the four quarters of the
+      compass with eight eyes out of four heads. Children fled in amazement from
+      me until I had to hide myself from them; and the ancients, who had
+      forgotten how to laugh, smiled grimly when they passed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. We have all committed these follies. You will all commit
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Oh, do grow a lot of arms and legs and heads for us. It
+      would be so funny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. My child: I am just as well as I am. I would not lift my
+      finger now to have a thousand heads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. But what would I not give to have no head at all?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ALL THE YOUNG. Whats that? No head at all? Why? How?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. Can you not understand?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ALL THE YOUNG [<i>shaking their heads</i>] No.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. One day, when I was tired of learning to walk forward
+      with some of my feet and backwards with others and sideways with the rest
+      all at once, I sat on a rock with my four chins resting on four of my
+      palms, and four or my elbows resting on four of my knees. And suddenly it
+      came into my mind that this monstrous machinery of heads and limbs was no
+      more me than my statues had been me, and that it was only an automaton
+      that I had enslaved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Enslaved? What does that mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. A thing that must do what you command it is a slave; and
+      its commander is its master. These are words you will learn when your turn
+      comes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. You will also learn that when the master has come to do
+      everything through the slave, the slave becomes his master, since he
+      cannot live without him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. And so I perceived that I had made myself the slave of a
+      slave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. When we discovered that, we shed our superfluous heads and
+      legs and arms until we had our old shapes again, and no longer startled
+      the children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. But still I am the slave of this slave, my body. How am I
+      to be delivered from it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. That, children, is the trouble of the ancients. For whilst
+      we are tied to this tyrannous body we are subject to its death, and our
+      destiny is not achieved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. What is your destiny?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. To be immortal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. The day will come when there will be no people, only
+      thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. And that will be life eternal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. I trust I shall meet my fatal accident before that day dawns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. For once, Ecrasia, I agree with you. A world in which there were
+      nothing plastic would be an utterly miserable one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. No limbs, no contours, no exquisite lines and elegant shapes, no
+      worship of beautiful bodies, no poetic embraces in which cultivated lovers
+      pretend that their caressing hands are wandering over celestial hills and
+      enchanted valleys, no&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS [<i>interrupting her disgustedly</i>] What an inhuman mind you have,
+      Ecrasia!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Inhuman!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Yes: inhuman. Why don't you fall in love with someone?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. I! I have been in love all my life. I burned with it even in the
+      egg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Not a bit of it. You and Arjillax are just as hard as two stones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. You did not always think so, Acis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Oh, I know. I offered you my love once, and asked for yours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. And did I deny it to you, Acis?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. You didn't even know what love was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Oh! I adored you, you stupid oaf, until I found that you were a
+      mere animal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. And I made no end of a fool of myself about you until I discovered
+      that you were a mere artist. You appreciated my contours! I was plastic,
+      as Arjillax says. I wasn't a man to you: I was a masterpiece appealing to
+      your tastes and your senses. Your tastes and senses had overlaid the
+      direct impulse of life in you. And because I cared only for our life, and
+      went straight to it, and was bored by your calling my limbs fancy names
+      and mapping me into mountains and valleys and all the rest of it, you
+      called me an animal. Well, I am an animal, if you call a live man an
+      animal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. You need not explain. You refused to be refined. I did my best to
+      lift your prehistoric impulses on to the plane of beauty, of imagination,
+      of romance, of poetry, of art, of&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. These things are all very well in their way and in their proper
+      places. But they are not love. They are an unnatural adulteration of love.
+      Love is a simple thing and a deep thing: it is an act of life and not an
+      illusion. Art is an illusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. That is false. The statue comes to life always. The statues of
+      today are the men and women of the next incubation. I hold up the marble
+      figure before the mother and say, 'This is the model you must copy.' We
+      produce what we see. Let no man dare to create in art a thing that he
+      would not have exist in life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Yes: I have been through all that. But you yourself are making
+      statues of ancients instead of beautiful nymphs and swains. And Ecrasia is
+      right about the ancients being inartistic. They are damnably inartistic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA [<i>triumphant</i>] Ah! Our greatest artist vindicates me. Thanks,
+      Martellus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. The body always ends by being a bore. Nothing remains beautiful
+      and interesting except thought, because the thought is the life. Which is
+      just what this old gentleman and this old lady seem to think too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. Quite so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. Precisely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN [<i>to the He-Ancient</i>] But you cant be nothing. What do
+      you want to be?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. A vortex.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. A what?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. A vortex. I began as a vortex: why should I not end as
+      one?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Oh! That is what you old people are, Vorticists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. But if life is thought, can you live without a head?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. Not now perhaps. But prehistoric men thought they could
+      not live without tails. I can live without a tail. Why should I not live
+      without a head?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. What is a tail?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT A habit of which your ancestors managed to pure themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. None of us now believe that all this machinery of flesh
+      and blood is necessary. It dies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. It imprisons us on this petty planet and forbids us to
+      range through the stars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. But even a vortex is a vortex in something. You cant have a
+      whirlpool without water; and you cant have a vortex without gas, or
+      molecules or atoms or ions or electrons or something, not nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. No: the vortex is not the water nor the gas nor the atoms:
+      it is a power over these things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. The body was the slave of the vortex; but the slave has
+      become the master; and we must free ourselves from that tyranny. It is
+      this stuff [<i>indicating her body</i>], this flesh and blood and bone and
+      all the rest of it, that is intolerable. Even prehistoric man dreamed of
+      what he called an astral body, and asked who would deliver him from the
+      body of this death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS [<i>evidently out of his depth</i>] I shouldn't think too much about
+      it if I were you. You have to keep sane, you know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The two Ancients look at one another; shrug their shoulders; and
+      address themselves to their departure.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. We are staying too long with you, children. We must go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>All the young people rise rather eagerly.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Dont mention it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. It is tiresome for us, too. You see, children, we have to
+      put things very crudely to you to make ourselves intelligible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. And I am afraid we do not quite succeed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. Very kind of you to come at all and talk to us, I'm sure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Why do the other ancients never come and give us a turn?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. It is difficult for them. They have forgotten how to
+      speak; how to read; even how to think in your fashion. We do not
+      communicate with one another in that way or apprehend the world as you do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. I find it more and more difficult to keep up your
+      language. Another century or two and it will be impossible. I shall have
+      to be relieved by a younger shepherd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Of course we are always delighted to see you; but still, if it tries
+      you very severely, we could manage pretty well by ourselves, you know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. Tell me, Acis: do you ever think of yourself as having to
+      live perhaps for thousands of years?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Oh, don't talk about it. Why, I know very well that I have only four
+      years of what any reasonable person would call living; and three and a
+      half of them are already gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. You must not mind our saying so; but really you cannot call being
+      an ancient living.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN [<i>almost in tears</i>] Oh, this dreadful shortness of our
+      lives! I cannot bear it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. I made up my mind on that subject long ago. When I am three
+      years and fifty weeks old, I shall have my fatal accident. And it will not
+      be an accident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE HE-ANCIENT. We are very tired of this subject. I must leave you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. What is being tired?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SHE-ANCIENT. The penalty of attending to children. Farewell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The two Ancients go away severally, she into the grove, he up to the
+      hills behind the temple.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ALL. Ouf! [<i>A great sigh of relief</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Dreadful people!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. Bores!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Yet one would like to follow them; to enter into their life; to
+      grasp their thought; to comprehend the universe as they must.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Getting old, Martellus?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. Well, I have finished with the dolls; and I am no longer
+      jealous of you. That looks like the end. Two hours sleep is enough for me.
+      I am afraid I am beginning to find you all rather silly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. I know. My girl went off this morning. She hadnt slept for
+      weeks. And she found mathematics more interesting than me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MARTELLUS. There is a prehistoric saying that has come down to us from a
+      famous woman teacher. She said: 'Leave women; and study mathematics.' It
+      is the only remaining fragment of a lost scripture called The Confessions
+      of St Augustin, the English Opium Eater. That primitive savage must have
+      been a great woman, to say a thing that still lives after three hundred
+      centuries. I too will leave women and study mathematics, which I have
+      neglected too long. Farewell, children, my old playmates. I almost wish I
+      could feel sentimental about parting from you; but the cold truth is that
+      you bore me. Do not be angry with me: your turn will come. [<i>He passes
+      away gravely into the grove</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. There goes a great spirit. What a sculptor he was! And now,
+      nothing! It is as if he had cut off his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Oh, will you all leave me as he has left you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Never. We have sworn it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. What is the use of swearing? She swore. He swore. You have
+      sworn. They have sworn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. You speak like a grammar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. That is how one ought to speak, isnt it? We shall all be
+      forsworn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Do not talk like that. You are saddening us; and you are
+      chasing the light away. It is growing dark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Night is falling. The light will come back tomorrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. What is tomorrow?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. The day that never comes. [<i>He turns towards the temple</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>All begin trooping into the temple.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN [<i>holding Acis back</i>] That is no answer. What&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Silence. Little children should be seen and not heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN [<i>putting out her tongue at him</i>]!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Ungraceful. You must not do that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. I will do what I like. But there is something the matter
+      with me. I want to lie down. I cannot keep my eyes open.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. You are falling asleep. You will wake up again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN [<i>drowsily</i>] What is sleep?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ACIS. Ask no questions; and you will be told no lies. [<i>He takes her by
+      the ear, and leads her firmly towards the temple</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE NEWLY BORN. Ai! oi! ai! Dont. I want to be carried. [<i>She reels into
+      the arms of Acts, who carries her into the temple</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Come, Arjillax: you at least are still an artist. I adore you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Do you? Unfortunately for you, I am not still a child. I have
+      grown out of cuddling. I can only appreciate your figure. Does that
+      satisfy you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. At what distance?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Arm's length or more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Thank you: not for me. [<i>She turns away from him</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARJILLAX. Ha! ha! [<i>He strides off into the temple</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA [<i>calling to Strephon, who is on the threshold of the temple,
+      going in</i>] Strephon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STREPHON. No. My heart is broken. [<i>He goes into the temple</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ECRASIA. Must I pass the night alone? [<i>She looks round, seeking another
+      partner; but they have all gone</i>]. After all, I can imagine a lover
+      nobler than any of you. [<i>She goes into the temple</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>It is now quite dark. A vague radiance appears near the temple and
+      shapes itself into the ghost of Adam.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A WOMAN'S VOICE [<i>in the grove</i>] Who is that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. The ghost of Adam, the first father of mankind. Who are you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE VOICE. The ghost of Eve, the first mother of mankind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Come forth, wife; and shew yourself to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE [<i>appearing near the grove</i>] Here I am, husband. You are very
+      old.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A VOICE [<i>in the hills</i>] Ha! ha! ha!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. Who laughs? Who dares laugh at Adam?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. Who has the heart to laugh at Eve?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE VOICE. The ghost of Cain, the first child, and the first murderer. [<i>He
+      appears between them; and as he does so there is a prolonged hiss</i>].
+      Who dares hiss at Cain, the lord of death?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A VOICE. The ghost of the serpent, that lived before Adam and before Eve,
+      and taught them how to bring forth Cain. [<i>She becomes visible, coiled
+      in the trees</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A VOICE. There is one that came before the serpent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. That is the voice of Lilith, in whom the father and mother
+      were one. Hail, Lilith!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Lilith becomes visible between Cain and Adam.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LILITH. I suffered unspeakably; I tore myself asunder; I lost my life, to
+      make of my one flesh these twain, man and woman. And this is what has come
+      of it. What do you make of it, Adam, my son?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. I made the earth bring forth by my labor, and the woman bring forth
+      by my love. And this is what has come of it. What do you make of it, Eve,
+      my wife?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. I nourished the egg in my body and fed it with my blood. And now they
+      let it fall as the birds did, and suffer not at all. What do you make of
+      it, Cain, my first-born?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. I invented killing and conquest and mastery and the winnowing out of
+      the weak by the strong. And now the strong have slain one another; and the
+      weak live for ever; and their deeds do nothing for the doer more than for
+      another. What do you make of it, snake?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERPENT. I am justified. For I chose wisdom and the knowledge of good
+      and evil; and now there is no evil; and wisdom and good are one. It is
+      enough. [<i>She vanishes</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAIN. There is no place for me on earth any longer. You cannot deny that
+      mine was a splendid game while it lasted. But now! Out, out, brief candle!
+      [<i>He vanishes</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVE. The clever ones were always my favorites. The diggers and the
+      fighters have dug themselves in with the worms. My clever ones have
+      inherited the earth. All's well. [<i>She fades away</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ADAM. I can make nothing of it, neither head nor tail. What is it all for?
+      Why? Whither? Whence? We were well enough in the garden. And now the fools
+      have killed all the animals; and they are dissatisfied because they cannot
+      be bothered with their bodies! Foolishness, I call it. [<i>He disappears</i>].
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LILITH. They have accepted the burden of eternal life. They have taken the
+      agony from birth; and their life does not fail them even in the hour of
+      their destruction. Their breasts are without milk: their bowels are gone:
+      the very shapes of them are only ornaments for their children to admire
+      and caress without understanding. Is this enough; or shall I labor again?
+      Shall I bring forth something that will sweep them away and make an end of
+      them as they have swept away the beasts of the garden, and made an end of
+      the crawling things and the flying things and of all them that refuse to
+      live for ever? I had patience with them for many ages: they tried me very
+      sorely. They did terrible things: they embraced death, and said that
+      eternal life was a fable. I stood amazed at the malice and destructiveness
+      of the things I had made: Mars blushed as he looked down on the shame of
+      his sister planet: cruelty and hypocrisy became so hideous that the face
+      of the earth was pitted with the graves of little children among which
+      living skeletons crawled in search of horrible food. The pangs of another
+      birth were already upon me when one man repented and lived three hundred
+      years; and I waited to see what would come of that. And so much came of it
+      that the horrors of that time seem now but an evil dream. They have
+      redeemed themselves from their vileness, and turned away from their sins.
+      Best of all, they are still not satisfied: the impulse I gave them in that
+      day when I sundered myself in twain and launched Man and Woman on the
+      earth still urges them: after passing a million goals they press on to the
+      goal of redemption from the flesh, to the vortex freed from matter, to the
+      whirlpool in pure intelligence that, when the world began, was a whirlpool
+      in pure force. And though all that they have done seems but the first hour
+      of the infinite work of creation, yet I will not supersede them until they
+      have forded this last stream that lies between flesh and spirit, and
+      disentangled their life from the matter that has always mocked it. I can
+      wait: waiting and patience mean nothing to the eternal. I gave the woman
+      the greatest of gifts: curiosity. By that her seed has been saved from my
+      wrath; for I also am curious; and I have waited always to see what they
+      will do tomorrow. Let them feed that appetite well for me. I say, let them
+      dread, of all things, stagnation; for from the moment I, Lilith, lose hope
+      and faith in them, they are doomed. In that hope and faith I have let them
+      live for a moment; and in that moment I have spared them many times. But
+      mightier creatures than they have killed hope and faith, and perished from
+      the earth; and I may not spare them for ever. I am Lilith: I brought life
+      into the whirlpool of force, and compelled my enemy, Matter, to obey a
+      living soul. But in enslaving Life's enemy I made him Life's master; for
+      that is the end of all slavery; and now I shall see the slave set free and
+      the enemy reconciled, the whirlpool become all life and no matter. And
+      because these infants that call themselves ancients are reaching out
+      towards that, I will have patience with them still; though I know well
+      that when they attain it they shall become one with me and supersede me,
+      and Lilith will be only a legend and a lay that has lost its meaning. Of
+      Life only is there no end; and though of its million starry mansions many
+      are empty and many still unbuilt, and though its vast domain is as yet
+      unbearably desert, my seed shall one day fill it and master its matter to
+      its uttermost confines. And for what may be beyond, the eyesight of Lilith
+      is too short. It is enough that there is a beyond. [<i>She vanishes</i>].
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BACK TO METHUSELAH***
+
+******* This file should be named 13084-h.htm or 13084-h.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/1/3/0/8/13084
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>
diff --git a/old/old/13084-h.zip b/old/old/13084-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..92ef38e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/old/13084-h.zip
diff --git a/old/old/13084.txt b/old/old/13084.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c46daf3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/old/13084.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,13897 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Back to Methuselah, by George Bernard Shaw
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Back to Methuselah
+
+Author: George Bernard Shaw
+
+Release Date: August 2, 2004  [eBook #13084]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BACK TO METHUSELAH***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell and Project Gutenberg Distributed
+Proofreaders
+
+
+
+Editorial note: The reader is likely to notice the absence of
+                apostrophes from contractions in the essay section of
+                this work. The author disliked apostrophes and
+                often omitted them. Some of his publishers inserted
+                them, others honored his wishes. The policy of Project
+                Gutenberg is to treat apostrophes as they were in the
+                source text. In this case, apostrophes were omitted in
+                the essay section but used in the play.
+
+
+
+
+BACK TO METHUSELAH
+
+A Metabiological Pentateuch
+
+by
+
+BERNARD SHAW
+
+1921
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+The Infidel Half Century
+  The Dawn of Darwinism
+  The Advent of the Neo-Darwinians
+  Political Inadequacy of the Human Animal
+  Cowardice of the Irreligious
+  Is there any Hope in Education?
+  Homeopathic Education
+  The Diabolical Efficiency of Technical Education
+  Flimsiness of Civilization
+  Creative Evolution
+  Voluntary Longevity
+  The Early Evolutionists
+  The Advent of the Neo-Lamarckians
+  How Acquirements are Inherited
+  The Miracle of Condensed Recapitulation
+  Heredity an Old Story
+  Discovery Anticipated by Divination
+  Corrected Dates for the Discovery of Evolution
+  Defying the Lightning: a Frustrated Experiment
+  In Quest of the First Cause
+  Paley's Watch
+  The Irresistible Cry of Order, Order!
+  The Moment and the Man
+  The Brink of the Bottomless Pit
+  Why Darwin Converted the Crowd
+  How we Rushed Down a Steep Place
+  Darwinism not Finally Refutable
+  Three Blind Mice
+  The Greatest of These is Self-Control
+  A Sample of Lamarcko-Shavian Invective
+  The Humanitarians and the Problem of Evil
+  How One Touch of Darwin makes the Whole World Kin
+  Why Darwin Pleased the Socialists
+  Darwin and Karl Marx
+  Why Darwin pleased the Profiteers also
+  The Poetry and Purity of Materialism
+  The Viceroys of the King of Kings
+  Political Opportunism in Excelsis
+  The Betrayal of Western Civilization
+  Circumstantial Selection in Finance
+  The Homeopathic Reaction against Darwinism
+  Religion and Romance
+  The Danger of Reaction
+  A Touchstone for Dogma
+  What to do with the Legends
+  A Lesson from Science to the Churches
+  The Religious Art of the Twentieth Century
+  The Artist-Prophets
+  Evolution in the Theatre
+  My Own Part in the Matter
+In the Beginning: B.C. 4004 (In the Garden of Eden)
+The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas: Present Day
+The Thing Happens: A.D. 2170
+Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman: A.D. 3000
+As Far as Thought Can Reach: A.D. 31,920
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+The Infidel Half Century
+
+
+THE DAWN OF DARWINISM
+
+One day early in the eighteen hundred and sixties, I, being then a
+small boy, was with my nurse, buying something in the shop of a petty
+newsagent, bookseller, and stationer in Camden Street, Dublin, when
+there entered an elderly man, weighty and solemn, who advanced to the
+counter, and said pompously, 'Have you the works of the celebrated
+Buffoon?'
+
+My own works were at that time unwritten, or it is possible that the
+shop assistant might have misunderstood me so far as to produce a copy
+of Man and Superman. As it was, she knew quite well what he wanted; for
+this was before the Education Act of 1870 had produced shop assistants
+who know how to read and know nothing else. The celebrated Buffoon was
+not a humorist, but the famous naturalist Buffon. Every literate child
+at that time knew Buffon's Natural History as well as Esop's Fables. And
+no living child had heard the name that has since obliterated Buffon's
+in the popular consciousness: the name of Darwin.
+
+Ten years elapsed. The celebrated Buffoon was forgotten; I had doubled
+my years and my length; and I had discarded the religion of my
+forefathers. One day the richest and consequently most dogmatic of my
+uncles came into a restaurant where I was dining, and found himself,
+much against his will, in conversation with the most questionable of his
+nephews. By way of making myself agreeable, I spoke of modern thought
+and Darwin. He said, 'Oh, thats the fellow who wants to make out that we
+all have tails like monkeys.' I tried to explain that what Darwin had
+insisted on in this connection was that some monkeys have no tails.
+But my uncle was as impervious to what Darwin really said as any
+Neo-Darwinian nowadays. He died impenitent, and did not mention me in
+his will.
+
+Twenty years elapsed. If my uncle had been alive, he would have known
+all about Darwin, and known it all wrong. In spite of the efforts of
+Grant Allen to set him right, he would have accepted Darwin as the
+discoverer of Evolution, of Heredity, and of modification of species by
+Selection. For the pre-Darwinian age had come to be regarded as a Dark
+Age in which men still believed that the book of Genesis was a standard
+scientific treatise, and that the only additions to it were Galileo's
+demonstration of Leonardo da Vinci's simple remark that the earth is
+a moon of the sun, Newton's theory of gravitation, Sir Humphry Davy's
+invention of the safety-lamp, the discovery of electricity, the
+application of steam to industrial purposes, and the penny post. It was
+just the same in other subjects. Thus Nietzsche, by the two or three who
+had come across his writings, was supposed to have been the first man
+to whom it occurred that mere morality and legality and urbanity lead
+nowhere, as if Bunyan had never written Badman. Schopenhauer was
+credited with inventing the distinction between the Covenant of Grace
+and the Covenant of Works which troubled Cromwell on his deathbed.
+People talked as if there had been no dramatic or descriptive music
+before Wagner; no impressionist painting before Whistler; whilst as to
+myself, I was finding that the surest way to produce an effect of daring
+innovation and originality was to revive the ancient attraction of long
+rhetorical speeches; to stick closely to the methods of Moliere; and to
+lift characters bodily out of the pages of Charles Dickens.
+
+
+THE ADVENT OF THE NEO-DARWINIANS
+
+This particular sort of ignorance does not always or often matter. But
+in Darwin's case it did matter. If Darwin had really led the world at
+one bound from the book of Genesis to Heredity, to Modification of
+Species by Selection, and to Evolution, he would have been a philosopher
+and a prophet as well as an eminent professional naturalist, with
+geology as a hobby. The delusion that he had actually achieved this
+feat did no harm at first, because if people's views are sound, about
+evolution or anything else, it does not make two straws difference
+whether they call the revealer of their views Tom or Dick. But later on
+such apparently negligible errors have awkward consequences. Darwin was
+given an imposing reputation as not only an Evolutionist, but as _the_
+Evolutionist, with the immense majority who never read his books.
+The few who never read any others were led by them to concentrate
+exclusively on Circumstantial Selection as the explanation of all the
+transformations and adaptations which were the evidence for Evolution.
+And they presently found themselves so cut off by this specialization
+from the majority who knew Darwin only by his spurious reputation, that
+they were obliged to distinguish themselves, not as Darwinians, but as
+Neo-Darwinians.
+
+Before ten more years had elapsed, the Neo-Darwinians were practically
+running current Science. It was 1906; I was fifty; I published my own
+view of evolution in a play called Man and Superman; and I found that
+most people were unable to understand how I could be an Evolutionist
+and not a Neo-Darwinian, or why I habitually derided Neo-Darwinism as
+a ghastly idiocy, and would fall on its professors slaughterously in
+public discussions. It was in the hope of making me clear the matter up
+that the Fabian Society, which was then organizing a series of lectures
+on Prophets of the Nineteenth Century, asked me to deliver a lecture
+on the prophet Darwin. I did so; and scraps of that lecture, which was
+never published, variegate these pages.
+
+
+POLITICAL INADEQUACY OF THE HUMAN ANIMAL
+
+Ten more years elapsed. Neo-Darwinism in politics had produced a
+European catastrophe of a magnitude so appalling, and a scope so
+unpredictable, that as I write these lines in 1920, it is still far from
+certain whether our civilization will survive it. The circumstances
+of this catastrophe, the boyish cinema-fed romanticism which made it
+possible to impose it on the people as a crusade, and especially the
+ignorance and errors of the victors of Western Europe when its violent
+phase had passed and the time for reconstruction arrived, confirmed a
+doubt which had grown steadily in my mind during my forty years public
+work as a Socialist: namely, whether the human animal, as he exists at
+present, is capable of solving the social problems raised by his own
+aggregation, or, as he calls it, his civilization.
+
+
+COWARDICE OF THE IRRELIGIOUS
+
+Another observation I had made was that goodnatured unambitious men are
+cowards when they have no religion. They are dominated and exploited not
+only by greedy and often half-witted and half-alive weaklings who will
+do anything for cigars, champagne, motor cars, and the more childish and
+selfish uses of money, but by able and sound administrators who can do
+nothing else with them than dominate and exploit them. Government and
+exploitation become synonymous under such circumstances; and the world
+is finally ruled by the childish, the brigands, and the blackguards.
+Those who refuse to stand in with them are persecuted and occasionally
+executed when they give any trouble to the exploiters. They fall into
+poverty when they lack lucrative specific talents. At the present moment
+one half of Europe, having knocked the other half down, is trying to
+kick it to death, and may succeed: a procedure which is, logically,
+sound Neo-Darwinism. And the goodnatured majority are looking on
+in helpless horror, or allowing themselves to be persuaded by the
+newspapers of their exploiters that the kicking is not only a sound
+commercial investment, but an act of divine justice of which they are
+the ardent instruments.
+
+But if Man is really incapable of organizing a big civilization, and
+cannot organize even a village or a tribe any too well, what is the use
+of giving him a religion? A religion may make him hunger and thirst for
+righteousness; but will it endow him with the practical capacity to
+satisfy that appetite? Good intentions do not carry with them a grain of
+political science, which is a very complicated one. The most devoted and
+indefatigable, the most able and disinterested students of this science
+in England, as far as I know, are my friends Sidney and Beatrice Webb.
+It has taken them forty years of preliminary work, in the course of
+which they have published several treatises comparable to Adam Smith's
+Wealth of Nations, to formulate a political constitution adequate to
+existing needs. If this is the measure of what can be done in a
+lifetime by extraordinary ability, keen natural aptitude, exceptional
+opportunities, and freedom from the preoccupations of bread-winning,
+what are we to expect from the parliament man to whom political science
+is as remote and distasteful as the differential calculus, and to whom
+such an elementary but vital point as the law of economic rent is a
+_pons asinorum_ never to be approached, much less crossed? Or from the
+common voter who is mostly so hard at work all day earning a living that
+he cannot keep awake for five minutes over a book?
+
+
+IS THERE ANY HOPE IN EDUCATION?
+
+The usual answer is that we must educate our masters: that is,
+ourselves. We must teach citizenship and political science at school.
+But must we? There is no must about it, the hard fact being that we must
+_not_ teach political science or citizenship at school. The schoolmaster
+who attempted it would soon find himself penniless in the streets
+without pupils, if not in the dock pleading to a pompously worded
+indictment for sedition against the exploiters. Our schools teach the
+morality of feudalism corrupted by commercialism, and hold up the
+military conqueror, the robber baron, and the profiteer, as models of
+the illustrious and the successful. In vain do the prophets who see
+through this imposture preach and teach a better gospel: the individuals
+whom they convert are doomed to pass away in a few years; and the new
+generations are dragged back in the schools to the morality of the
+fifteenth century, and think themselves Liberal when they are defending
+the ideas of Henry VII, and gentlemanly when they are opposing to them
+the ideas of Richard III. Thus the educated man is a greater nuisance
+than the uneducated one: indeed it is the inefficiency and sham of the
+educational side of our schools (to which, except under compulsion,
+children would not be sent by their parents at all if they did not act
+as prisons in which the immature are kept from worrying the mature) that
+save us from being dashed on the rocks of false doctrine instead of
+drifting down the midstream of mere ignorance. There is no way out
+through the schoolmaster.
+
+
+HOMEOPATHIC EDUCATION
+
+In truth, mankind cannot be saved from without, by schoolmasters or any
+other sort of masters: it can only be lamed and enslaved by them. It is
+said that if you wash a cat it will never again wash itself. This may or
+may not be true: what is certain is that if you teach a man anything he
+will never learn it; and if you cure him of a disease he will be unable
+to cure himself the next time it attacks him. Therefore, if you want
+to see a cat clean, you throw a bucket of mud over it, when it will
+immediately take extraordinary pains to lick the mud off, and finally be
+cleaner than it was before. In the same way doctors who are up-to-date
+(BURGE-LUBIN per cent of all the registered practitioners, and 20 per
+cent of the unregistered ones), when they want to rid you of a disease
+or a symptom, inoculate you with that disease or give you a drug that
+produces that symptom, in order to provoke you to resist it as the mud
+provokes the cat to wash itself.
+
+Now an acute person will ask me why, if this be so, our false education
+does not provoke our scholars to find out the truth. My answer is that
+it sometimes does. Voltaire was a pupil of the Jesuits; Samuel Butler
+was the pupil of a hopelessly conventional and erroneous country parson.
+But then Voltaire was Voltaire, and Butler was Butler: that is, their
+minds were so abnormally strong that they could throw off the doses of
+poison that paralyse ordinary minds. When the doctors inoculate you and
+the homeopathists dose you, they give you an infinitesimally attenuated
+dose. If they gave you the virus at full strength it would overcome your
+resistance and produce its direct effect. The doses of false doctrine
+given at public schools and universities are so big that they overwhelm
+the resistance that a tiny dose would provoke. The normal student is
+corrupted beyond redemption, and will drive the genius who resists out
+of the country if he can. Byron and Shelley had to fly to Italy, whilst
+Castlereagh and Eldon ruled the roost at home. Rousseau was hunted from
+frontier to frontier; Karl Marx starved in exile in a Soho lodging;
+Ruskin's articles were refused by the magazines (he was too rich to be
+otherwise persecuted); whilst mindless forgotten nonentities governed
+the land; sent men to the prison or the gallows for blasphemy and
+sedition (meaning the truth about Church and State); and sedulously
+stored up the social disease and corruption which explode from time to
+time in gigantic boils that have to be lanced by a million bayonets.
+This is the result of allopathic education. Homeopathic education has
+not yet been officially tried, and would obviously be a delicate
+matter if it were. A body of schoolmasters inciting their pupils to
+infinitesimal peccadilloes with the object of provoking them to exclaim,
+'Get thee behind me, Satan,' or telling them white lies about history
+for the sake of being contradicted, insulted, and refuted, would
+certainly do less harm than our present educational allopaths do; but
+then nobody will advocate homeopathic education. Allopathy has produced
+the poisonous illusion that it enlightens instead of darkening. The
+suggestion may, however, explain why, whilst most people's minds succumb
+to inculcation and environment, a few react vigorously: honest and
+decent people coming from thievish slums, and sceptics and realists from
+country parsonages.
+
+
+THE DIABOLICAL EFFICIENCY OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION
+
+But meanwhile--and here comes the horror of it--our technical
+instruction is honest and efficient. The public schoolboy who is
+carefully blinded, duped, and corrupted as to the nature of a society
+based on profiteering, and is taught to honor parasitic idleness and
+luxury, learns to shoot and ride and keep fit with all the assistance
+and guidance that can be procured for him by the most anxiously sincere
+desire that he may do these things well, and if possible superlatively
+well. In the army he learns to fly; to drop bombs; to use machine-guns
+to the utmost of his capacity. The discovery of high explosives is
+rewarded and dignified: instruction in the manufacture of the weapons,
+battleships, submarines, and land batteries by which they are applied
+destructively, is quite genuine: the instructors know their business,
+and really mean the learners to succeed. The result is that powers
+of destruction that could hardly without uneasiness be entrusted to
+infinite wisdom and infinite benevolence are placed in the hands of
+romantic schoolboy patriots who, however generous by nature, are by
+education ignoramuses, dupes, snobs, and sportsmen to whom fighting is a
+religion and killing an accomplishment; whilst political power, useless
+under such circumstances except to militarist imperialists in chronic
+terror of invasion and subjugation, pompous tufthunting fools,
+commercial adventurers to whom the organization by the nation of its own
+industrial services would mean checkmate, financial parasites on the
+money market, and stupid people who cling to the status quo merely
+because they are used to it, is obtained by heredity, by simple
+purchase, by keeping newspapers and pretending that they are organs of
+public opinion, by the wiles of seductive women, and by prostituting
+ambitious talent to the service of the profiteers, who call the tune
+because, having secured all the spare plunder, they alone can afford
+to pay the piper. Neither the rulers nor the ruled understand high
+politics. They do not even know that there is such a branch of knowledge
+as political science; but between them they can coerce and enslave
+with the deadliest efficiency, even to the wiping out of civilization,
+because their education as slayers has been honestly and thoroughly
+carried out. Essentially the rulers are all defectives; and there is
+nothing worse than government by defectives who wield irresistible
+powers of physical coercion. The commonplace sound people submit, and
+compel the rest to submit, because they have been taught to do so as
+an article of religion and a point of honor. Those in whom natural
+enlightenment has reacted against artificial education submit because
+they are compelled; but they would resist, and finally resist
+effectively, if they were not cowards. And they are cowards because they
+have neither an officially accredited and established religion nor a
+generally recognized point of honor, and are all at sixes and sevens
+with their various private speculations, sending their children perforce
+to the schools where they will be corrupted for want of any other
+schools. The rulers are equally intimidated by the immense extension
+and cheapening of the means of slaughter and destruction. The British
+Government is more afraid of Ireland now that submarines, bombs, and
+poison gas are cheap and easily made than it was of the German Empire
+before the war; consequently the old British custom which maintained a
+balance of power through command of the sea is intensified into a terror
+that sees security in nothing short of absolute military mastery of the
+entire globe: that is, in an impossibility that will yet seem possible
+in detail to soldiers and to parochial and insular patriotic civilians.
+
+
+FLIMSINESS OF CIVILIZATION
+
+This situation has occurred so often before, always with the same result
+of a collapse of civilization (Professor Flinders Petrie has let out the
+secret of previous collapses), that the rich are instinctively crying
+'Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die,' and the poor, 'How long, O
+Lord, how long?' But the pitiless reply still is that God helps those
+who help themselves. This does not mean that if Man cannot find the
+remedy no remedy will be found. The power that produced Man when the
+monkey was not up to the mark, can produce a higher creature than Man if
+Man does not come up to the mark. What it means is that if Man is to be
+saved, Man must save himself. There seems no compelling reason why he
+should be saved. He is by no means an ideal creature. At his present
+best many of his ways are so unpleasant that they are unmentionable in
+polite society, and so painful that he is compelled to pretend that pain
+is often a good. Nature holds no brief for the human experiment: it must
+stand or fall by its results. If Man will not serve, Nature will try
+another experiment.
+
+What hope is there then of human improvement? According to the
+Neo-Darwinists, to the Mechanists, no hope whatever, because improvement
+can come only through some senseless accident which must, on the
+statistical average of accidents, be presently wiped out by some other
+equally senseless accident.
+
+
+CREATIVE EVOLUTION
+
+But this dismal creed does not discourage those who believe that the
+impulse that produces evolution is creative. They have observed the
+simple fact that the will to do anything can and does, at a certain
+pitch of intensity set up by conviction of its necessity, create and
+organize new tissue to do it with. To them therefore mankind is by no
+means played out yet. If the weight lifter, under the trivial stimulus
+of an athletic competition, can 'put up a muscle,' it seems reasonable
+to believe that an equally earnest and convinced philosopher could 'put
+up a brain.' Both are directions of vitality to a certain end. Evolution
+shews us this direction of vitality doing all sorts of things: providing
+the centipede with a hundred legs, and ridding the fish of any legs at
+all; building lungs and arms for the land and gills and fins for the
+sea; enabling the mammal to gestate its young inside its body, and the
+fowl to incubate hers outside it; offering us, we may say, our choice of
+any sort of bodily contrivance to maintain our activity and increase our
+resources.
+
+
+VOLUNTARY LONGEVITY
+
+Among other matters apparently changeable at will is the duration of
+individual life. Weismann, a very clever and suggestive biologist who
+was unhappily reduced to idiocy by Neo-Darwinism, pointed out that death
+is not an eternal condition of life, but an expedient introduced to
+provide for continual renewal without overcrowding. Now Circumstantial
+Selection does not account for natural death: it accounts only for the
+survival of species in which the individuals have sense enough to decay
+and die on purpose. But the individuals do not seem to have calculated
+very reasonably: nobody can explain why a parrot should live ten times
+as long as a dog, and a turtle be almost immortal. In the case of man,
+the operation has overshot its mark: men do not live long enough: they
+are, for all the purposes of high civilization, mere children when they
+die; and our Prime Ministers, though rated as mature, divide their
+time between the golf course and the Treasury Bench in parliament.
+Presumably, however, the same power that made this mistake can remedy
+it. If on opportunist grounds Man now fixes the term of his life at
+three score and ten years, he can equally fix it at three hundred, or
+three thousand, or even at the genuine Circumstantial Selection limit,
+which would be until a sooner-or-later-inevitable fatal accident makes
+an end of the individual. All that is necessary to make him extend his
+present span is that tremendous catastrophes such as the late war shall
+convince him of the necessity of at least outliving his taste for
+golf and cigars if the race is to be saved. This is not fantastic
+speculation: it is deductive biology, if there is such a science as
+biology. Here, then, is a stone that we have left unturned, and that may
+be worth turning. To make the suggestion more entertaining than it would
+be to most people in the form of a biological treatise, I have written
+Back to Methuselah as a contribution to the modern Bible.
+
+Many people, however, can read treatises and cannot read Bibles. Darwin
+could not read Shakespear. Some who can read both, like to learn the
+history of their ideas. Some are so entangled in the current confusion
+of Creative Evolution with Circumstantial Selection by their historical
+ignorance that they are puzzled by any distinction between the two.
+For all their sakes I must give here a little history of the conflict
+between the view of Evolution taken by the Darwinians (though not
+altogether by Darwin himself) and called Natural Selection, and that
+which is emerging, under the title of Creative Evolution, as the
+genuinely scientific religion for which all wise men are now anxiously
+looking.
+
+
+THE EARLY EVOLUTIONISTS
+
+The idea of Evolution, or Transformation as it is now sometimes called,
+was not first conceived by Charles Darwin, nor by Alfred Russel Wallace,
+who observed the operation of Circumstantial Selection simultaneously
+with Charles. The celebrated Buffoon was a better Evolutionist than
+either of them; and two thousand years before Buffon was born, the Greek
+philosopher Empedocles opined that all forms of life are transformations
+of four elements, Fire, Air, Earth, and Water, effected by the two
+innate forces of attraction and repulsion, or love and hate. As lately
+as 1860 I myself was taught as a child that everything was made out of
+these four elements. Both the Empedocleans and the Evolutionists were
+opposed to those who believed in the separate creation of all forms
+of life as described in the book of Genesis. This 'conflict between
+religion and science', as the phrase went then, did not perplex my
+infant mind in the least: I knew perfectly well, without knowing that I
+knew it, that the validity of a story is not the same as the occurrence
+of a fact. But as I grew up I found that I had to choose between
+Evolution and Genesis. If you believed that dogs and cats and snakes
+and birds and beetles and oysters and whales and men and women were all
+separately designed and made and named in Eden garden at the beginning
+of things, and have since survived simply by reproducing their kind,
+then you were not an Evolutionist. If you believed, on the contrary,
+that all the different species are modifications, variations, and
+elaborations of one primal stock, or even of a few primal stocks, then
+you were an Evolutionist. But you were not necessarily a Darwinian; for
+you might have been a modern Evolutionist twenty years before Charles
+Darwin was born, and a whole lifetime before he published his Origin of
+Species. For that matter, when Aristotle grouped animals with backbones
+as blood relations, he began the sort of classification which, when
+extended by Darwin to monkeys and men, so shocked my uncle.
+
+Genesis had held the field until the time (1707-1778) of Linnaeus the
+famous botanist. In the meantime the microscope had been invented. It
+revealed a new world of hitherto invisible creatures called Infusorians,
+as common water was found to be an infusion of them. In the eighteenth
+century naturalists were very keen on the Infusorian Amoebas, and were
+much struck by the way in which the members of this old family behaved
+and developed. But it was still possible for Linnaeus to begin a
+treatise by saying 'There are just so many species as there were forms
+created in the beginning,' though there were hundreds of commonplace
+Scotch gardeners, pigeon fanciers, and stock breeders then living who
+knew better. Linnaeus himself knew better before he died. In the
+last edition of his System of Nature, he began to wonder whether the
+transmutation of species by variation might not be possible. Then came
+the great poet who jumped over the facts to the conclusion. Goethe said
+that all the shapes of creation were cousins; that there must be some
+common stock from which all the species had sprung; that it was the
+environment of air that had produced the eagle, of water the seal, and
+of earth the mole. He could not say how this happened; but he divined
+that it did happen. Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles, carried
+the environment theory much further, pointing out instance after
+instance of modifications made in species apparently to adapt it to
+circumstances and environment: for instance, that the brilliant colors
+of the leopard, which make it so conspicuous in Regent's Park, conceal
+it in a tropical jungle. Finally he wrote, as his declaration of faith,
+'The world has been evolved, not created: it has arisen little by little
+from a small beginning, and has increased through the activity of the
+elemental forces embodied in itself, and so has rather grown than come
+into being at an almighty word. What a sublime idea of the infinite
+might of the great Architect, the Cause of all causes, the Father of all
+fathers, the Ens Entium! For if we would compare the Infinite, it would
+surely require a greater Infinite to cause the causes of effects than to
+produce the effects themselves.' In this, published in the year 1794,
+you have nineteenth-century Evolution precisely defined. And Erasmus
+Darwin was by no means its only apostle. It was in the air then. A
+German biologist named Treviranus, whose book was published in 1802,
+wrote, 'In every living being there exists a capacity for endless
+diversity of form. Each possesses the power of adapting its organization
+to the variations of the external world; and it is this power, called
+into activity by cosmic changes, which has enabled the simple zoophytes
+of the primitive world to climb to higher and higher stages of
+organization, and has brought endless variety into nature.' There you
+have your evolution of Man from the amoeba all complete whilst Nelson
+was still alive on the seas. And in 1809, before the battle of Waterloo,
+a French soldier named Lamarck, who had beaten his musket into a
+microscope and turned zoologist, declared that species were an illusion
+produced by the shortness of our individual lives, and that they were
+constantly changing and melting into one another and into new forms as
+surely as the hand of a clock is continually moving, though it moves so
+slowly that it looks stationary to us. We have since come to think that
+its industry is less continuous: that the clock stops for a long time,
+and then is suddenly 'put on' by a mysterious finger. But never mind
+that just at present.
+
+
+THE ADVENT OF THE NEO-LAMARCKIANS
+
+I call your special attention to Lamarck, because later on there were
+Neo-Lamarckians as well as Neo-Darwinians. I was a Neo-Lamarckian.
+Lamarck passed on from the conception of Evolution as a general law to
+Charles Darwin's department of it, which was the method of Evolution.
+Lamarck, whilst making many ingenious suggestions as to the reaction
+of external causes on life and habit, such as changes of climate,
+food supply, geological upheavals and so forth, really held as his
+fundamental proposition that living organisms changed because they
+wanted to. As he stated it, the great factor in Evolution is use and
+disuse. If you have no eyes, and want to see, and keep trying to see,
+you will finally get eyes. If, like a mole or a subterranean fish, you
+have eyes and dont want to see, you will lose your eyes. If you like
+eating the tender tops of trees enough to make you concentrate all your
+energies on the stretching of your neck, you will finally get a long
+neck, like the giraffe. This seems absurd to inconsiderate people at the
+first blush; but it is within the personal experience of all of us that
+it is just by this process that a child tumbling about the floor becomes
+a boy walking erect; and that a man sprawling on the road with a bruised
+chin, or supine on the ice with a bashed occiput, becomes a bicyclist
+and a skater. The process is not continuous, as it would be if mere
+practice had anything to do with it; for though you may improve at each
+bicycling lesson _during_ the lesson, when you begin your next lesson
+you do not begin at the point at which you left off: you relapse
+apparently to the beginning. Finally, you succeed quite suddenly, and do
+not relapse again. More miraculous still, you at once exercise the new
+power unconsciously. Although you are adapting your front wheel to your
+balance so elaborately and actively that the accidental locking of your
+handle bars for a second will throw you off; though five minutes before
+you could not do it at all, yet now you do it as unconsciously as you
+grow your finger nails. You have a new faculty, and must have created
+some new bodily tissue as its organ. And you have done it solely by
+willing. For here there can be no question of Circumstantial Selection,
+or the survival of the fittest. The man who is learning how to ride
+a bicycle has no advantage over the non-cyclist in the struggle for
+existence: quite the contrary. He has acquired a new habit, an automatic
+unconscious habit, solely because he wanted to, and kept trying until it
+was added unto him.
+
+
+HOW ACQUIREMENTS ARE INHERITED
+
+But when your son tries to skate or bicycle in his turn, he does not
+pick up the accomplishment where you left it, any more than he is born
+six feet high with a beard and a tall hat. The set-back that occurred
+between your lessons occurs again. The race learns exactly as the
+individual learns. Your son relapses, not to the very beginning, but to
+a point which no mortal method of measurement can distinguish from the
+beginning. Now this is odd; for certain other habits of yours, equally
+acquired (to the Evolutionist, of course, all habits are acquired),
+equally unconscious, equally automatic, are transmitted without any
+perceptible relapse. For instance, the very first act of your son
+when he enters the world as a separate individual is to yell with
+indignation: that yell which Shakespear thought the most tragic and
+piteous of all sounds. In the act of yelling he begins to breathe:
+another habit, and not even a necessary one, as the object of breathing
+can be achieved in other ways, as by deep sea fishes. He circulates his
+blood by pumping it with his heart. He demands a meal, and proceeds at
+once to perform the most elaborate chemical operations on the food he
+swallows. He manufactures teeth; discards them; and replaces them with
+fresh ones. Compared to these habitual feats, walking, standing upright,
+and bicycling are the merest trifles; yet it is only by going through
+the wanting, trying process that he can stand, walk, or cycle, whereas
+in the other and far more difficult and complex habits he not only does
+not consciously want nor consciously try, but actually consciously
+objects very strongly. Take that early habit of cutting the teeth: would
+he do that if he could help it? Take that later habit of decaying and
+eliminating himself by death--equally an acquired habit, remember--how
+he abhors it! Yet the habit has become so rooted, so automatic, that he
+must do it in spite of himself, even to his own destruction.
+
+We have here a routine which, given time enough for it to operate, will
+finally produce the most elaborate forms of organized life on Lamarckian
+lines without the intervention of Circumstantial Selection at all. If
+you can turn a pedestrian into a cyclist, and a cyclist into a pianist
+or violinist, without the intervention of Circumstantial Selection, you
+can turn an amoeba into a man, or a man into a superman, without it. All
+of which is rank heresy to the Neo-Darwinian, who imagines that if
+you stop Circumstantial Selection, you not only stop development but
+inaugurate a rapid and disastrous degeneration.
+
+Let us fix the Lamarckian evolutionary process well in our minds. You
+are alive; and you want to be more alive. You want an extension of
+consciousness and of power. You want, consequently, additional organs,
+or additional uses of your existing organs: that is, additional habits.
+You get them because you want them badly enough to keep trying for them
+until they come. Nobody knows how: nobody knows why: all we know is that
+the thing actually takes place. We relapse miserably from effort to
+effort until the old organ is modified or the new one created, when
+suddenly the impossible becomes possible and the habit is formed. The
+moment we form it we want to get rid of the consciousness of it so as
+to economize our consciousness for fresh conquests of life; as all
+consciousness means preoccupation and obstruction. If we had to think
+about breathing or digesting or circulating our blood we should have
+no attention to spare for anything else, as we find to our cost when
+anything goes wrong with these operations. We want to be unconscious of
+them just as we wanted to acquire them; and we finally win what we want.
+But we win unconsciousness of our habits at the cost of losing our
+control of them; and we also build one habit and its corresponding
+functional modification of our organs on another, and so become
+dependent on our old habits. Consequently we have to persist in them
+even when they hurt us. We cannot stop breathing to avoid an attack of
+asthma, or to escape drowning. We can lose a habit and discard an organ
+when we no longer need them, just as we acquired them; but this process
+is slow and broken by relapses; and relics of the organ and the habit
+long survive its utility. And if other and still indispensable habits
+and modifications have been built on the ones we wish to discard, we
+must provide a new foundation for them before we demolish the old one.
+This is also a slow process and a very curious one.
+
+
+THE MIRACLE OF CONDENSED RECAPITULATION
+
+The relapses between the efforts to acquire a habit are important
+because, as we have seen, they recur not only from effort to effort in
+the case of the individual, but from generation to generation in the
+case of the race. This relapsing from generation to generation is an
+invariable characteristic of the evolutionary process. For instance,
+Raphael, though descended from eight uninterrupted generations of
+painters, had to learn to paint apparently as if no Sanzio had ever
+handled a brush before. But he had also to learn to breathe, and digest,
+and circulate his blood. Although his father and mother were fully grown
+adults when he was conceived, he was not conceived or even born fully
+grown: he had to go back and begin as a speck of protoplasm, and to
+struggle through an embryonic lifetime, during part of which he was
+indistinguishable from an embryonic dog, and had neither a skull nor a
+backbone. When he at last acquired these articles, he was for some time
+doubtful whether he was a bird or a fish. He had to compress untold
+centuries of development into nine months before he was human enough
+to break loose as an independent being. And even then he was still so
+incomplete that his parents might well have exclaimed 'Good Heavens!
+have you learnt nothing from our experience that you come into the world
+in this ridiculously elementary state? Why cant you talk and walk and
+paint and behave decently?' To that question Baby Raphael had no answer.
+All he could have said was that this is how evolution or transformation
+happens. The time may come when the same force that compressed the
+development of millions of years into nine months may pack many more
+millions into even a shorter space; so that Raphaels may be born
+painters as they are now born breathers and blood circulators. But they
+will still begin as specks of protoplasm, and acquire the faculty of
+painting in their mother's womb at quite a late stage of their embryonic
+life. They must recapitulate the history of mankind in their own
+persons, however briefly they may condense it.
+
+Nothing was so astonishing and significant in the discoveries of the
+embryologists, nor anything so absurdly little appreciated, as this
+recapitulation, as it is now called: this power of hurrying up into
+months a process which was once so long and tedious that the mere
+contemplation of it is unendurable by men whose span of life is
+three-score-and-ten. It widened human possibilities to the extent of
+enabling us to hope that the most prolonged and difficult operation of
+our minds may yet become instantaneous, or, as we call it, instinctive.
+It also directed our attention to examples of this packing up of
+centuries into seconds which were staring us in the face in all
+directions. As I write these lines the newspapers are occupied by the
+exploits of a child of eight, who has just defeated twenty adult chess
+players in twenty games played simultaneously, and has been able
+afterwards to reconstruct all the twenty games without any apparent
+effort of memory. Most people, including myself, play chess (when they
+play it at all) from hand to mouth, and can hardly recall the last move
+but one, or foresee the next but two. Also, when I have to make an
+arithmetical calculation, I have to do it step by step with pencil and
+paper, slowly, reluctantly, and with so little confidence in the result
+that I dare not act on it without 'proving' the sum by a further
+calculation involving more ciphering. But there are men who can neither
+read, write, nor cipher, to whom the answer to such sums as I can do
+is instantly obvious without any conscious calculation at all; and the
+result is infallible. Yet some of these natural arithmeticians have but
+a small vocabulary; are at a loss when they have to find words for any
+but the simplest everyday occasions; and cannot for the life of them
+describe mechanical operations which they perform daily in the course of
+their trade; whereas to me the whole vocabulary of English literature,
+from Shakespear to the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica,
+is so completely and instantaneously at my call that I have never had
+to consult even a thesaurus except once or twice when for some reason I
+wanted a third or fourth synonym. Again, though I have tried and failed
+to draw recognizable portraits of persons I have seen every day for
+years, Mr Bernard Partridge, having seen a man once, will, without more
+strain than is involved in eating a sandwich, draw him to the life. The
+keyboard of a piano is a device I have never been able to master; yet Mr
+Cyril Scott uses it exactly as I use my own fingers; and to Sir Edward
+Elgar an orchestral score is as instantaneously intelligible at sight as
+a page of Shakespear is to me. One man cannot, after trying for years,
+finger the flute fluently. Another will take up a flute with a newly
+invented arrangement of keys on it, and play it at once with hardly a
+mistake. We find people to whom writing is so difficult that they prefer
+to sign their name with a mark, and beside them men who master systems
+of shorthand and improvise new systems of their own as easily as they
+learnt the alphabet. These contrasts are to be seen on all hands, and
+have nothing to do with variations in general intelligence, nor even
+in the specialized intelligence proper to the faculty in question: for
+example, no composer or dramatic poet has ever pretended to be able to
+perform all the parts he writes for the singers, actors, and players who
+are his executants. One might as well expect Napoleon to be a fencer, or
+the Astronomer Royal to know how many beans make five any better than
+his bookkeeper. Even exceptional command of language does not imply the
+possession of ideas to express; Mezzofanti, the master of fifty-eight
+languages, had less to say in them than Shakespear with his little Latin
+and less Greek; and public life is the paradise of voluble windbags.
+
+All these examples, which might be multiplied by millions, are cases in
+which a long, laborious, conscious, detailed process of acquirement has
+been condensed into an instinctive and unconscious inborn one. Factors
+which formerly had to be considered one by one in succession are
+integrated into what seems a single simple factor. Chains of hardly
+soluble problems have coalesced in one problem which solves itself
+the moment it is raised. What is more, they have been pushed back (or
+forward, if you like) from post-natal to pre-natal ones. The child
+in the womb may take some time over them; but it is a miraculously
+shortened time.
+
+The time phenomena involved are curious, and suggest that we are either
+wrong about our history or else that we enormously exaggerate the
+periods required for the pre-natal acquirement of habits. In the
+nineteenth century we talked very glibly about geological periods, and
+flung millions of eons about in the most lordly manner in our reaction
+against Archbishop Ussher's chronology. We had a craze for big figures,
+and positively liked to believe that the progress made by the child in
+the womb in a month was represented in prehistoric time by ages and
+ages. We insisted that Evolution advanced more slowly than any snail
+ever crawled, and that Nature does not proceed by leaps and bounds. This
+was all very well as long as we were dealing with such acquired habits
+as breathing or digestion. It was possible to believe that dozens of
+epochs had gone to the slow building up of these habits. But when we
+have to consider the case of a man born not only as an accomplished
+metabolist, but with such an aptitude for shorthand and keyboard
+manipulation that he is a stenographer or pianist at least five sixths
+ready-made as soon as he can control his hands intelligently, we
+are forced to suspect either that keyboards and shorthand are older
+inventions than we suppose, or else that acquirements can be assimilated
+and stored as congenital qualifications in a shorter time than we think;
+so that, as between Lyell and Archbishop Ussher, the laugh may not be
+with Lyell quite so uproariously as it seemed fifty years ago.
+
+
+HEREDITY AN OLD STORY
+
+It is evident that the evolutionary process is a hereditary one, or,
+to put it less drily, that human life is continuous and immortal. The
+Evolutionists took heredity for granted. So did everybody. The human
+mind has been soaked in heredity as long back as we can trace its
+thought. Hereditary peers, hereditary monarchs, hereditary castes and
+trades and classes were the best known of social institutions, and in
+some cases of public nuisances. Pedigree men counted pedigree dogs and
+pedigree horses among their most cherished possessions. Far from being
+unconscious of heredity, or sceptical, men were insanely credulous about
+it: they not only believed in the transmission of qualities and habits
+from generation to generation, but expected the son to begin mentally
+where the father left off.
+
+This belief in heredity led naturally to the practice of Intentional
+Selection. Good blood and breeding were eagerly sought after in human
+marriage. In dealing with plants and animals, selection with a view to
+the production of new varieties and the improvement and modification of
+species had been practised ever since men began to cultivate them. My
+pre-Darwinian uncle knew as well as Darwin that the race-horse and the
+dray-horse are not separate creations from the Garden of Eden, but
+adaptations by deliberate human selection of the medieval war-horse to
+modern racing and industrial haulage. He knew that there are nearly
+two hundred different sorts of dogs, all capable of breeding with one
+another and of producing cross varieties unknown to Adam. He knew that
+the same thing is true of pigeons. He knew that gardeners had spent
+their lives trying to breed black tulips and green carnations and
+unheard-of orchids, and had actually produced flowers just as strange
+to Eve. His quarrel with the Evolutionists was not a quarrel with the
+evidence for Evolution: he had accepted enough of it to prove Evolution
+ten times over before he ever heard of it. What he repudiated was
+cousinship with the ape, and the implied suspicion of a rudimentary
+tail, because it was offensive to his sense of his own dignity, and
+because he thought that apes were ridiculous, and tails diabolical when
+associated with the erect posture. Also he believed that Evolution was
+a heresy which involved the destruction of Christianity, of which, as
+a member of the Irish Church (the pseudo-Protestant one), he conceived
+himself a pillar. But this was only his ignorance; for man may deny his
+descent from an ape and be eligible as a churchwarden without being any
+the less a convinced Evolutionist.
+
+
+DISCOVERY ANTICIPATED BY DIVINATION
+
+What is more, the religious folk can claim to be among the pioneers of
+Evolutionism. Weismann, Neo-Darwinist though he was, devoted a long
+passage in his History of Evolution to the Nature Philosophy of Lorenz
+Oken, published in 1809. Oken defined natural science as 'the science
+of the everlasting transmutations of the Holy Ghost in the world.' His
+religion had started him on the right track, and not only led him to
+think out a whole scheme of Evolution in abstract terms, but guided his
+aim in a significantly good scientific shot which brought him within the
+scope of Weismann. He not only defined the original substance from which
+all forms of life have developed as protoplasm, or, as he called it,
+primitive slime (_Urschleim_), but actually declared that this slime
+took the form of vesicles out of which the universe was built. Here was
+the modern cell morphology guessed by a religious thinker long before
+the microscope and the scalpel forced it on the vision of mere
+laboratory workers who could not think and had no religion. They worked
+hard to discover the vital secrets of the glands by opening up dogs
+and cutting out the glands, or tying up their ducts, or severing their
+nerves, thereby learning, negatively, that the governors of our vital
+forces do not hold their incessant conversations through the nerves,
+and, positively, how miserably a horribly injured dog can die, leaving
+us to infer that we shall probably perish likewise if we grudge our
+guineas to Harley Street. Lorenz Oken _thought_ very hard to find out
+what was happening to the Holy Ghost, and thereby made a contribution of
+extraordinary importance to our understanding of uninjured creatures.
+The man who was scientific enough to see that the Holy Ghost is a
+scientific fact got easily in front of the blockheads who could only
+sin against it. Hence my uncle was turning his back on very respectable
+company when he derided Evolution, and would probably have recanted and
+apologized at once had anybody pointed out to him what a solecism he was
+committing.
+
+The metaphysical side of Evolution was thus no novelty when Darwin
+arrived. Had Oken never lived, there would still have been millions of
+persons trained from their childhood to believe that we are continually
+urged upwards by a force called the Will of God. In 1819 Schopenhauer
+published his treatise on The World as Will, which is the metaphysical
+complement to Lamarck's natural history, as it demonstrates that the
+driving force behind Evolution is a will-to-live, and to live, as Christ
+said long before, more abundantly. And the earlier philosophers, from
+Plato to Leibniz, had kept the human mind open for the thought of
+the universe as one idea behind all its physically apprehensible
+transformations.
+
+
+CORRECTED DATES FOR THE DISCOVERY OF EVOLUTION
+
+All this, remember, is the state of things in the pre-Darwin period,
+which so many of us still think of as a pre-evolutionary period.
+Evolutionism was the rage before Queen Victoria came to the throne. To
+fix this chronology, let me repeat the story told by Weismann of the
+July revolution in Paris in 1830, when the French got rid of Charles the
+Tenth. Goethe was then still living; and a French friend of his called
+on him and found him wildly excited. 'What do you think of the great
+event?' said Goethe. 'The volcano is in eruption; and all is in flames.
+There can no longer be discussion with closed doors.' The Frenchman
+replied that no doubt it was a terrible business; but what could they
+expect with such a ministry and such a king? 'Stuff!' said Goethe: 'I
+am not thinking of these people at all, but of the open rupture in
+the French Academy between Cuvier and St Hilaire. It is of the utmost
+importance to science,' The rupture Goethe meant was about Evolution,
+Cuvier contending that there were four species, and St Hilaire that
+there was only one.
+
+From 1830, when Darwin was an apparently unpromising lad of twenty-one,
+until 1859, when he turned the world upside down by his Origin of
+Species, there was a slump in Evolutionism. The first generation of its
+enthusiasts was ageing and dying out; and their successors were being
+taught from the Book of Genesis, just as Edward VI was (and Edward VII
+too, for that matter). Nobody who knew the theory was adding anything to
+it. This slump not only heightened the impression of entire novelty when
+Darwin brought the subject to the front again: it probably prevented
+him from realizing how much had been done before, even by his own
+grandfather, to whom he was accused of being unjust. Besides, he was
+not really carrying on the family business. He was an entirely original
+worker; and he was on a new tack, as we shall see presently. And he
+would not in any case have thought much, as a practical naturalist, of
+the more or less mystical intellectual speculations of the Deists of
+1790-1830. Scientific workers were very tired of Deism just then. They
+had given up the riddle of the Great First Cause as insoluble, and were
+calling themselves, accordingly, Agnostics. They had turned from the
+inscrutable question of Why things existed, to the spade work of
+discovering What was really occurring in the world and How it really
+occurred.
+
+With all his attention bent in this new direction, Darwin soon noticed
+that a good deal was occurring in an entirely unmystical and even
+unmeaning way of which the older speculative Deist-Evolutionists had
+taken little or no account. Nowadays, when we are turning in weary
+disgust and disillusion from Neo-Darwinism and Mechanism to Vitalism and
+Creative Evolution, it is difficult to imagine how this new departure of
+Darwin's could possibly have appealed to his contemporaries as exciting,
+agreeable, above all as hopeful. Let me therefore try to bring back
+something of the atmosphere of that time by describing a scene, very
+characteristic of its superstitions, in which I took what was then
+considered an unspeakably shocking part.
+
+
+DEFYING THE LIGHTNING: A FRUSTRATED EXPERIMENT
+
+One evening in 1878 or thereabouts, I, being then in my earliest
+twenties, was at a bachelor party of young men of the professional class
+in the house of a doctor in the Kensingtonian quarter of London. They
+fell to talking about religious revivals; and an anecdote was related of
+a man who, having incautiously scoffed at the mission of Messrs Moody
+and Sankey, a then famous firm of American evangelists, was subsequently
+carried home on a shutter, slain by divine vengeance as a blasphemer.
+A timid minority, without quite venturing to question the truth of the
+incident--for they naturally did not care to run the risk of going home
+on shutters themselves--nevertheless shewed a certain disposition to
+cavil at those who exulted in it; and something approaching to an
+argument began. At last it was alleged by the most evangelical of the
+disputants that Charles Bradlaugh, the most formidable atheist on the
+Secularist platform, had taken out his watch publicly and challenged the
+Almighty to strike him dead in five minutes if he really existed and
+disapproved of atheism. The leader of the cavillers, with great heat,
+repudiated this as a gross calumny, declaring that Bradlaugh had
+repeatedly and indignantly contradicted it, and implying that the
+atheist champion was far too pious a man to commit such a blasphemy.
+This exquisite confusion of ideas roused my sense of comedy. It was
+clear to me that the challenge attributed to Charles Bradlaugh was a
+scientific experiment of a quite simple, straightforward, and proper
+kind to ascertain whether the expression of atheistic opinions really
+did involve any personal risk. It was certainly the method taught in the
+Bible, Elijah having confuted the prophets of Baal in precisely that
+way, with every circumstance of bitter mockery of their god when he
+failed to send down fire from heaven. Accordingly I said that if the
+question at issue were whether the penalty of questioning the theology
+of Messrs Moody and Sankey was to be struck dead on the spot by an
+incensed deity, nothing could effect a more convincing settlement of it
+than the very obvious experiment attributed to Mr Bradlaugh, and that
+consequently if he had not tried it, he ought to have tried it. The
+omission, I added, was one which could easily be remedied there and
+then, as I happened to share Mr Bradlaugh's views as to the absurdity of
+the belief in these violent interferences with the order of nature by a
+short-tempered and thin-skinned supernatural deity. Therefore--and at
+that point I took out my watch.
+
+The effect was electrical. Neither sceptics nor devotees were prepared
+to abide the result of the experiment. In vain did I urge the pious to
+trust in the accuracy of their deity's aim with a thunderbolt, and the
+justice of his discrimination between the innocent and the guilty. In
+vain did I appeal to the sceptics to accept the logical outcome of their
+scepticism: it soon appeared that when thunderbolts were in question
+there were no sceptics. Our host, seeing that his guests would vanish
+precipitately if the impious challenge were uttered, leaving him alone
+with a solitary infidel under sentence of extermination in five minutes,
+interposed and forbade the experiment, pleading at the same time for
+a change of subject. I of course complied, but could not refrain from
+remarking that though the dreadful words had not been uttered, yet, as
+the thought had been formulated in my mind, it was very doubtful whether
+the consequences could be averted by sealing my lips. However, the rest
+appeared to feel that the game would be played according to the rules,
+and that it mattered very little what I thought so long as I said
+nothing. Only the leader of the evangelical party, I thought, was a
+little preoccupied until five minutes had elapsed and the weather was
+still calm.
+
+
+IN QUEST OF THE FIRST CAUSE
+
+Another reminiscence. In those days we thought in terms of time and
+space, of cause and effect, as we still do; but we do not now demand
+from a religion that it shall explain the universe completely in terms
+of cause and effect, and present the world to us as a manufactured
+article and as the private property of its Manufacturer. We did then. We
+were invited to pity the delusion of certain heathens who held that
+the world is supported by an elephant who is supported by a tortoise.
+Mahomet decided that the mountains are great weights to keep the world
+from being blown away into space. But we refuted these orientals by
+asking triumphantly what the tortoise stands on? Freethinkers asked
+which came first: the owl or the egg. Nobody thought of saying that
+the ultimate problem of existence, being clearly insoluble and even
+unthinkable on causation lines, could not be a causation problem. To
+pious people this would have been flat atheism, because they assumed
+that God must be a Cause, and sometimes called him The Great First
+Cause, or, in still choicer language, The Primal Cause. To the
+Rationalists it would have been a renunciation of reason. Here and there
+a man would confess that he stood as with a dim lantern in a dense fog,
+and could see but a little way in any direction into infinity. But he
+did not really believe that infinity was infinite or that the eternal
+was also sempiternal: he assumed that all things, known and unknown,
+were caused.
+
+Hence it was that I found myself one day towards the end of the
+eighteen-seventies in a cell in the old Brompton Oratory arguing with
+Father Addis, who had been called by one of his flock to attempt my
+conversion to Roman Catholicism. The universe exists, said the father:
+somebody must have made it. If that somebody exists, said I, somebody
+must have made him. I grant that for the sake of argument, said the
+Oratorian. I grant you a maker of God. I grant you a maker of the maker
+of God. I grant you as long a line of makers as you please; but an
+infinity of makers is unthinkable and extravagant: it is no harder to
+believe in number one than in number fifty thousand or fifty million; so
+why not accept number one and stop there, since no attempt to get behind
+him will remove your logical difficulty? By your leave, said I, it is as
+easy for me to believe that the universe made itself as that a maker of
+the universe made himself: in fact much easier; for the universe visibly
+exists and makes itself as it goes along, whereas a maker for it is a
+hypothesis. Of course we could get no further on these lines. He rose
+and said that we were like two men working a saw, he pushing it forward
+and I pushing it back, and cutting nothing; but when we had dropped the
+subject and were walking through the refectory, he returned to it for a
+moment to say that he should go mad if he lost his belief. I, glorying
+in the robust callousness of youth and the comedic spirit, felt quite
+comfortable and said so; though I was touched, too, by his evident
+sincerity.
+
+These two anecdotes are superficially trivial and even comic; but there
+is an abyss of horror beneath them. They reveal a condition so utterly
+irreligious that religion means nothing but belief in a nursery bogey,
+and its inadequacy is demonstrated by a toy logical dilemma, neither
+the bogey nor the dilemma having anything to do with religion, or being
+serious enough to impose on or confuse any properly educated child
+over the age of six. One hardly knows which is the more appalling: the
+abjectness of the credulity or the flippancy of the scepticism. The
+result was inevitable. All who were strong-minded enough not to be
+terrified by the bogey were left stranded in empty contemptuous
+negation, and argued, when they argued at all, as I argued with Father
+Addis. But their position was not intellectually comfortable. A member
+of parliament expressed their discomfort when, objecting to the
+admission of Charles Bradlaugh into parliament, he said 'Hang it all, a
+man should believe in something or somebody.' It was easy to throw the
+bogey into the dustbin; but none the less the world, our corner of the
+universe, did not look like a pure accident: it presented evidences of
+design in every direction. There was mind and purpose behind it. As the
+anti-Bradlaugh member would have put it, there must be somebody behind
+the something: no atheist could get over that.
+
+
+PALEY'S WATCH
+
+Paley had put the argument in an apparently unanswerable form. If you
+found a watch, full of mechanism exquisitely adapted to produce a series
+of operations all leading to the fulfilment of one central purpose of
+measuring for mankind the march of the day and night, could you believe
+that it was not the work of a cunning artificer who had designed and
+contrived it all to that end? And here was a far more wonderful thing
+than a watch, a man with all his organs ingeniously contrived, cords and
+levers, girders and kingposts, circulating systems of pipes and valves,
+dialysing membranes, chemical retorts, carburettors, ventilators, inlets
+and outlets, telephone transmitters in his ears, light recorders and
+lenses in his eye: was it conceivable that this was the work of chance?
+that no artificer had wrought here? that there was no purpose in this,
+no design, no guiding intelligence? The thing was incredible. In vain
+did Helmholtz declare that 'the eye has every possible defect that can
+be found in an optical instrument, and even some peculiar to itself,'
+and that 'if an optician tried to sell me an instrument which had all
+these defects I should think myself quite justified in blaming
+his carelessness in the strongest terms, and sending him back his
+instrument.' To discredit the optician's skill was not to get rid of the
+optician. The eye might not be so cleverly made as Paley thought, but it
+was made somehow, by somebody.
+
+And then my argument with Father Addis began all over again. It was
+easy enough to say that every man makes his own eyes: indeed the
+embryologists had actually caught him doing it. But what about the very
+evident purpose that prompted him to do it? Why did he want to see, if
+not to extend his consciousness and his knowledge and his power? That
+purpose was at work everywhere, and must be something bigger than the
+individual eye-making man. Only the stupidest muckrakers could fail to
+see this, and even to know it as part of their own consciousness. Yet to
+admit it seemed to involve letting the bogey come back, so inextricably
+had we managed to mix up belief in the bogey's existence with belief in
+the existence of design in the universe.
+
+
+THE IRRESISTIBLE CRY OF ORDER, ORDER!
+
+Our scornful young scientific and philosophic lions of today must not
+blame the Church of England for this confusion of thought. In 1562 the
+Church, in convocation in London 'for the avoiding of diversities of
+opinions and for the establishment of consent touching true religion,'
+proclaimed in their first utterance, and as an Article of Religion,
+that God is 'without body, parts, or passions,' or, as we say, an _Elan
+Vital_ or Life Force. Unfortunately neither parents, parsons, nor
+pedagogues could be induced to adopt that article. St John might say
+that 'God is spirit' as pointedly as he pleased; our Sovereign Lady
+Elizabeth might ratify the Article again and again; serious divines
+might feel as deeply as they could that a God with body, parts, and
+passions could be nothing but an anthropomorphic idol: no matter: people
+at large could not conceive a God who was not anthropomorphic: they
+stood by the Old Testament legends of a God whose parts had been seen by
+one of the patriarchs, and finally set up as against the Church a God
+who, far from being without body, parts, or passions, was composed of
+nothing else, and of very evil passions too. They imposed this idol
+in practice on the Church itself, in spite of the First Article, and
+thereby homeopathically produced the atheist, whose denial of God was
+simply a denial of the idol and a demonstration against an unbearable
+and most unchristian idolatry. The idol was, as Shelley had been
+expelled from Oxford for pointing out, an almighty fiend, with a petty
+character and unlimited power, spiteful, cruel, jealous, vindictive,
+and physically violent. The most villainous schoolmasters, the most
+tyrannical parents, fell far short in their attempts to imitate it.
+But it was not its social vices that brought it low. What made it
+scientifically intolerable was that it was ready at a moment's notice to
+upset the whole order of the universe on the most trumpery provocation,
+whether by stopping the sun in the valley of Ajalon or sending an
+atheist home dead on a shutter (the shutter was indispensable because
+it marked the utter unpreparedness of the atheist, who, unable to save
+himself by a deathbed repentance, was subsequently roasted through all
+eternity in blazing brimstone). It was this disorderliness, this refusal
+to obey its own laws of nature, that created a scientific need for its
+destruction. Science could stand a cruel and unjust god; for nature was
+full of suffering and injustice. But a disorderly god was impossible. In
+the Middle Ages a compromise had been made by which two different orders
+of truth, religious and scientific, had been recognized, in order that a
+schoolman might say that two and two make four without being burnt for
+heresy. But the nineteenth century, steeped in a meddling, presumptuous,
+reading-and-writing, socially and politically powerful ignorance
+inconceivable by Thomas Aquinas or even Roger Bacon, was incapable of
+so convenient an arrangement; and science was strangled by bigoted
+ignoramuses claiming infallibility for their interpretation of the
+Bible, which was regarded, not as a literature nor even as a book, but
+partly as an oracle which answered and settled all questions, and partly
+as a talisman to be carried by soldiers in their breast pockets or
+placed under the pillows of persons who were afraid of ghosts. The tract
+shops exhibited in their windows bullet-dinted testaments, mothers'
+gifts to their soldier sons whose lives had been saved by it; for the
+muzzle-loaders of those days could not drive a projectile through so
+many pages.
+
+
+THE MOMENT AND THE MAN
+
+This superstition of a continual capricious disorder in nature, of a
+lawgiver who was also a lawbreaker, made atheists in all directions
+among clever and lightminded people. But atheism did not account for
+Paley's watch. Atheism accounted for nothing; and it was the business of
+science to account for everything that was plainly accountable. Science
+had no use for mere negation: what was desired by it above all things
+just then was a demonstration that the evidences of design could be
+explained without resort to the hypothesis of a personal designer. If
+only some genius, whilst admitting Paley's facts, could knock the brains
+out of Paley by the discovery of a method whereby watches could happen
+without watchmakers, that genius was assured of such a welcome from the
+thought of his day as no natural philosopher had ever enjoyed before.
+
+The time being thus ripe, the genius appeared; and his name was Charles
+Darwin. And now, what did Darwin really discover?
+
+Here, I am afraid, I shall require once more the assistance of the
+giraffe, or, as he was called in the days of the celebrated Buffoon,
+the camelopard (by children, cammyleopard). I do not remember how this
+animal imposed himself illustratively on the Evolution controversy; but
+there was no getting away from him then; and I am old-fashioned enough
+to be unable to get away from him now. How did he come by his long neck?
+Lamarck would have said, by wanting to get at the tender leaves high
+up on the tree, and trying until he succeeded in wishing the necessary
+length of neck into existence. Another answer was also possible: namely,
+that some prehistoric stockbreeder, wishing to produce a natural
+curiosity, selected the longest-necked animals he could find, and bred
+from them until at last an animal with an abnormally long neck was
+evolved by intentional selection, just as the race-horse or the fantail
+pigeon has been evolved. Both these explanations, you will observe,
+involve consciousness, will, design, purpose, either on the part of the
+animal itself or on the part of a superior intelligence controlling its
+destiny. Darwin pointed out--and this and no more was Darwin's famous
+discovery--that a third explanation, involving neither will nor purpose
+nor design either in the animal or anyone else, was on the cards. If
+your neck is too short to reach your food, you die. That may be the
+simple explanation of the fact that all the surviving animals that feed
+on foliage have necks or trunks long enough to reach it. So bang goes
+your belief that the necks must have been designed to reach the food.
+But Lamarck did not believe that the necks were so designed in the
+beginning: he believed that the long necks were evolved by wanting
+and trying. Not necessarily, said Darwin. Consider the effect on the
+giraffes of the natural multiplication of their numbers, as insisted on
+by Malthus. Suppose the average height of the foliage-eating animals is
+four feet, and that they increase in numbers until a time comes when all
+the trees are eaten away to within four feet of the ground. Then the
+animals who happen to be an inch or two short of the average will die
+of starvation. All the animals who happen to be an inch or so above
+the average will be better fed and stronger than the others. They will
+secure the strongest and tallest mates; and their progeny will survive
+whilst the average ones and the sub-average ones will die out. This
+process, by which the species gains, say, an inch in reach, will repeat
+itself until the giraffe's neck is so long that he can always find
+food enough within his reach, at which point, of course, the selective
+process stops and the length of the giraffe's neck stops with it.
+Otherwise, he would grow until he could browse off the trees in the
+moon. And this, mark you, without the intervention of any stockbreeder,
+human or divine, and without will, purpose, design, or even
+consciousness beyond the blind will to satisfy hunger. It is true that
+this blind will, being in effect a will to live, gives away the whole
+case; but still, as compared to the open-eyed intelligent wanting and
+trying of Lamarck, the Darwinian process may be described as a chapter
+of accidents. As such, it seems simple, because you do not at first
+realize all that it involves. But when its whole significance dawns on
+you, your heart sinks into a heap of sand within you. There is a hideous
+fatalism about it, a ghastly and damnable reduction of beauty and
+intelligence, of strength and purpose, of honor and aspiration, to such
+casually picturesque changes as an avalanche may make in a mountain
+landscape, or a railway accident in a human figure. To call this Natural
+Selection is a blasphemy, possible to many for whom Nature is nothing
+but a casual aggregation of inert and dead matter, but eternally
+impossible to the spirits and souls of the righteous. If it be no
+blasphemy, but a truth of science, then the stars of heaven, the showers
+and dew, the winter and summer, the fire and heat, the mountains and
+hills, may no longer be called to exalt the Lord with us by praise;
+their work is to modify all things by blindly starving and murdering
+everything that is not lucky enough to survive in the universal struggle
+for hogwash.
+
+
+THE BRINK OF THE BOTTOMLESS PIT
+
+Thus did the neck of the giraffe reach out across the whole heavens and
+make men believe that what they saw there was a gloaming of the gods.
+For if this sort of selection could turn an antelope into a giraffe, it
+could conceivably turn a pond full of amoebas into the French
+Academy. Though Lamarck's way, the way of life, will, aspiration, and
+achievement, remained still possible, this newly shewn way of hunger,
+death, stupidity, delusion, chance, and bare survival was also possible:
+was indeed most certainly the way in which many apparently intelligently
+designed transformations had actually come to pass. Had I not preluded
+with the apparently idle story of my revival of the controversial
+methods of Elijah, I should be asked how it was that the explorer who
+opened up this gulf of despair, far from being stoned or crucified as
+the destroyer of the honor of the race and the purpose of the world, was
+hailed as Deliverer, Savior, Prophet, Redeemer, Enlightener, Rescuer,
+Hope Giver, and Epoch Maker; whilst poor Lamarck was swept aside as a
+crude and exploded guesser hardly worthy to be named as his erroneous
+forerunner. In the light of my anecdote, the explanation is obvious. The
+first thing the gulf did was to swallow up Paley, and the Disorderly
+Designer, and Shelley's Almighty Fiend, and all the rest of the
+pseudo-religious rubbish that had blocked every upward and onward path
+since the hopes of men had turned to Science as their true Savior. It
+seemed such a convenient grave that nobody at first noticed that it was
+nothing less than the bottomless pit, now become a very real terror. For
+though Darwin left a path round it for his soul, his followers presently
+dug it right across the whole width of the way. Yet for the moment,
+there was nothing but wild rejoicing: a sort of scientific mafficking.
+We had been so oppressed by the notion that everything that happened in
+the world was the arbitrary personal act of an arbitrary personal god
+of dangerously jealous and cruel personal character, so that even the
+relief of the pains of childbirth and the operating table by chloroform
+was objected to as an interference with his arrangements which he would
+probably resent, that we just jumped at Darwin. When Napoleon was asked
+what would happen when he died, he said that Europe would express its
+intense relief with a great 'Ouf!': Well, when Darwin killed the god who
+objected to chloroform, everybody who had ever thought about it said
+'Ouf!' Paley was buried fathoms deep with his watch, now fully accounted
+for without any divine artificer at all. We were so glad to be rid of
+both that we never gave a thought to the consequences. When a prisoner
+sees the door of his dungeon open, he dashes for it without stopping to
+think where he shall get his dinner outside. The moment we found that we
+could do without Shelley's almighty fiend intellectually, he went into
+the gulf that seemed only a dustbin with a suddenness that made our own
+lives one of the most astonishing periods in history. If I had told that
+uncle of mine that within thirty years from the date of our conversation
+I should be exposing myself to suspicions of the grossest superstition
+by questioning the sufficiency of Darwin; maintaining the reality of the
+Holy Ghost; declaring that the phenomenon of the Word becoming Flesh
+was occurring daily, he would have regarded me as the most extravagant
+madman our family had ever produced. Yet it was so. In 1906 I might
+have vituperated Jehovah more heartily than ever Shelley did without
+eliciting a protest in any circle of thinkers, or shocking any public
+audience accustomed to modern discussion; but when I described Darwin
+as 'an intelligent and industrious pigeon fancier,' that blasphemous
+levity, as it seemed, was received with horror and indignation. The tide
+has now turned; and every puny whipster may say what he likes about
+Darwin; but anyone who wants to know what it was to be a Lamarckian
+during the last quarter of the nineteenth century has only to read Mr
+Festing Jones's memoir of Samuel Butler to learn how completely even a
+man of genius could isolate himself by antagonizing Darwin on the one
+hand and the Church on the other.
+
+
+WHY DARWIN CONVERTED THE CROWD
+
+I am well aware that in describing the effect of Darwin's discovery on
+naturalists and on persons capable of serious reflection on the nature
+and attributes of God, I am leaving the vast mass of the British public
+out of account. I have pointed out elsewhere that the British nation
+does not consist of atheists and Plymouth Brothers; and I am not now
+going to pretend that it ever consisted of Darwinians and Lamarckians.
+The average citizen is irreligious and unscientific: you talk to him
+about cricket and golf, market prices and party politics, not about
+evolution and relativity, transubstantiation and predestination. Nothing
+will knock into his head the fateful distinction between Evolution as
+promulgated by Erasmus Darwin, and Circumstantial (so-called Natural)
+Selection as revealed by his grandson. Yet the doctrine of Charles
+reached him, though the doctrine of Erasmus had passed over his head.
+Why did not Erasmus Darwin popularize the word Evolution as effectively
+as Charles?
+
+The reason was, I think, that Circumstantial Selection is easier to
+understand, more visible and concrete, than Lamarckian evolution.
+Evolution as a philosophy and physiology of the will is a mystical
+process, which can be apprehended only by a trained, apt, and
+comprehensive thinker. Though the phenomena of use and disuse, of
+wanting and trying, of the manufacture of weight lifters and wrestlers
+from men of ordinary strength, are familiar enough as facts, they are
+extremely puzzling as subjects of thought, and lead you into metaphysics
+the moment you try to account for them. But pigeon fanciers, dog
+fanciers, gardeners, stock breeders, or stud grooms, can understand
+Circumstantial Selection, because it is their business to produce
+transformation by imposing on flowers and animals a Selection From
+Without. All that Darwin had to say to them was that the mere chapter of
+accidents is always doing on a huge scale what they themselves are doing
+on a very small scale. There is hardly a laborer attached to an English
+country house who has not taken a litter of kittens or puppies to the
+bucket, and drowned all of them except the one he thinks the most
+promising. Such a man has nothing to learn about the survival of the
+fittest except that it acts in more ways than he has yet noticed; for he
+knows quite well, as you will find if you are not too proud to talk to
+him, that this sort of selection occurs naturally (in Darwin's sense)
+too: that, for instance, a hard winter will kill off a weakly child as
+the bucket kills off a weakly puppy. Then there is the farm laborer.
+Shakespear's Touchstone, a court-bred fool, was shocked to find in the
+shepherd a natural philosopher, and opined that he would be damned for
+the part he took in the sexual selection of sheep. As to the production
+of new species by the selection of variations, that is no news to your
+gardener. Now if you are familiar with these three processes: the
+survival of the fittest, sexual selection, and variation leading to new
+kinds, there is nothing to puzzle you in Darwinism.
+
+That was the secret of Darwin's popularity. He never puzzled anybody. If
+very few of us have read The Origin of Species from end to end, it is
+not because it overtaxes our mind, but because we take in the whole case
+and are prepared to accept it long before we have come to the end of
+the innumerable instances and illustrations of which the book mainly
+consists. Darwin becomes tedious in the manner of a man who insists
+on continuing to prove his innocence after he has been acquitted. You
+assure him that there is not a stain on his character, and beg him to
+leave the court; but he will not be content with enough evidence: he
+will have you listen to all the evidence that exists in the world.
+Darwin's industry was enormous. His patience, his perseverance, his
+conscientiousness reached the human limit. But he never got deeper
+beneath or higher above his facts than an ordinary man could follow
+him. He was not conscious of having raised a stupendous issue, because,
+though it arose instantly, it was not his business. He was conscious of
+having discovered a process of transformation and modification which
+accounted for a great deal of natural history. But he did not put it
+forward as accounting for the whole of natural history. He included it
+under the heading of Evolution, though it was only pseudo-evolution at
+best; but he revealed it as _a_ method of evolution, not as _the_ method
+of evolution. He did not pretend that it excluded other methods, or
+that it was the chief method. Though he demonstrated that many
+transformations which had been taken as functional adaptations (the
+current phrase for Lamarckian evolution) either certainly were or
+conceivably might be due to Circumstantial Selection, he was careful
+not to claim that he had superseded Lamarck or disproved Functional
+Adaptation. In short, he was not a Darwinian, but an honest naturalist
+working away at his job with so little preoccupation with theological
+speculation that he never quarrelled with the theistic Unitarianism into
+which he was born, and remained to the end the engagingly simple and
+socially easy-going soul he had been in his boyhood, when his elders
+doubted whether he would ever be of much use in the world.
+
+
+HOW WE RUSHED DOWN A STEEP PLACE
+
+Not so the rest of us intellectuals. We all began going to the devil
+with the utmost cheerfulness. Everyone who had a mind to change, changed
+it. Only Samuel Butler, on whom Darwin had acted homeopathically,
+reacted against him furiously; ran up the Lamarckian flag to the
+top-gallant peak; declared with penetrating accuracy that Darwin had
+'banished mind from the universe'; and even attacked Darwin's personal
+character, unable to bear the fact that the author of so abhorrent a
+doctrine was an amiable and upright man. Nobody would listen to him. He
+was so completely submerged by the flowing tide of Darwinism that when
+Darwin wanted to clear up the misunderstanding on which Butler was
+basing his personal attacks, Darwin's friends, very foolishly and
+snobbishly, persuaded him that Butler was too ill-conditioned and
+negligible to be answered. That they could not recognize in Butler a
+man of genius mattered little: what did matter was that they could not
+understand the provocation under which he was raging. They actually
+regarded the banishment of mind from the universe as a glorious
+enlightenment and emancipation for which he was ignorantly ungrateful.
+Even now, when Butler's eminence is unchallenged, and his biographer, Mr
+Festing Jones, is enjoying a vogue like that of Boswell or Lockhart, his
+memoirs shew him rather as a shocking example of the bad controversial
+manners of our country parsonages than as a prophet who tried to head
+us back when we were gaily dancing to our damnation across the rainbow
+bridge which Darwinism had thrown over the gulf which separates life and
+hope from death and despair. We were intellectually intoxicated with the
+idea that the world could make itself without design, purpose, skill,
+or intelligence: in short, without life. We completely overlooked the
+difference between the modification of species by adaptation to their
+environment and the appearance of new species: we just threw in the word
+'variations' or the word 'sports' (fancy a man of science talking of
+an unknown factor as a sport instead of as _x_!) and left them to
+'accumulate' and account for the difference between a cockatoo and a
+hippopotamus. Such phrases set us free to revel in demonstrating to the
+Vitalists and Bible worshippers that if we once admit the existence of
+any kind of force, however unintelligent, and stretch out the past to
+unlimited time for such force to operate accidentally in, that force may
+conceivably, by the action of Circumstantial Selection, produce a world
+in which every function has an organ perfectly adapted to perform it,
+and therefore presents every appearance of having been designed, like
+Paley's watch, by a conscious and intelligent artificer for the purpose.
+We took a perverse pleasure in arguing, without the least suspicion
+that we were reducing ourselves to absurdity, that all the books in the
+British Museum library might have been written word for word as they
+stand on the shelves if no human being had ever been conscious, just
+as the trees stand in the forest doing wonderful things without
+consciousness.
+
+And the Darwinians went far beyond denying consciousness to trees.
+Weismann insisted that the chick breaks out of its eggshell
+automatically; that the butterfly, springing into the air to avoid the
+pounce of the lizard, 'does not wish to avoid death; knows nothing about
+death,' what has happened being simply that a flight instinct evolved by
+Circumstantial Selection reacts promptly to a visual impression produced
+by the lizard's movement. His proof is that the butterfly immediately
+settles again on the flower, and repeats the performance every time the
+lizard springs, thus shewing that it learns nothing from experience,
+and--Weismann concludes--is not conscious of what it does.
+
+It should hardly have escaped so curious an observer that when the cat
+jumps up on the dinner table, and you put it down, it instantly jumps
+up again, and finally establishes its right to a place on the cloth by
+convincing you that if you put it down a hundred times it will jump up a
+hundred and one times; so that if you desire its company at dinner you
+can have it only on its own terms. If Weismann really thought that
+cats act thus without any consciousness or any purpose, immediate or
+ulterior, he must have known very little about cats. But a thoroughgoing
+Weismannite, if any such still survive from those mad days, would
+contend that I am not at present necessarily conscious of what I am
+doing; that my writing of these lines, and your reading of them, are
+effects of Circumstantial Selection; that I heed know no more about
+Darwinism than a butterfly knows of a lizard's appetite; and that the
+proof that I actually am doing it unconsciously is that as I have spent
+forty years in writing in this fashion without, as far as I can see,
+producing any visible effect on public opinion, I must be incapable of
+learning from experience, and am therefore a mere automaton. And
+the Weismannite demonstration of this would of course be an equally
+unconscious effect of Circumstantial Selection.
+
+
+DARWINISM NOT FINALLY REFUTABLE
+
+Do not too hastily say that this is inconceivable. To Circumstantial
+Selection all mechanical and chemical reactions are possible, provided
+you accept the geologists' estimates of the great age of the earth, and
+therefore allow time enough for the circumstances to operate. It is true
+that mere survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence plus
+sexual selection fail as hopelessly to account for Darwin's own life
+work as for my conquest of the bicycle; but who can prove that there
+are not other soulless factors, unnoticed or undiscovered, which only
+require imagination enough to fit them to the evolution of an automatic
+Jesus or Shakespear? When a man tells you that you are a product of
+Circumstantial Selection solely, you cannot finally disprove it. You can
+only tell him out of the depths of your inner conviction that he is a
+fool and a liar. But as this, though British, is uncivil, it is wiser to
+offer him the counter-assurance that you are the product of Lamarckian
+evolution, formerly called Functional Adaptation and now Creative
+Evolution, and challenge him to disprove _that_, which he can no more
+do than you can disprove Circumstantial Selection, both forces being
+conceivably able to produce anything if you only give them rope enough.
+You may also defy him to act for a single hour on the assumption that he
+may safely cross Oxford Street in a state of unconsciousness, trusting
+to his dodging reflexes to react automatically and promptly enough
+to the visual impression produced by a motor bus, and the audible
+impression produced by its hooter. But if you allow yourself to defy him
+to explain any particular action of yours by Circumstantial Selection,
+he should always be able to find some explanation that will fit the case
+if only he is ingenious enough and goes far enough to find it. Darwin
+found several such explanations in his controversies. Anybody who really
+wants to believe that the universe has been produced by Circumstantial
+Selection co-operating with a force as inhuman as we conceive magnetism
+to be can find a logical excuse for his belief if he tries hard enough.
+
+
+
+THREE BLIND MICE
+
+The stultification and damnation which ensued are illustrated by a
+comparison of the ease and certainty with which Butler's mind moved to
+humane and inspiring conclusions with the grotesque stupidities and
+cruelties of the idle and silly controversy which arose among the
+Darwinians as to whether acquired habits can be transmitted from parents
+to offspring. Consider, for example, how Weismann set to work on that
+subject. An Evolutionist with a live mind would first have dropped the
+popular expression 'acquired habits,' because to an Evolutionist there
+are no other habits and can be no others, a man being only an amoeba
+with acquirements. He would then have considered carefully the process
+by which he himself had acquired his habits. He would have assumed that
+the habits with which he was born must have been acquired by a similar
+process. He would have known what a habit is: that is, an Action
+voluntarily attempted until it has become more or less automatic and
+involuntary; and it would never have occurred to him that injuries or
+accidents coming from external sources against the will of the victim
+could possibly establish a habit; that, for instance, a family could
+acquire a habit of being killed in railway accidents.
+
+And yet Weismann began to investigate the point by behaving like the
+butcher's wife in the old catch. He got a colony of mice, and cut off
+their tails. Then he waited to see whether their children would be born
+without tails. They were not, as Butler could have told him beforehand.
+He then cut off the children's tails, and waited to see whether the
+grandchildren would be born with at least rather short tails. They were
+not, as I could have told him beforehand. So with the patience and
+industry on which men of science pride themselves, he cut off the
+grandchildren's tails too, and waited, full of hope, for the birth of
+curtailed great-grandchildren. But their tails were quite up to the
+mark, as any fool could have told him beforehand. Weismann then gravely
+drew the inference that acquired habits cannot be transmitted. And yet
+Weismann was not a born imbecile. He was an exceptionally clever and
+studious man, not without roots of imagination and philosophy in him
+which Darwinism killed as weeds.
+
+How was it that he did not see that he was not experimenting with habits
+or characteristics at all? How had he overlooked the glaring fact that
+his experiment had been tried for many generations in China on the feet
+of Chinese women without producing the smallest tendency on their part
+to be born with abnormally small feet? He must have known about the
+bound feet even if he knew nothing of the mutilations, the clipped ears
+and docked tails, practised by dog fanciers and horse breeders on many
+generations of the unfortunate animals they deal in. Such amazing
+blindness and stupidity on the part of a man who was naturally
+neither blind nor stupid is a telling illustration of what Darwin
+unintentionally did to the minds of his disciples by turning their
+attention so exclusively towards the part played in Evolution by
+accident and violence operating with entire callousness to suffering and
+sentiment.
+
+A vital conception of Evolution would have taught Weismann that
+biological problems are not to be solved by assaults on mice. The
+scientific form of his experiment would have been something like this.
+First, he should have procured a colony of mice highly susceptible to
+hypnotic suggestion. He should then have hypnotized them into an
+urgent conviction that the fate of the musque world depended on
+the disappearance of its tail, just as some ancient and forgotten
+experimenter seems to have convinced the cats of the Isle of Man. Having
+thus made the mice desire to lose their tails with a life-or-death
+intensity, he would very soon have seen a few mice born with little or
+no tail. These would be recognized by the other mice as superior
+beings, and privileged in the division of food and in sexual selection.
+Ultimately the tailed mice would be put to death as monsters by their
+fellows, and the miracle of the tailless mouse completely achieved.
+
+The objection to this experiment is not that it seems too funny to be
+taken seriously, and is not cruel enough to overawe the mob, but simply
+that it is impossible because the human experimenter cannot get at the
+mouse's mind. And that is what is wrong with all the barren cruelties of
+the laboratories. Darwin's followers did not think of this. Their only
+idea of investigation was to imitate 'Nature' by perpetrating violent
+and senseless cruelties, and watch the effect of them with a paralyzing
+fatalism which forbade the smallest effort to use their minds instead of
+their knives and eyes, and established an abominable tradition that the
+man who hesitates to be as cruel as Circumstantial Selection itself is a
+traitor to science. For Weismann's experiment upon the mice was a mere
+joke compared to the atrocities committed by other Darwinians in their
+attempts to prove that mutilations could not be transmitted. No doubt
+the worst of these experiments were not really experiments at all, but
+cruelties committed by cruel men who were attracted to the laboratory by
+the fact that it was a secret refuge left by law and public superstition
+for the amateur of passionate torture. But there is no reason to suspect
+Weismann of Sadism. Cutting off the tails of several generations of mice
+is not voluptuous enough to tempt a scientific Nero. It was a mere piece
+of one-eyedness; and it was Darwin who put out Weismann's humane and
+sensible eye. He blinded many another eye and paralyzed many another
+will also. Ever since he set up Circumstantial Selection as the creator
+and ruler of the universe, the scientific world has been the very
+citadel of stupidity and cruelty. Fearful as the tribal god of the
+Hebrews was, nobody ever shuddered as they passed even his meanest and
+narrowest Little Bethel or his proudest war-consecrating cathedral as we
+shudder now when we pass a physiological laboratory. If we dreaded and
+mistrusted the priest, we could at least keep him out of the house; but
+what of the modern Darwinist surgeon whom we dread and mistrust ten
+times more, but into whose hands we must all give ourselves from time
+to time? Miserably as religion had been debased, it did at least still
+proclaim that our relation to one another was that of a fellowship
+in which we were all equal and members one of another before the
+judgment-seat of our common father. Darwinism proclaimed that our true
+relation is that of competitors and combatants in a struggle for mere
+survival, and that every act of pity or loyalty to the old fellowship is
+a vain and mischievous attempt to lessen the severity of the struggle
+and preserve inferior varieties from the efforts of Nature to weed them
+out. Even in Socialist Societies which existed solely to substitute
+the law of fellowship for the law of competition, and the method of
+providence and wisdom for the method of rushing violently down a steep
+place into the sea, I found myself regarded as a blasphemer and an
+ignorant sentimentalist because whenever the Neo-Darwinian doctrine was
+preached there I made no attempt to conceal my intellectual contempt for
+its blind coarseness and shallow logic, or my natural abhorrence of its
+sickening inhumanity.
+
+
+THE GREATEST OF THESE IS SELF-CONTROL
+
+As there is no place in Darwinism for free will, or any other sort
+of will, the Neo-Darwinists held that there is no such thing as
+self-control. Yet self-control is just the one quality of survival value
+which Circumstantial Selection must invariably and inevitably develop in
+the long run. Uncontrolled qualities may be selected for survival and
+development for certain periods and under certain circumstances. For
+instance, since it is the ungovernable gluttons who strive the hardest
+to get food and drink, their efforts would develop their strength and
+cunning in a period of such scarcity that the utmost they could do would
+not enable them to over-eat themselves. But a change of circumstances
+involving a plentiful supply of food would destroy them. We see this
+very thing happening often enough in the case of the healthy and
+vigorous poor man who becomes a millionaire by one of the accidents of
+our competitive commerce, and immediately proceeds to dig his grave with
+his teeth. But the self-controlled man survives all such changes of
+circumstance, because he adapts himself to them, and eats neither as
+much as he can hold nor as little as he can scrape along on, but as much
+as is good for him. What is self-control? It is nothing but a highly
+developed vital sense, dominating and regulating the mere appetites. To
+overlook the very existence of this supreme sense; to miss the obvious
+inference that it is the quality that distinguishes the fittest to
+survive; to omit, in short, the highest moral claim of Evolutionary
+Selection: all this, which the Neo-Darwinians did in the name of Natural
+Selection, shewed the most pitiable want of mastery of their own
+subject, the dullest lack of observation of the forces upon which
+Natural Selection works.
+
+
+A SAMPLE OF LAMARCKO-SHAVIAN INVECTIVE
+
+The Vitalist philosophers made no such mistakes. Nietzsche, for example,
+thinking out the great central truth of the Will to Power instead of
+cutting off mouse-tails, had no difficulty in concluding that the final
+objective of this Will was power over self, and that the seekers after
+power over others and material possessions were on a false scent.
+
+The stultification naturally became much worse as the first Darwinians
+died out. The prestige of these pioneers, who had the older evolutionary
+culture to build on, and were in fact no more Darwinian in the modern
+sense than Darwin himself, ceased to dazzle us when Huxley and Tyndall
+and Spencer and Darwin passed away, and we were left with the smaller
+people who began with Darwin and took in nothing else. Accordingly, I
+find that in the year 1906 I indulged my temper by hurling invectives at
+the Neo-Darwinians in the following terms.
+
+'I really do not wish to be abusive; but when I think of these poor
+little dullards, with their precarious hold of just that corner of
+evolution that a blackbeetle can understand--with their retinue of
+twopenny-halfpenny Torquemadas wallowing in the infamies of the
+vivisector's laboratory, and solemnly offering us as epoch-making
+discoveries their demonstrations that dogs get weaker and die if you
+give them no food; that intense pain makes mice sweat; and that if you
+cut off a dog's leg the three-legged dog will have a four-legged puppy,
+I ask myself what spell has fallen on intelligent and humane men
+that they allow themselves to be imposed on by this rabble of dolts,
+blackguards, impostors, quacks, liars, and, worst of all, credulous
+conscientious fools. Better a thousand times Moses and Spurgeon [a then
+famous preacher] back again. After all, you cannot understand Moses
+without imagination nor Spurgeon without metaphysics; but you can be a
+thorough-going Neo-Darwinian without imagination, metaphysics,
+poetry, conscience, or decency. For "Natural Selection" has no moral
+significance: it deals with that part of evolution which has no purpose,
+no intelligence, and might more appropriately be called accidental
+selection, or better still, Unnatural Selection, since nothing is
+more unnatural than an accident. If it could be proved that the whole
+universe had been produced by such Selection, only fools and rascals
+could bear to live.'
+
+
+THE HUMANITARIANS AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
+
+Yet the humanitarians were as delighted as anybody with Darwinism at
+first. They had been perplexed by the Problem of Evil and the Cruelty of
+Nature. They were Shelleyists, but not atheists. Those who believed in
+God were at a terrible disadvantage with the atheist. They could not
+deny the existence of natural facts so cruel that to attribute them to
+the will of God is to make God a demon. Belief in God was impossible to
+any thoughtful person without belief in the Devil as well. The painted
+Devil, with his horns, his barbed tail, and his abode of burning
+brimstone, was an incredible bogey; but the evil attributed to him was
+real enough; and the atheists argued that the author of evil, if he
+exists, must be strong enough to overcome God, else God is morally
+responsible for everything he permits the Devil to do. Neither
+conclusion delivered us from the horror of attributing the cruelty of
+nature to the workings of an evil will, or could reconcile it with our
+impulses towards justice, mercy, and a higher life.
+
+A complete deliverance was offered by the discovery of Circumstantial
+Selection: that is to say, of a method by which horrors having every
+appearance of being elaborately planned by some intelligent contriver
+are only accidents without any moral significance at all. Suppose a
+watcher from the stars saw a frightful accident produced by two crowded
+trains at full speed crashing into one another! How could he conceive
+that a catastrophe brought about by such elaborate machinery, such
+ingenious preparation, such skilled direction, such vigilant industry,
+was quite unintentional? Would he not conclude that the signal-men were
+devils?
+
+Well, Circumstantial Selection is largely a theory of collisions: that
+is, a theory of the innocence of much apparently designed devilry. In
+this way Darwin brought intense relief as well as an enlarged knowledge
+of facts to the humanitarians. He destroyed the omnipotence of God for
+them; but he also exonerated God from a hideous charge of cruelty.
+Granted that the comfort was shallow, and that deeper reflection was
+bound to shew that worse than all conceivable devil-deities is a blind,
+deaf, dumb, heartless, senseless mob of forces that strike as a tree
+does when it is blown down by the wind, or as the tree itself is struck
+by lightning. That did not occur to the humanitarians at the moment:
+people do not reflect deeply when they are in the first happiness of
+escape from an intolerably oppressive situation. Like Bunyan's pilgrim
+they could not see the wicket gate, nor the Slough of Despond, nor the
+castle of Giant Despair; but they saw the shining light at the end of
+the path, and so started gaily towards it as Evolutionists.
+
+And they were right; for the problem of evil yields very easily to
+Creative Evolution. If the driving power behind Evolution is omnipotent
+only in the sense that there seems no limit to its final achievement;
+and if it must meanwhile struggle with matter and circumstance by
+the method of trial and error, then the world must be full of its
+unsuccessful experiments. Christ may meet a tiger, or a High Priest
+arm-in-arm with a Roman Governor, and be the unfittest to survive under
+the circumstances. Mozart may have a genius that prevails against
+Emperors and Archbishops, and a lung that succumbs to some obscure and
+noxious property of foul air. If all our calamities are either accidents
+or sincerely repented mistakes, there is no malice in the Cruelty
+of Nature and no Problem of Evil in the Victorian sense at all. The
+theology of the women who told us that they became atheists when they
+sat by the cradles of their children and saw them strangled by the hand
+of God is succeeded by the theology of Blanco Posnet, with his 'It was
+early days when He made the croup, I guess. It was the best He could
+think of then; but when it turned out wrong on His hands He made you and
+me to fight the croup for Him.'
+
+
+HOW ONE TOUCH OF DARWIN MAKES THE WHOLE WORLD KIN
+
+Another humanitarian interest in Darwinism was that Darwin popularized
+Evolution generally, as well as making his own special contribution to
+it. Now the general conception of Evolution provides the humanitarian
+with a scientific basis, because it establishes the fundamental equality
+of all living things. It makes the killing of an animal murder in
+exactly the same sense as the killing of a man is murder. It is
+sometimes necessary to kill men as it is always necessary to kill
+tigers; but the old theoretic distinction between the two acts has been
+obliterated by Evolution. When I was a child and was told that our dog
+and our parrot, with whom I was on intimate terms, were not creatures
+like myself, but were brutal whilst I was reasonable, I not only did not
+believe it, but quite consciously and intellectually formed the opinion
+that the distinction was false; so that afterwards, when Darwin's views
+were first unfolded to me, I promptly said that I had found out all that
+for myself before I was ten years old; and I am far from sure that my
+youthful arrogance was not justified; for this sense of the kinship of
+all forms of life is all that is needed to make Evolution not only a
+conceivable theory, but an inspiring one. St Anthony was ripe for the
+Evolution theory when he preached to the fishes, and St Francis when
+he called the birds his little brothers. Our vanity, and our snobbish
+conception of Godhead as being, like earthly kingship, a supreme class
+distinction instead of the rock on which Equality is built, had led us
+to insist on God offering us special terms by placing us apart from and
+above all the rest of his creatures. Evolution took that conceit out of
+us; and now, though we may kill a flea without the smallest remorse, we
+at all events know that we are killing our cousin. No doubt it shocks
+the flea when the creature that an almighty Celestial Flea created
+expressly for the food of fleas, destroys the jumping lord of creation
+with his sharp and enormous thumbnail; but no flea will ever be so
+foolish as to preach that in slaying fleas Man is applying a method of
+Natural Selection which will finally evolve a flea so swift that no man
+can catch him, and so hardy of constitution that Insect Powder will have
+no more effect on him than strychnine on an elephant.
+
+
+WHY DARWIN PLEASED THE SOCIALISTS
+
+The Humanitarians were not alone among the agitators in their welcome to
+Darwin. He had the luck to please everybody who had an axe to grind. The
+Militarists were as enthusiastic as the Humanitarians, the Socialists as
+the Capitalists. The Socialists were specially encouraged by Darwin's
+insistence on the influence of environment. Perhaps the strongest moral
+bulwark of Capitalism is the belief in the efficacy of individual
+righteousness. Robert Owen made desperate efforts to convince England
+that her criminals, her drunkards, her ignorant and stupid masses, were
+the victims of circumstance: that if we would only establish his new
+moral world we should find that the masses born into an educated and
+moralized community would be themselves educated and moralized. The
+stock reply to this is to be found in Lewes's Life of Goethe. Lewes
+scorned the notion that circumstances govern character. He pointed
+to the variety of character in the governing rich class to prove the
+contrary. Similarity of circumstance can hardly be carried to a more
+desolating dead level than in the case of the individuals who are born
+and bred in English country houses, and sent first to Eton or Harrow,
+and then to Oxford or Cambridge, to have their minds and habits formed.
+Such a routine would destroy individuality if anything could. Yet
+individuals come out from it as different as Pitt from Fox, as Lord
+Russell from Lord Gurzon, as Mr Winston Churchill from Lord Robert
+Cecil. This acceptance of the congenital character of the individual
+as the determining factor in his destiny had been reinforced by the
+Lamarckian view of Evolution. If the giraffe can develop his neck by
+wanting and trying, a man can develop his character in the same way. The
+old saying, 'Where there is a will, there is a way,' condenses Lamarck's
+theory of functional adaptation into a proverb. This felt bracingly
+moral to strong minds, and reassuringly pious to feeble ones. There was
+no more effective retort to the Socialist than to tell him to reform
+himself before he pretends to reform society. If you were rich, how
+pleasant it was to feel that you owed your riches to the superiority
+of your own character! The industrial revolution had turned numbers
+of greedy dullards into monstrously rich men. Nothing could be more
+humiliating and threatening to them than the view that the falling of a
+shower of gold into their pockets was as pure an accident as the falling
+of a shower of hail on their umbrellas, and happened alike to the just
+and unjust. Nothing could be more flattering and fortifying to them than
+the assumption that they were rich because they were virtuous.
+
+Now Darwinism made a clean sweep of all such self-righteousness. It
+more than justified Robert Owen by discovering in the environment of an
+organism an influence on it more potent than Owen had ever claimed. It
+implied that street arabs are produced by slums and not by original sin:
+that prostitutes are produced by starvation wages and not by feminine
+concupiscence. It threw the authority of science on the side of the
+Socialist who said that he who would reform himself must first reform
+society. It suggested that if we want healthy and wealthy citizens we
+must have healthy and wealthy towns; and that these can exist only in
+healthy and wealthy countries. It could be led to the conclusion that
+the type of character which remains indifferent to the welfare of its
+neighbors as long as its own personal appetite is satisfied is the
+disastrous type, and the type which is deeply concerned about its
+environment the only possible type for a permanently prosperous
+community. It shewed that the surprising changes which Robert Owen had
+produced in factory children by a change in their circumstances which
+does not seem any too generous to us nowadays were as nothing to the
+changes--changes not only of habits but of species, not only of species
+but of orders--which might conceivably be the work of environment acting
+on individuals without any character or intellectual consciousness
+whatever. No wonder the Socialists received Darwin with open arms.
+
+
+DARWIN AND KARL MARX
+
+Besides, the Socialists had an evolutionary prophet of their own, who
+had discredited Manchester as Darwin discredited the Garden of Eden.
+Karl Marx had proclaimed in his Communist Manifesto of 1848 (now
+enjoying Scriptural authority in Russia) that civilization is an
+organism evolving irresistibly by circumstantial selection; and he
+published the first volume of his Das Kapital in 1867. The revolt
+against anthropomorphic idolatry, which was, as we have seen, the secret
+of Darwin's success, had been accompanied by a revolt against the
+conventional respectability which covered not only the brigandage and
+piracy of the feudal barons, but the hypocrisy, inhumanity, snobbery,
+and greed of the bourgeoisie, who were utterly corrupted by an
+essentially diabolical identification of success in life with big
+profits. The moment Marx shewed that the relation of the bourgeoisie to
+society was grossly immoral and disastrous, and that the whited wall of
+starched shirt fronts concealed and defended the most infamous of all
+tyrannies and the basest of all robberies, he became an inspired prophet
+in the mind of every generous soul whom his book reached. He had said
+and proved what they wanted to have proved; and they would hear nothing
+against him. Now Marx was by no means infallible: his economics, half
+borrowed, and half home-made by a literary amateur, were not, when
+strictly followed up, even favorable to Socialism. His theory of
+civilisation had been promulgated already in Buckle's History of
+Civilization, a book as epoch-making in the minds of its readers as Das
+Kapital. There was nothing about Socialism in the widely read first
+volume of Das Kapital: every reference it made to workers and
+capitalists shewed that Marx had never breathed industrial air, and had
+dug his case out of bluebooks in the British Museum. Compared to Darwin,
+he seemed to have no power of observation: there was not a fact in Das
+Kapital that had not been taken out of a book, nor a discussion that had
+not been opened by somebody else's pamphlet. No matter: he exposed the
+bourgeoisie and made an end of its moral prestige. That was enough: like
+Darwin he had for the moment the World Will by the ear. Marx had, too,
+what Darwin had not: implacability and a fine Jewish literary gift,
+with terrible powers of hatred, invective, irony, and all the bitter
+qualities bred, first in the oppression of a rather pampered young
+genius (Marx was the spoilt child of a well-to-do family) by a social
+system utterly uncongenial to him, and later on by exile and poverty.
+Thus Marx and Darwin between them toppled over two closely related
+idols, and became the prophets of two new creeds.
+
+
+WHY DARWIN PLEASED THE PROFITEERS ALSO
+
+But how, at this rate, did Darwin succeed with the capitalists too? It
+is not easy to make the best of both worlds when one of the worlds is
+preaching a Class War, and the other vigorously practising it. The
+explanation is that Darwinism was so closely related to Capitalism that
+Marx regarded it as an economic product rather than as a biological
+theory. Darwin got his main postulate, the pressure of population on
+the available means of subsistence, from the treatise of Malthus
+on Population, just as he got his other postulate of a practically
+unlimited time for that pressure to operate from the geologist Lyell,
+who made an end of Archbishop Ussher's Biblical estimate of the age
+of the earth as 4004 B.C. plus A.D. The treatises of the Ricardian
+economists on the Law of Diminishing Return, which was only the
+Manchester School's version of the giraffe and the trees, were all very
+fiercely discussed when Darwin was a young man. In fact the discovery in
+the eighteenth century by the French Physiocrats of the economic
+effects of Commercial Selection in soils and sites, and by Malthus of
+a competition for subsistence which he attributed to pressure of
+population on available subsistence, had already brought political
+science into that unbreathable atmosphere of fatalism which is the
+characteristic blight of Darwinism. Long before Darwin published a line,
+the Ricardo-Malthusian economists were preaching the fatalistic Wages
+Fund doctrine, and assuring the workers that Trade Unionism is a vain
+defiance of the inexorable laws of political economy, just as the
+Neo-Darwinians were presently assuring us that Temperance Legislation is
+a vain defiance of Natural Selection, and that the true way to deal with
+drunkenness is to flood the country with cheap gin and let the fittest
+survive. Cobdenism is, after all, nothing but the abandonment of trade
+to Circumstantial Selection.
+
+It is hardly possible to exaggerate the importance of this preparation
+for Darwinism by a vast political and clerical propaganda of its moral
+atmosphere. Never in history, as far as we know, had there been such a
+determined, richly subsidized, politically organized attempt to persuade
+the human race that all progress, all prosperity, all salvation,
+individual and social, depend on an unrestrained conflict for food and
+money, on the suppression and elimination of the weak by the strong,
+on Free Trade, Free Contract, Free Competition, Natural Liberty,
+Laisser-faire: in short, on 'doing the other fellow down' with impunity,
+all interference by a guiding government, all organization except police
+organization to protect legalized fraud against fisticuffs, all
+attempt to introduce human purpose and design and forethought into the
+industrial welter, being 'contrary to the laws of political economy.'
+Even the proletariat sympathized, though to them Capitalist liberty
+meant only wage slavery without the legal safeguards of chattel slavery.
+People were tired of governments and kings and priests and providences,
+and wanted to find out how Nature would arrange matters if she were let
+alone. And they found it out to their cost in the days when Lancashire
+used up nine generations of wage slaves in one generation of their
+masters. But their masters, becoming richer and richer, were very well
+satisfied, and Bastiat proved convincingly that Nature had arranged
+Economic Harmonies which would settle social questions far better than
+theocracies or aristocracies or mobocracies, the real _deus ex machina_
+being unrestrained plutocracy.
+
+
+THE POETRY AND PURITY OF MATERIALISM
+
+Thus the stars in their courses fought for Darwin. Every faction drew a
+moral from him; every catholic hater of faction founded a hope on him;
+every blackguard felt justified by him; and every saint felt encouraged
+by him. The notion that any harm could come of so splendid an
+enlightenment seemed as silly as the notion that the atheists would
+steal all our spoons. The physicists went further than the Darwinians.
+Tyndall declared that he saw in Matter the promise and potency of all
+forms of life, and with his Irish graphic lucidity made a picture of a
+world of magnetic atoms, each atom with a positive and a negative pole,
+arranging itself by attraction and repulsion in orderly crystalline
+structure. Such a picture is dangerously fascinating to thinkers
+oppressed by the bloody disorders of the living world. Craving for purer
+subjects of thought, they find in the contemplation of crystals and
+magnets a happiness more dramatic and less childish than the happiness
+found by the mathematicians in abstract numbers, because they see in the
+crystals beauty and movement without the corrupting appetites of fleshly
+vitality. In such Materialism as that of Lucretius and Tyndall there
+is a nobility which produces poetry: John Davidson found his highest
+inspiration in it. Even its pessimism as it faces the cooling of the
+sun and the return of the ice-caps does not degrade the pessimist: for
+example, the Quincy Adamses, with their insistence on modern democratic
+degradation as an inevitable result of solar shrinkage, are not
+dehumanized as the vivisectionists are. Perhaps nobody is at heart fool
+enough to believe that life is at the mercy of temperature: Dante was
+not troubled by the objection that Brunetto could not have lived in the
+fire nor Ugolino in the ice.
+
+But the physicists found their intellectual vision of the world
+incommunicable to those who were not born with it. It came to the public
+simply as Materialism; and Materialism lost its peculiar purity and
+dignity when it entered into the Darwinian reaction against Bible
+fetichism. Between the two of them religion was knocked to pieces; and
+where there had been a god, a cause, a faith that the universe was
+ordered however inexplicable by us its order might be, and therefore a
+sense of moral responsibility as part of that order, there was now an
+utter void. Chaos had come again. The first effect was exhilarating:
+we had the runaway child's sense of freedom before it gets hungry and
+lonely and frightened. In this phase we did not desire our God back
+again. We printed the verses in which William Blake, the most religious
+of our great poets, called the anthropomorphic idol Old Nobodaddy, and
+gibed at him in terms which the printer had to leave us to guess from
+his blank spaces. We had heard the parson droning that God is not
+mocked; and it was great fun to mock Him to our hearts' content and not
+be a penny the worse. It did not occur to us that Old Nobodaddy, instead
+of being a ridiculous fiction, might be only an impostor, and that the
+exposure of this Koepenik Captain of the heavens, far from proving that
+there was no real captain, rather proved the contrary: that, in short,
+Nobodaddy could not have impersonated anybody if there had not been
+Somebodaddy to impersonate. We did not see the significance of the
+fact that on the last occasion on which God had been 'expelled with a
+pitchfork,' men so different as Voltaire and Robespierre had said, the
+one that if God did not exist it would be necessary to invent him, and
+the other that after an honest attempt to dispense with a Supreme
+Being in practical politics, some such hypothesis had been found quite
+indispensable, and could not be replaced by a mere Goddess of Reason. If
+these two opinions were quoted at all, they were quoted as jokes at the
+expense of Nobodaddy. We were quite sure for the moment that whatever
+lingering superstition might have daunted these men of the eighteenth
+century, we Darwinians could do without God, and had made a good
+riddance of Him.
+
+
+THE VICEROYS OF THE KING OF KINGS
+
+Now in politics it is much easier to do without God than to do without
+his viceroys and vicars and lieutenants; and we begin to miss the
+lieutenants long before we begin to miss their principal. Roman
+Catholics do what their confessors advise without troubling God; and
+Royalists are content to worship the King and ask the policeman. But
+God's trustiest lieutenants often lack official credentials. They may be
+professed atheists who are also men of honor and high public spirit.
+The old belief that it matters dreadfully to God whether a man thinks
+himself an atheist or not, and that the extent to which it matters can
+be stated with exactness as one single damn, was an error: for the
+divinity is in the honor and public spirit, not in the mouthed _credo_
+or _non credo_. The consequences of this error became grave when the
+fitness of a man for public trust was tested, not by his honor and
+public spirit, but by asking him whether he believed in Nobodaddy or
+not. If he said yes, he was held fit to be a Prime Minister, though,
+as our ablest Churchman has said, the real implication was that he was
+either a fool, a bigot, or a liar. Darwin destroyed this test; but when
+it was only thoughtlessly dropped, there was no test at all; and the
+door to public trust was open to the man who had no sense of God because
+he had no sense of anything beyond his own business interests and
+personal appetites and ambitions. As a result, the people who did
+not feel in the least inconvenienced by being no longer governed by
+Nobodaddy soon found themselves very acutely inconvenienced by being
+governed by fools and commercial adventurers. They had forgotten not
+only God but Goldsmith, who had warned them that 'honor sinks where
+commerce long prevails.'
+
+The lieutenants of God are not always persons: some of them are
+legal and parliamentary fictions. One of them is Public Opinion. The
+pre-Darwinian statesmen and publicists were not restrained directly by
+God; but they restrained themselves by setting up an image of a Public
+Opinion which would not tolerate any attempt to tamper with British
+liberties. Their favorite way of putting it was that any Government
+which proposed such and such an infringement of such and such a British
+liberty would be hurled from office in a week. This was not true: there
+was no such public opinion, no limit to what the British people would
+put up with in the abstract, and no hardship short of immediate and
+sudden starvation that it would not and did not put up with in the
+concrete. But this very helplessness of the people had forced their
+rulers to pretend that they were not helpless, and that the certainty of
+a sturdy and unconquerable popular resistance forbade any trifling with
+Magna Carta or the Petition of Rights or the authority of parliament.
+Now the reality behind this fiction was the divine sense that liberty
+is a need vital to human growth. Accordingly, though it was difficult
+enough to effect a political reform, yet, once parliament had passed it,
+its wildest opponent had no hope that the Government would cancel it,
+or shelve it, or be bought off from executing it. From Walpole to
+Campbell-Bannerman there was no Prime Minister to whom such renagueing
+or trafficking would ever have occurred, though there were plenty who
+employed corruption unsparingly to procure the votes of members of
+parliament for their policy.
+
+
+POLITICAL OPPORTUNISM IN EXCELSIS
+
+The moment Nobodaddy was slain by Darwin, Public Opinion, as divine
+deputy, lost its sanctity. Politicians no longer told themselves that
+the British public would never suffer this or that: they allowed
+themselves to know that for their own personal purposes, which are
+limited to their ten or twenty years on the front benches in parliament,
+the British public can be humbugged and coerced into believing and
+suffering everything that it pays to impose on them, and that any false
+excuse for an unpopular step will serve if it can be kept in countenance
+for a fortnight: that is, until the terms of the excuse are forgotten.
+The people, untaught or mistaught, are so ignorant and incapable
+politically that this in itself would not greatly matter; for a
+statesman who told them the truth would not be understood, and would in
+effect mislead them more completely than if he dealt with them according
+to their blindness instead of to his own wisdom. But though there is no
+difference in this respect between the best demagogue and the worst,
+both of them having to present their cases equally in terms of
+melodrama, there is all the difference in the world between the
+statesman who is humbugging the people into allowing him to do the
+will of God, in whatever disguise it may come to him, and one who is
+humbugging them into furthering his personal ambition and the commercial
+interests of the plutocrats who own the newspapers and support him on
+reciprocal terms. And there is almost as great a difference between
+the statesman who does this naively and automatically, or even does it
+telling himself that he is ambitious and selfish and unscrupulous, and
+the one who does it on principle, believing that if everyone takes the
+line of least material resistance the result will be the survival of the
+fittest in a perfectly harmonious universe. Once produce an atmosphere
+of fatalism on principle, and it matters little what the opinions or
+superstitions of the individual statesmen concerned may be. A Kaiser
+who is a devout reader of sermons, a Prime Minister who is an emotional
+singer of hymns, and a General who is a bigoted Roman Catholic may be
+the executants of the policy; but the policy itself will be one of
+unprincipled opportunism; and all the Governments will be like the tramp
+who walks always with the wind and ends as a pauper, or the stone that
+rolls down the hill and ends as an avalanche: their way is the way to
+destruction.
+
+
+THE BETRAYAL OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION
+
+Within sixty years from the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species
+political opportunism had brought parliaments into contempt; created
+a popular demand for direct action by the organized industries
+('Syndicalism'); and wrecked the centre of Europe in a paroxysm of that
+chronic terror of one another, that cowardice of the irreligious, which,
+masked in the bravado of militarist patriotism, had ridden the Powers
+like a nightmare since the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71. The sturdy
+old cosmopolitan Liberalism vanished almost unnoticed. At the present
+moment all the new ordinances for the government of our Grown Colonies
+contain, as a matter of course, prohibitions of all criticism, spoken or
+written, of their ruling officials, which would have scandalized George
+III and elicited Liberal pamphlets from Catherine II. Statesmen are
+afraid of the suburbs, of the newspapers, of the profiteers, of the
+diplomatists, of the militarists, of the country houses, of the trade
+unions, of everything ephemeral on earth except the revolutions they
+are provoking; and they would be afraid of these if they were not too
+ignorant of society and history to appreciate the risk, and to know that
+a revolution always seems hopeless and impossible the day before it
+breaks out, and indeed never does break out until it seems hopeless and
+impossible; for rulers who think it possible take care to insure the
+risk by ruling reasonably. This brings about a condition fatal to all
+political stability: namely, that you never know where to have the
+politicians. If the fear of God was in them it might be possible to come
+to some general understanding as to what God disapproves of; and Europe
+might pull together on that basis. But the present panic, in which Prime
+Ministers drift from election to election, either fighting or running
+away from everybody who shakes a fist at them, makes a European
+civilization impossible. Such peace and prosperity as we enjoyed before
+the war depended on the loyalty of the Western States to their own
+civilization. That loyalty could find practical expression only in an
+alliance of the highly civilized Western Powers against the primitive
+tyrannies of the East. Britain, Germany, France, and the United States
+of America could have imposed peace on the world, and nursed modern
+civilization in Russia, Turkey, and the Balkans. Every meaner
+consideration should have given way to this need for the solidarity of
+the higher civilization. What actually happened was that France and
+England, through their clerks the diplomatists, made an alliance with
+Russia to defend themselves against Germany; Germany made an alliance
+with Turkey to defend herself against the three; and the two unnatural
+and suicidal combinations fell on one another in a war that came nearer
+to being a war of extermination than any wars since those of Timur the
+Tartar; whilst the United States held aloof as long as they could, and
+the other States either did the same or joined in the fray through
+compulsion, bribery, or their judgment as to which side their bread was
+buttered. And at the present moment, though the main fighting has ceased
+through the surrender of Germany on terms which the victors have never
+dreamt of observing, the extermination by blockade and famine, which
+was what forced Germany to surrender, still continues, although it is
+certain that if the vanquished starve the victors will starve too, and
+Europe will liquidate its affairs by going, not into bankruptcy, but
+into chaos.
+
+Now all this, it will be noticed, was fundamentally nothing but an
+idiotic attempt on the part of each belligerent State to secure
+for itself the advantage of the survival of the fittest through
+Circumstantial Selection. If the Western Powers had selected their
+allies in the Lamarckian manner intelligently, purposely, and vitally,
+_ad majorem Dei gloriam_, as what Nietzsche called good Europeans,
+there would have been a League of Nations and no war. But because the
+selection relied on was purely circumstantial opportunist selection, so
+that the alliances were mere marriages of convenience, they have turned
+out, not merely as badly as might have been expected, but far worse than
+the blackest pessimist had ever imagined possible.
+
+
+
+CIRCUMSTANTIAL SELECTION IN FINANCE
+
+How it will all end we do not yet know. When wolves combine to kill a
+horse, the death of the horse only sets them fighting one another for
+the choicest morsels. Men are no better than wolves if they have no
+better principles: accordingly, we find that the Armistice and the
+Treaty have not extricated us from the war. A handful of Serbian
+regicides flung us into it as a sporting navvy throws a bull pup at a
+cat; but the Supreme Council, with all its victorious legions and all
+its prestige, cannot get us out of it, though we are heartily sick and
+tired of the whole business, and know now very well that it should never
+have been allowed to happen. But we are helpless before a slate scrawled
+with figures of National Debts. As there is no money to pay them because
+it was all spent on the war (wars have to be paid for on the nail) the
+sensible thing to do is to wipe the slate and let the wrangling States
+distribute what they can spare, on the sound communist principle of from
+each according to his ability, to each according to his need. But no:
+we have no principles left, not even commercial ones; for what sane
+commercialist would decree that France must not pay for her failure to
+defend her own soil; that Germany must pay for her success in carrying
+the war into the enemy's country; and that as Germany has not the money
+to pay, and under our commercial system can make it only by becoming
+once more a commercial competitor of England and France, which neither
+of them will allow, she must borrow the money from England, or America,
+or even from France: an arrangement by which the victorious creditors
+will pay one another, and wait to get their money back until Germany is
+either strong enough to refuse to pay or ruined beyond the possibility
+of paying? Meanwhile Russia, reduced to a scrap of fish and a pint of
+cabbage soup a day, has fallen into the hands of rulers who perceive
+that Materialist Communism is at all events more effective than
+Materialist Nihilism, and are attempting to move in an intelligent and
+ordered manner, practising a very strenuous Intentional Selection of
+workers as fitter to survive than idlers; whilst the Western Powers are
+drifting and colliding and running on the rocks, in the hope that if
+they continue to do their worst they will get Naturally Selected for
+survival without the trouble of thinking about it.
+
+
+THE HOMEOPATHIC REACTION AGAINST DARWINISM
+
+When, like the Russians, our Nihilists have it urgently borne in on
+them, by the brute force of rising wages that never overtake rising
+prices, that they are being Naturally Selected for destruction, they
+will perhaps remember that 'Dont Care came to a bad end,' and begin to
+look round for a religion. And the whole purpose of this book is to
+shew them where to look. For, throughout all the godless welter of the
+infidel half-century, Darwinism has been acting not only directly but
+homeopathically, its poison rallying our vital forces not only to resist
+it and cast it out, but to achieve a new Reformation and put a credible
+and healthy religion in its place. Samuel Butler was the pioneer of the
+reaction as far as the casting out was concerned; but the issue was
+confused by the physiologists, who were divided on the question into
+Mechanists and Vitalists. The Mechanists said that life is nothing but
+physical and chemical action; that they have demonstrated this in many
+cases of so-called vital phenomena; and that there is no reason to doubt
+that with improved methods they will presently be able to demonstrate it
+in all of them. The Vitalists said that a dead body and a live one are
+physically and chemically identical, and that the difference can be
+accounted for only by the existence of a Vital Force. This seems simple;
+but the Anti-Mechanists objected to be called Vitalists (obviously the
+right name for them) on two contradictory grounds. First, that vitality
+is scientifically inadmissible, because it cannot be isolated and
+experimented with in the laboratory. Second, that force, being by
+definition anything that can alter the speed or direction of matter
+in motion (briefly, that can overcome inertia), is essentially a
+mechanistic conception. Here we had the New Vitalist only half
+extricated from the Old Mechanist, objecting to be called either, and
+unable to give a clear lead in the new direction. And there was a deeper
+antagonism. The Old Vitalists, in postulating a Vital Force, were
+setting up a comparatively mechanical conception as against the divine
+idea of the life breathed into the clay nostrils of Adam, whereby he
+became a living soul. The New Vitalists, filled by their laboratory
+researches with a sense of the miraculousness of life that went far
+beyond the comparatively uninformed imaginations of the authors of the
+Book of Genesis, regarded the Old Vitalists as Mechanists who had tried
+to fill up the gulf between life and death with an empty phrase denoting
+an imaginary physical force.
+
+These professional faction fights are ephemeral, and need not trouble us
+here. The Old Vitalist, who was essentially a Materialist, has evolved
+into the New Vitalist, who is, as every genuine scientist must be,
+finally a metaphysician. And as the New Vitalist turns from the disputes
+of his youth to the future of his science, he will cease to boggle at
+the name Vitalist, or at the inevitable, ancient, popular, and quite
+correct use of the term Force to denote metaphysical as well as physical
+overcomers of inertia.
+
+Since the discovery of Evolution as the method of the Life Force the
+religion of metaphysical Vitalism has been gaining the definiteness and
+concreteness needed to make it assimilable by the educated critical man.
+But it has always been with us. The popular religions, disgraced by
+their Opportunist cardinals and bishops, have been kept in credit by
+canonized saints whose secret was their conception of themselves as the
+instruments and vehicles of divine power and aspiration: a conception
+which at moments becomes an actual experience of ecstatic possession by
+that power. And above and below all have been millions of humble and
+obscure persons, sometimes totally illiterate, sometimes unconscious of
+having any religion at all, sometimes believing in their simplicity
+that the gods and temples and priests of their district stood for their
+instinctive righteousness, who have kept sweet the tradition that good
+people follow a light that shines within and above and ahead of them,
+that bad people care only for themselves, and that the good are saved
+and blessed and the bad damned and miserable. Protestantism was a
+movement towards the pursuit of a light called an inner light because
+every man must see it with his own eyes and not take any priest's word
+for it or any Church's account of it. In short, there is no question
+of a new religion, but rather of redistilling the eternal spirit
+of religion and thus extricating it from the sludgy residue of
+temporalities and legends that are making belief impossible, though they
+are the stock-in-trade of all the Churches and all the Schools.
+
+
+RELIGION AND ROMANCE
+
+It is the adulteration of religion by the romance of miracles and
+paradises and torture chambers that makes it reel at the impact of every
+advance in science, instead of being clarified by it. If you take an
+English village lad, and teach him that religion means believing that
+the stories of Noah's Ark and the Garden of Eden are literally true on
+the authority of God himself, and if that boy becomes an artisan and
+goes into the town among the sceptical city proletariat, then, when the
+jibes of his mates set him thinking, and he sees that these stories
+cannot be literally true, and learns that no candid prelate now pretends
+to believe them, he does not make any fine distinctions: he declares at
+once that religion is a fraud, and parsons and teachers hypocrites and
+liars. He becomes indifferent to religion if he has little conscience,
+and indignantly hostile to it if he has a good deal.
+
+The same revolt against wantonly false teaching is happening daily
+in the professional classes whose recreation is reading and whose
+intellectual sport is controversy. They banish the Bible from their
+houses, and sometimes put into the hands of their unfortunate children
+Ethical and Rationalist tracts of the deadliest dullness, compelling
+these wretched infants to sit out the discourses of Secularist lecturers
+(I have delivered some of them myself), who bore them at a length now
+forbidden by custom in the established pulpit. Our minds have reacted so
+violently towards provable logical theorems and demonstrable mechanical
+or chemical facts that we have become incapable of metaphysical truth,
+and try to cast out incredible and silly lies by credible and clever
+ones, calling in Satan to cast out Satan, and getting more into his
+clutches than ever in the process. Thus the world is kept sane less by
+the saints than by the vast mass of the indifferent, who neither act nor
+react in the matter. Butler's preaching of the gospel of Laodicea was a
+piece of common sense founded on his observation of this.
+
+But indifference will not guide nations through civilization to the
+establishment of the perfect city of God. An indifferent statesman is a
+contradiction in terms; and a statesman who is indifferent on principle,
+a Laisser-faire or Muddle-Through doctrinaire, plays the deuce with us
+in the long run. Our statesmen must get a religion by hook or crook; and
+as we are committed to Adult Suffrage it must be a religion capable of
+vulgarization. The thought first put into words by the Mills when they
+said 'There is no God; but this is a family secret,' and long held
+unspoken by aristocratic statesmen and diplomatists, will not serve now;
+for the revival of civilization after the war cannot be effected by
+artificial breathing: the driving force of an undeluded popular consent
+is indispensable, and will be impossible until the statesman can appeal
+to the vital instincts of the people in terms of a common religion. The
+success of the Hang the Kaiser cry at the last General Election shews
+us very terrifyingly how a common irreligion can be used by myopic
+demagogy; and common irreligion will destroy civilization unless it is
+countered by common religion.
+
+
+THE DANGER OF REACTION
+
+And here arises the danger that when we realize this we shall do just
+what we did half a century ago, and what Pliable did in The Pilgrim's
+Progress when Christian landed him in the Slough of Despond: that is,
+run back in terror to our old superstitions. We jumped out of the
+frying-pan into the fire; and we are just as likely to jump back again,
+now that we feel hotter than ever. History records very little in the
+way of mental activity on the part of the mass of mankind except a
+series of stampedes from affirmative errors into negative ones and back
+again. It must therefore be said very precisely and clearly that the
+bankruptcy of Darwinism does not mean that Nobodaddy was Somebodaddy
+_with_ 'body, parts, and passions' after all; that the world was made
+in the year 4004 B.C.; that damnation means a eternity of blazing
+brimstone; that the Immaculate Conception means that sex is sinful and
+that Christ was parthenogenetically brought forth by a virgin descended
+in like manner from a line of virgins right back to Eve; that the
+Trinity is an anthropomorphic monster with three heads which are yet
+only one head; that in Rome the bread and wine on the altar become flesh
+and blood, and in England, in a still more mystical manner, they do
+and they do not; that the Bible is an infallible scientific manual, an
+accurate historical chronicle, and a complete guide to conduct; that we
+may lie and cheat and murder and then wash ourselves innocent in the
+blood of the lamb on Sunday at the cost of a _credo_ and a penny in the
+plate, and so on and so forth. Civilization cannot be saved by people
+not only crude enough to believe these things, but irreligious enough
+to believe that such belief constitutes a religion. The education of
+children cannot safely be left in their hands. If dwindling sects like
+the Church of England, the Church of Rome, the Greek Church, and the
+rest, persist in trying to cramp the human mind within the limits of
+these grotesque perversions of natural truths and poetic metaphors, then
+they must be ruthlessly banished from the schools until they either
+perish in general contempt or discover the soul that is hidden in every
+dogma. The real Class War will be a war of intellectual classes; and its
+conquest will be the souls of the children.
+
+
+A TOUCHSTONE FOR DOGMA
+
+The test of a dogma is its universality. As long as the Church of
+England preaches a single doctrine that the Brahman, the Buddhist, the
+Mussulman, the Parsee, and all the other sectarians who are British
+subjects cannot accept, it has no legitimate place in the counsels of
+the British Commonwealth, and will remain what it is at present, a
+corrupter of youth, a danger to the State, and an obstruction to the
+Fellowship of the Holy Ghost. This has never been more strongly felt
+than at present, after a war in which the Church failed grossly in the
+courage of its profession, and sold its lilies for the laurels of the
+soldiers of the Victoria Cross. All the cocks in Christendom have been
+crowing shame on it ever since; and it will not be spared for the sake
+of the two or three faithful who were found even among the bishops. Let
+the Church take it on authority, even my authority (as a professional
+legend maker) if it cannot see the truth by its own light: no dogma can
+be a legend. A legend can pass an ethnical frontier as a legend, but not
+as a truth; whilst the only frontier to the currency of a sound dogma as
+such is the frontier of capacity for understanding it.
+
+This does not mean that we should throw away legend and parable and
+drama: they are the natural vehicles of dogma; but woe to the Churches
+and rulers who substitute the legend for the dogma, the parable for the
+history, the drama for the religion! Better by far declare the throne
+of God empty than set a liar and a fool on it. What are called wars of
+religion are always wars to destroy religion by affirming the historical
+truth or material substantiality of some legend, and killing those who
+refuse to accept it as historical or substantial. But who has ever
+refused to accept a good legend with delight as a legend? The legends,
+the parables, the dramas, are among the choicest treasures of mankind.
+No one is ever tired of stories of miracles. In vain did Mahomet
+repudiate the miracles ascribed to him: in vain did Christ furiously
+scold those who asked him to give them an exhibition as a conjurer: in
+vain did the saints declare that God chose them not for their powers but
+for their weaknesses; that the humble might be exalted, and the proud
+rebuked. People will have their miracles, their stories, their heroes
+and heroines and saints and martyrs and divinities to exercise their
+gifts of affection, admiration, wonder, and worship, and their Judases
+and devils to enable them to be angry and yet feel that they do well to
+be angry. Every one of these legends is the common heritage of the human
+race; and there is only one inexorable condition attached to their
+healthy enjoyment, which is that no one shall believe them literally.
+The reading of stories and delighting in them made Don Quixote a
+gentleman: the believing them literally made him a madman who slew
+lambs instead of feeding them. In England today good books of Eastern
+religious legends are read eagerly; and Protestants and Atheists read
+Roman Catholic legends of the Saints with pleasure. But such fare is
+shirked by Indians and Roman Catholics. Freethinkers read the Bible:
+indeed they seem to be its only readers now except the reluctant
+parsons at the church lecterns, who communicate their discomfort to the
+congregation by gargling the words in their throats in an unnatural
+manner that is as repulsive as it is unintelligible. And this is because
+the imposition of the legends as literal truths at once changes them
+from parables into falsehoods. The feeling against the Bible has become
+so strong at last that educated people not only refuse to outrage their
+intellectual consciences by reading the legend of Noah's Ark, with its
+funny beginning about the animals and its exquisite end about the birds:
+they will not read even the chronicles of King David, which may
+very well be true, and are certainly more candid than the official
+biographies of our contemporary monarchs.
+
+
+WHAT TO DO WITH THE LEGENDS
+
+What we should do, then, is to pool our legends and make a delightful
+stock of religious folk-lore on an honest basis for all mankind. With
+our minds freed from pretence and falsehood we could enter into the
+heritage of all the faiths. China would share her sages with Spain, and
+Spain her saints with China. The Ulster man who now gives his son an
+unmerciful thrashing if the boy is so tactless as to ask how the evening
+and the morning could be the first day before the sun was created, or
+to betray an innocent calf-love for the Virgin Mary, would buy him a
+bookful of legends of the creation and of mothers of God from all parts
+of the world, and be very glad to find his laddie as interested in such
+things as in marbles or Police and Robbers. That would be better
+than beating all good feeling towards religion out of the child, and
+blackening his mind by teaching him that the worshippers of the holy
+virgins, whether of the Parthenon or St Peter's, are fire-doomed
+heathens and idolaters. All the sweetness of religion is conveyed to
+the world by the hands of storytellers and image-makers. Without their
+fictions the truths of religion would for the multitude be neither
+intelligible nor even apprehensible; and the prophets would prophesy and
+the teachers teach in vain. And nothing stands between the people and
+the fictions except the silly falsehood that the fictions are literal
+truths, and that there is nothing in religion but fiction.
+
+
+A LESSON FROM SCIENCE TO THE CHURCHES
+
+Let the Churches ask themselves why there is no revolt against the
+dogmas of mathematics though there is one against the dogmas
+of religion. It is not that the mathematical dogmas are more
+comprehensible. The law of inverse squares is as incomprehensible to the
+common man as the Athanasian creed. It is not that science is free from
+legends, witchcraft, miracles, biographic boostings of quacks as heroes
+and saints, and of barren scoundrels as explorers and discoverers. On
+the contrary, the iconography and hagiology of Scientism are as copious
+as they are mostly squalid. But no student of science has yet been
+taught that specific gravity consists in the belief that Archimedes
+jumped out of his bath and ran naked through the streets of Syracuse
+shouting Eureka, Eureka, or that the law of inverse squares must be
+discarded if anyone can prove that Newton was never in an orchard in his
+life. When some unusually conscientious or enterprising bacteriologist
+reads the pamphlets of Jenner, and discovers that they might have been
+written by an ignorant but curious and observant nurserymaid, and could
+not possibly have been written by any person with a scientifically
+trained mind, he does not feel that the whole edifice of science has
+collapsed and crumbled, and that there is no such thing as smallpox.
+It may come to that yet; for hygiene, as it forces its way into our
+schools, is being taught as falsely as religion is taught there; but in
+mathematics and physics the faith is still kept pure, and you may take
+the law and leave the legends without suspicion of heresy. Accordingly,
+the tower of the mathematician stands unshaken whilst the temple of the
+priest rocks to its foundation.
+
+
+THE RELIGIOUS ART OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
+
+Creative Evolution is already a religion, and is indeed now
+unmistakeably the religion of the twentieth century, newly arisen
+from the ashes of pseudo-Christianity, of mere scepticism, and of
+the soulless affirmations and blind negations of the Mechanists and
+Neo-Darwinians. But it cannot become a popular religion until it has its
+legends, its parables, its miracles. And when I say popular I do not
+mean apprehensible by villagers only. I mean apprehensible by Cabinet
+Ministers as well. It is unreasonable to look to the professional
+politician and administrator for light and leading in religion. He
+is neither a philosopher nor a prophet: if he were, he would be
+philosophizing and prophesying, and not neglecting both for the drudgery
+of practical government. Socrates and Coleridge did not remain soldiers,
+nor could John Stuart Mill remain the representative of Westminster in
+the House of Commons even when he was willing. The Westminster electors
+admired Mill for telling them that much of the difficulty of dealing
+with them arose from their being inveterate liars. But they would not
+vote a second time for the man who was not afraid to break the crust of
+mendacity on which they were all dancing; for it seemed to them
+that there was a volcanic abyss beneath, not having his philosophic
+conviction that the truth is the solidest standing ground in the end.
+Your front bench man will always be an exploiter of the popular religion
+or irreligion. Not being an expert, he must take it as he finds it; and
+before he can take it, he must have been told stories about it in his
+childhood and had before him all his life an elaborate iconography of it
+produced by writers, painters, sculptors, temple architects, and artists
+of all the higher sorts. Even if, as sometimes happens, he is a bit of
+an amateur in metaphysics as well as a professional politician, he must
+still govern according to the popular iconography, and not according to
+his own personal interpretations if these happen to be heterodox.
+
+It will be seen then that the revival of religion on a scientific basis
+does not mean the death of art, but a glorious rebirth of it. Indeed art
+has never been great when it was not providing an iconography for a live
+religion. And it has never been quite contemptible except when imitating
+the iconography after the religion had become a superstition. Italian
+painting from Giotto to Carpaccio is all religious painting; and it
+moves us deeply and has real greatness. Compare with it the attempts of
+our painters a century ago to achieve the effects of the old masters by
+imitation when they should have been illustrating a faith of their own.
+Contemplate, if you can bear it, the dull daubs of Hilton and Haydon,
+who knew so much more about drawing and scumbling and glazing and
+perspective and anatomy and 'marvellous foreshortening' than Giotto,
+the latchet of whose shoe they were nevertheless not worthy to unloose.
+Compare Mozart's Magic Flute, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Wagner's Ring,
+all of them reachings-forward to the new Vitalist art, with the dreary
+pseudo-sacred oratorios and cantatas which were produced for no better
+reason than that Handel had formerly made splendid thunder in that way,
+and with the stale confectionery, mostly too would-be pious to be even
+cheerfully toothsome, of Spohr and Mendelssohn, Stainer and Parry, which
+spread indigestion at our musical festivals until I publicly told Parry
+the bludgeoning truth about his Job and woke him to conviction of sin.
+Compare Flaxman and Thorwaldsen and Gibson with Phidias and Praxiteles,
+Stevens with Michael Angelo, Bouguereau's Virgin with Cimabue's, or the
+best operatic Christs of Scheffer and Mueller with the worst Christs that
+the worst painters could paint before the end of the fifteenth century,
+and you must feel that until we have a great religious movement we
+cannot hope for a great artistic one. The disillusioned Raphael could
+paint a mother and child, but not a queen of Heaven as much less skilful
+men had done in the days of his great-grandfather; yet he could reach
+forward to the twentieth century and paint a Transfiguration of the Son
+of Man as they could not. Also, please note, he could decorate a house
+of pleasure for a cardinal very beautifully with voluptuous pictures of
+Cupid and Psyche; for this simple sort of Vitalism is always with
+us, and, like portrait painting, keeps the artist supplied with
+subject-matter in the intervals between the ages of faith; so that your
+sceptical Rembrandts and Velasquezs are at least not compelled to paint
+shop fronts for want of anything else to paint in which they can really
+believe.
+
+
+THE ARTIST-PROPHETS
+
+And there are always certain rare but intensely interesting
+anticipations. Michael Angelo could not very well believe in Julius
+II or Leo X, or in much that they believed in; but he could paint
+the Superman three hundred years before Nietzsche wrote Also Sprach
+Zarathustra and Strauss set it to music. Michael Angelo won the primacy
+among all modern painters and sculptors solely by his power of shewing
+us superhuman persons. On the strength of his decoration and color alone
+he would hardly have survived his own death twenty years; and even his
+design would have had only an academic interest; but as a painter of
+prophets and sibyls he is greatest among the very greatest in his craft,
+because we aspire to a world of prophets and sibyls. Beethoven never
+heard of radioactivity nor of electrons dancing in vortices of
+inconceivable energy; but pray can anyone explain the last movement of
+his Hammerklavier Sonata, Opus 106, otherwise than as a musical picture
+of these whirling electrons? His contemporaries said he was mad, partly
+perhaps because the movement was so hard to play; but we, who can make a
+pianola play it to us over and over until it is as familiar as Pop
+Goes the Weasel, know that it is sane and methodical. As such, it
+must represent something; and as all Beethoven's serious compositions
+represent some process within himself, some nerve storm or soul storm,
+and the storm here is clearly one of physical movement, I should much
+like to know what other storm than the atomic storm could have driven
+him to this oddest of all those many expressions of cyclonic energy
+which have given him the same distinction among musicians that Michael
+Angelo has among draughtsmen.
+
+In Beethoven's day the business of art was held to be 'the sublime and
+beautiful.' In our day it has fallen to be the imitative and voluptuous.
+In both periods the word passionate has been freely employed; but in the
+eighteenth century passion meant irresistible impulse of the loftiest
+kind: for example, a passion for astronomy or for truth. For us it has
+come to mean concupiscence and nothing else. One might say to the art of
+Europe what Antony said to the corpse of Caesar: 'Are all thy conquests,
+glories, triumphs, spoils, shrunk to this little measure?' But in fact
+it is the mind of Europe that has shrunk, being, as we have seen, wholly
+preoccupied with a busy spring-cleaning to get rid of its superstitions
+before readjusting itself to the new conception of Evolution.
+
+
+EVOLUTION IN THE THEATRE
+
+On the stage (and here I come at last to my own particular function in
+the matter), Comedy, as a destructive, derisory, critical, negative art,
+kept the theatre open when sublime tragedy perished. From Moliere to
+Oscar Wilde we had a line of comedic playwrights who, if they had
+nothing fundamentally positive to say, were at least in revolt against
+falsehood and imposture, and were not only, as they claimed, 'chastening
+morals by ridicule,' but, in Johnson's phrase, clearing our minds of
+cant, and thereby shewing an uneasiness in the presence of error which
+is the surest symptom of intellectual vitality. Meanwhile the name of
+Tragedy was assumed by plays in which everyone was killed in the last
+act, just as, in spite of Moliere, plays in which everyone was married
+in the last act called themselves comedies. Now neither tragedies nor
+comedies can be produced according to a prescription which gives only
+the last moments of the last act. Shakespear did not make Hamlet out of
+its final butchery, nor Twelfth Night out of its final matrimony. And he
+could not become the conscious iconographer of a religion because he had
+no conscious religion. He had therefore to exercise his extraordinary
+natural gifts in the very entertaining art of mimicry, giving us the
+famous 'delineation of character' which makes his plays, like the novels
+of Scott, Dumas, and Dickens, so delightful. Also, he developed that
+curious and questionable art of building us a refuge from despair by
+disguising the cruelties of Nature as jokes. But with all his gifts, the
+fact remains that he never found the inspiration to write an original
+play. He furbished up old plays, and adapted popular stories, and
+chapters of history from Holinshed's Chronicle and Plutarch's
+biographies, to the stage. All this he did (or did not; for there are
+minus quantities in the algebra of art) with a recklessness which shewed
+that his trade lay far from his conscience. It is true that he never
+takes his characters from the borrowed story, because it was less
+trouble and more fun to him to create them afresh; but none the less
+he heaps the murders and villainies of the borrowed story on his own
+essentially gentle creations without scruple, no matter how incongruous
+they may be. And all the time his vital need for a philosophy drives
+him to seek one by the quaint professional method of introducing
+philosophers as characters into his plays, and even of making his heroes
+philosophers; but when they come on the stage they have no philosophy
+to expound: they are only pessimists and railers; and their occasional
+would-be philosophic speeches, such as The Seven Ages of Man and The
+Soliloquy on Suicide, shew how deeply in the dark Shakespear was as
+to what philosophy means. He forced himself in among the greatest of
+playwrights without having once entered that region in which Michael
+Angelo, Beethoven, Goethe, and the antique Athenian stage poets are
+great. He would really not be great at all if it were not that he had
+religion enough to be aware that his religionless condition was one of
+despair. His towering King Lear would be only a melodrama were it not
+for its express admission that if there is nothing more to be said of
+the universe than Hamlet has to say, then 'as flies to wanton boys are
+we to the gods: they kill us for their sport.'
+
+Ever since Shakespear, playwrights have been struggling with the same
+lack of religion; and many of them were forced to become mere panders
+and sensation-mongers because, though they had higher ambitions, they
+could find no better subject-matter. From Congreve to Sheridan they were
+so sterile in spite of their wit that they did not achieve between them
+the output of Moliere's single lifetime; and they were all (not without
+reason) ashamed of their profession, and preferred to be regarded as
+mere men of fashion with a rakish hobby. Goldsmith's was the only saved
+soul in that pandemonium.
+
+The leaders among my own contemporaries (now veterans) snatched at minor
+social problems rather than write entirely without any wider purpose
+than to win money and fame. One of them expressed to me his envy of the
+ancient Greek playwrights because the Athenians asked them, not for some
+'new and original' disguise of the half-dozen threadbare plots of the
+modern theatre, but for the deepest lesson they could draw from the
+familiar and sacred legends of their country. 'Let us all,' he said,
+'write an Electra, an Antigone, an Agamemnon, and shew what we can do
+with it.' But he did not write any of them, because these legends are
+no longer religious: Aphrodite and Artemis and Poseidon are deader than
+their statues. Another, with a commanding position and every trick of
+British farce and Parisian drama at his fingers' ends, finally could
+not write without a sermon to preach, and yet could not find texts more
+fundamental than the hypocrisies of sham Puritanism, or the matrimonial
+speculation which makes our young actresses as careful of their
+reputations as of their complexions. A third, too tenderhearted to break
+our spirits with the realities of a bitter experience, coaxed a wistful
+pathos and a dainty fun out of the fairy cloudland that lay between him
+and the empty heavens. The giants of the theatre of our time, Ibsen and
+Strindberg, had no greater comfort for the world than we: indeed much
+less; for they refused us even the Shakespearian-Dickensian consolation
+of laughter at mischief, accurately called comic relief. Our emancipated
+young successors scorn us, very properly. But they will be able to do no
+better whilst the drama remains pre-Evolutionist. Let them consider the
+great exception of Goethe. He, no richer than Shakespear, Ibsen, or
+Strindberg in specific talent as a playwright, is in the empyrean whilst
+they are gnashing their teeth in impotent fury in the mud, or at best
+finding an acid enjoyment in the irony of their predicament. Goethe is
+Olympian: the other giants are infernal in everything but their veracity
+and their repudiation of the irreligion of their time: that is, they are
+bitter and hopeless. It is not a question of mere dates. Goethe was
+an Evolutionist in 1830: many playwrights, even young ones, are still
+untouched by Creative Evolution in 1920. Ibsen was Darwinized to the
+extent of exploiting heredity on the stage much as the ancient Athenian
+playwrights exploited the Eumenides; but there is no trace in his
+plays of any faith in or knowledge of Creative Evolution as a modern
+scientific fact. True, the poetic aspiration is plain enough in his
+Emperor or Galilean; but it is one of Ibsen's distinctions that nothing
+was valid for him but science; and he left that vision of the future
+which his Roman seer calls 'the third Empire' behind him as a Utopian
+dream when he settled down to his serious grapple with realities in
+those plays of modern life with which he overcame Europe, and broke
+the dusty windows of every dry-rotten theatre in it from Moscow to
+Manchester.
+
+
+MY OWN PART IN THE MATTER
+
+In my own activities as a playwright I found this state of things
+intolerable. The fashionable theatre prescribed one serious subject:
+clandestine adultery: the dullest of all subjects for a serious author,
+whatever it may be for audiences who read the police intelligence
+and skip the reviews and leading articles. I tried slum-landlordism,
+doctrinaire Free Love (pseudo-Ibsenism), prostitution, militarism,
+marriage, history, current politics, natural Christianity, national
+and individual character, paradoxes of conventional society, husband
+hunting, questions of conscience, professional delusions and impostures,
+all worked into a series of comedies of manners in the classic fashion,
+which was then very much out of fashion, the mechanical tricks of
+Parisian 'construction' being _de rigueur_ in the theatre. But this,
+though it occupied me and established me professionally, did not
+constitute me an iconographer of the religion of my time, and thus
+fulfil my natural function as an artist. I was quite conscious of this;
+for I had always known that civilization needs a religion as a matter of
+life or death; and as the conception of Creative Evolution developed I
+saw that we were at last within reach of a faith which complied with
+the first condition of all the religions that have ever taken hold of
+humanity: namely, that it must be, first and fundamentally, a science
+of metabiology. This was a crucial point with me; for I had seen Bible
+fetichism, after standing up to all the rationalistic batteries of Hume,
+Voltaire, and the rest, collapse before the onslaught of much less
+gifted Evolutionists, solely because they discredited it as a biological
+document; so that from that moment it lost its hold, and left literate
+Christendom faithless. My own Irish eighteenth-centuryism made it
+impossible for me to believe anything until I could conceive it as
+a scientific hypothesis, even though the abominations, quackeries,
+impostures, venalities, credulities, and delusions of the camp followers
+of science, and the brazen lies and priestly pretensions of the
+pseudo-scientific cure-mongers, all sedulously inculcated by modern
+'secondary education,' were so monstrous that I was sometimes forced to
+make a verbal distinction between science and knowledge lest I should
+mislead my readers. But I never forgot that without knowledge even
+wisdom is more dangerous than mere opportunist ignorance, and that
+somebody must take the Garden of Eden in hand and weed it properly.
+
+Accordingly, in 1901, I took the legend of Don Juan in its Mozartian
+form and made it a dramatic parable of Creative Evolution. But being
+then at the height of my invention and comedic talent, I decorated it
+too brilliantly and lavishly. I surrounded it with a comedy of which it
+formed only one act, and that act was so completely episodical (it was
+a dream which did not affect the action of the piece) that the comedy
+could be detached and played by itself: indeed it could hardly be played
+at full length owing to the enormous length of the entire work, though
+that feat has been performed a few times in Scotland by Mr Esme Percy,
+who led one of the forlorn hopes of the advanced drama at that time.
+Also I supplied the published work with an imposing framework consisting
+of a preface, an appendix called The Revolutionist's Handbook, and a
+final display of aphoristic fireworks. The effect was so vertiginous,
+apparently, that nobody noticed the new religion in the centre of the
+intellectual whirlpool. Now I protest I did not cut these cerebral
+capers in mere inconsiderate exuberance. I did it because the worst
+convention of the criticism of the theatre current at that time was that
+intellectual seriousness is out of place on the stage; that the theatre
+is a place of shallow amusement; that people go there to be soothed
+after the enormous intellectual strain of a day in the city: in short,
+that a playwright is a person whose business it is to make unwholesome
+confectionery out of cheap emotions. My answer to this was to put all
+my intellectual goods in the shop window under the sign of Man and
+Superman. That part of my design succeeded. By good luck and acting, the
+comedy triumphed on the stage; and the book was a good deal discussed.
+Since then the sweet-shop view of the theatre has been out of
+countenance; and its critical exponents have been driven to take an
+intellectual pose which, though often more trying than their old
+intellectually nihilistic vulgarity, at least concedes the dignity
+of the theatre, not to mention the usefulness of those who live by
+criticizing it. And the younger playwrights are not only taking their
+art seriously, but being taken seriously themselves. The critic who
+ought to be a newsboy is now comparatively rare.
+
+I now find myself inspired to make a second legend of Creative Evolution
+without distractions and embellishments. My sands are running out; the
+exuberance of 1901 has aged into the garrulity of 1930; and the war has
+been a stern intimation that the matter is not one to be trifled with. I
+abandon the legend of Don Juan with its erotic associations, and go back
+to the legend of the Garden of Eden. I exploit the eternal interest of
+the philosopher's stone which enables men to live for ever. I am not, I
+hope, under more illusion than is humanly inevitable as to the crudity
+of this my beginning of a Bible for Creative Evolution. I am doing the
+best I can at my age. My powers are waning; but so much the better for
+those who found me unbearably brilliant when I was in my prime. It is
+my hope that a hundred apter and more elegant parables by younger hands
+will soon leave mine as far behind as the religious pictures of the
+fifteenth century left behind the first attempts of the early Christians
+at iconography. In that hope I withdraw and ring up the curtain.
+
+
+
+BACK TO METHUSELAH.
+
+PART I
+
+In the Beginning
+
+ACT I
+
+
+_The Garden of Eden. Afternoon. An immense serpent is sleeping with
+her head buried in a thick bed of Johnswort, and her body coiled in
+apparently endless rings through the branches of a tree, which is
+already well grown; for the days of creation have been longer than our
+reckoning. She is not yet visible to anyone unaware of her presence, as
+her colors of green and brown make a perfect camouflage. Near her head a
+low rock shows above the Johnswort.
+
+The rock and tree are on the border of a glade in which lies a dead fawn
+all awry, its neck being broken. Adam, crouching with one hand on the
+rock, is staring in consternation at the dead body. He has not noticed
+the serpent on his left hand. He turns his face to his right and calls
+excitedly._
+
+ADAM. Eve! Eve!
+
+EVE'S VOICE. What is it, Adam?
+
+ADAM. Come here. Quick. Something has happened.
+
+EVE [_running in_] What? Where? [_Adam points to the fawn_]. Oh! [_She
+goes to it; and he is emboldened to go with her_]. What is the matter
+with its eyes?
+
+ADAM. It is not only its eyes. Look. [_He kicks it._]
+
+EVE. Oh don't! Why doesn't it wake?
+
+ADAM. I don't know. It is not asleep.
+
+EVE. Not asleep?
+
+ADAM. Try.
+
+EVE [_trying to shake it and roll it over_] It is stiff and cold.
+
+ADAM. Nothing will wake it.
+
+EVE. It has a queer smell. Pah! [_She dusts her hands, and draws away
+from it_]. Did you find it like that?
+
+ADAM. No. It was playing about; and it tripped and went head over heels.
+It never stirred again. Its neck is wrong [_he stoops to lift the neck
+and shew her_].
+
+EVE. Dont touch it. Come away from it.
+
+_They both retreat, and contemplate it from a few steps' distance with
+growing repulsion._
+
+EVE. Adam.
+
+ADAM. Yes?
+
+EVE. Suppose you were to trip and fall, would you go like that?
+
+ADAM. Ugh! [_He shudders and sits down on the rock_].
+
+EVE [_throwing herself on the ground beside him, and grasping his knee_]
+You must be careful. Promise me you will be careful.
+
+ADAM. What is the good of being careful? We have to live here for ever.
+Think of what for ever means! Sooner or later I shall trip and fall. It
+may be tomorrow; it may be after as many days as there are leaves in
+the garden and grains of sand by the river. No matter: some day I shall
+forget and stumble.
+
+EVE. I too.
+
+ADAM [_horrified_] Oh no, no. I should be alone. Alone for ever. You
+must never put yourself in danger of stumbling. You must not move about.
+You must sit still. I will take care of you and bring you what you want.
+
+EVE [_turning away from him with a shrug, and hugging her ankles_] I
+should soon get tired of that. Besides, if it happened to you, _I_
+should be alone. I could not sit still then. And at last it would happen
+to me too.
+
+ADAM. And then?
+
+EVE. Then we should be no more. There would be only the things on all
+fours, and the birds, and the snakes.
+
+ADAM. That must not be.
+
+EVE. Yes: that must not be. But it might be.
+
+ADAM. No. I tell you it must not be. I know that it must not be.
+
+EVE. We both know it. How do we know it?
+
+ADAM. There is a voice in the garden that tells me things.
+
+EVE. The garden is full of voices sometimes. They put all sorts of
+thoughts into my head.
+
+ADAM. To me there is only one voice. It is very low; but it is so near
+that it is like a whisper from within myself. There is no mistaking it
+for any voice of the birds or beasts, or for your voice.
+
+EVE. It is strange that I should hear voices from all sides and you only
+one from within. But I have some thoughts that come from within me and
+not from the voices. The thought that we must not cease to be comes from
+within.
+
+ADAM [_despairingly_] But we shall cease to be. We shall fall like the
+fawn and be broken. [_Rising and moving about in his agitation_]. I
+cannot bear this knowledge. I will not have it. It must not be, I tell
+you. Yet I do not know how to prevent it.
+
+EVE. That is just what I feel; but it is very strange that you should
+say so: there is no pleasing you. You change your mind so often.
+
+ADAM [_scolding her_] Why do you say that? How have I changed my mind?
+
+EVE. You say we must not cease to exist. But you used to complain
+of having to exist always and for ever. You sometimes sit for hours
+brooding and silent, hating me in your heart. When I ask you what I have
+done to you, you say you are not thinking of me, but of the horror of
+having to be here for ever. But I know very well that what you mean is
+the horror of having to be here with me for ever.
+
+ADAM. Oh! That is what you think, is it? Well, you are wrong. [_He sits
+down again, sulkily_]. It is the horror of having to be with myself for
+ever. I like you; but I do not like myself. I want to be different; to
+be better, to begin again and again; to shed myself as a snake sheds its
+skin. I am tired of myself. And yet I must endure myself, not for a day
+or for many days, but for ever. That is a dreadful thought. That is what
+makes me sit brooding and silent and hateful. Do you never think of
+that?
+
+EVE. No: I do not think about myself: what is the use? I am what I am:
+nothing can alter that. I think about you.
+
+ADAM. You should not. You are always spying on me. I can never be alone.
+You always want to know what I have been doing. It is a burden. You
+should try to have an existence of your own, instead of occupying
+yourself with my existence.
+
+EVE. I _have_ to think about you. You are lazy: you are dirty: you
+neglect yourself: you are always dreaming: you would eat bad food and
+become disgusting if I did not watch you and occupy myself with you. And
+now some day, in spite of all my care, you will fall on your head and
+become dead.
+
+ADAM. Dead? What word is that?
+
+EVE [_pointing to the fawn_] Like that. I call it dead.
+
+ADAM [_rising and approaching it slowly_] There is something uncanny
+about it.
+
+EVE [_joining him_] Oh! It is changing into little white worms.
+
+ADAM. Throw it into the river. It is unbearable.
+
+EVE. I dare not touch it.
+
+ADAM. Then I must, though I loathe it. It is poisoning the air. [_He
+gathers its hooves in his hand and carries it away in the direction from
+which Eve came, holding it as far from him as possible_].
+
+Eve looks after them for a moment; then, with a shiver of disgust, sits
+down on the rock, brooding. The body of the serpent becomes visible,
+glowing with wonderful new colors. She rears her head slowly from the
+bed of Johnswort, and speaks into Eve's ear in a strange seductively
+musical whisper.
+
+THE SERPENT. Eve.
+
+EVE [_startled_] Who is that?
+
+THE SERPENT. It is I. I have come to shew you my beautiful new hood. See
+[_she spreads a magnificent amethystine hood_]!
+
+EVE [_admiring it_] Oh! But who taught you to speak?
+
+THE SERPENT. You and Adam. I have crept through the grass, and hidden,
+and listened to you.
+
+EVE. That was wonderfully clever of you.
+
+THE SERPENT. I am the most subtle of all the creatures of the field.
+
+EVE. Your hood is most lovely. [_She strokes it and pets the serpent_].
+Pretty thing! Do you love your godmother Eve?
+
+THE SERPENT. I adore her. [_She licks Eve's neck with her double
+tongue_].
+
+EVE [_petting her_] Eve's wonderful darling snake. Eve will never be
+lonely now that her snake can talk to her.
+
+THE SNAKE. I can talk of many things. I am very wise. It was I who
+whispered the word to you that you did not know. Dead. Death. Die.
+
+EVE [_shuddering_] Why do you remind me of it? I forgot it when I saw
+your beautiful hood. You must not remind me of unhappy things.
+
+THE SERPENT. Death is not an unhappy thing when you have learnt how to
+conquer it.
+
+EVE. How can I conquer it?
+
+THE SERPENT. By another thing, called birth.
+
+EVE. What? [_Trying to pronounce it_] B-birth?
+
+THE SERPENT. Yes, birth.
+
+EVE. What is birth?
+
+THE SERPENT. The serpent never dies. Some day you shall see me come out
+of this beautiful skin, a new snake with a new and lovelier skin. That
+is birth.
+
+EVE. I have seen that. It is wonderful.
+
+THE SERPENT. If I can do that, what can I not do? I tell you I am very
+subtle. When you and Adam talk, I hear you say 'Why?' Always 'Why?' You
+see things; and you say 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I
+say 'Why not?' I made the word dead to describe my old skin that I cast
+when I am renewed. I call that renewal being born.
+
+EVE. Born is a beautiful word.
+
+THE SERPENT. Why not be born again and again as I am, new and beautiful
+every time?
+
+EVE. I! It does not happen: that is why.
+
+THE SERPENT. That is how; but it is not why. Why not?
+
+EVE. But I should not like it. It would be nice to be new again; but my
+old skin would lie on the ground looking just like me; and Adam would
+see it shrivel up and--
+
+THE SERPENT. No. He need not. There is a second birth.
+
+EVE. A second birth?
+
+THE SERPENT. Listen. I will tell you a great secret. I am very subtle;
+and I have thought and thought and thought. And I am very wilful, and
+must have what I want; and I have willed and willed and willed. And I
+have eaten strange things: stones and apples that you are afraid to eat.
+
+EVE. You dared!
+
+THE SERPENT. I dared everything. And at last I found a way of gathering
+together a part of the life in my body--
+
+EVE. What is the life?
+
+THE SERPENT. That which makes the difference between the dead fawn and
+the live one.
+
+EVE. What a beautiful word! And what a wonderful thing! Life is the
+loveliest of all the new words.
+
+THE SERPENT. Yes: it was by meditating on Life that I gained the power
+to do miracles.
+
+EVE. Miracles? Another new word.
+
+THE SERPENT. A miracle is an impossible thing that is nevertheless
+possible. Something that never could happen, and yet does happen.
+
+EVE. Tell me some miracle that you have done.
+
+THE SERPENT. I gathered a part of the life in my body, and shut it into
+a tiny white case made of the stones I had eaten.
+
+EVE. And what good was that?
+
+THE SERPENT. I shewed the little case to the sun, and left it in its
+warmth. And it burst; and a little snake came out; and it became bigger
+and bigger from day to day until it was as big as I. That was the second
+birth.
+
+EVE. Oh! That is too wonderful. It stirs inside me. It hurts.
+
+THE SERPENT. It nearly tore me asunder. Yet I am alive, and can burst my
+skin and renew myself as before. Soon there will be as many snakes in
+Eden as there are scales on my body. Then death will not matter: this
+snake and that snake will die; but the snakes will live.
+
+EVE. But the rest of us will die sooner or later, like the fawn. And
+then there will be nothing but snakes, snakes, snakes everywhere.
+
+THE SERPENT. That must not be. I worship you, Eve. I must have something
+to worship. Something quite different to myself, like you. There must be
+something greater than the snake.
+
+EVE. Yes: it must not be. Adam must not perish. You are very subtle:
+tell me what to do.
+
+THE SERPENT. Think. Will. Eat the dust. Lick the white stone: bite the
+apple you dread. The sun will give life.
+
+EVE. I do not trust the sun. I will give life myself. I will tear.
+another Adam from my body if I tear my body to pieces in the act.
+
+THE SERPENT. Do. Dare it. Everything is possible: everything. Listen.
+I am old. I am the old serpent, older than Adam, older than Eve. I
+remember Lilith, who came before Adam and Eve. I was her darling as I am
+yours. She was alone: there was no man with her. She saw death as you
+saw it when the fawn fell; and she knew then that she must find out how
+to renew herself and cast the skin like me. She had a mighty will: she
+strove and strove and willed and willed for more moons than there are
+leaves on all the trees of the garden. Her pangs were terrible: her
+groans drove sleep from Eden. She said it must never be again: that the
+burden of renewing life was past bearing: that it was too much for one.
+And when she cast the skin, lo! there was not one new Lilith but two:
+one like herself, the other like Adam. You were the one: Adam was the
+other.
+
+EVE. But why did she divide into two, and make us different?
+
+THE SERPENT. I tell you the labor is too much for one. Two must share
+it.
+
+EVE. Do you mean that Adam must share it with me? He will not. He cannot
+bear pain, nor take trouble with his body.
+
+THE SERPENT. He need not. There will be no pain for him. He will implore
+you to let him do his share. He will be in your power through his
+desire.
+
+EVE. Then I will do it. But how? How did Lilith work this miracle?
+
+THE SERPENT. She imagined it.
+
+EVE. What is imagined?
+
+THE SERPENT. She told it to me as a marvellous story of something that
+never happened to a Lilith that never was. She did not know then that
+imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire;
+you will what you imagine; and at last you create what you will.
+
+EVE. How can I create out of nothing?
+
+THE SERPENT. Everything must have been created out of nothing. Look at
+that thick roll of hard flesh on your strong arm! That was not always
+there: you could not climb a tree when I first saw you. But you willed
+and tried and willed and tried; and your will created out of nothing the
+roll on your arm until you had your desire, and could draw yourself up
+with one hand and seat yourself on the bough that was above your head.
+
+EVE. That was practice.
+
+THE SERPENT. Things wear out by practice: they do not grow by it. Your
+hair streams in the wind as if it were trying to stretch itself further
+and further. But it does not grow longer for all its practice in
+streaming, because you have not willed it so. When Lilith told me what
+she had imagined in our silent language (for there were no words then) I
+bade her desire it and will it; and then, to our great wonder, the thing
+she had desired and willed created itself in her under the urging of her
+will. Then I too willed to renew myself as two instead of one; and after
+many days the miracle happened, and I burst from my skin another snake
+interlaced with me; and now there are two imaginations, two desires, two
+wills to create with.
+
+EVE. To desire, to imagine, to will, to create. That is too long a
+story. Find me one word for it all: you, who are so clever at words.
+
+THE SERPENT. In one word, to conceive. That is the word that means both
+the beginning in imagination and the end in creation.
+
+EVE. Find me a word for the story Lilith imagined and told you in your
+silent language: the story that was too wonderful to be true, and yet
+came true.
+
+THE SERPENT. A poem.
+
+EVE. Find me another word for what Lilith was to me.
+
+THE SERPENT. She was your mother.
+
+EVE. And Adam's mother?
+
+THE SERPENT. Yes.
+
+EVE [_about to rise_] I will go and tell Adam to conceive.
+
+THE SERPENT [_laughs_]!!!
+
+EVE [_jarred and startled_] What a hateful noise! What is the matter
+with you? No one has ever uttered such a sound before.
+
+THE SERPENT. Adam cannot conceive.
+
+EVE. Why?
+
+THE SERPENT. Lilith did not imagine him so. He can imagine: he can
+will: he can desire: he can gather his life together for a great spring
+towards creation: he can create all things except one; and that one is
+his own kind.
+
+EVE. Why did Lilith keep this from him?
+
+THE SERPENT. Because if he could do that he could do without Eve.
+
+EVE. That is true. It is I who must conceive.
+
+THE SERPENT. Yes. By that he is tied to you.
+
+EVE. And I to him!
+
+THE SERPENT. Yes, until you create another Adam.
+
+EVE. I had not thought of that. You are very subtle. But if I create
+another Eve he may turn to her and do without me. I will not create any
+Eves, only Adams.
+
+THE SERPENT. They cannot renew themselves without Eves. Sooner or later
+you will die like the fawn; and the new Adams will be unable to create
+without new Eves. You can imagine such an end; but you cannot desire it,
+therefore cannot will it, therefore cannot create Adams only.
+
+EVE. If I am to die like the fawn, why should not the rest die too? What
+do I care?
+
+THE SERPENT. Life must not cease. That comes before everything. It is
+silly to say you do not care. You do care. It is that care that
+will prompt your imagination; inflame your desires; make your will
+irresistible; and create out of nothing.
+
+EVE [_thoughtfully_] There can be no such thing as nothing. The garden
+is full, not empty.
+
+THE SERPENT. I had not thought of that. That is a great thought. Yes:
+there is no such thing as nothing, only things we cannot see. The
+chameleon eats the air.
+
+EVE. I have another thought: I must tell it to Adam. [_Calling_] Adam!
+Adam! Coo-ee!
+
+ADAM'S VOICE. Coo-ee!
+
+EVE. This will please him, and cure his fits of melancholy.
+
+THE SERPENT. Do not tell him yet. I have not told you the great secret.
+
+EVE. What more is there to tell? It is I who have to do the miracle.
+
+THE SERPENT. No: he, too, must desire and will. But he must give his
+desire and his will to you.
+
+EVE. How?
+
+THE SERPENT. That is the great secret. Hush! he is coming.
+
+ADAM [_returning_] Is there another voice in the garden besides our
+voices and the Voice? I heard a new voice.
+
+EVE [_rising and running to him_] Only think, Adam! Our snake has learnt
+to speak by listening to us.
+
+ADAM [_delighted_] Is it so? [_He goes past her to the stone, and
+fondles the serpent_].
+
+THE SERPENT [_responding affectionately_] It is so, dear Adam.
+
+EVE. But I have more wonderful news than that. Adam: we need not live
+for ever.
+
+ADAM [_dropping the snake's head in his excitement_] What! Eve: do not
+play with me about this. If only there may be an end some day, and yet
+no end! If only I can be relieved of the horror of having to endure
+myself for ever! If only the care of this terrible garden may pass on
+to some other gardener! If only the sentinel set by the Voice can be
+relieved! If only the rest and sleep that enable me to bear it from
+day to day could grow after many days into an eternal rest, an eternal
+sleep, then I could face my days, however long they may last. Only,
+there must be some end, some end: I am not strong enough to bear
+eternity.
+
+THE SERPENT. You need not live to see another summer; and yet there
+shall be no end.
+
+ADAM. That cannot be.
+
+THE SERPENT. It can be.
+
+EVE. It shall be.
+
+THE SERPENT. It is. Kill me; and you will find another snake in the
+garden tomorrow. You will find more snakes than there are fingers on
+your hands.
+
+EVE. I will make other Adams, other Eves.
+
+ADAM. I tell you you must not make up stories about this. It cannot
+happen.
+
+THE SERPENT. I can remember when you were yourself a thing that could
+not happen. Yet you are.
+
+ADAM [_struck_] That must be true. [_He sits down on the stone_].
+
+THE SERPENT. I will tell Eve the secret; and she will tell it to you.
+
+ADAM. The secret! [_He turns quickly towards the serpent, and in doing
+so puts his foot on something sharp_]. Oh!
+
+EVE. What is it?
+
+ADAM [_rubbing his foot_] A thistle. And there, next to it, a briar. And
+nettles, too! I am tired of pulling these things up to keep the garden
+pleasant for us for ever.
+
+THE SERPENT. They do not grow very fast. They will not overrun the whole
+garden for a long time: not until you have laid down your burden and
+gone to sleep for ever. Why should you trouble yourself? Let the new
+Adams clear a place for themselves.
+
+ADAM. That is very true. You must tell us your secret. You see, Eve,
+what a splendid thing it is not to have to live for ever.
+
+EVE [_throwing herself down discontentedly and plucking at the grass_]
+That is so like a man. The moment you find we need not last for ever,
+you talk as if we were going to end today. You must clear away some of
+those horrid things, or we shall be scratched and stung whenever we
+forget to look where we are stepping.
+
+ADAM. Oh yes, some of them, of course. But only some. I will clear them
+away tomorrow.
+
+THE SERPENT [_laughs_]!!!
+
+ADAM. That is a funny noise to make. I like it.
+
+EVE. I do not. Why do you make it again?
+
+THE SERPENT. Adam has invented something new. He has invented tomorrow.
+You will invent things every day now that the burden of immortality is
+lifted from you.
+
+EVE. Immortality? What is that?
+
+THE SERPENT. My new word for having to live for ever.
+
+EVE. The serpent has made a beautiful word for being. Living.
+
+ADAM. Make me a beautiful word for doing things tomorrow; for that
+surely is a great and blessed invention.
+
+THE SERPENT. Procrastination.
+
+EVE. That is a sweet word. I wish I had a serpent's tongue.
+
+THE SERPENT. That may come too. Everything is possible.
+
+ADAM [_springing up in sudden terror_] Oh!
+
+EVE. What is the matter now?
+
+ADAM. My rest! My escape from life!
+
+THE SERPENT. Death. That is the word.
+
+ADAM. There is a terrible danger in this procrastination.
+
+EVE. What danger?
+
+ADAM. If I put off death until tomorrow, I shall never die. There is no
+such day as tomorrow, and never can be.
+
+THE SERPENT. I am very subtle; but Man is deeper in his thought than
+I am. The woman knows that there is no such thing as nothing: the man
+knows that there is no such day as tomorrow. I do well to worship them.
+
+ADAM. If I am to overtake death, I must appoint a real day, not a
+tomorrow. When shall I die?
+
+EVE. You may die when I have made another Adam. Not before. But then,
+as soon as you like. [_She rises, and passing behind him, strolls off
+carelessly to the tree and leans against it, stroking a ring of the
+snake_].
+
+ADAM. There need be no hurry even then.
+
+EVE. I see you will put it off until tomorrow.
+
+ADAM. And you? Will you die the moment you have made a new Eve?
+
+EVE. Why should I? Are you eager to be rid of me? Only just now you
+wanted me to sit still and never move lest I should stumble and die like
+the fawn. Now you no longer care.
+
+ADAM. It does not matter so much now.
+
+EVE [_angrily to the snake_] This death that you have brought into the
+garden is an evil thing. He wants me to die.
+
+THE SERPENT [_to Adam_] Do you want her to die?
+
+ADAM. No. It is I who am to die. Eve must not die before me. I should be
+lonely.
+
+EVE. You could get one of the new Eves.
+
+ADAM. That is true. But they might not be quite the same. They could
+not: I feel sure of that. They would not have the same memories. They
+would be--I want a word for them.
+
+THE SERPENT. Strangers.
+
+ADAM. Yes: that is a good hard word. Strangers.
+
+EVE. When there are new Adams and new Eves we shall live in a garden of
+strangers. We shall need each other. [_She comes quickly behind him and
+turns up his face to her_]. Do not forget that, Adam. Never forget it.
+
+ADAM. Why should I forget it? It is I who have thought of it.
+
+EVE. I, too, have thought of something. The fawn stumbled and fell and
+died. But you could come softly up behind me and [_she suddenly pounces
+on his shoulders and throws him forward on his face_] throw me down so
+that I should die. I should not dare to sleep if there were no reason
+why you should not make me die.
+
+ADAM [_scrambling up in horror_] Make you die!!! What a frightful
+thought!
+
+THE SERPENT. Kill, kill, kill, kill. That is the word.
+
+EVE. The new Adams and Eves might kill us. I shall not make them. [_She
+sits on the rock and pulls him down beside her, clasping him to her with
+her right arm_].
+
+THE SERPENT. You must. For if you do not there will be an end.
+
+ADAM. No: they will not kill us: they will feel as I do. There is
+something against it. The Voice in the garden will tell them that they
+must not kill, as it tells me.
+
+THE SERPENT. The voice in the garden is your own voice.
+
+ADAM. It is; and it is not. It is something greater than me: I am only a
+part of it.
+
+EVE. The Voice does not tell me not to kill you. Yet I do not want you
+to die before me. No voice is needed to make me feel that.
+
+ADAM [_throwing his arm round her shoulder with an expression of
+anguish_] Oh no: that is plain without any voice. There is something
+that holds us together, something that has no word--
+
+THE SERPENT. Love. Love. Love.
+
+ADAM. That is too short a word for so long a thing.
+
+THE SERPENT [_laughs_]!!!
+
+EVE [_turning impatiently to the snake_] That heart-biting sound again!
+Do not do it. Why do you do it?
+
+THE SERPENT. Love may be too long a word for so short a thing soon. But
+when it is short it will be very sweet.
+
+ADAM [_ruminating_] You puzzle me. My old trouble was heavy; but it was
+simple. These wonders that you promise to do may tangle up my being
+before they bring me the gift of death. I was troubled with the burden
+of eternal being; but I was not confused in my mind. If I did not know
+that I loved Eve, at least I did not know that she might cease to love
+me, and come to love some other Adam and desire my death. Can you find a
+name for that knowledge?
+
+THE SERPENT. Jealousy. Jealousy. Jealousy.
+
+ADAM. A hideous word.
+
+EVE [_shaking him_] Adam: you must not brood. You think too much.
+
+ADAM [_angrily_] How can I help brooding when the future has become
+uncertain? Anything is better than uncertainty. Life has become
+uncertain. Love is uncertain. Have you a word for this new misery?
+
+THE SERPENT. Fear. Fear. Fear.
+
+ADAM. Have you a remedy for it?
+
+THE SERPENT. Yes. Hope. Hope. Hope.
+
+ADAM. What is hope?
+
+THE SERPENT. As long as you do not know the future you do not know that
+it will not be happier than the past. That is hope.
+
+ADAM. It does not console me. Fear is stronger in me than hope. I must
+have certainty. [_He rises threateningly_]. Give it to me; or I will
+kill you when next I catch you asleep.
+
+EVE [_throwing her arms round the serpent_] My beautiful snake. Oh no.
+How can you even think such a horror?
+
+ADAM. Fear will drive me to anything. The serpent gave me fear. Let it
+now give me certainty or go in fear of me.
+
+THE SERPENT. Bind the future by your will. Make a vow.
+
+ADAM. What is a vow?
+
+THE SERPENT. Choose a day for your death; and resolve to die on that
+day. Then death is no longer uncertain but certain. Let Eve vow to love
+you until your death. Then love will be no longer uncertain.
+
+ADAM. Yes: that is splendid: that will bind the future.
+
+EVE [_displeased, turning away from the serpent_] But it will destroy
+hope.
+
+ADAM [_angrily_] Be silent, woman. Hope is wicked. Happiness is wicked.
+Certainty is blessed.
+
+THE SERPENT. What is wicked? You have invented a word.
+
+ADAM. Whatever I fear to do is wicked. Listen to me, Eve; and you,
+snake, listen too, that your memory may hold my vow. I will live a
+thousand sets of the four seasons--
+
+THE SERPENT. Years. Years.
+
+ADAM. I will live a thousand years; and then I will endure no more: I
+will die and take my rest. And I will love Eve all that time and no
+other woman.
+
+EVE. And if Adam keeps his vow I will love no other man until he dies.
+
+THE SERPENT. You have both invented marriage. And what he will be to you
+and not to any other woman is husband; and what you will be to him and
+not to any other man is wife.
+
+ADAM [_instinctively moving his hand towards her_] Husband and wife.
+
+EVE [_slipping her hand into his_] Wife and husband.
+
+THE SERPENT [_laughs_]!!!
+
+EVE [_snatching herself loose from Adam_] Do not make that odious noise,
+I tell you.
+
+ADAM. Do not listen to her: the noise is good: it lightens my heart.
+You are a jolly snake. But you have not made a vow yet. What vow do you
+make?
+
+THE SERPENT. I make no vows. I take my chance.
+
+ADAM. Chance? What does that mean?
+
+THE SERPENT. It means that I fear certainty as you fear uncertainty. It
+means that nothing is certain but uncertainty. If I bind the future I
+bind my will. If I bind my will I strangle creation.
+
+EVE. Creation must not be strangled. I tell you I will create, though I
+tear myself to pieces in the act.
+
+ADAM. Be silent, both of you. I _will_ bind the future. I will be
+delivered from fear. [_To Eve_] We have made our vows; and if you must
+create, you shall create within the bounds of those vows. You shall not
+listen to that snake any more. Come [_he seizes her by the hair to drag
+her away_].
+
+EVE. Let me go, you fool. It has not yet told me the secret.
+
+ADAM [_releasing her_] That is true. What is a fool?
+
+EVE. I do not know: the word came to me. It is what you are when you
+forget and brood and are filled with fear. Let us listen to the snake.
+
+ADAM. No: I am afraid of it. I feel as if the ground were giving way
+under my feet when it speaks. Do you stay and listen to it.
+
+THE SERPENT [_laughs_]!!!
+
+ADAM [_brightening_] That noise takes away fear. Funny. The snake and
+the woman are going to whisper secrets. [_He chuckles and goes away
+slowly, laughing his first laugh_].
+
+EVE. Now the secret. The secret. [_She sits on the rock and throws her
+arms round the serpent, who begins whispering to her_].
+
+_Eve's face lights up with intense interest, which increases until an
+expression of overwhelming repugnance takes its place. She buries her
+face in her hands_.
+
+
+
+ACT II
+
+
+_A few centuries later. Morning. An oasis in Mesopotamia. Close at hand
+the end of a log house abuts on a kitchen garden. Adam is digging in the
+middle of the garden. On his right, Eve sits on a stool in the shadow
+of a tree by the doorway, spinning flax. Her wheel, which she turns by
+hand, is a large disc of heavy wood, practically a flywheel. At the
+opposite side of the garden is a thorn brake with a passage through it
+barred by a hurdle.
+
+The two are scantily and carelessly dressed in rough linen and leaves.
+They have lost their youth and grace; and Adam has an unkempt beard and
+jaggedly cut hair; but they are strong and in the prime of life. Adam
+looks worried, like a farmer. Eve, better humored (having given up
+worrying), sits and spins and thinks._
+
+A MAN'S VOICE. Hallo, mother!
+
+EVE [_looking across the garden towards the hurdle_] Here is Cain.
+
+ADAM [_uttering a grunt of disgust_]!!! [_He goes on digging without
+raising his head_].
+
+_Cain kicks the hurdle out of his way, and strides into the garden. In
+pose, voice, and dress he is insistently warlike. He is equipped with
+huge spear and broad brass-bound leather shield; his casque is a tiger's
+head with bull's horns; he wears a scarlet cloak with gold brooch over a
+lion's skin with the claws dangling; his feet are in sandals with brass
+ornaments; his shins are in brass greaves; and his bristling military
+moustache glistens with oil. To his parents he has the self-assertive,
+not-quite-at-ease manner of a revolted son who knows that he is not
+forgiven nor approved of._
+
+CAIN [_to Adam_] Still digging? Always dig, dig, dig. Sticking in the
+old furrow. No progress! no advanced ideas! no adventures! What should I
+be if I had stuck to the digging you taught me?
+
+ADAM. What are you now, with your shield and spear, and your brother's
+blood crying from the ground against you?
+
+CAIN. I am the first murderer: you are only the first man. Anybody could
+be the first man: it is as easy as to be the first cabbage. To be the
+first murderer one must be a man of spirit.
+
+ADAM. Begone. Leave us in peace. The world is wide enough to keep us
+apart.
+
+EVE. Why do you want to drive him away? He is mine. I made him out of my
+own body. I want to see my work sometimes.
+
+ADAM. You made Abel also. He killed Abel. Can you bear to look at him
+after that?
+
+CAIN. Whose fault was it that I killed Abel? Who invented killing? Did
+I? No: he invented it himself. I followed your teaching. I dug and dug
+and dug. I cleared away the thistles and briars. I ate the fruits of the
+earth. I lived in the sweat of my brow, as you do. I was a fool. But
+Abel was a discoverer, a man of ideas, of spirit: a true Progressive. He
+was the discoverer of blood. He was the inventor of killing. He found
+out that the fire of the sun could be brought down by a dewdrop. He
+invented the altar to keep the fire alive. He changed the beasts he
+killed into meat by the fire on the altar. He kept himself alive by
+eating meat. His meal cost him a day's glorious health-giving sport and
+an hour's amusing play with the fire. You learnt nothing from him: you
+drudged and drudged and drudged, and dug and dug and dug, and made me do
+the same. I envied his happiness, his freedom. I despised myself for
+not doing as he did instead of what you did. He became so happy that he
+shared his meal with the Voice that had whispered all his inventions to
+him. He said that the Voice was the voice of the fire that cooked his
+food, and that the fire that could cook could also eat. It was true: I
+saw the fire consume the food on his altar. Then I, too, made an altar,
+and offered my food on it, my grains, my roots, my fruit. Useless:
+nothing happened. He laughed at me; and then came my great idea: why not
+kill him as he killed the beasts? I struck; and he died, just as they
+did. Then I gave up your old silly drudging ways, and lived as he had
+lived, by the chase, by the killing, and by the fire. Am I not better
+than you? stronger, happier, freer?
+
+ADAM. You are not stronger: you are shorter in the wind: you cannot
+endure. You have made the beasts afraid of us; and the snake has
+invented poison to protect herself against you. I fear you myself. If
+you take a step towards your mother with that spear of yours I will
+strike you with my spade as you struck Abel.
+
+EVE. He will not strike me. He loves me.
+
+ADAM. He loved his brother. But he killed him.
+
+CAIN. I do not want to kill women. I do not want to kill my mother. And
+for her sake I will not kill you, though I could send this spear through
+you without coming within reach of your spade. But for her, I could not
+resist the sport of trying to kill you, in spite of my fear that you
+would kill me. I have striven with a boar and with a lion as to which of
+us should kill the other. I have striven with a man: spear to spear and
+shield to shield. It is terrible; but there is no joy like it. I call
+it fighting. He who has never fought has never lived. That is what has
+brought me to my mother today.
+
+ADAM. What have you to do with one another now? She is the creator, you
+the destroyer.
+
+CAIN. How can I destroy unless she creates? I want her to create more
+and more men: aye, and more and more women, that they may in turn create
+more men. I have imagined a glorious poem of many men, of more men than
+there are leaves on a thousand trees. I will divide them into two great
+hosts. One of them I will lead; and the other will be led by the man I
+fear most and desire to fight and kill most. And each host shall try
+to kill the other host. Think of that! all those multitudes of men
+fighting, fighting, killing, killing! The four rivers running with
+blood! The shouts of triumph! the howls of rage! the curses of despair!
+the shrieks of torment! That will be life indeed: life lived to the very
+marrow: burning, overwhelming life. Every man who has not seen it, heard
+it, felt it, risked it, will feel a humbled fool in the presence of the
+man who has.
+
+EVE. And I! I am to be a mere convenience to make men for you to kill!
+
+ADAM. Or to kill you, you fool.
+
+CAIN. Mother: the making of men is your right, your risk, your agony,
+your glory, your triumph. You make my father here your mere convenience,
+as you call it, for that. He has to dig for you, sweat for you, plod
+for you, like the ox who helps him to tear up the ground or the ass who
+carries his burdens for him. No woman shall make me live my father's
+life. I will hunt: I will fight and strive to the very bursting of my
+sinews. When I have slain the boar at the risk of my life, I will throw
+it to my woman to cook, and give her a morsel of it for her pains. She
+shall have no other food; and that will make her my slave. And the man
+that slays me shall have her for his booty. Man shall be the master of
+Woman, not her baby and her drudge.
+
+_Adam throws down his spade, and stands looking darkly at Eve._
+
+EVE. Are you tempted, Adam? Does this seem a better thing to you than
+love between us?
+
+CAIN. What does he know of love? Only when he has fought, when he has
+faced terror and death, when he has striven to the spending of the last
+rally of his strength, can he know what it is to rest in love in the
+arms of a woman. Ask that woman whom you made, who is also my wife,
+whether she would have me as I was in the days when I followed the ways
+of Adam, and was a digger and a drudge?
+
+EVE [_angrily throwing down her distaff_] What! You dare come here
+boasting about that good-for-nothing Lua, the worst of daughters and the
+worst of wives! You her master! You are more her slave than Adam's ox or
+your own sheepdog. Forsooth, when you have slain the boar at the risk
+of your life, you will throw her a morsel of it for her pains! Ha! Poor
+wretch: do you think I do not know her, and know you, better than that?
+Do you risk your life when you trap the ermine and the sable and the
+blue fox to hang on her lazy shoulders and make her look more like an
+animal than a woman? When you have to snare the little tender birds
+because it is too much trouble for her to chew honest food, how much of
+a great warrior do you feel then? You slay the tiger at the risk of your
+life; but who gets the striped skin you have run that risk for? She
+takes it to lie on, and flings you the carrion flesh you cannot eat. You
+fight because you think that your fighting makes her admire and desire
+you. Fool: she makes you fight because you bring her the ornaments and
+the treasures of those you have slain, and because she is courted and
+propitiated with power and gold by the people who fear you. You say that
+I make a mere convenience of Adam: I who spin and keep the house, and
+bear and rear children, and am a woman and not a pet animal to please
+men and prey on them! What are you, you poor slave of a painted face and
+a bundle of skunk's fur? You were a man-child when I bore you. Lua was a
+woman-child when I bore her. What have you made of yourselves?
+
+CAIN [_letting his spear fall into the crook of his shield arm, and
+twirling his moustache_] There is something higher than man. There is
+hero and superman.
+
+EVE. Superman! You are no superman: you are Anti-Man: you are to other
+men what the stoat is to the rabbit; and she is to you what the leech is
+to the stoat. You despise your father; but when he dies the world will
+be the richer because he lived. When you die, men will say, 'He was a
+great warrior; but it would have been better for the world if he had
+never been born.' And of Lua they will say nothing; but when they think
+of her they will spit.
+
+CAIN. She is a better sort of woman to live with than you. If Lua nagged
+at me as you are nagging, and as you nag at Adam, I would beat her black
+and blue from head to foot. I have done it too, slave as you say I am.
+
+EVE. Yes, because she looked at another man. And then you grovelled at
+her feet, and cried, and begged her to forgive you, and were ten times
+more her slave than ever; and she, when she had finished screaming and
+the pain went off a little, she forgave you, did she not?
+
+CAIN. She loved me more than ever. That is the true nature of woman.
+
+EVE [_now pitying him maternally_] Love! You call that love! You call
+that the nature of woman! My boy: this is neither man nor woman nor love
+nor life. You have no real strength in your bones nor sap in your flesh.
+
+CAIN. Ha! [_he seizes his spear and swings it muscularly_].
+
+EVE. Yes: you have to twirl a stick to feel your strength: you cannot
+taste life without making it bitter and boiling hot: you cannot love
+Lua until her face is painted, nor feel the natural warmth of her flesh
+until you have stuck a squirrel's fur on it. You can feel nothing but a
+torment, and believe nothing but a lie. You will not raise your head to
+look at all the miracles of life that surround you; but you will run ten
+miles to see a fight or a death.
+
+ADAM. Enough said. Let the boy alone.
+
+CAIN. Boy! Ha! ha!
+
+EVE [_to Adam_] You think, perhaps, that his way of life may be better
+than yours after all. You are still tempted. Well, will you pamper me as
+he pampers his woman? Will you kill tigers and bears until I have a heap
+of their skins to lounge on? Shall I paint my face and let my arms waste
+into pretty softness, and eat partridges and doves, and the flesh of
+kids whose milk you will steal for me?
+
+ADAM. You are hard enough to bear with as you are. Stay as you are; and
+I will stay as I am.
+
+CAIN. You neither of you know anything about life. You are simple
+country folk. You are the nurses and valets of the oxen and dogs and
+asses you have tamed to work for you. I can raise you out of that. I
+have a plan. Why not tame men and women to work for us? Why not bring
+them up from childhood never to know any other lot, so that they may
+believe that we are gods, and that they are here only to make life
+glorious for us?
+
+ADAM [_impressed_] That is a great thought, certainly.
+
+EVE [_contemptuously_] Great thought!
+
+ADAM. Well, as the serpent used to say, why not?
+
+EVE. Because I would not have such wretches in my house. Because I hate
+creatures with two heads, or with withered limbs, or that are distorted
+and perverted and unnatural. I have told Cain already that he is not a
+man and that Lua is not a woman: they are monsters. And now you want to
+make still more unnatural monsters, so that you may be utterly lazy and
+worthless, and that your tamed human animals may find work a blasting
+curse. A fine dream, truly! [_To Cain_] Your father is a fool skin deep;
+but you are a fool to your very marrow; and your baggage of a wife is
+worse.
+
+ADAM. Why am I a fool? How am I a greater fool than you?
+
+EVE. You said there would be no killing because the Voice would tell our
+children that they must not kill. Why did it not tell Cain that?
+
+CAIN. It did; but I am not a child to be afraid of a Voice. The Voice
+thought I was nothing but my brother's keeper. It found that I was
+myself, and that it was for Abel to be himself also, and look to
+himself. He was not my keeper any more than I was his: why did he not
+kill me? There was no more to prevent him than there was to prevent me:
+it was man to man; and I won. I was the first conqueror.
+
+ADAM. What did the Voice say to you when you thought all that?
+
+CAIN. Why, it gave me right. It said that my deed was as a mark on me, a
+burnt-in mark such as Abel put on his sheep, that no man should slay me.
+And here I stand unslain, whilst the cowards who have never slain, the
+men who are content to be their brothers' keepers instead of their
+masters, are despised and rejected, and slain like rabbits. He who bears
+the brand of Cain shall rule the earth. When he falls, he shall be
+avenged sevenfold: the Voice has said it; so beware how you plot against
+me, you and all the rest.
+
+ADAM. Cease your boasting and bullying, and tell the truth. Does not the
+Voice tell you that as no man dare slay you for murdering your brother,
+you ought to slay yourself?
+
+CAIN. No.
+
+ADAM. Then there is no such thing as divine justice, unless you are
+lying.
+
+CAIN. I am not lying: I dare all truths. There is divine justice. For
+the Voice tells me that I must offer myself to every man to be killed if
+he can kill me. Without danger I cannot be great. That is how I pay for
+Abel's blood. Danger and fear follow my steps everywhere. Without them
+courage would have no sense. And it is courage, courage, courage, that
+raises the blood of life to crimson splendor.
+
+ADAM [_picking up his spade and preparing to dig again_] Take yourself
+off then. This splendid life of yours does not last for a thousand
+years; and I must last for a thousand years. When you fighters do not
+get killed in fighting one another or fighting the beasts, you die from
+mere evil in yourselves. Your flesh ceases to grow like man's flesh: it
+grows like a fungus on a tree. Instead of breathing you sneeze, or cough
+up your insides, and wither and perish. Your bowels become rotten; your
+hair falls from you; your teeth blacken and drop out; and you die before
+your time, not because you will, but because you must. I will dig, and
+live.
+
+CAIN. And pray, what use is this thousand years of life to you, you
+old vegetable? Do you dig any better because you have been digging for
+hundreds of years? I have not lived as long as you; but I know all there
+is to be known of the craft of digging. By quitting it I have set myself
+free to learn nobler crafts of which you know nothing. I know the craft
+of fighting and of hunting: in a word, the craft of killing. What
+certainty have you of your thousand years? I could kill both of you; and
+you could no more defend yourselves than a couple of sheep. I spare you;
+but others may kill you. Why not live bravely, and die early and make
+room for others? Why, I--I! that know many more crafts than either of
+you, am tired of myself when I am not fighting or hunting. Sooner than
+face a thousand years of it I should kill myself, as the Voice sometimes
+tempts me to do already.
+
+ADAM. Liar: you denied just now that it called on you to pay for Abel's
+life with your own.
+
+CAIN. The Voice does not speak to me as it does to you. I am a man: you
+are only a grown-up child. One does not speak to a child as to a man.
+And a man does not listen and tremble in silence. He replies: he makes
+the Voice respect him: in the end he dictates what the Voice shall say.
+
+ADAM. May your tongue be accurst for such blasphemy!
+
+EVE. Keep a guard on your own tongue; and do not curse my son. It was
+Lilith who did wrong when she shared the labor of creation so unequally
+between man and wife. If you, Cain, had had the trouble of making Abel,
+or had had to make another man to replace him when he was gone, you
+would not have killed him: you would have risked your own life to save
+his. That is why all this empty talk of yours, which tempted Adam just
+now when he threw down his spade and listened to you for a while, went
+by me like foul wind that has passed over a dead body. That is why there
+is enmity between Woman the creator and Man the destroyer. I know you: I
+am your mother. You are idle: you are selfish. It is long and hard and
+painful to create life: it is short and easy to steal the life others
+have made. When you dug, you made the earth live and bring forth as I
+live and bring forth. It was for that that Lilith set you free from the
+travail of women, not for theft and murder.
+
+CAIN. The Devil thank her for it! I can make better use of my time than
+to play the husband to the clay beneath my feet.
+
+ADAM. Devil? What new word is that?
+
+CAIN. Hearken to me, old fool. I have never in my soul listened
+willingly when you have told me of the Voice that whispers to you. There
+must be two Voices: one that gulls and despises you, and another that
+trusts and respects me. I call yours the Devil. Mine I call the Voice of
+God.
+
+ADAM. Mine is the Voice of Life: yours the Voice of Death.
+
+CAIN. Be it so. For it whispers to me that death is not really death:
+that it is the gate of another life: a life infinitely splendid and
+intense: a life of the soul alone: a life without clods or spades,
+hunger or fatigue--
+
+EVE. Selfish and idle, Cain. I know.
+
+CAIN. Selfish, yes: a life in which no man is his brother's keeper,
+because his brother can keep himself. But am I idle? In rejecting your
+drudgery, have I not embraced evils and agonies of which you know
+nothing? The arrow is lighter in the hand than the spade; but the energy
+that drives it through the breast of a fighter is as fire to water
+compared with the strength that drives the spade into the harmless dirty
+clay. My strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure.
+
+ADAM. What is that word? What is pure?
+
+CAIN. Turned from the clay. Turned upward to the sun, to the clear clean
+heavens.
+
+ADAM. The heavens are empty, child. The earth is fruitful. The earth
+feeds us. It gives us the strength by which we made you and all mankind.
+Cut off from the clay which you despise, you would perish miserably.
+
+CAIN. I revolt against the clay. I revolt against the food. You say it
+gives us strength: does it not also turn into filth and smite us with
+diseases? I revolt against these births that you and mother are so proud
+of. They drag us down to the level of the beasts. If that is to be the
+last thing as it has been the first, let mankind perish. If I am to
+eat like a bear, if Lua is to bring forth cubs like a bear, then I had
+rather be a bear than a man; for the bear is not ashamed: he knows no
+better. If you are content, like the bear, I am not. Stay with the woman
+who gives you children: I will go to the woman who gives me dreams.
+Grope in the ground for your food: I will bring it from the skies with
+my arrows, or strike it down as it roams the earth in the pride of its
+life. If I must have food or die, I will at least have it at as far a
+remove from the earth as I can. The ox shall make it something nobler
+than grass before it comes to me. And as the man is nobler than the ox,
+I shall some day let my enemy eat the ox; and then I will slay and eat
+him.
+
+ADAM. Monster! You hear this, Eve?
+
+EVE. So that is what comes of turning your face to the clean clear
+heavens! Man-eating! Child-eating! For that is what it would come to,
+just as it came to lambs and kids when Abel began with sheep and goats.
+You are a poor silly creature after all. Do you think I never have these
+thoughts: I! who have the labor of the child-bearing: I! who have the
+drudgery of preparing the food? I thought for a moment that perhaps this
+strong brave son of mine, who could imagine something better, and could
+desire what he imagined, might also be able to will what he desired
+until he created it. And all that comes of it is that he wants to be a
+bear and eat children. Even a bear would not eat a man if it could get
+honey instead.
+
+CAIN. I do not want to be a bear. I do not want to eat children. I do
+not know what I want, except that I want to be something higher and
+nobler than this stupid old digger whom Lilith made to help you to bring
+me into the world, and whom you despise now that he has served your
+turn.
+
+ADAM [_in sullen rage_] I have half a mind to shew you that my spade can
+split your undutiful head open, in spite of your spear.
+
+CAIN. Undutiful! Ha! ha! [_Flourishing his spear_] Try it, old
+everybody's father. Try a taste of fighting.
+
+EVE. Peace, peace, you two fools. Sit down and be quiet; and listen to
+me. [_Adam, with a weary shrug, throws down his spade. Cain, with
+a laughing one, throws down his shield and spear. Both sit on the
+ground_]. I hardly know which of you satisfies me least, you with your
+dirty digging, or he with his dirty killing. I cannot think it was for
+either of these cheap ways of life that Lilith set you free. [_To Adam_]
+You dig roots and coax grains out of the earth: why do you not draw down
+a divine sustenance from the skies? He steals and kills for his food;
+and makes up idle poems of life after death; and dresses up his
+terror-ridden life with fine words and his disease-ridden body with fine
+clothes, so that men may glorify and honor him instead of cursing him as
+murderer and thief. All you men, except only Adam, are my sons, or my
+sons' sons, or my sons' sons' sons: you all come to see me: you all shew
+off before me: all your little wisdoms and accomplishments are trotted
+out before mother Eve. The diggers come: the fighters and killers come:
+they are both very dull; for they either complain to me of the last
+harvest, or boast to me of the last fight; and one harvest is just like
+another, and the last fight only a repetition of the first. Oh, I have
+heard it all a thousand times. They tell me too of their last-born:
+the clever thing the darling child said yesterday, and how much more
+wonderful or witty or quaint it is than any child that ever was born
+before. And I have to pretend to be surprised, delighted, interested;
+though the last child is like the first, and has said and done nothing
+that did not delight Adam and me when you and Abel said it. For you were
+the first children in the world, and filled us with such wonder and
+delight as no couple can ever again feel while the world lasts. When I
+can bear no more, I go to our old garden, that is now a mass of nettles
+and thistles, in the hope of finding the serpent to talk to. But you
+have made the serpent our enemy: she has left the garden, or is dead: I
+never see her now. So I have to come back and listen to Adam saying the
+same thing for the ten-thousandth time, or to receive a visit from the
+last great-great-grandson who has grown up and wants to impress me with
+his importance. Oh, it is dreary, dreary! And there is yet nearly seven
+hundred years of it to endure.
+
+CAIN. Poor mother! You see, life is too long. One tires of everything.
+There is nothing new under the sun.
+
+ADAM [_to Eve, grumpily_] Why do you live on, if you can find nothing
+better to do than complain?
+
+EVE. Because there is still hope.
+
+CAIN. Of what?
+
+EVE. Of the coming true of your dreams and mine. Of newly created
+things. Of better things. My sons and my son's sons are not all diggers
+and fighters. Some of them will neither dig nor fight: they are more
+useless than either of you: they are weaklings and cowards: they are
+vain; yet they are dirty and will not take the trouble to cut their
+hair. They borrow and never pay; but one gives them what they want,
+because they tell beautiful lies in beautiful words. They can remember
+their dreams. They can dream without sleeping. They have not will enough
+to create instead of dreaming; but the serpent said that every dream
+could be willed into creation by those strong enough to believe in it.
+There are others who cut reeds of different lengths and blow through
+them, making lovely patterns of sound in the air; and some of them can
+weave the patterns together, sounding three reeds at the same time, and
+raising my soul to things for which I have no words. And others make
+little mammoths out of clay, or make faces appear on flat stones, and
+ask me to create women for them with such faces. I have watched those
+faces and willed; and then I have made a woman-child that has grown up
+quite like them. And others think of numbers without having to count on
+their fingers, and watch the sky at night, and give names to the stars,
+and can foretell when the sun will be covered with a black saucepan lid.
+And there is Tubal, who made this wheel for me which has saved me so
+much labor. And there is Enoch, who walks on the hills, and hears the
+Voice continually, and has given up his will to do the will of the
+Voice, and has some of the Voice's greatness. When they come, there is
+always some new wonder, or some new hope: something to live for. They
+never want to die, because they are always learning and always creating
+either things or wisdom, or at least dreaming of them. And then you,
+Cain, come to me with your stupid fighting and destroying, and your
+foolish boasting; and you want me to tell you that it is all splendid,
+and that you are heroic, and that nothing but death or the dread of
+death makes life worth living. Away with you, naughty child; and do you,
+Adam, go on with your work and not waste your time listening to him.
+
+CAIN. I am not, perhaps, very clever; but--
+
+EVE [_interrupting him_] Perhaps not; but do not begin to boast of that.
+It is no credit to you.
+
+CAIN. For all that, mother, I have an instinct which tells me that death
+plays its part in life. Tell me this: who invented death?
+
+_Adam springs to his feet. Eve drops her distaff. Both shew the greatest
+consternation._
+
+CAIN. What is the matter with you both?
+
+ADAM. Boy: you have asked us a terrible question.
+
+EVE. You invented murder. Let that be enough for you.
+
+CAIN. Murder is not death. You know what I mean. Those whom I slay would
+die if I spared them. If I am not slain, yet I shall die. Who put this
+upon me? I say, who invented death?
+
+ADAM. Be reasonable, boy. Could you bear to live for ever? You think you
+could, because you know that you will never have to make your thought
+good. But I have known what it is to sit and brood under the terror of
+eternity, of immortality. Think of it, man: to have no escape! to be
+Adam, Adam, Adam through more days than there are grains of sand by the
+two rivers, and then be as far from the end as ever! I, who have so much
+in me that I hate and long to cast off! Be thankful to your parents, who
+enabled you to hand on your burden to new and better men, and won for
+you an eternal rest; for it was we who invented death.
+
+CAIN [_rising_] You did well: I, too, do not want to live for ever. But
+if you invented death, why do you blame me, who am a minister of death?
+
+ADAM. I do not blame you. Go in peace. Leave me to my digging, and your
+mother to her spinning.
+
+CAIN. Well, I will leave you to it, though I have shewn you a better
+way. [_He picks up his shield and spear_]. I will go back to my brave
+warrior friends and their splendid women. [_He strides to the thorn
+brake_]. When Adam delved and Eve span, where was then the gentleman?
+[_He goes away roaring with laughter, which ceases as he cries from the
+distance_] Goodbye, mother.
+
+ADAM [_grumbling_] He might have put the hurdle back, lazy hound! [_He
+replaces the hurdle across the passage_].
+
+EVE. Through him and his like, death is gaining on life. Already most of
+our grandchildren die before they have sense enough to know how to live.
+
+ADAM. No matter. [_He spits on his hands, and takes up the spade
+again_]. Life is still long enough to learn to dig, short as they are
+making it.
+
+EVE [_musing_] Yes, to dig. And to fight. But is it long enough for the
+other things, the great things? Will they live long enough to eat manna?
+
+ADAM. What is manna?
+
+EVE. Food drawn down from heaven, made out of the air, not dug dirtily
+from the earth. Will they learn all the ways of all the stars in their
+little time? It took Enoch two hundred years to learn to interpret the
+will of the Voice. When he was a mere child of eighty, his babyish
+attempts to understand the Voice were more dangerous than the wrath of
+Cain. If they shorten their lives, they will dig and fight and kill and
+die; and their baby Enochs will tell them that it is the will of the
+Voice that they should dig and fight and kill and die for ever.
+
+ADAM. If they are lazy and have a will towards death I cannot help it.
+I will live my thousand years: if they will not, let them die and be
+damned.
+
+EVE. Damned? What is that?
+
+ADAM. The state of them that love death more than life. Go on with your
+spinning; and do not sit there idle while I am straining my muscles for
+you.
+
+EVE [_slowly taking up her distaff_] If you were not a fool you would
+find something better for both of us to live by than this spinning and
+digging.
+
+ADAM. Go on with your work, I tell you; or you shall go without bread.
+
+EVE. Man need not always live by bread alone. There is something else.
+We do not yet know what it is; but some day we shall find out; and then
+we will live on that alone; and there shall be no more digging nor
+spinning, nor fighting nor killing.
+
+_She spins resignedly; he digs impatiently._
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas
+
+
+_In the first years after the war an impressive-looking gentleman of 50
+is seated writing in a well-furnished spacious study. He is dressed in
+black. His coat is a frock-coat; his tie is white; and his waistcoat,
+though it is not quite a clergyman's waistcoat, and his collar, though
+it buttons in front instead of behind, combine with the prosperity
+indicated by his surroundings, and his air of personal distinction, to
+suggest the clerical dignitary. Still, he is clearly neither dean nor
+bishop; he is rather too starkly intellectual for a popular Free Church
+enthusiast; and he is not careworn enough to be a great headmaster.
+
+The study windows, which have broad comfortable window seats, overlook
+Hampstead Heath towards London. Consequently, it being a fine afternoon
+in spring, the room is sunny. As you face these windows, you have on
+your right the fireplace, with a few logs smouldering in it, and a
+couple of comfortable library chairs on the hearthrug; beyond it and
+beside it the door; before you the writing-table, at which the clerical
+gentleman sits a little to your left facing the door with his right
+profile presented to you; on your left a settee; and on your right a
+couple of Chippendale chairs. There is also an upholstered square stool
+in the middle of the room, against the writing-table. The walls are
+covered with bookshelves above and lockers beneath.
+
+The door opens; and another gentleman, shorter than the clerical one,
+within a year or two of the same age, dressed in a well-worn tweed
+lounge suit, with a short beard and much less style in his bearing and
+carriage, looks in._
+
+THE CLERICAL GENTLEMAN [_familiar and by no means cordial_] Hallo! I
+didn't expect you until the five o'clock train.
+
+THE TWEEDED GENTLEMAN [_coming in very slowly_] I have something on my
+mind. I thought I'd come early.
+
+THE CLERICAL GENTLEMAN [_throwing down his pen_] What is on your mind?
+
+THE TWEEDED GENTLEMAN [_sitting down on the stool, heavily preoccupied
+with his thought_] I have made up my mind at last about the time. I make
+it three hundred years.
+
+THE CLERICAL GENTLEMAN [_sitting up energetically_] Now that is
+extraordinary. Most extraordinary. The very last words I wrote when you
+interrupted me were 'at least three centuries.' [_He snatches up his
+manuscript, and points to it_]. Here it is: [_reading_] 'the term of
+human life must be extended to at least three centuries.'
+
+THE TWEEDED GENTLEMAN. How did you arrive at it?
+
+_A parlor maid opens the door, ushering in a young clergyman._
+
+THE PARLOR MAID. Mr Haslam. [_She withdraws_].
+
+_The visitor is so very unwelcome that his host forgets to rise; and
+the two brothers stare at the intruder, quite unable to conceal their
+dismay. Haslam, who has nothing clerical about him except his collar,
+and wears a snuff-colored suit, smiles with a frank school-boyishness
+that makes it impossible to be unkind to him, and explodes into
+obviously unpremeditated speech._
+
+HASLAM. I'm afraid I'm an awful nuisance. I'm the rector; and I suppose
+one ought to call on people.
+
+THE TWEEDED GENTLEMAN [_in ghostly tones_] We're not Church people, you
+know.
+
+HASLAM. Oh, I don't mind that, if you don't. The Church people here are
+mostly as dull as ditch-water. I have heard such a lot about you; and
+there are so jolly few people to talk to. I thought you perhaps wouldn't
+mind. _Do_ you mind? for of course I'll go like a shot if I'm in the
+way.
+
+THE CLERICAL GENTLEMAN [_rising, disarmed_] Sit down, Mr--er?
+
+HASLAM. Haslam.
+
+THE CLERICAL GENTLEMAN. Mr Haslam.
+
+THE TWEEDED GENTLEMAN [_rising and offering him the stool_] Sit down.
+[_He retreats towards the Chippendale chairs_].
+
+HASLAM [_sitting down on the stool_] Thanks awfully.
+
+THE CLERICAL GENTLEMAN [_resuming his seat_] This is my brother Conrad,
+Professor of Biology at Jarrowfields University: Dr. Conrad Barnabas. My
+name is Franklyn: Franklyn Barnabas. I was in the Church myself for some
+years.
+
+HASLAM [_sympathizing_] Yes: one cant help it. If theres a living in
+the family, or one's Governor knows a patron, one gets shoved into the
+Church by one's parents.
+
+CONRAD [_sitting down on the furthest Chippendale with a snort of
+amusement_] Mp!
+
+FRANKLYN. One gets shoved out of it, sometimes, by one's conscience.
+
+HASLAM. Oh yes; but where is a chap like me to go? I'm afraid I'm not
+intellectual enough to split straws when theres a job in front of me,
+and nothing better for me to do. I daresay the Church was a bit thick
+for you; but it's good enough for me. It will last my time, anyhow [_he
+laughs good-humoredly_].
+
+FRANKLYN [_with renewed energy_] There again! You see, Con. It will last
+his time. Life is too short for men to take it seriously.
+
+HASLAM. Thats a way of looking at it, certainly.
+
+FRANKLYN. I was not shoved into the Church, Mr Haslam: I felt it to be
+my vocation to walk with God, like Enoch. After twenty years of it I
+realized that I was walking with my own ignorance and self-conceit, and
+that I was not within a hundred and fifty years of the experience and
+wisdom I was pretending to.
+
+HASLAM. Now I come to think of it, old Methuselah must have had to think
+twice before he took on anything for life. If I thought I was going to
+live nine hundred and sixty years, I don't think I should stay in the
+Church.
+
+FRANKLYN. If men lived even a third of that time, the Church would be
+very different from the thing it is.
+
+CONRAD. If I could count on nine hundred and sixty years I could make
+myself a real biologist, instead of what I am now: a child trying to
+walk. Are you sure you might not become a good clergyman if you had a
+few centuries to do it in?
+
+HASLAM. Oh, theres nothing much the matter with _me_: it's quite easy to
+be a decent parson. It's the Church that chokes me off. I couldnt stick
+it for nine hundred years. I should chuck it. You know, sometimes, when
+the bishop, who is the most priceless of fossils, lets off something
+more than usually out-of-date, the bird starts in my garden.
+
+FRANKLYN. The bird?
+
+HASLAM. Oh yes. Theres a bird there that keeps on singing 'Stick it or
+chuck it: stick it or chuck it'--just like that--for an hour on end in
+the spring. I wish my father had found some other shop for me.
+
+_The parlor maid comes back._
+
+THE PARLOR MAID. Any letters for the post, sir?
+
+FRANKLYN. These. [_He proffers a basket of letters. She comes to the
+table and takes them_].
+
+HASLAM [_to the maid_] Have you told Mr Barnabas yet?
+
+THE PARLOR MAID [_flinching a little_] No, sir.
+
+FRANKLYN. Told me what?
+
+HASLAM. She is going to leave you?
+
+FRANKLYN. Indeed? I'm sorry. Is it our fault, Mr Haslam?
+
+HASLAM. Not a bit. She is jolly well off here.
+
+THE PARLOR MAID [_reddening_] I have never denied it, sir: I couldnt ask
+for a better place. But I have only one life to live; and I maynt get
+a second chance. Excuse me, sir; but the letters must go to catch the
+post. [_She goes out with the letters._]
+
+_The two brothers look inquiringly at Haslam._
+
+HASLAM. Silly girl! Going to marry a village woodman and live in a hovel
+with him and a lot of kids tumbling over one another, just because the
+fellow has poetic-looking eyes and a moustache.
+
+CONRAD [_demurring_] She said it was because she had only one life.
+
+HASLAM. Same thing, poor girl! The fellow persuaded her to chuck it; and
+when she marries him she'll have to stick it. Rotten state of things, I
+call it.
+
+CONRAD. You see, she hasnt time to find out what life really means. She
+has to die before she knows.
+
+HASLAM [_agreeably_] Thats it.
+
+FRANKLYN. She hasnt time to form a well-instructed conscience.
+
+HASLAM [_still more cheerfully_] Quite.
+
+FRANKLYN. It goes deeper. She hasnt time to form a genuine conscience
+at all. Some romantic points of honor and a few conventions. A world
+without conscience: that is the horror of our condition.
+
+HASLAM [_beaming_] Simply fatuous. [_Rising_] Well, I suppose I'd better
+be going. It's most awfully good of you to put up with my calling.
+
+CONRAD [_in his former low ghostly tone_] You neednt go, you know, if
+you are really interested.
+
+HASLAM [_fed up_] Well, I'm afraid I ought to--I really must get back--I
+have something to do in the--
+
+FRANKLYN [_smiling benignly and rising to proffer his hand_] Goodbye.
+
+CONRAD [_gruffly, giving him up as a bad job_] Goodbye.
+
+HASLAM. Goodbye. Sorry--er--
+
+_As the rector moves to shake hands with Franklyn, feeling that he is
+making a frightful mess of his departure, a vigorous sunburnt young lady
+with hazel hair cut to the level of her neck, like an Italian youth in a
+Gozzoli picture, comes in impetuously. She seems to have nothing on but
+her short skirt, her blouse, her stockings, and a pair of Norwegian
+shoes: in short, she is a Simple-Lifer._
+
+THE SIMPLE-LIFER [_swooping on Conrad and kissing him_] Hallo, Nunk.
+Youre before your time.
+
+CONRAD. Behave yourself. Theres a visitor.
+
+_She turns quickly and sees the rector. She instinctively switches at
+her Gozzoli fringe with her fingers, but gives it up as hopeless._
+
+FRANKLYN. Mr Haslam, our new rector. [_To Haslam_] My daughter Cynthia.
+
+CONRAD. Usually called Savvy, short for Savage.
+
+SAVVY. I usually call Mr Haslam Bill, short for William. [_She strolls
+to the hearthrug, and surveys them calmly from that commanding
+position_].
+
+FRANKLYN. You know him?
+
+SAVVY. Rather. Sit down, Bill.
+
+FRANKLYN. Mr Haslam is going, Savvy. He has an engagement.
+
+SAVVY. I know. I'm the engagement.
+
+CONRAD. In that case, would you mind taking him into the garden while I
+talk to your father?
+
+SAVVY [_to Haslam_] Tennis?
+
+HASLAM. Rather!
+
+SAVVY. Come on. [_She dances out. He runs boyishly after her_].
+
+FRANKLYN [_leaving his table and beginning to walk up and down the room
+discontentedly_] Savvy's manners jar on me. They would have horrified
+her grandmother.
+
+CONRAD [_obstinately_] They are happier manners than Mother's manners.
+
+FRANKLYN. Yes: they are franker, wholesomer, better in a hundred ways.
+And yet I squirm at them. I cannot get it out of my head that Mother was
+a well-mannered woman, and that Savvy has no manners at all.
+
+CONRAD. There wasnt any pleasure in Mother's fine manners. That makes a
+biological difference.
+
+FRANKLYN. But there was beauty in Mother's manners, grace in them, style
+in them: above all, decision in them. Savvy is such a cub.
+
+CONRAD. So she ought to be, at her age.
+
+FRANKLYN. There it comes again! Her age! her age!
+
+CONRAD. You want her to be fully grown at eighteen. You want to force
+her into a stuck-up, artificial, premature self-possession before she
+has any self to possess. You just let her alone: she is right enough for
+her years.
+
+FRANKLYN. I have let her alone; and look at the result! Like all the
+other young people who have been let alone, she becomes a Socialist.
+That is, she becomes hopelessly demoralized.
+
+CONRAD. Well, arnt you a Socialist?
+
+FRANKLYN. Yes; but that is not the same thing. You and I were brought
+up in the old bourgeois morality. We were taught bourgeois manners and
+bourgeois points of honor. Bourgeois manners may be snobbish manners:
+there may be no pleasure in them, as you say; but they are better than
+no manners. Many bourgeois points of honor may be false; but at least
+they exist. The women know what to expect and what is expected of
+them. Savvy doesn't. She is a Bolshevist and nothing else. She has to
+improvise her manners and her conduct as she goes along. It's often
+charming, no doubt; but sometimes she puts her foot in it frightfully;
+and then I feel that she is blaming me for not teaching her better.
+
+CONRAD. Well, you have something better to teach her now, at all events.
+
+FRANKLYN. Yes: but it is too late. She doesn't trust me now. She doesn't
+talk about such things to me. She doesnt read anything I write. She
+never comes to hear me lecture. I am out of it as far as Savvy is
+concerned. [_He resumes his seat at the writing-table_].
+
+CONRAD. I must have a talk to her.
+
+FRANKLYN. Perhaps she will listen to you. You are not her father.
+
+CONRAD. I sent her my last book. I can break the ice by asking her what
+she made of it.
+
+FRANKLYN. When she heard you were coming, she asked me whether all the
+leaves were cut, in case it fell into your hands. She hasnt read a word
+of it.
+
+CONRAD [_rising indignantly_] What!
+
+FRANKLYN [_inexorably_] Not a word of it.
+
+CONRAD [_beaten_] Well, I suppose it's only natural. Biology is a dry
+subject for a girl; and I am a pretty dry old codger.
+
+[_He sits down again resignedly_].
+
+FRANKLYN. Brother: if that is so; if biology as you have worked at it,
+and religion as I have worked at it, are dry subjects like the old stuff
+they taught under these names, and we two are dry old codgers, like the
+old preachers and professors, then the Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas
+is a delusion. Unless this withered thing religion, and this dry thing
+science, have come alive in our hands, alive and intensely interesting,
+we may just as well go out and dig the garden until it is time to dig
+our graves. [_The parlor maid returns. Franklyn is impatient at the
+interruption_]. Well? what is it now?
+
+THE PARLOR MAID. Mr Joyce Burge on the telephone, sir. He wants to speak
+to you.
+
+FRANKLYN [_astonished_] Mr Joyce Burge!
+
+THE PARLOR MAID. Yes, sir.
+
+FRANKLYN [_to Conrad_] What on earth does this mean? I havnt heard from
+him nor exchanged a word with him for years. I resigned the chairmanship
+of the Liberal Association and shook the dust of party politics from
+my feet before he was Prime Minister in the Coalition. Of course, he
+dropped me like a hot potato.
+
+CONRAD. Well, now that the Coalition has chucked him out, and he is only
+one of the half-dozen leaders of the Opposition, perhaps he wants to
+pick you up again.
+
+THE PARLOR MAID [_warningly_] He is holding the line, sir.
+
+FRANKLYN. Yes: all right [_he hurries out_].
+
+_The parlor maid goes to the hearthrug to make up the fire. Conrad
+rises and strolls to the middle of the room, where he stops and looks
+quizzically down at her._
+
+CONRAD. So you have only one life to live, eh?
+
+THE PARLOR MAID [_dropping on her knees in consternation_] I meant no
+offence, sir.
+
+CONRAD. You didn't give any. But you know you could live a devil of a
+long life if you really wanted to.
+
+THE PARLOR MAID [_sitting down on her heels_] Oh, dont say that, sir.
+It's so unsettling.
+
+CONRAD. Why? Have you been thinking about it?
+
+THE PARLOR MAID. It would never have come into my head if you hadnt put
+it there, sir. Me and cook had a look at your book.
+
+CONRAD. What!
+
+
+   You and cook
+   Had a look
+   At my book!
+
+
+And my niece wouldn't open it! The prophet is without honor in his own
+family. Well, what do you think of living for several hundred years? Are
+you going to have a try for it?
+
+THE PARLOR MAID. Well, of course youre not in earnest, sir. But it does
+set one thinking, especially when one is going to be married.
+
+CONRAD. What has that to do with it? He may live as long as you, you
+know.
+
+THE PARLOR MAID. Thats just it, sir. You see, he must take me for better
+for worse, til death do us part. Do you think he would be so ready to do
+that, sir, if he thought it might be for several hundred years?
+
+CONRAD. Thats true. And what about yourself?
+
+THE PARLOR MAID. Oh, I tell you straight out, sir, I'd never
+promise to live with the same man as long as that. I wouldnt put
+up with my own children as long as that. Why, cook figured it
+out, sir, that when you were only 200, you might marry your own
+great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson and not even know who he
+was.
+
+CONRAD. Well, why not? For all you know, the man you are going to
+marry may be your great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother's
+great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson.
+
+THE PARLOR MAID. But do you think it would ever be thought respectable,
+sir?
+
+CONRAD. My good girl, all biological necessities have to be made
+respectable whether we like it or not; so you neednt worry yourself
+about that.
+
+_Franklyn returns and crosses the room to his chair, but does not sit
+down. The parlor maid goes out._
+
+CONRAD. Well, what does Joyce Burge want?
+
+FRANKLYN. Oh, a silly misunderstanding. I have promised to address a
+meeting in Middlesborough; and some fool has put it into the papers that
+I am 'coming to Middlesborough,' without any explanation. Of course, now
+that we are on the eve of a general election, political people think I
+am coming there to contest the parliamentary seat. Burge knows that I
+have a following, and thinks I could get into the House of Commons and
+head a group there. So he insists on coming to see me. He is staying
+with some people at Dollis Hill, and can be here in five or ten minutes,
+he says.
+
+CONRAD. But didn't you tell him that it's a false alarm?
+
+FRANKLYN. Of course I did; but he wont believe me.
+
+CONRAD. Called you a liar, in fact?
+
+FRANKLYN. No: I wish he had: any sort of plain speaking is better than
+the nauseous sham good fellowship our democratic public men get up for
+shop use. He pretends to believe me, and assures me his visit is quite
+disinterested; but why should he come if he has no axe to grind? These
+chaps never believe anything they say themselves; and naturally they
+cannot believe anything anyone else says.
+
+CONRAD [_rising_] Well, I shall clear out. It was hard enough to stand
+the party politicians before the war; but now that they have managed to
+half kill Europe between them, I cant be civil to them, and I dont see
+why I should be.
+
+FRANKLYN. Wait a bit. We have to find out how the world will take our
+new gospel. [_Conrad sits down again_]. Party politicians are still
+unfortunately an important part of the world. Suppose we try it on Joyce
+Burge.
+
+CONRAD. How can you? You can tell things only to people who can listen.
+Joyce Burge has talked so much that he has lost the power of listening.
+He doesnt listen even in the House of Commons.
+
+_Savvy rushes in breathless, followed by Haslam, who remains timidly
+just inside the door._
+
+SAVVY [_running to Franklyn_] I say! Who do you think has just driven up
+in a big car?
+
+FRANKLYN. Mr Joyce Burge, perhaps.
+
+SAVVY [_disappointed_] Oh, they know, Bill. Why didnt you tell us he was
+coming? I have nothing on.
+
+HASLAM. I'd better go, hadnt I?
+
+CONRAD. You just wait here, both of you. When you start yawning, Joyce
+Burge will take the hint, perhaps.
+
+SAVVY [_to Franklyn_] May we?
+
+FRANKLYN. Yes, if you promise to behave yourself.
+
+SAVVY [_making a wry face_] That will be a treat, wont it?
+
+THE PARLOR MAID [_entering and announcing_] Mr Joyce Burge.
+
+_Haslam hastily moves to the fireplace; and the parlor maid goes out and
+shuts the door when the visitor has passed in._
+
+FRANKLYN [_hurrying past Savvy to his guest with the false cordiality he
+has just been denouncing_] Oh! Here you are. Delighted to see you. [_He
+shakes Burge's hand, and introduces Savvy_] My daughter.
+
+SAVVY [_not daring to approach_] Very kind of you to come.
+
+_Joyce Burge stands fast and says nothing; but he screws up his cheeks
+into a smile at each introduction, and makes his eyes shine in a very
+winning manner. He is a well-fed man turned fifty, with broad forehead,
+and grey hair which, his neck being short, falls almost to his collar._
+
+FRANKLYN. Mr Haslam, our rector.
+
+_Burge conveys an impression of shining like a church window; and Haslam
+seizes the nearest library chair on the hearth, and swings it round for
+Burge between the stool and Conrad. He then retires to the window seat
+at the other side of the room, and is joined by Savvy. They sit there,
+side by side, hunched up with their elbows on their knees and their
+chins on their hands, providing Burge with a sort of Stranger's Gallery
+during the ensuing sitting._
+
+FRANKLYN. I forget whether you know my brother Conrad. He is a
+biologist.
+
+BURGE [_suddenly bursting into energetic action and shaking hands
+heartily with Conrad_] By reputation only, but very well, of course.
+How I wish I could have devoted myself to biology! I have always been
+interested in rocks and strata and volcanoes and so forth: they throw
+such a light on the age of the earth. [_With conviction_] There is
+nothing like biology. 'The cloud-capped towers, the solemn binnacles,
+the gorgeous temples, the great globe itself: yea, all that it inherit
+shall dissolve, and, like this influential pageant faded, leave not a
+rack behind.' Thats biology, you know: good sound biology. [_He sits
+down. So do the others, Franklyn on the stool, and Conrad on his
+Chippendale_]. Well, my dear Barnabas, what do you think of the
+situation? Dont you think the time has come for us to make a move?
+
+FRANKLYN. The time has always come to make a move.
+
+BURGE. How true! But what is the move to be? You are a man of enormous
+influence. We know that. Weve always known it. We have to consult you
+whether we like it or not. We--
+
+FRANKLYN [_interrupting firmly_] I never meddle in party politics now.
+
+SAVVY. It's no use saying you have no influence, daddy. Heaps of people
+swear by you.
+
+BURGE [_shining at her_] Of course they do. Come! let me prove to you
+what we think of you. Shall we find you a first-rate constituency
+to contest at the next election? One that wont cost you a penny. A
+metropolitan seat. What do you say to the Strand?
+
+FRANKLYN. My dear Burge, I am not a child. Why do you go on wasting your
+party funds on the Strand? You know you cannot win it.
+
+BURGE. We cannot win it; but you--
+
+FRANKLYN. Oh, please!
+
+SAVVY. The Strand's no use, Mr Burge. I once canvassed for a Socialist
+there. Cheese it.
+
+BURGE. Cheese it!
+
+HASLAM [_spluttering with suppressed laughter_] Priceless!
+
+SAVVY. Well, I suppose I shouldnt say cheese it to a Right Honorable.
+But the Strand, you know! Do come off it.
+
+FRANKLYN. You must excuse my daughter's shocking manners, Burge; but I
+agree with her that popular democratic statesmen soon come to believe
+that everyone they speak to is an ignorant dupe and a born fool into the
+bargain.
+
+BURGE [_laughing genially_] You old aristocrat, you! But believe me, the
+instinct of the people is sound--
+
+CONRAD [_cutting in sharply_] Then why are you in the Opposition instead
+of in the Government?
+
+BURGE [_shewing signs of temper under this heckling_] I deny that I
+am in the Opposition _morally_. The Government does not represent the
+country. I was chucked out of the Coalition by a Tory conspiracy. The
+people want me back. I dont want to go back.
+
+FRANKLYN [_gently remonstrant_] My dear Burge: of course you do.
+
+BURGE [_turning on him_] Not a bit of it. I want to cultivate my garden.
+I am not interested in politics: I am interested in roses. I havnt a
+scrap of ambition. I went into politics because my wife shoved me into
+them, bless her! But I want to serve my country. What else am I for? I
+want to save my country from the Tories. They dont represent the people.
+The man they have made Prime Minister has never represented the people;
+and you know it. Lord Dunreen is the bitterest old Tory left alive. What
+has he to offer to the people?
+
+FRANKLYN [_cutting in before Burge can proceed--as he evidently
+intends--to answer his own question_] I will tell you. He has
+ascertainable beliefs and principles to offer. The people know where
+they are with Lord Dunreen. They know what he thinks right and what he
+thinks wrong. With your followers they never know where they are. With
+you they never know where they are.
+
+BURGE [_amazed_] With me!
+
+FRANKLYN. Well, where are you? What are you?
+
+BURGE. Barnabas: you must be mad. You ask me what I am?
+
+FRANKLYN. I do.
+
+BURGE. I am, if I mistake not, Joyce Burge, pretty well known throughout
+Europe, and indeed throughout the world, as the man who--unworthily
+perhaps, but not quite unsuccessfully--held the helm when the ship
+of State weathered the mightiest hurricane that has ever burst with
+earth-shaking violence on the land of our fathers.
+
+FRANKLYN. I know that. I know who you are. And the earth-shaking part of
+it to me is that though you were placed in that enormously responsible
+position, neither I nor anyone else knows what your beliefs are, or even
+whether you have either beliefs or principles. What we did know was that
+your Government was formed largely of men who regarded you as a robber
+of henroosts, and whom you regarded as enemies of the people.
+
+BURGE [_adroitly, as he thinks_] I agree with you. I agree with you
+absolutely. I dont believe in coalition governments.
+
+FRANKLYN. Precisely. Yet you formed two.
+
+BURGE. Why? Because we were at war. That is what you fellows never would
+realize. The Hun was at the gate. Our country, our lives, the honor of
+our wives and mothers and daughters, the tender flesh of our innocent
+babes, were at stake. Was that a time to argue about principles?
+
+FRANKLYN. I should say it was the time of all others to confirm the
+resolution of our own men and gain the confidence and support of public
+opinion throughout the world by a declaration of principle. Do you think
+the Hun would ever have come to the gate if he had known that it would
+be shut in his face on principle? Did he not hold his own against you
+until America boldly affirmed the democratic principle and came to our
+rescue? Why did you let America snatch that honor from England?
+
+BURGE. Barnabas: America was carried away by words, and had to eat them
+at the Peace Conference. Beware of eloquence: it is the bane of popular
+speakers like you.
+
+
+   FRANKLYN} [_exclaiming_]{Well!!
+   SAVVY} [_all_]{I like that!
+   HASLAM} [_together_]{Priceless!
+
+
+BURGE [_continuing remorselessly_] Come down to facts. It wasn't
+principle that won the war: it was the British fleet and the blockade.
+America found the talk: I found the shells. You cannot win wars by
+principles; but you _can_ win elections by them. There I am with you.
+You want the next election to be fought on principles: that is what it
+comes to, doesnt it?
+
+FRANKLYN. I dont want it to be fought at all! An election is a moral
+horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood: a mud bath for every
+soul concerned in it. You know very well that it will not be fought on
+principle.
+
+BURGE. On the contrary it will be fought on nothing else. I believe a
+program is a mistake. I agree with you that principle is what we want.
+
+FRANKLYN. Principle without program, eh?
+
+BURGE. Exactly. There it is in three words.
+
+FRANKLYN. Why not in one word? Platitudes. That is what principle
+without program means.
+
+BURGE [_puzzled but patient, trying to get at Franklyn's drift in order
+to ascertain his price_] I have not made myself clear. Listen. I am
+agreeing with you. I am on your side. I am accepting your proposal.
+There isnt going to be any more coalition. This time there wont be a
+Tory in the Cabinet. Every candidate will have to pledge himself to Free
+Trade, slightly modified by consideration for our Overseas Dominions; to
+Disestablishment; to Reform of the House of Lords; to a revised scheme
+of Taxation of Land Values; and to doing something or other to keep the
+Irish quiet. Does that satisfy you?
+
+FRANKLYN. It does not even interest me. Suppose your friends do commit
+themselves to all this! What does it prove about them except that they
+are hopelessly out of date even in party politics? that they have learnt
+nothing and forgotten nothing since 1885? What is it to me that they
+hate the Church and hate the landed gentry; that they are jealous of the
+nobility, and have shipping shares instead of manufacturing businesses
+in the Midlands? I can find you hundreds of the most sordid rascals, or
+the most densely stupid reactionaries, with all these qualifications.
+
+BURGE. Personal abuse proves nothing. Do you suppose the Tories are all
+angels because they are all members of the Church of England?
+
+FRANKLYN. No; but they stand together as members of the Church of
+England, whereas your people, in attacking the Church, are all over the
+shop. The supporters of the Church are of one mind about religion: its
+enemies are of a dozen minds. The Churchmen are a phalanx: your people
+are a mob in which atheists are jostled by Plymouth Brethren, and
+Positivists by Pillars of Fire. You have with you all the crudest
+unbelievers and all the crudest fanatics.
+
+BURGE. We stand, as Cromwell did, for liberty of conscience, if that is
+what you mean.
+
+FRANKLYN. How can you talk such rubbish over the graves of your
+conscientious objectors? All law limits liberty of conscience: if a
+man's conscience allows him to steal your watch or to shirk military
+service, how much liberty do you allow it? Liberty of conscience is not
+my point.
+
+BURGE [_testily_] I wish you would come to your point. Half the time
+you are saying that you must have principles; and when I offer you
+principles you say they wont work.
+
+FRANKLYN. You have not offered me any principles. Your party shibboleths
+are not principles. If you get into power again you will find yourself
+at the head of a rabble of Socialists and anti-Socialists, of Jingo
+Imperialists and Little Englanders, of cast-iron Materialists
+and ecstatic Quakers, of Christian Scientists and Compulsory
+Inoculationists, of Syndicalists and Bureaucrats: in short, of men
+differing fiercely and irreconcilably on every principle that goes to
+the root of human society and destiny; and the impossibility of keeping
+such a team together will force you to sell the pass again to the solid
+Conservative Opposition.
+
+BURGE [_rising in wrath_] Sell the pass again! You accuse me of having
+sold the pass!
+
+FRANKLYN. When the terrible impact of real warfare swept your
+parliamentary sham warfare into the dustbin, you had to go behind the
+backs of your followers and make a secret agreement with the leaders of
+the Opposition to keep you in power on condition that you dropped all
+legislation of which they did not approve. And you could not even hold
+them to their bargain; for they presently betrayed the secret and forced
+the coalition on you.
+
+BURGE. I solemnly declare that this is a false and monstrous accusation.
+
+FRANKLYN. Do you deny that the thing occurred? Were the uncontradicted
+reports false? Were the published letters forgeries?
+
+BURGE. Certainly not. But _I_ did not do it. I was not Prime Minister
+then. It was that old dotard, that played-out old humbug Lubin. He was
+Prime Minister then, not I.
+
+FRANKLYN. Do you mean to say you did not know?
+
+BURGE [_sitting down again with a shrug_] Oh, I had to be told. But what
+could I do? If we had refused we might have had to go out of office.
+
+FRANKLYN. Precisely.
+
+BURGE. Well, could we desert the country at such a crisis? The Hun was
+at the gate. Everyone has to make sacrifices for the sake of the country
+at such moments. We had to rise above party; and I am proud to say we
+never gave party a second thought. We stuck to--
+
+CONRAD. Office?
+
+SURGE [_turning on him_] Yes, sir, to office: that is, to
+responsibility, to danger, to heart-sickening toil, to abuse and
+misunderstanding, to a martyrdom that made us envy the very soldiers in
+the trenches. If you had had to live for months on aspirin and bromide
+of potassium to get a wink of sleep, you wouldn't talk about office as
+if it were a catch.
+
+FRANKLYN. Still, you admit that under our parliamentary system Lubin
+could not have helped himself?
+
+BURGE. On that subject my lips are closed. Nothing will induce me to say
+one word against the old man. I never have; and I never will. Lubin is
+old: he has never been a real statesman: he is as lazy as a cat on
+a hearthrug: you cant get him to attend to anything: he is good for
+nothing but getting up and making speeches with a peroration that goes
+down with the back benches. But I say nothing against him. I gather that
+you do not think much of me as a statesman; but at all events I can get
+things done. I can hustle: even you will admit that. But Lubin! Oh my
+stars, Lubin!! If you only knew--
+
+_The parlor maid opens the door and announces a visitor._
+
+THE PARLOR MAID. Mr Lubin.
+
+SURGE [_bounding from his chair_] Lubin! Is this a conspiracy?
+
+_They all rise in amazement, staring at the door. Lubin enters: a man
+at the end of his sixties, a Yorkshireman with the last traces of
+Scandinavian flax still in his white hair, undistinguished in stature,
+unassuming in his manner, and taking his simple dignity for granted,
+but wonderfully comfortable and quite self-assured in contrast to
+the intellectual restlessness of Franklyn and the mesmeric
+self-assertiveness of Burge. His presence suddenly brings out the fact
+that they are unhappy men, ill at ease, square pegs in round holes,
+whilst he flourishes like a primrose.
+
+The parlor maid withdraws._
+
+LUBIN [_coming to Franklyn_] How do you do, Mr Barnabas? [_He speaks
+very comfortably and kindly, much as if he were the host, and Franklyn
+an embarrassed but welcome guest_]. I had the pleasure of meeting you
+once at the Mansion House. I think it was to celebrate the conclusion of
+the hundred years peace with America.
+
+FRANKLYN [_shaking hands_] It was long before that: a meeting about
+Venezuela, when we were on the point of going to war with America.
+
+LUBIN [_not at all put out_] Yes: you are quite right. I knew it was
+something about America. [_He pats Franklyn's hand_]. And how have you
+been all this time? Well, eh?
+
+FRANKLYN [_smiling to soften the sarcasm_] A few vicissitudes of health
+naturally in so long a time.
+
+LUBIN. Just so. Just so. [_Looking round at Savvy_] The young lady is--?
+
+FRANKLYN. My daughter, Savvy.
+
+_Savvy comes from the window between her father and Lubin._
+
+LUBIN [_taking her hand affectionately in both his_] And why has she
+never come to see us?
+
+BURGE. I don't know whether you have noticed, Lubin, that I am present.
+
+_Savvy takes advantage of this diversion to slip away to the settee,
+where she is stealthily joined by Haslam, who sits down on her left._
+
+LUBIN [_seating himself in Burge's chair with ineffable
+comfortableness_] My dear Burge: if you imagine that it is possible to
+be within ten miles of your energetic presence without being acutely
+aware of it, you do yourself the greatest injustice. How are you?
+And how are your good newspaper friends? [_Burge makes an explosive
+movement; but Lubin goes on calmly and sweetly_] And what are you doing
+here with my old friend Barnabas, if I may ask?
+
+BURGE [_sitting down in Conrad's chair, leaving him standing uneasily in
+the corner_] Well, just what you are doing, if you want to know. I am
+trying to enlist Mr Barnabas's valuable support for my party.
+
+LUBIN. Your party, eh? The newspaper party?
+
+BURGE. The Liberal Party. The party of which I have the honor to be
+leader.
+
+LUBIN. Have you now? Thats very interesting; for I thought _I_ was the
+leader of the Liberal Party. However, it is very kind of you to take it
+off my hands, if the party will let you.
+
+BURGE. Do you suggest that I have not the support and confidence of the
+party?
+
+LUBIN. I dont suggest anything, my dear Burge. Mr Barnabas will tell you
+that we all think very highly of you. The country owes you a great deal.
+During the war, you did very creditably over the munitions; and if you
+were not quite so successful with the peace, nobody doubted that you
+meant well.
+
+BURGE. Very kind of you, Lubin. Let me remark that you cannot lead a
+progressive party without getting a move on.
+
+LUBIN. You mean you cannot. I did it for ten years without the least
+difficulty. And very comfortable, prosperous, pleasant years they were.
+
+BURGE. Yes; but what did they end in?
+
+LUBIN. In you, Burge. You don't complain of that, do you?
+
+BURGE [_fiercely_] In plague, pestilence, and famine; battle, murder,
+and sudden death.
+
+LUBIN [_with an appreciative chuckle_] The Nonconformist can quote the
+prayer-book for his own purposes, I see. How you enjoyed yourself over
+that business, Burge! Do you remember the Knock-Out Blow?
+
+BURGE. It came off: don't forget that. Do _you_ remember fighting to the
+last drop of your blood?
+
+LUBIN [_unruffled, to Franklyn_] By the way, I remember your brother
+Conrad--a wonderful brain and a dear good fellow--explaining to me that
+I couldn't fight to the last drop of my blood, because I should be dead
+long before I came to it. Most interesting, and quite true. He was
+introduced to me at a meeting where the suffragettes kept disturbing me.
+They had to be carried out kicking and making a horrid disturbance.
+
+CONRAD. No: it was later, at a meeting to support the Franchise Bill
+which gave them the vote.
+
+LUBIN [_discovering Conrad's presence for the first time_] Youre right:
+it was. I knew it had something to do with women. My memory never
+deceives me. Thank you. Will you introduce me to this gentleman,
+Barnabas?
+
+CONRAD [_not at all affably_] I am the Conrad in question. [_He sits
+down in dudgeon on the vacant Chippendale_].
+
+LUBIN. Are you? [_Looking at him pleasantly_] Yes: of course you are. I
+never forget a face. But [_with an arch turn of his eyes to Savvy_] your
+pretty niece engaged all my powers of vision.
+
+BURGE. I wish youd be serious, Lubin. God knows we have passed through
+times terrible enough to make any man serious.
+
+LUBIN. I do not think I need to be reminded of that. In peace time
+I used to keep myself fresh for my work by banishing all worldly
+considerations from my mind on Sundays; but war has no respect for the
+Sabbath; and there have been Sundays within the last few years on which
+I have had to play as many as sixty-six games of bridge to keep my mind
+off the news from the front.
+
+BURGE [_scandalized_] Sixty-six games of bridge on Sunday!!!
+
+LUBIN. You probably sang sixty-six hymns. But as I cannot boast either
+your admirable voice or your spiritual fervor, I had to fall back on
+bridge.
+
+FRANKLYN. If I may go back to the subject of your visit, it seems to me
+that you may both be completely superseded by the Labor Party.
+
+BURGE. But I am in the truest sense myself a Labor leader. I--[_he
+stops, as Lubin has risen with a half-suppressed yawn, and is already
+talking calmly, but without a pretence of interest_].
+
+LUBIN. The Labor Party! Oh no, Mr Barnabas. No, no, no, no, no. [_He
+moves in Savvy's direction_]. There will be no trouble about that. Of
+course we must give them a few seats: more, I quite admit, than we
+should have dreamt of leaving to them before the war; but--[_by this
+time he has reached the sofa where Savvy and Haslam are seated. He sits
+down between them; takes her hand; and drops the subject of Labor_].
+Well, my dear young lady? What is the latest news? Whats going on? Have
+you seen Shoddy's new play? Tell me all about it, and all about the
+latest books, and all about everything.
+
+SAVVY. You have not met Mr Haslam. Our Rector.
+
+LUBIN [_who has quite overlooked Haslam_] Never heard of him. Is he any
+good?
+
+FRANKLYN. I was introducing him. This is Mr Haslam.
+
+HASLAM. How d'ye do?
+
+LUBIN. I beg your pardon, Mr Haslam. Delighted to meet you. [_To Savvy_]
+Well, now, how many books have you written?
+
+SAVVY [_rather overwhelmed but attracted_] None. I don't write.
+
+LUBIN. You dont say so; Well, what do you do? Music? Skirt-dancing?
+
+SAVVY. I dont do anything.
+
+LUBIN. Thank God! You and I were born for one another. Who is your
+favorite poet, Sally?
+
+SAVVY. Savvy.
+
+LUBIN. Savvy! I never heard of him. Tell me all about him. Keep me up to
+date.
+
+SAVVY. It's not a poet. _I_ am Savvy, not Sally.
+
+LUBIN. Savvy! Thats a funny name, and very pretty. Savvy. It sounds
+Chinese. What does it mean?
+
+CONRAD. Short for Savage.
+
+LUBIN [_patting her hand_] La belle Sauvage.
+
+HASLAM [_rising and surrendering Savvy to Lubin by crossing to the
+fireplace_] I suppose the Church is out of it as far as progressive
+politics are concerned.
+
+BURGE. Nonsense! That notion about the Church being unprogressive is one
+of those shibboleths that our party must drop. The Church is all right
+essentially. Get rid of the establishment; get rid of the bishops; get
+rid of the candlesticks; get rid of the 39 articles; and the Church of
+England is just as good as any other Church; and I don't care who hears
+me say so.
+
+LUBIN. It doesn't matter a bit who hears you say so, my dear Burge. [_To
+Savvy_] Who did you say your favorite poet was?
+
+SAVVY. I dont make pets of poets. Who's yours?
+
+LUBIN. Horace.
+
+SAVVY. Horace who?
+
+LUBIN. Quintus Horatius Flaccus: the noblest Roman of them all, my dear.
+
+SAVVY. Oh, if he is dead, that explains it. I have a theory that all the
+dead people we feel especially interested in must have been ourselves.
+You must be Horace's reincarnation.
+
+LUBIN [_delighted_] That is the very most charming and penetrating and
+intelligent thing that has ever been said to me. Barnabas: will you
+exchange daughters with me? I can give you your choice of two.
+
+FRANKLYN. Man proposes. Savvy disposes.
+
+LUBIN. What does Savvy say?
+
+BURGE. Lubin: I came here to talk politics.
+
+LUBIN. Yes: you have only one subject, Burge. I came here to talk to
+Savvy. Take Burge into the next room, Barnabas; and let him rip.
+
+BURGE [_half-angry, half-indulgent_] No; but really, Lubin, we are at a
+crisis--
+
+LUBIN. My dear Burge, life is a disease; and the only difference between
+one man and another is the stage of the disease at which he lives. You
+are always at the crisis; I am always in the convalescent stage. I enjoy
+convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worth while.
+
+SAVVY [_half-rising_] Perhaps I'd better run away. I am distracting you.
+
+LUBIN [_making her sit down again_] Not at all, my dear. You are only
+distracting Burge. Jolly good thing for him to be distracted by a pretty
+girl. Just what he needs.
+
+BURGE. I sometimes envy you, Lubin. The great movement of mankind, the
+giant sweep of the ages, passes you by and leaves you standing.
+
+LUBIN. It leaves me sitting, and quite comfortable, thank you. Go on
+sweeping. When you are tired of it, come back; and you will find England
+where it was, and me in my accustomed place, with Miss Savvy telling me
+all sorts of interesting things.
+
+SAVVY [_who has been growing more and more restless_] Dont let him shut
+you up, Mr Burge. You know, Mr Lubin, I am frightfully interested in the
+Labor movement, and in Theosophy, and in reconstruction after the war,
+and all sorts of things. I daresay the flappers in your smart set are
+tremendously flattered when you sit beside them and are nice to them
+as you are being nice to me; but I am not smart; and I am no use as
+a flapper. I am dowdy and serious. I want you to be serious. If you
+refuse, I shall go and sit beside Mr Burge, and ask him to hold my hand.
+
+LUBIN. He wouldnt know how to do it, my dear. Burge has a reputation as
+a profligate--
+
+BURGE [_starting_] Lubin: this is monstrous. I--
+
+LUBIN [_continuing_]--but he is really a model of domesticity. His name
+is coupled with all the most celebrated beauties; but for him there is
+only one woman; and that is not you, my dear, but his very charming
+wife.
+
+BURGE. You are destroying my character in the act of pretending to save
+it. Have the goodness to confine yourself to your own character and your
+own wife. Both of them need all your attention.
+
+LUBIN. I have the privilege of my age and of my transparent innocence. I
+have not to struggle with your volcanic energy.
+
+BURGE [_with an immense sense of power_] No, by George!
+
+FRANKLYN. I think I shall speak both for my brother and myself, and
+possibly also for my daughter, if I say that since the object of your
+visit and Mr Joyce Burge's is to some extent political, we should hear
+with great interest something about your political aims, Mr Lubin.
+
+LUBIN [_assenting with complete good humor, and becoming attentive,
+clear, and businesslike in his tone_] By all means, Mr Barnabas. What
+we have to consider first, I take it, is what prospect there is of our
+finding you beside us in the House after the next election.
+
+FRANKLYN. When I speak of politics, Mr Lubin, I am not thinking of
+elections, or available seats, or party funds, or the registers, or
+even, I am sorry to have to add, of parliament as it exists at present.
+I had much rather you talked about bridge than about electioneering: it
+is the more interesting game of the two.
+
+BURGE. He wants to discuss principles, Lubin.
+
+LUBIN [_very cool and clear_] I understand Mr Barnabas quite well. But
+elections are unsettled things; principles are settled things.
+
+CONRAD [_impatiently_] Great Heavens!--
+
+LUBIN [_interrupting him with quiet authority_] One moment, Dr Barnabas.
+The main principles on which modern civilized society is founded
+are pretty well understood among educated people. That is what our
+dangerously half-educated masses and their pet demagogues--if Burge will
+excuse that expression--
+
+BURGE. Dont mind me. Go on. I shall have something to say presently.
+
+LUBIN.--that is what our dangerously half-educated people do not
+realize. Take all this fuss about the Labor Party, with its imaginary
+new principles and new politics. The Labor members will find that
+the immutable laws of political economy take no more notice of their
+ambitions and aspirations than the law of gravitation. I speak, if I may
+say so, with knowledge; for I have made a special, study of the Labor
+question.
+
+FRANKLYN [_with interest and some surprise_] Indeed?
+
+LUBIN. Yes. It occurred quite at the beginning of my career. I was asked
+to deliver an address to the students at the Working Men's College; and
+I was strongly advised to comply, as Gladstone and Morley and others
+were doing that sort of thing at the moment. It was rather a troublesome
+job, because I had not gone into political economy at the time. As you
+know, at the university I was a classical scholar; and my profession
+was the Law. But I looked up the text-books, and got up the case most
+carefully. I found that the correct view is that all this Trade Unionism
+and Socialism and so forth is founded on the ignorant delusion that
+wages and the production and distribution of wealth can be controlled by
+legislation or by any human action whatever. They obey fixed scientific
+laws, which have been ascertained and settled finally by the highest
+economic authorities. Naturally I do not at this distance of time
+remember the exact process of reasoning; but I can get up the case again
+at any time in a couple of days; and you may rely on me absolutely,
+should the occasion arise, to deal with all these ignorant and
+unpractical people in a conclusive and convincing way, except, of
+course, as far as it may be advisable to indulge and flatter them a
+little so as to let them down without creating ill feeling in the
+working-class electorate. In short, I can get that lecture up again
+almost at a moment's notice.
+
+SAVVY. But, Mr Lubin, I have had a university education too; and all
+this about wages and distribution being fixed by immutable laws of
+political economy is obsolete rot.
+
+FRANKLYN [_shocked_] Oh, my dear! That is not polite.
+
+LUBIN. No, no, no. Dont scold her. She mustnt be scolded. [_To Savvy_] I
+understand. You are a disciple of Karl Marx.
+
+SAVVY. No, no. Karl Marx's economics are all rot.
+
+LUBIN [_at last a little taken aback_] Dear me!
+
+SAVVY. You must excuse me, Mr Lubin; but it's like hearing a man talk
+about the Garden of Eden.
+
+CONRAD. Why shouldnt he talk about the Garden of Eden? It was a first
+attempt at biology anyhow.
+
+LUBIN [_recovering his self-possession_] I am sound on the Garden of
+Eden. I have heard of Darwin.
+
+SAVVY. But Darwin is all rot.
+
+LUBIN. What! Already!
+
+SAVVY. It's no good your smiling at me like a Cheshire cat, Mr Lubin;
+and I am not going to sit here mumchance like an old-fashioned goody
+goody wife while you men monopolize the conversation and pay out the
+very ghastliest exploded drivel as the latest thing in politics. I am
+not giving you my own ideas, Mr Lubin, but just the regular orthodox
+science of today. Only the most awful old fossils think that Socialism
+is bad economics and that Darwin invented Evolution. Ask Papa. Ask
+Uncle. Ask the first person you meet in the street. [_She rises and
+crosses to Haslam_]. Give me a cigaret, Bill, will you?
+
+HASLAM. Priceless. [_He complies_].
+
+FRANKLYN. Savvy has not lived long enough to have any manners, Mr Lubin;
+but that is where you stand with the younger generation. Dont smoke,
+dear.
+
+_Savvy, with a shrug of rather mutinous resignation, throws the cigaret
+into the fire. Haslam, on the point of lighting one for himself, changes
+his mind._
+
+LUBIN [_shrewd and serious_] Mr Barnabas: I confess I am surprised; and
+I will not pretend that I am convinced. But I am open to conviction. I
+may be wrong.
+
+BURGE [_in a burst of irony_] Oh no. Impossible! Impossible!
+
+LUBIN. Yes, Mr Barnabas, though I do not possess Burge's genius for
+being always wrong, I have been in that position once or twice. I could
+not conceal from you, even if I wished to, that my time has been so
+completely filled by my professional work as a lawyer, and later on
+by my duties as leader of the House of Commons in the days when Prime
+Ministers were also leaders--
+
+BURGE [_stung_] Not to mention bridge and smart society.
+
+LUBIN.--not to mention the continual and trying effort to make Burge
+behave himself, that I have not been able to keep my academic reading up
+to date. I have kept my classics brushed up out of sheer love for them;
+but my economics and my science, such as they were, may possibly be a
+little rusty. Yet I think I may say that if you and your brother will
+be so good as to put me on the track of the necessary documents, I will
+undertake to put the case to the House or to the country to your entire
+satisfaction. You see, as long as you can shew these troublesome
+half-educated people who want to turn the world upside down that they
+are talking nonsense, it really does not matter very much whether you do
+it in terms of what Miss Barnabas calls obsolete rot or in terms of
+what her granddaughter will probably call unmitigated tosh. I have no
+objection whatever to denounce Karl Marx. Anything I can say against
+Darwin will please a large body of sincerely pious voters. If it will be
+easier to carry on the business of the country on the understanding
+that the present state of things is to be called Socialism, I have no
+objection in the world to call it Socialism. There is the precedent
+of the Emperor Constantine, who saved the society of his own day by
+agreeing to call his Imperialism Christianity. Mind: I must not go ahead
+of the electorate. You must not call a voter a Socialist until--
+
+FRANKLYN. Until he is a Socialist. Agreed.
+
+LUBIN. Oh, not at all. You need not wait for that. You must not call
+him a Socialist until he wishes to be called a Socialist: that is all.
+Surely you would not say that I must not address my constituents as
+gentlemen until they are gentlemen. I address them as gentlemen because
+they wish to be so addressed. [_He rises from the sofa and goes to
+Franklyn, placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder_]. Do not be afraid
+of Socialism, Mr Barnabas. You need not tremble for your property or
+your position or your dignity. England will remain what England is, no
+matter what new political names may come into vogue. I do not intend to
+resist the transition to Socialism. You may depend on me to guide it, to
+lead it, to give suitable expression to its aspirations, and to steer it
+clear of Utopian absurdities. I can honestly ask for your support on the
+most advanced Socialist grounds no less than on the soundest Liberal
+ones.
+
+BURGE. In short, Lubin, youre incorrigible. You dont believe anything
+is going to change. The millions are still to toil--the people--my
+people--for I am a man of the people--
+
+LUBIN [_interrupting him contemptuously_] Dont be ridiculous, Burge. You
+are a country solicitor, further removed from the people, more foreign
+to them, more jealous of letting them up to your level, than any duke or
+any archbishop.
+
+BURGE [_hotly_] I deny it. You think I have never been poor. You think
+I have never cleaned my own boots. You think my fingers have never come
+out through the soles when I was cleaning them. You think--
+
+LUBIN. I think you fall into the very common mistake of supposing that
+it is poverty that makes the proletarian and money that makes the
+gentleman. You are quite wrong. You never belonged to the people: you
+belonged to the impecunious. Impecuniosity and broken boots are the lot
+of the unsuccessful middle class, and the commonplaces of the early
+struggles of the professional and younger son class. I defy you to find
+a farm laborer in England with broken boots. Call a mechanic one of the
+poor, and he'll punch your head. When you talk to your constituents
+about the toiling millions, they don't consider that you are referring
+to them. They are all third cousins of somebody with a title or a park.
+I am a Yorkshireman, my friend. I know England; and you don't. If you
+did you would know--
+
+SURGE. What do you know that I don't know?
+
+LUBIN. I know that we are taking up too much of Mr Barnabas's time.
+[_Franklyn rises_]. May I take it, my dear Barnabas, that I may count
+on your support if we succeed in forcing an election before the new
+register is in full working order?
+
+SURGE [_rising also_] May the party count on your support? I say nothing
+about myself. Can the party depend on you? Is there any question of
+yours that I have left unanswered?
+
+
+CONRAD. We havnt asked you any, you know.
+
+BURGE. May I take that as a mark of confidence?
+
+CONRAD. If I were a laborer in your constituency, I should ask you a
+biological question?
+
+LUBIN. No you wouldnt, my dear Doctor. Laborers never ask questions.
+
+BURGE. Ask it now. I have never flinched from being heckled. Out with
+it. Is it about the land?
+
+CONRAD. No.
+
+SURGE. Is it about the Church?
+
+CONRAD. No.
+
+BURGE. Is it about the House of Lords?
+
+CONRAD. No.
+
+BURGE. Is it about Proportional Representation?
+
+CONRAD. No.
+
+SURGE. Is it about Free Trade?
+
+CONRAD. No.
+
+SURGE. Is it about the priest in the school?
+
+CONRAD. No.
+
+BURGE. Is it about Ireland?
+
+CONRAD. No.
+
+BURGE. Is it about Germany?
+
+CONRAD. No.
+
+BURGE. Well, is it about Republicanism? Come! I wont flinch. Is it about
+the Monarchy?
+
+CONRAD. No.
+
+SURGE. Well, what the devil is it about, then?
+
+CONRAD. You understand that I am asking the question in the character of
+a laborer who earned thirteen shillings a week before the war and earns
+thirty now, when he can get it?
+
+BURGE. Yes: I understand that. I am ready for you. Out with it.
+
+CONRAD. And whom you propose to represent n parliament?
+
+SURGE. Yes, yes, yes. Come on.
+
+CONRAD. The question is this. Would you allow your son to marry my
+daughter, or your daughter to marry my son?
+
+BURGE [_taken aback_] Oh, come! Thats not a political question.
+
+CONRAD. Then, as a biologist, I don't take the slightest interest in
+your politics; and I shall not walk across the street to vote for you or
+anyone else at the election. Good evening.
+
+LUBIN. Serve you right, Burge! Dr Barnabas: you have my assurance that
+my daughter shall marry the man of her choice, whether he be lord or
+laborer. May _I_ count on your support?
+
+SURGE [_hurling the epithet at him_] Humbug!
+
+SAVVY. Stop. [_They all stop short in the movement of leave-taking to
+look at her_]. Daddy: are you going to let them off like this? How are
+they to know anything if nobody ever tells them? If you don't, I will.
+
+CONRAD. You cant. You didn't read my book; and you know nothing about
+it. You just hold your tongue.
+
+SAVVY. I just wont, Nunk. I shall have a vote when I am thirty; and I
+ought to have it now. Why are these two ridiculous people to be allowed
+to come in and walk over us as if the world existed only to play their
+silly parliamentary game?
+
+FRANKLYN [_severely_] Savvy: you really must not be uncivil to our
+guests.
+
+SAVVY. I'm sorry. But Mr Lubin didn't stand on much ceremony with me,
+did he? And Mr Burge hasnt addressed a single word to me. I'm not going
+to stand it. You and Nunk have a much better program than either of
+them. It's the only one we are going to vote for; and they ought to be
+told about it for the credit of the family and the good of their own
+souls. You just tip them a chapter from the gospel of the brothers
+Barnabas, Daddy.
+
+_Lubin and Burge turn inquiringly to Franklyn, suspecting a move to form
+a new party._
+
+FRANKLYN. It is quite true, Mr Lubin, that I and my brother have a
+little program of our own which--
+
+CONRAD [_interrupting_] It's not a little program: it's an almighty big
+one. It's not our own: it's the program of the whole of civilization.
+
+BURGE. Then why split the party before you have put it to us? For God's
+sake let us have no more splits. I am here to learn. I am here to gather
+your opinions and represent them. I invite you to put your views before
+me. I offer myself to be heckled. You have asked me only an absurd
+non-political question.
+
+FRANKLYN. Candidly, I fear our program will be thrown away on you. It
+would not interest you.
+
+BURGE [_with challenging audacity_] Try. Lubin can go if he likes; but I
+am still open to new ideas, if only I can find them.
+
+FRANKLYN [_to Lubin_] Are you prepared to listen, Mr Lubin; or shall I
+thank you for your very kind and welcome visit, and say good evening?
+
+LUBIN [_sitting down resignedly on the settee, but involuntarily making
+a movement which looks like the stifling of a yawn_] With pleasure, Mr
+Barnabas. Of course you know that before I can adopt any new plank
+in the party platform, it will have to reach me through the National
+Liberal Federation, which you can approach through your local Liberal
+and Radical Association.
+
+FRANKLYN. I could recall to you several instances of the addition
+to your party program of measures of which no local branch of your
+Federation had ever dreamt. But I understand that you are not really
+interested. I will spare you, and drop the subject.
+
+LUBIN [_waking up a little_] You quite misunderstand me. Please do not
+take it in that way. I only--
+
+BURGE [_talking him down_] Never mind the Federation: _I_ will answer
+for the Federation. Go on, Barnabas: go on. Never mind Lubin [_he sits
+down in the chair from which Lubin first displaced him_].
+
+FRANKLYN. Our program is only that the term of human life shall be
+extended to three hundred years.
+
+LUBIN [_softly_] Eh?
+
+BURGE [_explosively_] What!
+
+SAVVY. Our election cry is 'Back to Methuselah!'
+
+HASLAM. Priceless!
+
+_Lubin and Surge look at one another._
+
+CONRAD. No. We are not mad.
+
+SAVVY. Theyre not joking either. They mean it.
+
+LUBIN [_cautiously_] Assuming that, in some sense which I am for the
+moment unable to fathom, you are in earnest, Mr Barnabas, may I ask what
+this has to do with politics?
+
+FRANKLYN. The connection is very evident. You are now, Mr Lubin, within
+immediate reach of your seventieth year. Mr Joyce Surge is your junior
+by about eleven years. You will go down to posterity as one of a
+European group of immature statesmen and monarchs who, doing the very
+best for your respective countries of which you were capable, succeeded
+in all-but-wrecking the civilization of Europe, and did, in effect, wipe
+out of existence many millions of its inhabitants.
+
+BURGE. Less than a million.
+
+FRANKLYN. That was our loss alone.
+
+BURGE. Oh, if you count foreigners--!
+
+HAS LAM. God counts foreigners, you know.
+
+SAVVY [_with intense satisfaction_] Well said, Bill.
+
+FRANKLYN. I am not blaming you. Your task was beyond human capacity.
+What with our huge armaments, our terrible engines of destruction, our
+systems of coercion manned by an irresistible police, you were called on
+to control powers so gigantic that one shudders at the thought of their
+being entrusted even to an infinitely experienced and benevolent God,
+much less to mortal men whose whole life does not last a hundred years.
+
+BURGE. We won the war: don't forget that.
+
+FRANKLYN. No: the soldiers and sailors won it, and left you to finish
+it. And you were so utterly incompetent that the multitudes of children
+slain by hunger in the first years of peace made us all wish we were at
+war again.
+
+CONRAD. It's no use arguing about it. It is now absolutely certain that
+the political and social problems raised by our civilization cannot be
+solved by mere human mushrooms who decay and die when they are just
+beginning to have a glimmer of the wisdom and knowledge needed for their
+own government.
+
+LUBIN. Quite an interesting idea, Doctor. Extravagant. Fantastic. But
+quite interesting. When I was young I used to feel my human limitations
+very acutely.
+
+BURGE. God knows I have often felt that I could not go on if it had not
+been for the sense that I was only an instrument in the hands of a Power
+above us.
+
+CONRAD. I'm glad you both agree with us, and with one another.
+
+LUBIN. I have not gone so far as that, I think. After all, we have had
+many very able political leaders even within your recollection and mine.
+
+FRANKLYN. Have you read the recent biographies--Dilke's, for
+instance--which revealed the truth about them?
+
+LUBIN. I did not discover any new truth revealed in these books, Mr
+Barnabas.
+
+FRANKLYN. What! Not the truth that England was governed all that time by
+a little woman who knew her own mind?
+
+SAVVY. Hear, hear!
+
+LUBIN. That often happens. Which woman do you mean?
+
+FRANKLYN. Queen Victoria, to whom your Prime Ministers stood in the
+relation of naughty children whose heads she knocked together when their
+tempers and quarrels became intolerable. Within thirteen years of her
+death Europe became a hell.
+
+SURGE. Quite true. That was because she was piously brought up, and
+regarded herself as an instrument. If a statesman remembers that he is
+only an instrument, and feels quite sure that he is rightly interpreting
+the divine purpose, he will come out all right, you know.
+
+FRANKLYN. The Kaiser felt like that. Did he come out all right?
+
+SURGE. Well, let us be fair, even to the Kaiser. Let us be fair.
+
+FRANKLYN. Were you fair to him when you won an election on the program
+of hanging him?
+
+SURGE. Stuff! I am the last man alive to hang anybody; but the people
+wouldnt listen to reason. Besides, I knew the Dutch wouldnt give him up.
+
+SAVVY. Oh, don't start arguing about poor old Bill. Stick to our point.
+Let these two gentlemen settle the question for themselves. Mr Burge: do
+you think Mr Lubin is fit to govern England?
+
+SURGE. No. Frankly, I dont.
+
+LUBIN [_remonstrant_] Really!
+
+CONRAD. Why?
+
+BURGE. Because he has no conscience: thats why.
+
+LUBIN [_shocked and amazed_] Oh!
+
+FRANKLYN. Mr Lubin: do you consider Joyce Burge qualified to govern
+England?
+
+LUBIN [_with dignified emotion, wounded, but without bitterness_] Excuse
+me, Mr Barnabas; but before I answer that question I want to say this.
+Burge: we have had differences of opinion; and your newspaper friends
+have said hard things of me. But we worked together for years; and I
+hope I have done nothing to justify you in the amazing accusation you
+have just brought against me. Do you realize that you said that I have
+no conscience?
+
+BURGE. Lubin: I am very accessible to an appeal to my emotions; and you
+are very cunning in making such appeals. I will meet you to this extent.
+I dont mean that you are a bad man. I dont mean that I dislike you, in
+spite of your continual attempts to discourage and depress me. But you
+have a mind like a looking-glass. You are very clear and smooth and
+lucid as to what is standing in front of you. But you have no foresight
+and no hindsight. You have no vision and no memory. You have no
+continuity; and a man without continuity can have neither conscience nor
+honor from one day to another. The result is that you have always been
+a damned bad minister; and you have sometimes been a damned bad friend.
+Now you can answer Barnabas's question and take it out of me to your
+heart's content. He asked you was I fit to govern England.
+
+LUBIN [_recovering himself_] After what has just passed I sincerely
+wish I could honestly say yes, Burge. But it seems to me that you have
+condemned yourself out of your own mouth. You represent something which
+has had far too much influence and popularity in this country since
+Joseph Chamberlain set the fashion; and that is mere energy without
+intellect and without knowledge. Your mind is not a trained mind: it has
+not been stored with the best information, nor cultivated by intercourse
+with educated minds at any of our great seats of learning. As I happen
+to have enjoyed that advantage, it follows that you do not understand my
+mind. Candidly, I think that disqualifies you. The peace found out your
+weaknesses.
+
+BURGE. Oh! What did it find out in you?
+
+LUBIN. You and your newspaper confederates took the peace out of my
+hands. The peace did not find me out because it did not find me in.
+
+FRANKLYN. Come! Confess, both of you! You were only flies on the wheel.
+The war went England's way; but the peace went its own way, and not
+England's way nor any of the ways you had so glibly appointed for it.
+Your peace treaty was a scrap of paper before the ink dried on it. The
+statesmen of Europe were incapable of governing Europe. What they needed
+was a couple of hundred years training and experience: what they had
+actually had was a few years at the bar or in a counting-house or on
+the grouse moors and golf courses. And now we are waiting, with monster
+cannons trained on every city and seaport, and huge aeroplanes ready to
+spring into the air and drop bombs every one of which will obliterate a
+whole street, and poison gases that will strike multitudes dead with a
+breath, until one of you gentlemen rises in his helplessness to tell us,
+who are as helpless as himself, that we are at war again.
+
+CONRAD. Aha! What consolation will it be for us then that you two are
+able to tell off one another's defects so cleverly in your afternoon
+chat?
+
+BURGE [_angrily_] If you come to that, what consolation will it be that
+you two can sit there and tell both of us off? you, who have had no
+responsibility! you, who havnt lifted a finger, as far as I know, to
+help us through this awful crisis which has left me ten years older than
+my proper age! Can you tell me a single thing you did to help us during
+the whole infernal business?
+
+CONRAD. We're not blaming you: you hadnt lived long enough. No more had
+we. Cant you see that three-score-and-ten, though it may be long
+enough for a very crude sort of village life, isnt long enough for a
+complicated civilization like ours? Flinders Petrie has counted nine
+attempts at civilization made by people exactly like us; and every one
+of them failed just as ours is failing. They failed because the citizens
+and statesmen died of old age or over-eating before they had grown out
+of schoolboy games and savage sports and cigars and champagne. The signs
+of the end are always the same: Democracy, Socialism, and Votes for
+Women. We shall go to smash within the lifetime of men now living unless
+we recognize that we must live longer.
+
+LUBIN. I am glad you agree with me that Socialism and Votes for Women
+are signs of decay.
+
+FRANKLYN. Not at all: they are only the difficulties that overtax your
+capacity. If you cannot organize Socialism you cannot organize civilized
+life; and you will relapse into barbarism accordingly.
+
+SAVVY. Hear, hear!
+
+SURGE. A useful point. We cannot put back the clock.
+
+HASLAM. _I_ can. Ive often done it.
+
+LUBIN. Tut tut! My dear Burge: what are you dreaming of? Mr Barnabas: I
+am a very patient man. But will you tell me what earthly use or interest
+there is in a conclusion that cannot be realized? I grant you that if
+we could live three hundred years we should all be, perhaps wiser,
+certainly older. You will grant me in return, I hope, that if the sky
+fell we should all catch larks.
+
+FRANKLYN. Your turn now, Conrad. Go ahead.
+
+CONRAD. I don't think it's any good. I don't think they want to live
+longer than usual.
+
+LUBIN. Although I am a mere child of 69, I am old enough to have lost,
+the habit of crying for the moon.
+
+BURGE. Have you discovered the elixir of life or have you not? If not, I
+agree with Lubin that you are wasting our time.
+
+CONRAD. Is your time of any value?
+
+SURGE [_unable to believe his ears_] My time of any value! What do you
+mean?
+
+LUBIN [_smiling comfortably_] From your high scientific point of view,
+I daresay, none whatever, Professor. In any case I think a little
+perfectly idle discussion would do Burge good. After all, we might as
+well hear about the elixir of life as read novels, or whatever Burge
+does when he is not playing golf on Walton Heath. What is your elixir,
+Dr Barnabas? Lemons? Sour milk? Or what is the latest?
+
+SURGE. We were just beginning to talk seriously; and now you snatch at
+the chance of talking rot. [_He rises_]. Good evening. [_He turns to the
+door_].
+
+CONRAD [_rudely_] Die as soon as you like. Good evening.
+
+BURGE [_hesitating_] Look here. I took sour milk twice a day until
+Metchnikoff died. He thought it would keep him alive for ever; and he
+died of it.
+
+CONRAD. You might as well have taken sour beer.
+
+BURGE. You believe in lemons?
+
+CONRAD. I wouldn't eat a lemon for ten pounds.
+
+BURGE [_sitting down again_] What do you recommend?
+
+CONRAD [_rising with a gesture of despair_] Whats the use of going on,
+Frank? Because I am a doctor, and because they think I have a bottle to
+give them that will make them live for ever, they are listening to me
+for the first time with their mouths open and their eyes shut. Thats
+their notion of science.
+
+SAVVY. Steady, Nunk! Hold the fort.
+
+CONRAD [_growls and sits down_]!!!
+
+LUBIN. You volunteered the consultation, Doctor. I may tell you that,
+far from sharing the credulity as to science which is now the fashion, I
+am prepared to demonstrate that during the last fifty years, though the
+Church has often been wrong, and even the Liberal Party has not been
+infallible, the men of science have always been wrong.
+
+CONRAD. Yes: the fellows you call men of science. The people who make
+money by it, and their medical hangers-on. But has anybody been right?
+
+LUBIN. The poets and story tellers, especially the classical poets and
+story tellers, have been, in the main, right. I will ask you not
+to repeat this as my opinion outside; for the vote of the medical
+profession and its worshippers is not to be trifled with.
+
+FRANKLYN. You are quite right: the poem is our real clue to biological
+science. The most scientific document we possess at present is, as your
+grandmother would have told you quite truly, the story of the Garden of
+Eden.
+
+BURGE [_pricking up his ears_] Whats that? If you can establish that,
+Barnabas, I am prepared to hear you out with my very best attention. I
+am listening. Go on.
+
+FRANKLYN. Well, you remember, don't you, that in the Garden of Eden Adam
+and Eve were not created mortal, and that natural death, as we call it,
+was not a part of life, but a later and quite separate invention?
+
+SURGE. Now you mention it, thats true. Death came afterwards.
+
+LUBIN. What about accidental death? That was always possible.
+
+FRANKLYN. Precisely. Adam and Eve were hung up between two frightful
+possibilities. One was the extinction of mankind by their accidental
+death. The other was the prospect of living for ever. They could bear
+neither. They decided that they would just take a short turn of a
+thousand years, and meanwhile hand on their work to a new pair.
+Consequently, they had to invent natural birth and natural death, which
+are, after all, only modes of perpetuating life without putting on any
+single creature the terrible burden of immortality.
+
+LUBIN. I see. The old must make room for the new.
+
+SURGE. Death is nothing but making room. Thats all there is in it or
+ever has been in it.
+
+FRANKLYN. Yes; but the old must not desert their posts until the new are
+ripe for them. They desert them now two hundred years too soon.
+
+SAVVY. I believe the old people are the new people reincarnated, Nunk.
+I suspect I am Eve. I am very fond of apples; and they always disagree
+with me.
+
+CONRAD. You are Eve, in a sense. The Eternal Life persists; only It
+wears out Its bodies and minds and gets new ones, like new clothes. You
+are only a new hat and frock on Eve.
+
+FRANKLYN. Yes. Bodies and minds ever better and better fitted to carry
+out Its eternal pursuit.
+
+LUBIN [_with quiet scepticism_] What pursuit, may one ask, Mr Barnabas?
+
+FRANKLYN. The pursuit of omnipotence and omniscience. Greater power and
+greater knowledge: these are what we are all pursuing even at the risk
+of our lives and the sacrifice of our pleasures. Evolution is that
+pursuit and nothing else. It is the path to godhead. A man differs from
+a microbe only in being further on the path.
+
+LUBIN. And how soon do you expect this modest end to be reached?
+
+FRANKLYN. Never, thank God! As there is no limit to power and knowledge
+there can be no end. 'The power and the glory, world without end': have
+those words meant nothing to you?
+
+BURGE [_pulling out an old envelope_] I should like to make a note of
+that. [_He does so_].
+
+CONRAD. There will always be something to live for.
+
+SURGE [_pocketing his envelope and becoming more and more businesslike_]
+Right: I have got that. Now what about sin? What about the Fall? How do
+you work them in?
+
+CONRAD. I don't work in the Fall. The Fall is outside Science. But I
+daresay Frank can work it in for you.
+
+SURGE [_to Franklyn_] I wish you would, you know. It's important. Very
+important.
+
+FRANKLYN. Well, consider it this way. It is clear that when Adam and
+Eve were immortal it was necessary that they should make the earth an
+extremely comfortable place to live in.
+
+BURGE. True. If you take a house on a ninety-nine years lease, you
+spend a good deal of money on it. If you take it for three months you
+generally have a bill for dilapidations to pay at the end of them.
+
+FRANKLYN. Just so. Consequently, when Adam had the Garden of Eden on a
+lease for ever, he took care to make it what the house agents call a
+highly desirable country residence. But the moment he invented death,
+and became a tenant for life only, the place was no longer worth the
+trouble. It was then that he let the thistles grow. Life was so short
+that it was no longer worth his while to do anything thoroughly well.
+
+BURGE. Do you think that is enough to constitute what an average elector
+would consider a Fall? Is it tragic enough?
+
+FRANKLYN. That is only the first step of the Fall. Adam did not fall
+down that step only: he fell down a whole flight. For instance, before
+he invented birth he dared not have lost his temper; for if he had
+killed Eve he would have been lonely and barren to all eternity. But
+when he invented birth, and anyone who was killed could be replaced, he
+could afford to let himself go. He undoubtedly invented wife-beating;
+and that was another step down. One of his sons invented meat-eating.
+The other was horrified at the innovation. With the ferocity which
+is still characteristic of bulls and other vegetarians, he slew his
+beefsteak-eating brother, and thus invented murder. That was a very
+steep step. It was so exciting that all the others began to kill one
+another for sport, and thus invented war, the steepest step of all. They
+even took to killing animals as a means of killing time, and then, of
+course, ate them to save the long and difficult labor of agriculture. I
+ask you to contemplate our fathers as they came crashing down all the
+steps of this Jacob's ladder that reached from paradise to a hell on
+earth in which they had multiplied the chances of death from violence,
+accident, and disease until they could hardly count on three score and
+ten years of life, much less the thousand that Adam had been ready to
+face! With that picture before you, will you now ask me where was the
+Fall? You might as well stand at the foot of Snowdon and ask me where is
+the mountain. The very children see it so plainly that they compress its
+history into a two line epic:
+
+
+    Old Daddy Long Legs wouldn't say his prayers:
+    Take him by the hind legs and throw him downstairs.
+
+
+LUBIN [_still immovably sceptical_] And what does Science say to this
+fairy tale, Doctor Barnabas? Surely Science knows nothing of Genesis, or
+of Adam and Eve.
+
+CONRAD. Then it isnt Science: thats all. Science has to account for
+everything; and everything includes the Bible.
+
+FRANKLYN. The Book of Genesis is a part of nature like any other part of
+nature. The fact that the tale of the Garden of Eden has survived and
+held the imagination of men spellbound for centuries, whilst hundreds
+of much more plausible and amusing stories have gone out of fashion
+and perished like last year's popular song, is a scientific fact; and
+Science is bound to explain it. You tell me that Science knows nothing
+of it. Then Science is more ignorant than the children at any village
+school.
+
+CONRAD. Of course if you think it more scientific to say that what we
+are discussing is not Adam and Eve and Eden, but the phylogeny of the
+blastoderm--
+
+SAVVY. You neednt swear, Nunk.
+
+CONRAD. Shut up, you: I am not swearing. [_To Lubin_] If you want the
+professional humbug of rewriting the Bible in words of four syllables,
+and pretending it's something new, I can humbug you to your heart's
+content. I can call Genesis Phylogenesis. Let the Creator say, if you
+like, 'I will establish an antipathetic symbiosis between thee and the
+female, and between thy blastoderm and her blastoderm.' Nobody will
+understand you; and Savvy will think you are swearing. The meaning is
+the same.
+
+HASLAM. Priceless. But it's quite simple. The one version is poetry: the
+other is science.
+
+FRANKLYN. The one is classroom jargon: the other is inspired human
+language.
+
+LUBIN [_calmly reminiscent_] One of the few modern authors into whom
+I have occasionally glanced is Rousseau, who was a sort of Deist like
+Burge--
+
+BURGE [_interrupting him forcibly_] Lubin: has this stupendously
+important communication which Professor Barnabas has just made to us: a
+communication for which I shall be indebted to him all my life long: has
+this, I say, no deeper effect on you than to set you pulling my leg by
+trying to make out that I am an infidel?
+
+LUBIN. It's very interesting and amusing, Burge; and I think I see a
+case in it. I think I could undertake to argue it in an ecclesiastical
+court. But important is hardly a word I should attach to it.
+
+BURGE. Good God! Here is this professor: a man utterly removed from the
+turmoil of our political life: devoted to pure learning in its most
+abstract phases; and I solemnly declare he is the greatest politician,
+the most inspired party leader, in the kingdom. I take off my hat to
+him. I, Joyce Burge, give him best. And you sit there purring like an
+Angora cat, and can see nothing in it!
+
+CONRAD [_opening his eyes widely_] Hallo! What have I done to deserve
+this tribute?
+
+SURGE. Done! You have put the Liberal Party into power for the next
+thirty years, Doctor: thats what you've done.
+
+CONRAD. God forbid!
+
+BURGE. It's all up with the Church now. Thanks to you, we go to the
+country with one cry and one only. Back to the Bible! Think of the
+effect on the Nonconformist vote. You gather that in with one hand; and
+you gather in the modern scientific sceptical professional vote with the
+other. The village atheist and the first cornet in the local Salvation
+Army band meet on the village green and shake hands. You take your
+school children, your Bible class under the Cowper-Temple clause, into
+the museum. You shew the kids the Piltdown skull; and you say, 'Thats
+Adam. Thats Eve's husband.' You take the spectacled science student
+from the laboratory in Owens College; and when he asks you for a truly
+scientific history of Evolution, you put into his hand The Pilgrim's
+Progress. You--[_Savvy and Haslam explode into shrieks of merriment_].
+What are you two laughing at?
+
+SAVVY. Oh, go on, Mr Burge. Dont stop.
+
+HASLAM. Priceless!
+
+FRANKLYN. Would thirty years of office for the Liberal Party seem so
+important to you, Mr Burge, if you had another two and a half centuries
+to live?
+
+BURGE [_decisively_] No. You will have to drop that part of it. The
+constituencies wont swallow it.
+
+LUBIN [_seriously_] I am not so sure of that, Burge. I am not sure that
+it may not prove the only point they will swallow.
+
+BURGE. It will be no use to us even if they do. It's not a party point.
+It's as good for the other side as for us.
+
+LUBIN. Not necessarily. If we get in first with it, it will be
+associated in the public mind with our party. Suppose I put it forward
+as a plank in our program that we advocate the extension of human life
+to three hundred years! Dunreen, as leader of the opposite party, will
+be bound to oppose me: to denounce me as a visionary and so forth. By
+doing so he will place himself in the position of wanting to rob the
+people of two hundred and thirty years of their natural life. The
+Unionists will become the party of Premature Death; and we shall become
+the Longevity party.
+
+BURGE [_shaken_] You really think the electorate would swallow it?
+
+LUBIN. My dear Burge: is there anything the electorate will not swallow
+if it is judiciously put to them? But we must make sure of our ground.
+We must have the support of the men of science. Is there serious
+agreement among them, Doctor, as to the possibility of such an evolution
+as you have described?
+
+CONRAD. Yes. Ever since the reaction against Darwin set in at the
+beginning of the present century, all scientific opinion worth counting
+has been converging rapidly upon Creative Evolution.
+
+FRANKLYN. Poetry has been converging on it: philosophy has been
+converging on it: religion has been converging on it. It is going to
+be the religion of the twentieth century: a religion that has its
+intellectual roots in philosophy and science just as medieval
+Christianity had its intellectual roots in Aristotle.
+
+LUBIN. But surely any change would be so extremely gradual that--
+
+CONRAD. Dont deceive yourself. It's only the politicians who improve the
+world so gradually that nobody can see the improvement. The notion that
+Nature does not proceed by jumps is only one of the budget of plausible
+lies that we call classical education. Nature always proceeds by jumps.
+She may spend twenty thousand years making up her mind to jump; but when
+she makes it up at last, the jump is big enough to take us into a new
+age.
+
+LUBIN [_impressed_] Fancy my being leader of the party for the next
+three hundred years!
+
+BURGE. What!!
+
+LUBIN. Perhaps hard on some of the younger men. I think in fairness I
+shall have to step aside to make room after another century or so: that
+is, if Mimi can be persuaded to give up Downing Street.
+
+BURGE. This is too much. Your colossal conceit blinds you to the most
+obvious necessity of the political situation.
+
+LUBIN. You mean my retirement. I really cannot see that it is a
+necessity. I could not see it when I was almost an old man--or at least
+an elderly one. Now that it appears that I am a young man, the case
+for it breaks down completely. [_To Conrad_] May I ask are there any
+alternative theories? Is there a scientific Opposition?
+
+CONRAD. Well, some authorities hold that the human race is a failure,
+and that a new form of life, better adapted to high civilization, will
+supersede us as we have superseded the ape and the elephant.
+
+BURGE. The superman: eh!
+
+CONRAD. No. Some being quite different from us.
+
+LUBIN. Is that altogether desirable?
+
+FRANKLYN. I fear so. However that may be, we may be quite sure of one
+thing. We shall not be let alone. The force behind evolution, call it
+what you will, is determined to solve the problem of civilization; and
+if it cannot do it through us, it will produce some more capable agents.
+Man is not God's last word: God can still create. If you cannot do His
+work He will produce some being who can.
+
+BURGE [_with zealous reverence_] What do we know about Him, Barnabas?
+What does anyone know about Him?
+
+CONRAD. We know this about Him with absolute certainty. The power my
+brother calls God proceeds by the method of Trial and Error; and if we
+turn out to be one of the errors, we shall go the way of the mastodon
+and the megatherium and all the other scrapped experiments.
+
+LUBIN [_rising and beginning to walk up and down the room with his
+considering cap on_] I admit that I am impressed, gentlemen. I will go
+so far as to say that your theory is likely to prove more interesting
+than ever Welsh Disestablishment was. But as a practical politician--hm!
+Eh, Burge?
+
+CONRAD. We are not practical politicians. We are out to get something
+done. Practical politicians are people who have mastered the art of
+using parliament to prevent anything being done.
+
+FRANKLYN. When we get matured statesmen and citizens--
+
+LUBIN [_stopping short_] Citizens! Oh! Are the citizens to live three
+hundred years as well as the statesmen?
+
+CONRAD. Of course.
+
+LUBIN. I confess that had not occurred to me [_he sits down abruptly,
+evidently very unfavorably affected by this new light_].
+
+_Savvy and Haslam look at one another with unspeakable feelings._
+
+BURGE. Do you think it would be wise to go quite so far at first? Surely
+it would be more prudent to begin with the best men.
+
+FRANKLYN. You need not be anxious about that. It will begin with the
+best men.
+
+LUBIN. I am glad to hear you say so. You see, we must put this into a
+practical parliamentary shape.
+
+BURGE. We shall have to draft a Bill: that is the long and the short of
+it. Until you have your Bill drafted you don't know what you are really
+doing: that is my experience.
+
+LUBIN. Quite so. My idea is that whilst we should interest the
+electorate in this as a sort of religious aspiration and personal hope,
+using it at the same time to remove their prejudices against those of us
+who are getting on in years, it would be in the last degree upsetting
+and even dangerous to enable everyone to live longer than usual.
+Take the mere question of the manufacture of the specific, whatever
+it may be! There are forty millions of people in the country. Let
+me assume for the sake of illustration that each person would
+have to consume, say, five ounces a day of the elixir. That
+would be--let me see--five times three hundred and sixty-five
+is--um--twenty-five--thirty-two--eighteen--eighteen hundred and
+twenty-five ounces a year: just two ounces over the hundredweight.
+
+BURGE. Two million tons a year, in round numbers, of stuff that everyone
+would clamor for: that men would trample down women and children in the
+streets to get at. You couldnt produce it. There would be blue murder.
+It's out of the question. We must keep the actual secret to ourselves.
+
+CONRAD [_staring at them_] The actual secret! What on earth is the man
+talking about?
+
+BURGE. The stuff. The powder. The bottle. The tabloid. Whatever it is.
+You said it wasnt lemons.
+
+CONRAD. My good sir: I have no powder, no bottle, no tabloid. I am not a
+quack: I am a biologist. This is a thing thats going to happen.
+
+LUBIN [_completely let down_] Going to happen! Oh! Is that all? [_He
+looks at his watch_].
+
+BURGE. Going to happen! What do you mean? Do you mean that you cant make
+it happen?
+
+CONRAD. No more than I could have made you happen.
+
+FRANKLYN. We can put it into men's heads that there is nothing to
+prevent its happening but their own will to die before their work is
+done, and their own ignorance of the splendid work there is for them to
+do.
+
+CONRAD. Spread that knowledge and that conviction; and as surely as the
+sun will rise tomorrow, the thing will happen.
+
+FRANKLYN. We don't know where or when or to whom it will happen. It may
+happen first to someone in this room.
+
+HASLAM. It wont happen to me: thats jolly sure.
+
+CONRAD. It might happen to anyone. It might happen to the parlor maid.
+How do we know?
+
+SAVVY. The parlor maid! Oh, thats nonsense, Nunk.
+
+LUBIN [_once more quite comfortable_] I think Miss Savvy has delivered
+the final verdict.
+
+BURGE. Do you mean to say that you have nothing more practical to offer
+than the mere wish to live longer? Why, if people could live by merely
+wishing to, we should all be living for ever already! Everybody would
+like to live for ever. Why don't they?
+
+CONRAD. Pshaw! Everybody would like to have a million of money. Why
+havnt they? Because the men who would like to be millionaires wont save
+sixpence even with the chance of starvation staring them in the face.
+The men who want to live for ever wont cut off a glass of beer or a pipe
+of tobacco, though they believe the teetotallers and non-smokers live
+longer. That sort of liking is not willing. See what they do when they
+know they must.
+
+FRANKLYN. Do not mistake mere idle fancies for the tremendous
+miracle-working force of Will nerved to creation by a conviction of
+Necessity. I tell you men capable of such willing, and realizing its
+necessity, will do it reluctantly, under inner compulsion, as all great
+efforts are made. They will hide what they are doing from themselves:
+they will take care not to know what they are doing. They will live
+three hundred years, not because they would like to, but because the
+soul deep down in them will know that they must, if the world is to be
+saved.
+
+LUBIN [_turning to Franklyn and patting him almost paternally_] Well,
+my dear Barnabas, for the last thirty years the post has brought me at
+least once a week a plan from some crank or other for the establishment
+of the millennium. I think you are the maddest of all the cranks; but
+you are much the most interesting. I am conscious of a very curious
+mixture of relief and disappointment in finding that your plan is all
+moonshine, and that you have nothing practical to offer us. But what
+a pity! It is such a fascinating idea! I think you are too hard on us
+practical men; but there are men in every Government, even on the Front
+Bench, who deserve all you say. And now, before dropping the subject,
+may I put just one question to you? An idle question, since nothing can
+come of it; but still--
+
+FRANKLYN. Ask your question.
+
+LUBIN. Why do you fix three hundred years as the exact figure?
+
+FRANKLYN. Because we must fix some figure. Less would not be enough; and
+more would be more than we dare as yet face.
+
+LUBIN. Pooh! I am quite prepared to face three thousand, not to say
+three million.
+
+CONRAD. Yes, because you don't believe you Will be called on to make
+good your word.
+
+FRANKLYN [_gently_] Also, perhaps, because you have never been troubled
+much by vision of the future.
+
+BURGE [_with intense conviction_] The future does not exist for Henry
+Hopkins Lubin.
+
+LUBIN. If by the future you mean the millennial delusions which you
+use as a bunch of carrots to lure the uneducated British donkey to the
+polling booth to vote for you, it certainly does not.
+
+SURGE. I can see the future not only because, if I may say so in all
+humility, I have been gifted with a certain power of spiritual vision,
+but because I have practised as a solicitor. A solicitor has to advise
+families. He has to think of the future and know the past. His office is
+the real modern confessional. Among other things he has to make people's
+wills for them. He has to shew them how to provide for their daughters
+after their deaths. Has it occurred to you, Lubin, that if you live
+three hundred years, your daughters will have to wait a devilish long
+time for their money?
+
+FRANKLYN. The money may not wait for them. Few investments flourish for
+three hundred years.
+
+SAVVY. And what about before your death? Suppose they didn't get
+married! Imagine a girl living at home with her mother and on her father
+for three hundred years! Theyd murder her if she didn't murder them
+first.
+
+LUBIN. By the way, Barnabas, is your daughter to keep her good looks all
+the time?
+
+FRANKLYN. Will it matter? Can you conceive the most hardened flirt going
+on flirting for three centuries? At the end of half the time we shall
+hardly notice whether it is a woman or a man we are speaking to.
+
+LUBIN [_not quite relishing this ascetic prospect_] Hm! [_He rises_].
+Ah, well: you must come and tell my wife and my young people all about
+it; and you will bring your daughter with you, of course. [_He shakes
+hands with Savvy_]. Goodbye. [_He shakes hands with Franklyn_]. Goodbye,
+Doctor. [_He shakes hands with Conrad_]. Come on, Burge: you must
+really tell me what line you are going to take about the Church at the
+election?
+
+BURGE. Havnt you heard? Havnt you taken in the revelation that has been
+vouchsafed to us? The line I am going to take is Back to Methuselah.
+
+LUBIN [_decisively_] Dont be ridiculous, Burge. You don't suppose, do
+you, that our friends here are in earnest, or that our very pleasant
+conversation has had anything to do with practical politics! They have
+just been pulling our legs very wittily. Come along. [_He goes out,
+Franklyn politely going with him, but shaking his head in mute
+protest_].
+
+BURGE [_shaking Conrad's hand_] It's beyond the old man, Doctor. No
+spiritual side to him: only a sort of classical side that goes down with
+his own set. Besides, he's done, gone, past, burnt out, burst up; thinks
+he is our leader and is only our rag and bottle department. But you may
+depend on me. I will work this stunt of yours in. I see its value. [_He
+begins moving towards the door with Conrad_]. Of course I cant put it
+exactly in your way; but you are quite right about our needing something
+fresh; and I believe an election can be fought on the death rate and on
+Adam and Eve as scientific facts. It will take the Opposition right out
+of its depth. And if we win there will be an O.M. for somebody when the
+first honors list comes round [_by this time he has talked himself out
+of the room and out of earshot, Conrad accompanying him_].
+
+_Savvy and Haslam, left alone, seize each other in an ecstasy of
+amusement, and jazz to the settee, where they sit down again side by
+side._
+
+HASLAM [_caressing her_] Darling! what a priceless humbug old Lubin is!
+
+SAVVY. Oh, sweet old thing! I love him. Burge is a flaming fraud if you
+like.
+
+HASLAM. Did you notice one thing? It struck me as rather curious.
+
+SAVVY. What?
+
+HASLAM. Lubin and your father have both survived the war. But their sons
+were killed in it.
+
+SAVVY [_sobered_] Yes. Jim's death killed mother.
+
+HASLAM. And they never said a word about it!
+
+SAVVY. Well, why should they? The subject didn't come up. _I_ forgot
+about it too; and I was very fond of Jim.
+
+HASLAM. _I_ didn't forget it, because I'm of military age; and if I
+hadnt been a parson I'd have had to go out and be killed too. To me the
+awful thing about their political incompetence was that they had to
+kill their own sons. It was the war casualty lists and the starvation
+afterwards that finished me up with politics and the Church and
+everything else except you.
+
+SAVVY. Oh, I was just as bad as any of them. I sold flags in the streets
+in my best clothes; and--hsh! [_she jumps up and pretends to be looking
+for a book on the shelves behind the settee_].
+
+_Franklyn and Conrad return, looking weary and glum._
+
+CONRAD. Well, thats how the gospel of the brothers Barnabas is going to
+be received! [_He drops into Burge's chair_].
+
+FRANKLYN [_going back to his seat at the table_] It's no use. Were you
+convinced, Mr Haslam?
+
+HASLAM. About our being able to live three hundred years? Frankly no.
+
+CONRAD [_to Savvy_] Nor you, I suppose?
+
+SAVVY. Oh, I don't know. I thought I was for a moment. I can believe, in
+a sort of way, that people might live for three hundred years. But when
+you came down to tin tacks, and said that the parlor maid might, then I
+saw how absurd it was.
+
+FRANKLYN. Just so. We had better hold our tongues about it, Con. We
+should only be laughed at, and lose the little credit we earned on false
+pretences in the days of our ignorance.
+
+CONRAD. I daresay. But Creative Evolution doesnt stop while people are
+laughing. Laughing may even lubricate its job.
+
+SAVVY. What does that mean?
+
+CONRAD. It means that the first man to live three hundred years maynt
+have the slightest notion that he is going to do it, and may be the
+loudest laugher of the lot.
+
+SAVVY. Or the first woman?
+
+CONRAD [_assenting_] Or the first woman.
+
+HASLAM. Well, it wont be one of us, anyhow.
+
+FRANKLYN. How do you know?
+
+_This is unanswerable. None of them have anything more to say._
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+The Thing Happens
+
+
+_A summer afternoon in the year 2170 A.D. The official parlor of the
+President of the British Islands. A board table, long enough for three
+chairs at each side besides the presidential chair at the head and an
+ordinary chair at the foot, occupies the breadth of the room. On the
+table, opposite every chair, a small switchboard with a dial. There is
+no fireplace. The end wall is a silvery screen nearly as large as a pair
+of folding doors. The door is on your left as you face the screen; and
+there is a row of thick pegs, padded and covered with velvet, beside it.
+
+A stoutish middle-aged man, good-looking and breezily genial, dressed
+in a silk smock, stockings, handsomely ornamented sandals, and a gold
+fillet round his brows, comes in. He is like Joyce Burge, yet also like
+Lubin, as if Nature had made a composite photograph of the two men.
+He takes off the fillet and hangs it on a peg; then sits down in the
+presidential chair at the head of the table, which is at the end
+farthest from the door. He puts a peg into his switchboard; turns
+the pointer on the dial; puts another peg in; and presses a button.
+Immediately the silvery screen vanishes; and in its place appears, in
+reverse from right to left, another office similarly furnished, with a
+thin, unamiable man similarly dressed, but in duller colors, turning
+over some documents at the table. His gold fillet is hanging up on a
+similar peg beside the door. He is rather like Conrad Barnabas, but
+younger, and much more commonplace._
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Hallo, Barnabas!
+
+BARNABAS [_without looking round_] What number?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Five double x three two gamma. Burge-Lubin.
+
+_Barnabas puts a plug in number five; turns his pointer to double x; and
+another plug in 32; presses a button and looks round at Burge-Lubin, who
+is now visible to him as well as audible._
+
+BARNABAS [_curtly_] Oh! That you, President?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Yes. They told me you wanted me to ring you up. Anything
+wrong?
+
+BARNABAS [_harsh and querulous_] I wish to make a protest.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_good-humored and mocking_] What! Another protest! Whats
+wrong now?
+
+BARNABAS. If you only knew all the protests I havnt made, you would be
+surprised at my patience. It is you who are always treating me with the
+grossest want of consideration.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. What have I done now?
+
+BARNABAS. You have put me down to go to the Record Office today to
+receive that American fellow, and do the honors of a ridiculous cinema
+show. That is not the business of the Accountant General: it is the
+business of the President. It is an outrageous waste of my time, and an
+unjustifiable shirking of your duty at my expense. I refuse to go. You
+must go.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. My dear boy, nothing would give me greater pleasure than to
+take the job off your hands--
+
+BARNABAS. Then do it. Thats all I want [_he is about to switch off_].
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Dont switch off. Listen. This American has invented a
+method of breathing under water.
+
+BARNABAS. What do I care? I don't want to breathe under water.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. You may, my dear Barnabas, at any time. You know you never
+look where you are going when you are immersed in your calculations.
+Some day you will walk into the Serpentine. This man's invention may
+save your life.
+
+BARNABAS [_angrily_] Will you tell me what that has to do with your
+putting your ceremonial duties on to my shoulders? I will not be trifled
+[_he vanishes and is replaced by the blank screen_]--
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_indignantly holding down his button_] Dont cut us off,
+please: we have not finished. I am the President, speaking to the
+Accountant General. What are you dreaming of?
+
+A WOMAN'S VOICE. Sorry. [_The screen shews Barnabas as before_].
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Since you take it that way, I will go in your place. It's a
+pity, because, you see, this American thinks you are the greatest living
+authority on the duration of human life; and--
+
+BARNABAS [_interrupting_] The American thinks! What do you mean? I am
+the greatest living authority on the duration of human life. Who dares
+dispute it?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Nobody, dear lad, nobody. Dont fly out at me. It is evident
+that you have not read the American's book.
+
+BARNABAS. Dont tell me that you have, or that you have read any book
+except a novel for the last twenty years; for I wont believe you.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Quite right, dear old fellow: I havnt read it. But I have
+read what The Times Literary Supplement says about it.
+
+BARNABAS. I don't care two straws what it says about it. Does it say
+anything about me?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Yes.
+
+BARNABAS. Oh, does it? What?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. It points out that an extraordinary number of first-rate
+persons like you and me have died by drowning during the last two
+centuries, and that when this invention of breathing under water takes
+effect, your estimate of the average duration of human life will be
+upset.
+
+BARNABAS [_alarmed_] Upset my estimate! Gracious Heavens! Does the fool
+realize what that means? Do you realize what that means?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. I suppose it means that we shall have to amend the Act.
+
+BARNABAS. Amend my Act! Monstrous!
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. But we must. We cant ask people to go on working until they
+are forty-three unless our figures are unchallengeable. You know what
+a row there was over those last three years, and how nearly the
+too-old-at-forty people won.
+
+BARNABAS. They would have made the British Islands bankrupt if theyd
+won. But you dont care for that; you care for nothing but being popular.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Oh, well: I shouldn't worry if I were you; for most people
+complain that there is not enough work for them, and would be only too
+glad to stick on instead of retiring at forty-three, if only they were
+asked as a favor instead of having to.
+
+BARNABAS. Thank you: I need no consolation. [_He rises determinedly and
+puts on his fillet_].
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Are you off? Where are you going to?
+
+BARNABAS. To that cinema tomfoolery, of course. I shall put this
+American impostor in his place. [_He goes out_].
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_calling after him_] God bless you, dear old chap! [_With
+a chuckle, he switches off; and the screen becomes blank. He presses a
+button and holds it down while he calls_] Hallo!
+
+A WOMAN'S VOICE. Hallo!
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_formally_] The President respectfully solicits the
+privilege of an interview with the Chief Secretary, and holds himself
+entirely at his honor's august disposal.
+
+A CHINESE VOICE. He is coming.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Oh! That you, Confucius? So good of you. Come along [_he
+releases the button_].
+
+_A man in a yellow gown, presenting the general appearance of a Chinese
+sage, enters._
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_jocularly_] Well, illustrious Sage-&-Onions, how are your
+poor sore feet?
+
+CONFUCIUS [_gravely_] I thank you for your kind inquiries. I am well.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Thats right. Sit down and make yourself comfortable. Any
+business for me today?
+
+CONFUCIUS [_sitting down on the first chair round the corner of the
+table to the President's right_] None.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Have you heard the result of the bye-election?
+
+CONFUCIUS. A walk-over. Only one candidate.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Any good?
+
+CONFUCIUS. He was released from the County Lunatic Asylum a fortnight
+ago. Not mad enough for the lethal chamber: not sane enough for any
+place but the division lobby. A very popular speaker.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. I wish the people would take a serious interest in
+politics.
+
+CONFUCIUS. I do not agree. The Englishman is not fitted by nature to
+understand politics. Ever since the public services have been manned by
+Chinese, the country has been well and honestly governed. What more is
+needed?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. What I cant make out is that China is one of the worst
+governed countries on earth.
+
+CONFUCIUS. No. It was badly governed twenty years ago; but since we
+forbade any Chinaman to take part in our public services, and imported
+natives of Scotland for that purpose, we have done well. Your
+information here is always twenty years out of date.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. People don't seem to be able to govern themselves. I cant
+understand it. Why should it be so?
+
+CONFUCIUS. Justice is impartiality. Only strangers are impartial.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. It ends in the public services being so good that the
+Government has nothing to do but think.
+
+CONFUCIUS. Were it otherwise, the Government would have too much to do
+to think.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Is that any excuse for the English people electing a
+parliament of lunatics?
+
+CONFUCIUS. The English people always did elect parliaments of lunatics.
+What does it matter if your permanent officials are honest and
+competent?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. You do not know the history of this country. What would my
+ancestors have said to the menagerie of degenerates that is still called
+the House of Commons? Confucius: you will not believe me; and I do not
+blame you for it; but England once saved the liberties of the world by
+inventing parliamentary government, which was her peculiar and supreme
+glory.
+
+CONFUCIUS. I know the history of your country perfectly well. It proves
+the exact contrary.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. How do you make that out?
+
+CONFUCIUS. The only power your parliament ever had was the power of
+withholding supplies from the king.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Precisely. That great Englishman Simon de Montfort--
+
+CONFUCIUS. He was not an Englishman: he was a Frenchman. He imported
+parliaments from France.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_surprised_] You dont say so!
+
+CONFUCIUS. The king and his loyal subjects killed Simon for forcing his
+French parliament on them. The first thing British parliaments always
+did was to grant supplies to the king for life with enthusiastic
+expressions of loyalty, lest they should have any real power, and be
+expected to do something.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Look here, Confucius: you know more history than I do, of
+course; but democracy--
+
+CONFUCIUS. An institution peculiar to China. And it was never really a
+success there.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. But the Habeas Corpus Act!
+
+CONFUCIUS. The English always suspended it when it threatened to be of
+the slightest use.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Well, trial by jury: you cant deny that we established
+that?
+
+CONFUCIUS. All cases that were dangerous to the governing classes were
+tried in the Star Chamber or by Court Martial, except when the prisoner
+was not tried at all, but executed after calling him names enough to
+make him unpopular.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Oh, bother! You may be right in these little details; but
+in the large we have managed to hold our own as a great race. Well,
+people who could do nothing couldnt have done that, you know.
+
+CONFUCIUS. I did not say you could do nothing. You could fight. You
+could eat. You could drink. Until the twentieth century you could
+produce children. You could play games. You could work when you were
+forced to. But you could not govern yourselves.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Then how did we get our reputation as the pioneers of
+liberty?
+
+CONFUCIUS. By your steadfast refusal to be governed at all. A horse that
+kicks everyone who tries to harness and guide him may be a pioneer of
+liberty; but he is not a pioneer of government. In China he would be
+shot.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Stuff! Do you imply that the administration of which I am
+president is no Government?
+
+CONFUCIUS. I do. _I_ am the Government.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. You! You!! You fat yellow lump of conceit!
+
+CONFUCIUS. Only an Englishman could be so ignorant of the nature of
+government as to suppose that a capable statesman cannot be fat, yellow,
+and conceited. Many Englishmen are slim, red-nosed, and modest. Put them
+in my place, and within a year you will be back in the anarchy and chaos
+of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Oh, if you go back to the dark ages, I have nothing more to
+say. But we did not perish. We extricated ourselves from that chaos. We
+are now the best governed country in the world. How did we manage that
+if we are such fools as you pretend?
+
+CONFUCIUS. You did not do it until the slaughter and ruin produced by
+your anarchy forced you at last to recognize two inexorable facts.
+First, that government is absolutely necessary to civilization, and that
+you could not maintain civilization by merely doing down your neighbor,
+as you called it, and cutting off the head of your king whenever he
+happened to be a logical Scot and tried to take his position seriously.
+Second, that government is an art of which you are congenitally
+incapable. Accordingly, you imported educated negresses and Chinese to
+govern you. Since then you have done very well.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. So have you, you old humbug. All the same, I don't know
+how you stand the work you do. You seem to me positively to like public
+business. Why wont you let me take you down to the coast some week-end
+and teach you marine golf?
+
+CONFUCIUS. It does not interest me. I am not a barbarian.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. You mean that I am?
+
+CONFUCIUS. That is evident.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. How?
+
+CONFUCIUS. People like you. They like cheerful goodnatured barbarians.
+They have elected you President five times in succession. They will
+elect you five times more. _I_ like you. You are better company than a
+dog or a horse because you can speak.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Am I a barbarian because you like me?
+
+CONFUCIUS. Surely. Nobody likes me: I am held in awe. Capable persons
+are never liked. I am not likeable; but I am indispensable.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Oh, cheer up, old man: theres nothing so disagreeable about
+you as all that. I don't dislike you; and if you think I'm afraid of
+you, you jolly well don't know Burge-Lubin: thats all.
+
+CONFUCIUS. You are brave: yes. It is a form of stupidity.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. You may not be brave: one doesn't expect it from a Chink.
+But you have the devil's own cheek.
+
+CONFUCIUS. I have the assured certainty of the man who sees and knows.
+Your genial bluster, your cheery self-confidence, are pleasant, like the
+open air. But they are blind: they are vain. I seem to see a great dog
+wag his tail and bark joyously. But if he leaves my heel he is lost.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Thank you for a handsome compliment. I have a big dog; and
+he is the best fellow I know. If you knew how much uglier you are than a
+chow, you wouldn't start those comparisons, though. [_Rising_] Well, if
+you have nothing for me to do, I am going to leave your heel for the
+rest of the day and enjoy myself. What would you recommend me to do with
+myself?
+
+CONFUCIUS. Give yourself up to contemplation; and great thoughts will
+come to you.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Will they? If you think I am going to sit here on a fine
+day like this with my legs crossed waiting for great thoughts, you
+exaggerate my taste for them. I prefer marine golf. [_Stopping short_]
+Oh, by the way, I forgot something. I have a word or two to say to the
+Minister of health. [_He goes back to his chair_].
+
+CONFUCIUS. Her number is--
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. I know it.
+
+CONFUCIUS [_rising_] I cannot understand her attraction for you. For me
+a woman who is not yellow does not exist, save as an official. [_He goes
+out_].
+
+_Burge-Lubin operates his switchboard as before. The screen vanishes:
+and a dainty room with a bed, a wardrobe, and a dressing-table with a
+mirror and a switch on it, appears. Seated at it a handsome negress is
+trying on a brilliant head scarf. Her dressing-gown is thrown back
+from her shoulders to her chair. She is in corset, knickers, and silk
+stockings._
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_horrified_] I beg your pardon a thousand times--[_The
+startled negress snatches the peg out of her switchboard and vanishes_].
+
+THE NEGRESS'S VOICE. Who is it?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Me. The President. Burge-Lubin. I had no idea your bedroom
+switch was in. I beg your pardon.
+
+_The negress reappears. She has pulled the dressing-gown perfunctorily
+over her shoulders, and continues her experiments with the scarf, not at
+all put out, and rather amused by Surge's prudery._
+
+THE NEGRESS. Stupid of me. I was talking to another lady this morning;
+and I left the peg in.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. But I am so sorry.
+
+THE NEGRESS [_sunnily: still busy with the scarf_] Why? It was my fault.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_embarrassed_] Well--er--But I suppose you were used to it
+in Africa.
+
+THE NEGRESS. Your delicacy is very touching, Mr President. It would be
+funny if it were not so unpleasant, because, like all white delicacy, it
+is in the wrong place. How do you think this suits my complexion?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. How can any really vivid color go wrong with a black satin
+skin? It is our women's wretched pale faces that have to be matched and
+lighted. Yours is always right.
+
+THE NEGRESS. Yes: it is a pity your white beauties have all the same
+ashy faces, the same colorless drab, the same age. But look at their
+beautiful noses and little lips! They are physically insipid: they have
+no beauty: you cannot love them; but how elegant!
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Cant you find an official pretext for coming to see me?
+Isnt it ridiculous that we have never met? It's so tantalizing to see
+you and talk to you, and to know all the time that you are two hundred
+miles away, and that I cant touch you?
+
+THE NEGRESS. I cannot live on the East Coast: it is hard enough to keep
+my blood warm here. Besides, my friend, it would not be safe. These
+distant flirtations are very charming; and they teach self-control.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Damn self-control! I want to hold you in my arms--to--[_the
+negress snatches out the peg from the switchboard and vanishes. She
+is still heard laughing_]. Black devil! [_He snatches out his peg
+furiously: her laugh is no longer heard_]. Oh, these sex episodes! Why
+can I not resist them? Disgraceful!
+
+_Confucius returns._
+
+CONFUCIUS. I forgot. There is something for you to do this morning. You
+have to go to the Record Office to receive the American barbarian.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Confucius: once for all, I object to this Chinese habit of
+describing white men as barbarians.
+
+CONFUCIUS [_standing formally at the end of the table with his hands
+palm to palm_] I make a mental note that you do not wish the Americans
+to be described as barbarians.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Not at all. The Americans are barbarians. But we are not. I
+suppose the particular barbarian you are speaking of is the American who
+has invented a means of breathing under water.
+
+CONFUCIUS. He says he has invented such a method. For some reason which
+is not intelligible in China, Englishmen always believe any statement
+made by an American inventor, especially one who has never invented
+anything. Therefore you believe this person and have given him a public
+reception. Today the Record Office is entertaining him with a display of
+the cinematographic records of all the eminent Englishmen who have lost
+their lives by drowning since the cinema was invented. Why not go to see
+it if you are at a loss for something to do?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. What earthly interest is there in looking at a moving
+picture of a lot of people merely because they were drowned? If they had
+had any sense, they would not have been drowned, probably.
+
+CONFUCIUS. That is not so. It has never been noticed before; but the
+Record Office has just made two remarkable discoveries about the public
+men and women who have displayed extraordinary ability during the
+past century. One is that they retained unusual youthfulness up to an
+advanced age. The other is that they all met their death by drowning.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Yes: I know. Can you explain it?
+
+CONFUCIUS. It cannot be explained. It is not reasonable. Therefore I do
+not believe it.
+
+_The Accountant General rushes in, looking ghastly. He staggers to the
+middle of the table._
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Whats the matter? Are you ill?
+
+BARNABAS [_choking_] No. I--[_he collapses into the middle chair_]. I
+must speak to you in private.
+
+_Confucius calmly withdraws._
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. What on earth is it? Have some oxygen.
+
+BARNABAS. I have had some. Go to the Record Office. You will see men
+fainting there again and again, and being revived with oxygen, as I have
+been. They have seen with their own eyes as I have.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Seen what?
+
+BARNABAS. Seen the Archbishop of York.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Well, why shouldn't they see the Archbishop of York? What
+are they fainting for? Has he been murdered?
+
+BARNABAS. No: he has been drowned.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Good God! Where? When? How? Poor fellow!
+
+BARNABAS. Poor fellow! Poor thief! Poor swindler! Poor robber of his
+country's Exchequer! Poor fellow indeed! Wait til I catch him.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. How can you catch him when he is dead? Youre mad.
+
+BARNABAS. Dead! Who said he was dead?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. You did. Drowned.
+
+BARNABAS [_exasperated_] Will you listen to me? Was old Archbishop
+Haslam, the present man's last predecessor but four, drowned or not?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. I don't know. Look him up in the Encyclopedia Britannica.
+
+BARNABAS. Yah! Was Archbishop Stickit, who wrote Stickit on the Psalms,
+drowned or not?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Yes, mercifully. He deserved it.
+
+BARNABAS. Was President Dickenson drowned? Was General Bullyboy drowned?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Who is denying it?
+
+BARNABAS. Well, wave had moving pictures of all four put on the screen
+today for this American; and they and the Archbishop are the same man.
+Now tell me I am mad.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. I do tell you you are mad. Stark raving mad.
+
+BARNABAS. Am I to believe my own eyes or am I not?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. You can do as you please. All I can tell you is that _I_
+don't believe your eyes if they cant see any difference between a live
+archbishop and two dead ones. [_The apparatus rings, he holds the button
+down_]. Yes?
+
+THE WOMAN'S VOICE. The Archbishop of York, to see the President.
+
+BARNABAS [_hoarse with rage_] Have him in. I'll talk to the scoundrel.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_releasing the button_] Not while you are in this state.
+
+BARNABAS [_reaching furiously for his button and holding it down_] Send
+the Archbishop in at once.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. If you lose your temper, Barnabas, remember that we shall
+be two to one.
+
+_The Archbishop enters. He has a white band round his throat, set in a
+black stock. He wears a sort of kilt of black ribbons, and soft black
+boots that button high up on his calves. His costume does not differ
+otherwise from that of the President and the Accountant General; but
+its color scheme is black and white. He is older than the Reverend Bill
+Haslam was when he wooed Miss Savvy Barnabas; but he is recognizably the
+same man. He does not look a day over fifty, and is very well preserved
+even at that; but his boyishness of manner is quite gone: he now has
+complete authority and self-possession: in fact the President is a
+little afraid of him; and it seems quite natural and inevitable that he
+should speak fast._
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Good day, Mr President.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Good day, Mr Archbishop. Be seated.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP [_sitting down between them_] Good day, Mr Accountant
+General.
+
+BARNABAS [_malevolently_] Good day to you. I have a question to put to
+you, if you don't mind.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP [_looking curiously at him, jarred by his uncivil tone_]
+Certainly. What is it?
+
+BARNABAS. What is your definition of a thief?
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Rather an old-fashioned word, is it not?
+
+BARNABAS. It survives officially in my department.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Our departments are full of survivals. Look at my tie!
+my apron! my boots! They are all mere survivals; yet it seems that
+without them I cannot be a proper Archbishop.
+
+BARNABAS. Indeed! Well, in my department the word thief survives,
+because in the community the thing thief survives. And a very despicable
+and dishonorable thing he is, too.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP [_coolly_] I daresay.
+
+BARNABAS. In my department, sir, a thief is a person who lives longer
+than the statutory expectation of life entitles him to, and goes on
+drawing public money when, if he were an honest man, he would be dead.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Then let me say, sir, that your department does not
+understand its own business. If you have miscalculated the duration of
+human life, that is not the fault of the persons whose longevity you
+have miscalculated. And if they continue to work and produce, they pay
+their way, even if they live two or three centuries.
+
+BARNABAS. I know nothing about their working and producing. That is not
+the business of my department. I am concerned with their expectation of
+life; and I say that no man has any right to go on living and drawing
+money when he ought to be dead.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. You do not comprehend the relation between income and
+production.
+
+BARNABAS. I understand my own department.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. That is not enough. Your department is part of a
+synthesis which embraces all the departments.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Synthesis! This is an intellectual difficulty. This is a
+job for Confucius. I heard him use that very word the other day; and I
+wondered what the devil he meant. [_Switching on_] Hallo! Put me through
+to the Chief Secretary.
+
+CONFUCIUS'S VOICE. You are speaking to him.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. An intellectual difficulty, old man. Something we don't
+understand. Come and help us out.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. May I ask how the question has arisen?
+
+BARNABAS. Ah! You begin to smell a rat, do you? You thought yourself
+pretty safe. You--
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Steady, Barnabas. Dont be in a hurry.
+
+_Confucius enters._
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP [_rising_] Good morning, Mr Chief Secretary.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_rising in instinctive imitation of the Archbishop_] Honor
+us by taking a seat, O sage.
+
+CONFUCIUS. Ceremony is needless. [_He bows to the company, and takes the
+chair at the foot of the table_].
+
+_The President and the Archbishop resume their seats._
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. We wish to put a case to you, Confucius. Suppose a man,
+instead of conforming to the official estimate of his expectation of
+life, were to live for more than two centuries and a half, would the
+Accountant General be justified in calling him a thief?
+
+CONFUCIUS. No. He would be justified in calling him a liar.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. I think not, Mr Chief Secretary. What do you suppose my
+age is?
+
+CONFUCIUS. Fifty.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. You don't look it. Forty-five; and young for your age.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. My age is two hundred and eighty-three.
+
+BARNABAS [_morosely triumphant_] Hmp! Mad, am I?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Youre both mad. Excuse me, Archbishop; but this is getting
+a bit--well--
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP [_to Confucius_] Mr Chief Secretary: will you, to oblige
+me, assume that I have lived nearly three centuries? As a hypothesis?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. What is a hypothesis?
+
+CONFUCIUS. It does not matter. I understand. [To _the Archbishop_] Am I
+to assume that you have lived in your ancestors, or by metempsychosis--
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Met--Emp--Sy--Good Lord! What a brain, Confucius! What a
+brain!
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Nothing of that kind. Assume in the ordinary sense that
+I was born in the year 1887, and that I have worked continuously in one
+profession or another since the year 1910. Am I a thief?
+
+CONFUCIUS. I do not know. Was that one of your professions?
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. No. I have been nothing worse than an Archbishop, a
+President, and a General.
+
+BARNABAS. Has he or has he not robbed the Exchequer by drawing five or
+six incomes when he was only entitled to one? Answer me that.
+
+CONFUCIUS. Certainly not. The hypothesis is that he has worked
+continuously since 1910. We are now in the year 2170. What is the
+official lifetime?
+
+BARNABAS. Seventy-eight. Of course it's an average; and we don't mind a
+man here and there going on to ninety, or even, as a curiosity, becoming
+a centenarian. But I say that a man who goes beyond that is a swindler.
+
+CONFUCIUS. Seventy-eight into two hundred and eighty-three goes more
+than three and a half times. Your department owes the Archbishop two and
+a half educations and three and a half retiring pensions.
+
+BARNABAS. Stuff! How can that be?
+
+CONFUCIUS. At what age do your people begin to work for the community?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Three. They do certain things every day when they are
+three. Just to break them in, you know. But they become self-supporting,
+or nearly so, at thirteen.
+
+CONFUCIUS. And at what age do they retire?
+
+BARNABAS. Forty-three.
+
+CONFUCIUS. That is, they do thirty years' work; and they receive
+maintenance and education, without working, for thirteen years of
+childhood and thirty-five years of superannuation, forty-eight years
+in all, for each thirty years' work. The Archbishop has given you 260
+years' work, and has received only one education and no superannuation.
+You therefore owe him over 300 years of leisure and nearly eight
+educations. You are thus heavily in his debt. In other words, he has
+effected an enormous national economy by living so long; and you, by
+living only seventy-eight years, are profiting at his expense. He is the
+benefactor: you are the thief. [_Half rising_] May I now withdraw and
+return to my serious business, as my own span is comparatively short?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Dont be in a hurry, old chap. [_Confucius sits down
+again_]. This hypothecary, or whatever you call it, is put up seriously.
+I don't believe it; but if the Archbishop and the Accountant General are
+going to insist that it's true, we shall have either to lock them up or
+to see the thing through.
+
+BARNABAS. It's no use trying these Chinese subtleties on me. I'm a plain
+man; and though I don't understand metaphysics, and don't believe in
+them, I understand figures; and if the Archbishop is only entitled to
+seventy-eight years, and he takes 283, I say he takes more than he is
+entitled to. Get over that if you can.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. I have not taken 283 years: I have taken 23 and given
+260.
+
+CONFUCIUS. Do your accounts shew a deficiency or a surplus?
+
+BARNABAS. A surplus. Thats what I cant make out. Thats the artfulness of
+these people.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. That settles it. Whats the use of arguing? The Chink says
+you are wrong; and theres an end of it.
+
+BARNABAS. I say nothing against the Chink's arguments. But what about my
+facts?
+
+CONFUCIUS. If your facts include a case of a man living 283 years, I
+advise you to take a few weeks at the seaside.
+
+BARNABAS. Let there be an end of this hinting that I am out of my mind.
+Come and look at the cinema record. I tell you this man is Archbishop
+Haslam, Archbishop Stickit, President Dickenson, General Bullyboy and
+himself into the bargain; all five of them.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. I do not deny it. I never have denied it. Nobody has
+ever asked me.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. But damn it, man--I beg your pardon, Archbishop; but
+really, really--
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Dont mention it. What were you going to say?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Well, you were drowned four times over. You are not a cat,
+you know.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. That is very easy to understand. Consider my situation
+when I first made the amazing discovery that I was destined to live
+three hundred years! I--
+
+CONFUCIUS [_interrupting him_] Pardon me. Such a discovery was
+impossible. You have not made it yet. You may live a million years
+if you have already lived two hundred. There is no question of three
+hundred years. You have made a slip at the very beginning of your fairy
+tale, Mr Archbishop.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Good, Confucius! [_To the Archbishop_] He has you there. I
+don't see how you can get over that.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Yes: it is quite a good point. But if the Accountant
+General will go to the British Museum library, and search the catalogue,
+he will find under his own name a curious and now forgotten book, dated
+1924, entitled The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas. That gospel was that
+men must live three hundred years if civilization is to be saved. It
+shewed that this extension of individual human life was possible, and
+how it was likely to come about. I married the daughter of one of the
+brothers.
+
+BARNABAS. Do you mean to say you claim to be a connection of mine?
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. I claim nothing. As I have by this time perhaps three or
+four million cousins of one degree or another, I have ceased to call on
+the family.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Gracious heavens! Four million relatives! Is that
+calculation correct, Confucius?
+
+CONFUCIUS. In China it might be forty millions if there were no checks
+on population.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. This is a staggerer. It brings home to one--but
+[_recovering_] it isnt true, you know. Let us keep sane.
+
+CONFUCIUS [_to the Archbishop_] You wish us to understand that the
+illustrious ancestors of the Accountant General communicated to you a
+secret by which you could attain the age of three hundred years.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. No. Nothing of the kind. They simply believed that
+mankind could live any length of time it knew to be absolutely necessary
+to save civilization from extinction. I did not share their belief: at
+least I was not conscious of sharing it: I thought I was only amused by
+it. To me my father-in-law and his brother were a pair of clever
+cranks who had talked one another into a fixed idea which had become a
+monomania with them. It was not until I got into serious difficulties
+with the pension authorities after turning seventy that I began to
+suspect the truth.
+
+CONFUCIUS. The truth?
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Yes, Mr Chief Secretary: the truth. Like all
+revolutionary truths, it began as a joke. As I shewed no signs of ageing
+after forty-five, my wife used to make fun of me by saying that I was
+certainly going to live three hundred years. She was sixty-eight when
+she died; and the last thing she said to me, as I sat by her bedside
+holding her hand, was 'Bill: you really don't look fifty. I wonder--'
+She broke off, and fell asleep wondering, and never awoke. Then I began
+to wonder too. That is the explanation of the three hundred years, Mr
+Secretary.
+
+CONFUCIUS. It is very ingenious, Mr Archbishop. And very well told.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Of course you understand that _I_ don't for a moment
+suggest the very faintest doubt of your absolute veracity, Archbishop.
+You know that, don't you?
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Quite, Mr President. Only you don't believe me: that is
+all. I do not expect you to. In your place I should not believe. You had
+better have a look at the films. [_Pointing to the Accountant General_]
+He believes.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. But the drowning? What about the drowning? A man might get
+drowned once, or even twice if he was exceptionally careless. But he
+couldn't be drowned four times. He would run away from water like a mad
+dog.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Perhaps Mr Chief Secretary can guess the explanation of
+that.
+
+CONFUCIUS. To keep your secret, you had to die.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. But dash it all, man, he isn't dead.
+
+CONFUCIUS. It is socially impossible not to do what everybody else does.
+One must die at the usual time.
+
+BARNABAS. Of course. A simple point of honour.
+
+CONFUCIUS. Not at all. A simple necessity.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Well, I'm hanged if I see it. I should jolly well live for
+ever if I could.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. It is not so easy as you think. You, Mr Chief Secretary,
+have grasped the difficulties of the position. Let me remind you,
+Mr President, that I was over eighty before the 1969 Act for the
+Redistribution of Income entitled me to a handsome retiring pension.
+Owing to my youthful appearance I was prosecuted for attempting to
+obtain public money on false pretences when I claimed it. I could prove
+nothing; for the register of my birth had been blown to pieces by a bomb
+dropped on a village church years before in the first of the big modern
+wars. I was ordered back to work as a man of forty, and had to work for
+fifteen years more, the retiring age being then fifty-five.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. As late as fifty-five! How did people stand it?
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. They made difficulties about letting me go even then, I
+still looked so young. For some years I was in continual trouble. The
+industrial police rounded me up again and again, refusing to believe
+that I was over age. They began to call me The Wandering Jew. You see
+how impossible my position was. I foresaw that in twenty years more my
+official record would prove me to be seventy-five; my appearance would
+make it impossible to believe that I was more than forty-five; and my
+real age would be one hundred and seventeen. What was I to do? Bleach
+my hair? Hobble about on two sticks? Mimic the voice of a centenarian?
+Better have killed myself.
+
+BARNABAS. You ought to have killed yourself. As an honest man you were
+entitled to no more than an honest man's expectation of life.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. I did kill myself. It was quite easy. I left a suit of
+clothes by the seashore during the bathing season, with documents in the
+pockets to identify me. I then turned up in a strange place, pretending
+that I had lost my memory, and did not know my name or my age or
+anything about myself. Under treatment I recovered my health, but not my
+memory. I have had several careers since I began this routine of life
+and death. I have been an archbishop three times. When I persuaded
+the authorities to knock down all our towns and rebuild them from the
+foundations, or move them, I went into the artillery, and became a
+general. I have been President.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Dickenson?
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Yes.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. But they found Dickenson's body: its ashes are buried in St
+Paul's.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. They almost always found the body. During the bathing
+season there are plenty of bodies. I have been cremated again and again.
+At first I used to attend my own funeral in disguise, because I had read
+about a man doing that in an old romance by an author named Bennett,
+from whom I remember borrowing five pounds in 1912. But I got tired of
+that. I would not cross the street now to read my latest epitaph.
+
+_The Chief Secretary and the President look very glum. Their incredulity
+is vanquished at last._
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Look here. Do you chaps realize how awful this is? Here we
+are sitting calmly in the presence of a man whose death is overdue by
+two centuries. He may crumble into dust before our eyes at any moment.
+
+BARNABAS. Not he. He'll go on drawing his pension until the end of the
+world.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Not quite that. My expectation of life is only three
+hundred years.
+
+BARNABAS. You will last out my time anyhow: that's enough for me.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP [_coolly_] How do you know?
+
+BARNABAS [_taken aback_] How do I know!
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Yes: how do you know? I did not begin even to suspect
+until I was nearly seventy. I was only vain of my youthful appearance.
+I was not quite serious about it until I was ninety. Even now I am not
+sure from one moment to another, though I have given you my reason
+for thinking that I have quite unintentionally committed myself to a
+lifetime of three hundred years.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. But how do you do it? Is it lemons? Is it Soya beans? Is
+it--
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. I do not do it. It happens. It may happen to anyone. It
+may happen to you.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_the full significance of this for himself dawning on him_]
+Then we three may be in the same boat with you, for all we know?
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. You may. Therefore I advise you to be very careful how
+you take any step that will make my position uncomfortable.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Well, I'm dashed! One of my secretaries was remarking
+only this morning how well and young I am looking. Barnabas: I have an
+absolute conviction that I am one of the--the--shall I say one of the
+victims?--of this strange destiny.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Your great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather
+formed the same conviction when he was between sixty and seventy. I knew
+him.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_depressed_] Ah! But he died.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. No.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_hopefully_] Do you mean to say he is still alive?
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. No. He was shot. Under the influence of his belief that
+he was going to live three hundred years he became a changed man. He
+began to tell people the truth; and they disliked it so much that they
+took advantage of certain clauses of an Act of Parliament he had himself
+passed during the Four Years War, and had purposely forgotten to repeal
+afterwards. They took him to the Tower of London and shot him.
+
+_The apparatus rings._
+
+CONFUCIUS [_answering_] Yes? [_He listens_].
+
+A WOMAN'S VOICE. The Domestic Minister has called.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_not quite catching the answer_] Who does she say has
+called?
+
+CONFUCIUS. The Domestic Minister.
+
+BARNABAS. Oh, dash it! That awful woman!
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. She certainly is a bit of a terror. I don't exactly know
+why; for she is not at all bad-looking.
+
+BARNABAS [_out of patience_] For Heaven's sake, don't be frivolous.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. He cannot help it, Mr Accountant General. Three of his
+sixteen great-great-great-grandfathers married Lubins.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Tut tut! I am not frivolling. _I_ did not ask the lady
+here. Which of you did?
+
+CONFUCIUS. It is her official duty to report personally to the President
+once a quarter.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Oh, that. Then I suppose it's my official duty to receive
+her. Theyd better send her in. You don't mind, do you? She will bring us
+back to real life. I don't know how you fellows feel; but I'm just going
+dotty.
+
+CONFUCIUS [_into the telephone_] The President will receive the Domestic
+Minister at once.
+
+_They watch the door in silence for the entrance of the Domestic
+Minister._
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_suddenly, to the Archbishop_] I suppose you have been
+married over and over again.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Once. You do not make vows until death when death is
+three hundred years off.
+
+_They relapse into uneasy silence. The Domestic Minister enters. She is
+a handsome woman, apparently in the prime of life, with elegant, tense,
+well held-up figure, and the walk of a goddess. Her expression and
+deportment are grave, swift, decisive, awful, unanswerable. She wears a
+Dianesque tunic instead of a blouse, and a silver coronet instead of a
+gold fillet. Her dress otherwise is not markedly different from that
+of the men, who rise as she enters, and incline their heads with
+instinctive awe. She comes to the vacant chair between Barnabas and
+Confucius._
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_resolutely genial and gallant_] Delighted to see you, Mrs
+Lutestring.
+
+CONFUCIUS. We are honored by your celestial presence.
+
+BARNABAS. Good day, madam.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. I have not had the pleasure of meeting you before. I am
+the Archbishop of York.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. Surely we have met, Mr Archbishop. I remember your face.
+We--[_she checks herself suddenly_] Ah, no: I remember now: it was
+someone else. [_She sits down_]. They all sit down.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP [_also puzzled_] Are you sure you are mistaken? I also
+have some association with your face, Mrs Lutestring. Something like a
+door opening continually and revealing you. And a smile of welcome when
+you recognized me. Did you ever open a door for me, I wonder?
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. I often opened a door for the person you have just
+reminded me of. But he has been dead many years. The rest, except the
+Archbishop, look at one another quickly.
+
+CONFUCIUS. May I ask how many years?
+
+MRS LUTESTRING [_struck by his tone, looks at him for a moment with some
+displeasure; then replies_] It does not matter. A long time.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. You mustnt rush to conclusions about the Archbishop, Mrs
+Lutestring. He is an older bird than you think. Older than you, at all
+events.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING [_with a melancholy smile_] I think not, Mr President.
+But the subject is a delicate one. I had rather not pursue it.
+
+CONFUCIUS. There is a question which has not been asked.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING [_very decisively_] If it is a question about my age, Mr
+Chief Secretary, it had better not be asked. All that concerns you about
+my personal affairs can be found in the books of the Accountant General.
+
+CONFUCIUS. The question I was thinking of will not be addressed to you.
+But let me say that your sensitiveness on the point is very strange,
+coming from a woman so superior to all common weaknesses as we know you
+to be.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. I may have reasons which have nothing to do with common
+weaknesses, Mr Chief Secretary. I hope you will respect them.
+
+CONFUCIUS [_after bowing to her in assent_] I will now put my question.
+Have you, Mr Archbishop, any ground for assuming, as you seem to do,
+that what has happened to you has not happened to other people as well?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Yes, by George! I never thought of that.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. I have never met any case but my own.
+
+CONFUCIUS. How do you know?
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Well, no one has ever told me that they were in this
+extraordinary position.
+
+CONFUCIUS. That proves nothing. Did you ever tell anybody that you were
+in it? You never told us. Why did you never tell us?
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. I am surprised at the question, coming from so astute a
+mind as yours, Mr Secretary. When you reach the age I reached before I
+discovered what was happening to me, I was old enough to know and fear
+the ferocious hatred with which human animals, like all other animals,
+turn upon any unhappy individual who has the misfortune to be unlike
+themselves in every respect: to be unnatural, as they call it. You will
+still find, among the tales of that twentieth-century classic, Wells,
+a story of a race of men who grew twice as big as their fellows, and
+another story of a man who fell into the hands of a race of blind men.
+The big people had to fight the little people for their lives; and the
+man with eyes would have had his eyes put out by the blind had he not
+fled to the desert, where he perished miserably. Wells's teaching, on
+that and other matters, was not lost on me. By the way, he lent me five
+pounds once which I never repaid; and it still troubles my conscience.
+
+CONFUCIUS. And were you the only reader of Wells? If there were others
+like you, had they not the same reason for keeping the secret?
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. That is true. But I should know. You short-lived people
+are so childish. If I met a man of my own age I should recognize him at
+once. I have never done so.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. Would you recognize a woman of your age, do you think?
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. I--[_He stops and turns upon her with a searching look,
+startled by the suggestion and the suspicion it rouses_].
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. What is your age, Mr Archbishop?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Two hundred and eighty-three, he says. That is his little
+joke. Do you know, Mrs Lutestring, he had almost talked us into
+believing him when you came in and cleared the air with your robust
+common sense.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. Do you really feel that, Mr President? I hear the note
+of breezy assertion in your voice. I miss the note of conviction.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_jumping up_] Look here. Let us stop talking damned
+nonsense. I don't wish to be disagreeable; but it's getting on my
+nerves. The best joke won't bear being pushed beyond a certain point.
+That point has been reached. I--I'm rather busy this morning. We all
+have our hands pretty full. Confucius here will tell you that I have a
+heavy day before me.
+
+BARNABAS. Have you anything more important than this thing, if it's
+true?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Oh, if if, if it's true! But it isn't true.
+
+BARNABAS. Have you anything at all to do?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Anything to do! Have you forgotten, Barnabas, that I happen
+to be President, and that the weight of the entire public business of
+this country is on my shoulders?
+
+BARNABAS. Has he anything to do, Confucius?
+
+CONFUCIUS. He has to be President.
+
+BARNABAS. That means that he has nothing to do.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_sulkily_] Very well, Barnabas. Go on making a fool of
+yourself. [_He sits down_]. Go on.
+
+BARNABAS. I am not going to leave this room until we get to the bottom
+of this swindle.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING [_turning with deadly gravity on the Accountant General_]
+This what, did you say?
+
+CONFUCIUS. These expressions cannot be sustained. You obscure the
+discussion in using them.
+
+BARNABAS [_glad to escape from her gaze by addressing Confucius_] Well,
+this unnatural horror. Will that satisfy you?
+
+CONFUCIUS. That is in order. But we do not commit ourselves to the
+implications of the word horror.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. By the word horror the Accountant General means only
+something unusual.
+
+CONFUCIUS. I notice that the honorable Domestic Minister, on learning
+the advanced age of the venerable prelate, shews no sign of surprise or
+incredulity.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. She doesn't take it seriously. Who would? Eh, Mrs
+Lutestring?
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. I take it very seriously indeed, Mr President. I see now
+that I was not mistaken at first. I have met the Archbishop before.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. I felt sure of it. This vision of a door opening to me,
+and a woman's face welcoming me, must be a reminiscence of something
+that really happened; though I see it now as an angel opening the gate
+of heaven.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. Or a parlor maid opening the door of the house of the
+young woman you were in love with?
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP [_making a wry face_] Is that the reality? How these
+things grow in our imagination! But may I say, Mrs Lutestring, that the
+transfiguration of a parlor maid to an angel is not more amazing than
+her transfiguration to the very dignified and able Domestic Minister I
+am addressing. I recognize the angel in you. Frankly, I do not recognize
+the parlor maid.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Whats a parlor maid?
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. An extinct species. A woman in a black dress and white
+apron, who opened the house door when people knocked or rang, and was
+either your tyrant or your slave. I was a parlor maid in the house of
+one of the Accountant General's remote ancestors. [_To Confucius_] You
+asked me my age, Mr Chief Secretary, I am two hundred and seventy-four.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_gallantly_] You don't look it. You really don't look it.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING [_turning her face gravely towards him_] Look again, Mr
+President.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_looking at her bravely until the smile fades from his
+face, and he suddenly covers his eyes with his hands_] Yes: you do
+look it. I am convinced. It's true. Now call up the Lunatic Asylum,
+Confucius; and tell them to send an ambulance for me.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING [_to the Archbishop_] Why have you given away your
+secret? our secret?
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. They found it out. The cinema records betrayed me. But I
+never dreamt that there were others. Did you?
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. I knew one other. She was a cook. She grew tired, and
+killed herself.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Dear me! However, her death simplifies the situation, as
+I have been able to convince these gentlemen that the matter had better
+go no further.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. What! When the President knows! It will be all over the
+place before the end of the week.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_injured_] Really, Mrs Lutestring! You speak as if I were a
+notoriously indiscreet person. Barnabas: have I such a reputation?
+
+BARNABAS [_resignedly_] It cant be helped. It's constitutional.
+
+CONFUCIUS. It is utterly unconstitutional. But, as you say, it cannot be
+helped.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_solemnly_] I deny that a secret of State has ever passed
+my lips--except perhaps to the Minister of Health, who is discretion
+personified. People think, because she is a negress--
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. It does not matter much now. Once, it would have
+mattered a great deal. But my children are all dead.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Yes: the children must have been a terrible difficulty.
+Fortunately for me, I had none.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. There was one daughter who was the child of my very
+heart. Some years after my first drowning I learnt that she had lost her
+sight. I went to her. She was an old woman of ninety-six, blind. She
+asked me to sit and talk with her because my voice was like the voice of
+her dead mother.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. The complications must be frightful. Really I hardly know
+whether I do want to live much longer than other people.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. You can always kill yourself, as cook did; but that
+was influenza. Long life is complicated, and even terrible; but it is
+glorious all the same. I would no more change places with an ordinary
+woman than with a mayfly that lives only an hour.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. What set you thinking of it first?
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. Conrad Barnabas's book. Your wife told me it was more
+wonderful than Napoleon's Book of Fate and Old Moore's Almanac, which
+cook and I used to read. I was very ignorant: it did not seem so
+impossible to me as to an educated woman. Yet I forgot all about it, and
+married and drudged as a poor man's wife, and brought up children, and
+looked twenty years older than I really was, until one day, long after
+my husband died and my children were out in the world working for
+themselves, I noticed that I looked twenty years younger than I really
+was. The truth came to me in a flash.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. An amazing moment. Your feelings must have been beyond
+description. What was your first thought?
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. Pure terror. I saw that the little money I had laid up
+would not last, and that I must go out and: work again. They had things
+called Old Age Pensions then: miserable pittances for worn-out old
+laborers to die on. I thought I should be found out if I went on drawing
+it too long. The horror of facing another lifetime of drudgery, of
+missing my hard-earned rest and losing my poor little savings, drove
+everything else out of my mind. You people nowadays can have no
+conception of the dread of poverty that hung over us then, or of the
+utter tiredness of forty years' unending overwork and striving to make a
+shilling do the work of a pound.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. I wonder you did not kill yourself. I often wonder why
+the poor in those evil old times did not kill themselves. They did not
+even kill other people.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. You never kill yourself, because you always may as well
+wait until tomorrow. And you have not energy or conviction enough to
+kill the others. Besides, how can you blame them when you would do as
+they do if you were in their place?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Devilish poor consolation, that.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. There were other consolations in those days for people
+like me. We drank preparations of alcohol to relieve the strain of
+living and give us an artificial happiness.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN {[[_all together,_]} Alcohol! CONFUCIUS {[_making_] } Pfff
+...! BARNABAS {[_wry faces_]] } Disgusting.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. A little alcohol would improve your temper and manners,
+and make you much easier to live with, Mr Accountant General.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_laughing_] By George, I believe you! Try it, Barnabas.
+
+CONFUCIUS. No. Try tea. It is the more civilized poison of the two.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. You, Mr President, were born intoxicated with your own
+well-fed natural exuberance. You cannot imagine what alcohol was to an
+underfed poor woman. I had carefully arranged my little savings so that
+I could get drunk, as we called it, once a week; and my only pleasure
+was looking forward to that poor little debauch. That is what saved
+me from suicide. I could not bear to miss my next carouse. But when
+I stopped working, and lived on my pension, the fatigue of my life's
+drudgery began to wear off, because, you see, I was not really old. I
+recuperated. I looked younger and younger. And at last I was rested
+enough to have courage and strength to begin life again. Besides,
+political changes were making it easier: life was a little better worth
+living for the nine-tenths of the people who used to be mere drudges.
+After that, I never turned back or faltered. My only regret now is that
+I shall die when I am three hundred or thereabouts. There was only one
+thing that made life hard; and that is gone now.
+
+CONFUCIUS. May we ask what that was?
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. Perhaps you will be offended if I tell you.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Offended! My dear lady, do you suppose, after such
+a stupendous revelation, that anything short of a blow from a
+sledge-hammer could produce the smallest impression on any of us?
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. Well, you see, it has been so hard on me never to meet a
+grown-up person. You are all such children. And I never was very fond of
+children, except that one girl who woke up the mother passion in me. I
+have been very lonely sometimes.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_again gallant_] But surely, Mrs Lutestring, that has been
+your own fault. If I may say so, a lady of your attractions need never
+have been lonely.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. Why?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Why! Well--. Well, er--. Well, er er--. Well! [_he gives it
+up_].
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. He means that you might have married. Curious, how
+little they understand our position.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. I did marry. I married again on my hundred and first
+birthday. But of course I had to marry an elderly man: a man over sixty.
+He was a great painter. On his deathbed he said to me 'It has taken me
+fifty years to learn my trade, and to paint all the foolish pictures a
+man must paint and get rid of before he comes through them to the
+great things he ought to paint. And now that my foot is at last on the
+threshold of the temple I find that it is also the threshold of my
+tomb.' That man would have been the greatest painter of all time if he
+could have lived as long as I. I saw him die of old age whilst he
+was still, as he said himself, a gentleman amateur, like all modern
+painters.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. But why had you to marry an elderly man? Why not marry a
+young one? or shall I say a middle-aged one? If my own affections were
+not already engaged; and if, to tell the truth, I were not a
+little afraid of you--for you are a very superior woman, as we all
+acknowledge--I should esteem myself happy in--er--er--
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. Mr President: have you ever tried to take advantage of
+the innocence of a little child for the gratification of your senses?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Good Heavens, madam, what do you take me for? What right
+have you to ask me such a question?
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. I am at present in my two hundred and seventy-fifth
+year. You suggest that I should take advantage of the innocence of a
+child of thirty, and marry it.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Can you shortlived people not understand that as the
+confusion and immaturity and primitive animalism in which we live for
+the first hundred years of our life is worse in this matter of sex than
+in any other, you are intolerable to us in that relation?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Do you mean to say, Mrs Lutestring, that you regard me as a
+child?
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. Do you expect me to regard you as a completed soul? Oh,
+you may well be afraid of me. There are moments when your levity, your
+ingratitude, your shallow jollity, make my gorge rise so against you
+that if I could not remind myself that you are a child I should be
+tempted to doubt your right to live at all.
+
+CONFUCIUS. Do you grudge us the few years we have? you who have three
+hundred!
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. You accuse me of levity! Must I remind you, madam, that I
+am the President, and that you are only the head of a department?
+
+BARNABAS. Ingratitude too! You draw a pension for three hundred years
+when we owe you only seventy-eight; and you call us ungrateful!
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. I do. When I think of the blessings that have been
+showered on you, and contrast them with the poverty! the humiliations!
+the anxieties! the heartbreak! the insolence and tyranny that were the
+daily lot of mankind when I was learning to suffer instead of learning
+to live! when I see how lightly you take it all! how you quarrel over
+the crumpled leaves in your beds of roses! how you are so dainty about
+your work that unless it is made either interesting or delightful to you
+you leave it to negresses and Chinamen, I ask myself whether even
+three hundred years of thought and experience can save you from being
+superseded by the Power that created you and put you on your trial.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. My dear lady: our Chinese and colored friends are perfectly
+happy. They are twenty times better off here than they would be in China
+or Liberia. They do their work admirably; and in doing it they set us
+free for higher employments.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP [_who has caught the infection of her indignation_] What
+higher employments are you capable of? you that are superannuated at
+seventy and dead at eighty!
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. You are not really doing higher work. You are supposed
+to make the decisions and give the orders; but the negresses and the
+Chinese make up your minds for you and tell you what orders to give,
+just as my brother, who was a sergeant in the Guards, used to prompt his
+officers in the old days. When I want to get anything done at the Health
+Ministry I do not come to you: I go to the black lady who has been the
+real president during your present term of office, or to Confucius, who
+goes on for ever while presidents come and presidents go.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. This is outrageous. This is treason to the white race. And
+let me tell you, madam, that I have never in my life met the Minister
+of Health, and that I protest against the vulgar color prejudice which
+disparages her great ability and her eminent services to the State. My
+relations with her are purely telephonic, gramophonic, photophonic, and,
+may I add, platonic.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. There is no reason why you should be ashamed of them in
+any case, Mr President. But let us look at the position impersonally.
+Can you deny that what is happening is that the English people have
+become a Joint Stock Company admitting Asiatics and Africans as
+shareholders?
+
+BARNABAS. Nothing like it. I know all about the old joint stock
+companies. The shareholders did no work.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. That is true; but we, like them, get our dividends
+whether we work or not. We work partly because we know there would be no
+dividends if we did not, and partly because if we refuse we are regarded
+as mentally deficient and put into a lethal chamber. But what do we work
+at? Before the few changes we were forced to make by the revolutions
+that followed the Four Years War, our governing classes had been so
+rich, as it was called, that they had become the most intellectually
+lazy and fat-headed people on the face of the earth. There is a good
+deal of that fat still clinging to us.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. As President, I must not listen to unpatriotic criticisms
+of our national character, Mr Archbishop.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. As Archbishop, Mr President, it is my official duty to
+criticize the national character unsparingly. At the canonization of
+Saint Henrik Ibsen, you yourself unveiled the monument to him which
+bears on its pedestal the noble inscription, 'I came not to call
+sinners, but the righteous, to repentance.' The proof of what I say
+is that our routine work, and what may be called our ornamental and
+figure-head work, is being more and more sought after by the English;
+whilst the thinking, organizing, calculating, directing work is done by
+yellow brains, brown brains, and black brains, just as it was done in
+my early days by Jewish brains, Scottish brains, Italian brains, German
+brains. The only white men who still do serious work are those who, like
+the Accountant General, have no capacity for enjoyment, and no social
+gifts to make them welcome outside their offices.
+
+BARNABAS. Confound your impudence! I had gifts enough to find you out,
+anyhow.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP [_disregarding this outburst_] If you were to kill me as
+I stand here, you would have to appoint an Indian to succeed me. I take
+precedence today not as an Englishman, but as a man with more than a
+century and a half of fully adult experience. We are letting all the
+power slip into the hands of the colored people. In another hundred
+years we shall be simply their household pets.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_reacting buoyantly_] Not the least danger of it. I grant
+you we leave the most troublesome part of the labor of the nation to
+them. And a good job too: why should we drudge at it? But think of the
+activities of our leisure! Is there a jollier place on earth to live
+in than England out of office hours? And to whom do we owe that? To
+ourselves, not to the niggers. The nigger and the Chink are all right
+from Tuesday to Friday; but from Friday to Tuesday they are simply
+nowhere; and the real life of England is from Friday to Tuesday.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. That is terribly true. In devising brainless amusements;
+in pursuing them with enormous vigor, and taking them with eager
+seriousness, our English people are the wonder of the world. They always
+were. And it is just as well; for otherwise their sensuality would
+become morbid and destroy them. What appals me is that their amusements
+should amuse them. They are the amusements of boys and girls. They
+are pardonable up to the age of fifty or sixty: after that they are
+ridiculous. I tell you, what is wrong with us is that we are a non-adult
+race; and the Irish and the Scots, and the niggers and Chinks, as you
+call them, though their lifetime is as short as ours, or shorter, yet do
+somehow contrive to grow up a little before they die. We die in boyhood:
+the maturity that should make us the greatest of all the nations lies
+beyond the grave for us. Either we shall go under as greybeards with
+golf clubs in our hands, or we must will to live longer.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. Yes: that is it. I could not have expressed it in words;
+but you have expressed it for me. I felt, even when I was an ignorant
+domestic slave, that we had the possibility of becoming a great nation
+within us; but our faults and follies drove me to cynical hopelessness.
+We all ended then like that. It is the highest creatures who take the
+longest to mature, and are the most helpless during their immaturity. I
+know now that it took me a whole century to grow up. I began my serious
+life when I was a hundred and twenty. Asiatics cannot control me: I am
+not a child in their hands, as you are, Mr President. Neither, I am
+sure, is the Archbishop. They respect me. You are not grown up enough
+even for that, though you were kind enough to say that I frighten you.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Honestly, you do. And will you think me very rude if I
+say that if I must choose between a white woman old enough to be my
+great-grandmother and a black woman of my own age, I shall probably find
+the black woman more sympathetic?
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. And more attractive in color, perhaps?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Yes. Since you ask me, more--well, not more attractive:
+I do not deny that you have an excellent appearance--but I will say,
+richer. More Venetian. Tropical. 'The shadowed livery of the burnished
+sun.'
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. Our women, and their favorite story writers, begin
+already to talk about men with golden complexions.
+
+CONFUCIUS [_expanding into a smile all across both face and body_]
+A-a-a-a-a-h!
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Well, what of it, madam? Have you read a very interesting
+book by the librarian of the Biological Society suggesting that the
+future of the world lies with the Mulatto?
+
+MRS LUTESTRING [_rising_] Mr Archbishop: if the white race is to be
+saved, our destiny is apparent.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. Yes: our duty is pretty clear.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. Have you time to come home with me and discuss the
+matter?
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP [_rising_] With pleasure.
+
+BARNABAS [_rising also and rushing past Mrs Lutestring to the door,
+where he turns to bar her way_] No you don't. Burge: you understand,
+don't you?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. No. What is it?
+
+BARNABAS. These two are going to marry.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Why shouldn't they, if they want to?
+
+BARNABAS. They don't want to. They will do it in cold blood because
+their children will live three hundred years. It mustnt be allowed.
+
+CONFUCIUS. You cannot prevent it. There is no law that gives you power
+to interfere with them.
+
+BARNABAS. If they force me to it I will obtain legislation against
+marriages above the age of seventy-eight.
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. There is not time for that before we are married, Mr
+Accountant General. Be good enough to get out of the lady's way.
+
+BARNABAS. There is time to send the lady to the lethal chamber before
+anything comes of your marriage. Dont forget that.
+
+MRS LUTESTRING. What nonsense, Mr Accountant General! Good afternoon,
+Mr President. Good afternoon, Mr Chief Secretary. [_They rise and
+acknowledge her salutation with bows. She walks straight at the
+Accountant General, who instinctively shrinks out of her way as she
+leaves the room_].
+
+THE ARCHBISHOP. I am surprised at you, Mr Barnabas. Your tone was like
+an echo from the Dark Ages. [_He follows the Domestic Minister_].
+
+_Confucius, shaking his head and clucking with his tongue in deprecation
+of this painful episode, moves to the chair just vacated by the
+Archbishop and stands behind it with folded palms, looking at the
+President. The Accountant General shakes his fist after the departed
+visitors, and bursts into savage abuse of them._
+
+BARNABAS. Thieves! Cursed thieves! Vampires! What are you going to do,
+Burge?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Do?
+
+BARNABAS. Yes, do. There must be dozens of these people in existence.
+Are you going to let them do what the two who have just left us mean to
+do, and crowd us off the face of the earth?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_sitting down_] Oh, come, Barnabas! What harm are they
+doing? Arnt you interested in them? Dont you like them?
+
+BARNABAS. Like them! I hate them. They are monsters, unnatural monsters.
+They are poison to me.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. What possible objection can there be to their living as
+long as they can? It does not shorten our lives, does it?
+
+BARNABAS. If I have to die when I am seventy-eight, I don't see
+why another man should be privileged to live to be two hundred and
+seventy-eight. It does shorten my life, relatively. It makes us
+ridiculous. If they grew to be twelve feet high they would make us all
+dwarfs. They talked to us as if we were children. There is no love lost
+between us: their hatred of us came out soon enough. You heard what the
+woman said, and how the Archbishop backed her up?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. But what can we do to them?
+
+BARNABAS. Kill them.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Nonsense!
+
+BARNABAS. Lock them up. Sterilize them somehow, anyhow.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. But what reason could we give?
+
+BARNABAS. What reason can you give for killing a snake? Nature tells you
+to do it.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. My dear Barnabas, you are out of your mind.
+
+BARNABAS. Havnt you said that once too often already this morning?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. I don't believe you will carry a single soul with you.
+
+BARNABAS. I understand. I know you. You think you are one of them.
+
+CONFUCIUS. Mr Accountant General: you may be one of them.
+
+BARNABAS. How dare you accuse me of such a thing? I am an honest man,
+not a monster. I won my place in public life by demonstrating that the
+true expectation of human life is seventy-eight point six. And I will
+resist any attempt to alter or upset it to the last drop of my blood if
+need be.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Oh, tut tut! Come, come! Pull yourself together. How can
+you, a descendant of the great Conrad Barnabas, the man who is still
+remembered by his masterly Biography of a Black Beetle, be so absurd?
+
+BARNABAS. You had better go and write the autobiography of a jackass. I
+am going to raise the country against this horror, and against you, if
+you shew the slightest sign of weakness about it.
+
+CONFUCIUS [_very impressively_] You will regret it if you do.
+
+BARNABAS. What is to make me regret it?
+
+CONFUCIUS. Every mortal man and woman in the community will begin to
+count on living for three centuries. Things will happen which you do not
+foresee: terrible things. The family will dissolve: parents and children
+will be no longer the old and the young: brothers and sisters will meet
+as strangers after a hundred years separation: the ties of blood will
+lose their innocence. The imaginations of men, let loose over the
+possibilities of three centuries of life, will drive them mad and wreck
+human society. This discovery must be kept a dead secret. [_He sits
+down_].
+
+BARNABAS. And if I refuse to keep the secret?
+
+CONFUCIUS. I shall have you safe in a lunatic asylum the day after you
+blab.
+
+BARNABAS. You forget that I can produce the Archbishop to prove my
+statement.
+
+CONFUCIUS. So can I. Which of us do you think he will support when I
+explain to him that your object in revealing his age is to get him
+killed?
+
+BARNABAS [_desperate_] Burge: are you going to back up this yellow
+abomination against me? Are we public men and members of the Government?
+or are we damned blackguards?
+
+CONFUCIUS [_unmoved_] Have you ever known a public man who was not what
+vituperative people called a damned blackguard when some inconsiderate
+person wanted to tell the public more than was good for it?
+
+BARNABAS. Hold your tongue, you insolent heathen. Burge: I spoke to you.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Well, you know, my dear Barnabas, Confucius is a very
+long-headed chap. I see his point.
+
+BARNABAS. Do you? Then let me tell you that, except officially, I will
+never speak to you again. Do you hear?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_cheerfully_] You will. You will.
+
+BARNABAS. And don't you ever dare speak to me again. Do you hear? [_He
+turns to the door_].
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. I will. I will. Goodbye, Barnabas. God bless you.
+
+BARNABAS. May you live forever, and be the laughingstock of the whole
+world! [_he dashes out in a fury_].
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_laughing indulgently_] He will keep the secret all right.
+I know Barnabas. You neednt worry.
+
+CONFUCIUS [_troubled and grave_] There are no secrets except the secrets
+that keep themselves. Consider. There are those films at the Record
+Office. We have no power to prevent the Master of the Records from
+publishing this discovery made in his department. We cannot silence the
+American--who can silence an American?--nor the people who were there
+today to receive him. Fortunately, a film can prove nothing but a
+resemblance.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Thats very true. After all, the whole thing is confounded
+nonsense, isnt it?
+
+CONFUCIUS [_raising his head to look at him_] You have decided not to
+believe it now that you realize its inconveniences. That is the English
+method. It may not work in this case.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. English be hanged! It's common sense. You know, those two
+people got us hypnotized: not a doubt of it. They must have been kidding
+us. They were, werent they?
+
+CONFUCIUS. You looked into that woman's face; and you believed.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Just so. Thats where she had me. I shouldn't have believed
+her a bit if she'd turned her back to me.
+
+CONFUCIUS [_shakes his head slowly and repeatedly_]???
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. You really think--? [_he hesitates_].
+
+CONFUCIUS. The Archbishop has always been a puzzle to me. Ever since
+I learnt to distinguish between one English face and another I have
+noticed what the woman pointed out: that the English face is not an
+adult face, just as the English mind is not an adult mind.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Stow it, John Chinaman. If ever there was a race divinely
+appointed to take charge of the non-adult races and guide them and train
+them and keep them out of mischief until they grow up to be capable of
+adopting our institutions, that race is the English race. It is the only
+race in the world that has that characteristic. Now!
+
+CONFUCIUS. That is the fancy of a child nursing a doll. But it is ten
+times more childish of you to dispute the highest compliment ever paid
+you.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. You call it a compliment to class us as grown-up children.
+
+CONFUCIUS. Not grown-up children, children at fifty, sixty, seventy.
+Your maturity is so late that you never attain to it. You have to be
+governed by races which are mature at forty. That means that you are
+potentially the most highly developed race on earth, and would be
+actually the greatest if you could live long enough to attain to
+maturity.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_grasping the idea at last_] By George, Confucius, youre
+right! I never thought of that. That explains everything. We are just
+a lot of schoolboys: theres no denying it. Talk to an Englishman about
+anything serious, and he listens to you curiously for a moment just as
+he listens to a chap playing classical music. Then he goes back to
+his marine golf, or motoring, or flying, or women, just like a bit of
+stretched elastic when you let it go. [_Soaring to the height of his
+theme_] Oh, youre quite right. We are only in our infancy. I ought to
+be in a perambulator, with a nurse shoving me along. It's true: it's
+absolutely true. But some day we'll grow up; and then, by Jingo, we'll
+shew em.
+
+CONFUCIUS. The Archbishop is an adult. When I was a child I was
+dominated and intimidated by people whom I now know to have been weaker
+and sillier than I, because there was some mysterious quality in their
+mere age that overawed me. I confess that, though I have kept up
+appearances, I have always been afraid of the Archbishop.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Between ourselves, Confucius, so have I.
+
+CONFUCIUS. It is this that convinced me. It was this in the woman's face
+that convinced you. Their new departure in the history of the race is no
+fraud. It does not even surprise me.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Oh, come! Not surprise you! It's your pose never to be
+surprised at anything; but if you are not surprised at this you are not
+human.
+
+CONFUCIUS. I am staggered, just as a man may be staggered by an
+explosion for which he has himself laid the charge and lighted the fuse.
+But I am not surprised, because, as a philosopher and a student of
+evolutionary biology, I have come to regard some such development as
+this as inevitable. If I had not thus prepared myself to be credulous,
+no mere evidence of films and well-told tales would have persuaded me to
+believe. As it is, I do believe.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Well, that being settled, what the devil is to happen next?
+Whats the next move for us?
+
+CONFUCIUS. We do not make the next move. The next move will be made by
+the Archbishop and the woman.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Their marriage?
+
+CONFUCIUS. More than that. They have made the momentous discovery that
+they are not alone in the world.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. You think there are others?
+
+CONFUCIUS. There must be many others. Each of them believes that he or
+she is the only one to whom the miracle has happened. But the Archbishop
+knows better now. He will advertise in terms which only the longlived
+people will understand. He will bring them together and organize them.
+They will hasten from all parts of the earth. They will become a great
+Power.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_a little alarmed_] I say, will they? I suppose they will.
+I wonder is Barnabas right after all? Ought we to allow it?
+
+CONFUCIUS. Nothing that we can do will stop it. We cannot in our souls
+really want to stop it: the vital force that has produced this change
+would paralyse our opposition to it, if we were mad enough to oppose.
+But we will not oppose. You and I may be of the elect, too.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Yes: thats what gets us every time. What the deuce ought we
+to do? Something must be done about it, you know.
+
+CONFUCIUS. Let us sit still, and meditate in silence on the vistas
+before us.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. By George, I believe youre right. Let us.
+
+_They sit meditating, the Chinaman naturally, the President with visible
+effort and intensity. He is positively glaring into the future when the
+voice of the Negress is heard._
+
+THE NEGRESS. Mr President.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_joyfully_] Yes. [_Taking up a peg_] Are you at home?
+
+THE NEGRESS. No. Omega, zero, x squared.
+
+_The President rapidly puts the peg in the switchboard; works the dial;
+and presses the button. The screen becomes transparent; and the Negress,
+brilliantly dressed, appears on what looks like the bridge of a steam
+yacht in glorious sea weather. The installation with which she is
+communicating is beside the binnacle._
+
+CONFUCIUS [_looking round, and recoiling with a shriek of disgust_] Ach!
+Avaunt! Avaunt! [_He rushes from the room_].
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. What part of the coast is that?
+
+THE NEGRESS. Fishguard Bay. Why not run over and join me for the
+afternoon? I am disposed to be approachable at last.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. But Fishguard! Two hundred and seventy miles!
+
+THE NEGRESS. There is a lightning express on the Irish Air Service at
+half-past sixteen. They will drop you by a parachute in the bay. The
+dip will do you good. I will pick you up and dry you and give you a
+first-rate time.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Delightful. But a little risky, isnt it?
+
+THE NEGRESS. Risky! I thought you were afraid of nothing.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. I am not exactly afraid; but--
+
+THE NEGRESS [_offended_] But you think it is not good enough. Very well
+[_she raises her hand to take the peg out of her switchboard_].
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_imploringly_] No: stop: let me explain: hold the line just
+one moment. Oh, please.
+
+THE NEGRESS [_waiting with her hand poised over the peg_] Well?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. The fact is, I have been behaving very recklessly for some
+time past under the impression that my life would be so short that
+it was not worth bothering about. But I have just learnt that I may
+live--well, much longer than I expected. I am sure your good sense will
+tell you that this alters the case. I--
+
+THE NEGRESS [_with suppressed rage_] Oh, quite. Pray don't risk your
+precious, life on my account. Sorry for troubling you. Goodbye. [_She
+snatches out her peg and vanishes_].
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_urgently_] No: please hold on. I can convince you--[_a
+loud buzz-uzz-uzz_]. Engaged! Who is she calling up now? [_Represses the
+button and calls_] The Chief Secretary. Say I want to see him again,
+just for a moment.
+
+CONFUCIUS'S VOICE. Is the woman gone?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Yes, yes: it's all right. Just a moment, if--[_Confucius
+returns_] Confucius: I have some important business at Fishguard. The
+Irish Air Service can drop me in the bay by parachute. I suppose it's
+quite safe, isnt it?
+
+CONFUCIUS. Nothing is quite safe. The air service is as safe as any
+other travelling service. The parachute is safe. But the water is not
+safe.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Why? They will give me an unsinkable tunic, wont they?
+
+CONFUCIUS. You will not sink; but the sea is very cold. You may get
+rheumatism for life.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. For life! That settles it: I wont risk it.
+
+CONFUCIUS. Good. You have at last become prudent: you are no longer what
+you call a sportsman: you are a sensible coward, almost a grown-up man.
+I congratulate you.
+
+BURGE-LUBIN [_resolutely_] Coward or no coward, I will not face an
+eternity of rheumatism for any woman that ever was born. [_He rises and
+goes to the rack for his fillet_] I have changed my mind: I am going
+home. [_He cocks the fillet rakishly_] Good evening.
+
+CONFUCIUS. So early? If the Minister of Health rings you up, what shall
+I tell her?
+
+BURGE-LUBIN. Tell her to go to the devil. [_He goes out_].
+
+CONFUCIUS [_shaking his head, shocked at the President's impoliteness_]
+No. No, no, no, no, no. Oh, these English! these crude young
+civilizations! Their manners! Hogs. Hogs.
+
+
+
+
+PART IV
+
+Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman
+
+
+ACT I
+
+
+_Burrin pier on the south shore of Galway Bay in Ireland, a region of
+stone-capped hills and granite fields. It is a fine summer day in the
+year 3000 A.D. On an ancient stone stump, about three feet thick and
+three feet high, used for securing ships by ropes to the shore, and
+called a bollard or holdfast, an elderly gentleman sits facing the land
+with his head bowed and his face in his hands, sobbing. His sunburnt
+skin contrasts with his white whiskers and eyebrows. He wears a black
+frock-coat, a white waistcoat, lavender trousers, a brilliant silk
+cravat with a jewelled pin stuck in it, a tall hat of grey felt, and
+patent leather boots with white spats. His starched linen cuffs protrude
+from his coat sleeves; and his collar, also of starched white linen, is
+Gladstonian. On his right, three or four full sacks, lying side by side
+on the flags, suggest that the pier, unlike many remote Irish piers,
+is occasionally useful as well as romantic. On his left, behind him, a
+flight of stone steps descends out of sight to the sea level.
+
+A woman in a silk tunic and sandals, wearing little else except a cap
+with the number 2 on it in gold, comes up the steps from the sea, and
+stares in astonishment at the sobbing man. Her age cannot be guessed:
+her face is firm and chiselled like a young face; but her expression is
+unyouthful in its severity and determination._
+
+THE WOMAN. What is the matter?
+
+_The elderly gentleman looks up; hastily pulls himself together; takes
+out a silk handkerchief and dries his tears lightly with a brave attempt
+to smile through them; and tries to rise gallantly, but sinks back._
+
+THE WOMAN. Do you need assistance?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No. Thank you very much. No. Nothing. The heat.
+[_He punctuates with sniffs, and dabs with his handkerchief at his eyes
+and nose._] Hay fever.
+
+THE WOMAN. You are a foreigner, are you not?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No. You must not regard me as a foreigner. I am a
+Briton.
+
+THE WOMAN. You come from some part of the British Commonwealth?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_amiably pompous_] From its capital, madam.
+
+THE WOMAN. From Baghdad?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Yes. You may not be aware, madam, that these
+islands were once the centre of the British Commonwealth, during a
+period now known as The Exile. They were its headquarters a thousand
+years ago. Few people know this interesting circumstance now; but I
+assure you it is true. I have come here on a pious pilgrimage to one of
+the numerous lands of my fathers. We are of the same stock, you and I.
+Blood is thicker than water. We are cousins.
+
+THE WOMAN. I do not understand. You say you have come here on a pious
+pilgrimage. Is that some new means of transport?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_again shewing signs of distress_] I find it
+very difficult to make myself understood here. I was not referring to a
+machine, but to a--a--a sentimental journey.
+
+THE WOMAN. I am afraid I am as much in the dark as before. You said also
+that blood is thicker than water. No doubt it is; but what of it?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Its meaning is obvious.
+
+THE WOMAN. Perfectly. But I assure you I am quite aware that blood is
+thicker than water.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_sniffing: almost in tears again_] We will leave
+it at that, madam.
+
+THE WOMAN [going _nearer to him and scrutinizing him with some concern_]
+I am afraid you are not well. Were you not warned that it is dangerous
+for shortlived people to come to this country? There is a deadly disease
+called discouragement, against which shortlived people have to take very
+strict precautions. Intercourse with us puts too great a strain on them.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_pulling himself together huffily_] It has no
+effect on me, madam. I fear my conversation does not interest you. If
+not, the remedy is in your own hands.
+
+THE WOMAN [_looking at her hands, and then looking inquiringly at him_]
+Where?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_breaking down_] Oh, this is dreadful. No
+understanding, no intelligence, no sympathy--[_his sobs choke him_].
+
+THE WOMAN. You see, you are ill.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_nerved by indignation_] I am not ill. I have
+never had a day's illness in my life.
+
+THE WOMAN. May I advise you?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I have no need of a lady doctor, thank you,
+madam.
+
+THE WOMAN [_shaking her head_] I am afraid I do not understand. I said
+nothing about a butterfly.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Well, _I_ said nothing about a butterfly.
+
+THE WOMAN. You spoke of a lady doctor. The word is known here only as
+the name of a butterfly.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_insanely_] I give up. I can bear this no longer.
+It is easier to go out of my mind at once. [_He rises and dances about,
+singing_]
+
+
+    I'd be a butterfly, born in a bower,
+    Making apple dumplings without any flour.
+
+
+THE WOMAN [_smiling gravely_] It must be at least a hundred and fifty
+years since I last laughed. But if you do that any more I shall
+certainly break out like a primary of sixty. Your dress is so
+extraordinarily ridiculous.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_halting abruptly in his antics_] My dress
+ridiculous! I may not be dressed like a Foreign Office clerk; but
+my clothes are perfectly in fashion in my native metropolis, where
+yours--pardon my saying so--would be considered extremely unusual and
+hardly decent.
+
+THE WOMAN. Decent? There is no such word in our language. What does it
+mean?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. It would not be decent for me to explain. Decency
+cannot be discussed without indecency.
+
+THE WOMAN. I cannot understand you at all. I fear you have not been
+observing the rules laid down for shortlived visitors.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Surely, madam, they do not apply to persons of my
+age and standing. I am not a child, nor an agricultural laborer.
+
+THE WOMAN [_severely_] They apply to you very strictly. You are expected
+to confine yourself to the society of children under sixty. You
+are absolutely forbidden to approach fully adult natives under any
+circumstances. You cannot converse with persons of my age for long
+without bringing on a dangerous attack of discouragement. Do you realize
+that you are already shewing grave symptoms of that very distressing and
+usually fatal complaint?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Certainly not, madam. I am fortunately in no
+danger of contracting it. I am quite accustomed to converse intimately
+and at the greatest length with the most distinguished persons. If you
+cannot discriminate between hay fever and imbecility, I can only say
+that your advanced years carry with them the inevitable penalty of
+dotage.
+
+THE WOMAN. I am one of the guardians of this district; and I am
+responsible for your welfare--
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. The Guardians! Do you take me for a pauper?
+
+THE WOMAN. I do not know what a pauper is. You must tell me who you are,
+if it is possible for you to express yourself intelligibly--
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_snorts indignantly_]!
+
+THE WOMAN [_continuing_]--and why you are wandering here alone without a
+nurse.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_outraged_] Nurse!
+
+THE WOMAN. Shortlived visitors are not allowed to go about here without
+nurses. Do you not know that rules are meant to be kept?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. By the lower classes, no doubt. But to persons
+in my position there are certain courtesies which are never denied by
+well-bred people; and--
+
+THE WOMAN. There are only two human classes here: the shortlived and
+the normal. The rules apply to the shortlived, and are for their own
+protection. Now tell me at once who you are.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_impressively_] Madam, I am a retired gentleman,
+formerly Chairman of the All-British Synthetic Egg and Vegetable Cheese
+Trust in Baghdad, and now President of the British Historical and
+Archaeological Society, and a Vice-President of the Travellers' Club.
+
+THE WOMAN. All that does not matter.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_again snorting_] Hm! Indeed!
+
+THE WOMAN. Have you been sent here to make your mind flexible?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. What an extraordinary question! Pray do you find
+my mind noticeably stiff?
+
+THE WOMAN. Perhaps you do not know that you are on the west coast of
+Ireland, and that it is the practice among natives of the Eastern Island
+to spend some years here to acquire mental flexibility. The climate has
+that effect.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_haughtily_] I was born, not in the Eastern
+Island, but, thank God, in dear old British Baghdad; and I am not in
+need of a mental health resort.
+
+THE WOMAN. Then why are you here?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Am I trespassing? I was not aware of it.
+
+THE WOMAN. Trespassing? I do not understand the word.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Is this land private property? If so, I make no
+claim. I proffer a shilling in satisfaction of damage (if any), and am
+ready to withdraw if you will be good enough to shew me the nearest way.
+[_He offers her a shilling_].
+
+THE WOMAN [_taking it and examining it without much interest_] I do not
+understand a single word of what you have just said.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I am speaking the plainest English. Are you the
+landlord?
+
+THE WOMAN [_shaking her head_] There is a tradition in this part of the
+country of an animal with a name like that. It used to be hunted and
+shot in the barbarous ages. It is quite extinct now.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_breaking down again_] It is a dreadful thing to
+be in a country where nobody understands civilized institutions. [_He
+collapses on the bollard, struggling with his rising sobs_]. Excuse me.
+Hay fever.
+
+THE WOMAN [_taking a tuning-fork from her girdle and holding it to her
+ear; then speaking into space on one note, like a chorister intoning
+a psalm_] Burrin Pier Galway please send someone to take charge of a
+discouraged shortliver who has escaped from his nurse male harmless
+babbles unintelligibly with moments of sense distressed hysterical
+foreign dress very funny has curious fringe of white sea-weed under his
+chin.
+
+THE GENTLEMAN. This is a gross impertinence. An insult.
+
+THE WOMAN [_replacing her tuning-fork and addressing the elderly
+gentleman_] These words mean nothing to me. In what capacity are you
+here? How did you obtain permission to visit us?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_importantly_] Our Prime Minister, Mr Badger
+Bluebin, has come to consult the oracle. He is my son-in-law. We are
+accompanied by his wife and daughter: my daughter and granddaughter. I
+may mention that General Aufsteig, who is one of our party, is really
+the Emperor of Turania travelling incognito. I understand he has a
+question to put to the oracle informally. I have come solely to visit
+the country.
+
+THE WOMAN. Why should you come to a place where you have no business?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Great Heavens, madam, can anything be more
+natural? I shall be the only member of the Travellers' Club who has set
+foot on these shores. Think of that! My position will be unique.
+
+THE WOMAN. Is that an advantage? We have a person here who has lost both
+legs in an accident. His position is unique. But he would much rather be
+like everyone else.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. This is maddening. There is no analogy whatever
+between the two cases.
+
+THE WOMAN. They are both unique.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Conversation in this place seems to consist of
+ridiculous quibbles. I am heartily tired of them.
+
+THE WOMAN. I conclude that your Travellers' Club is an assembly of
+persons who wish to be able to say that they have been in some place
+where nobody else has been.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Of Course if you wish to sneer at us--
+
+THE WOMAN. What is sneer?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_with a wild sob_] I shall drown myself.
+
+_He makes desperately for the edge of the pier, but is confronted by
+a man with the number one on his cap, who comes up the steps and
+intercepts him. He is dressed like the woman, but a slight moustache
+proclaims his sex._
+
+THE MAN [_to the elderly gentleman_] Ah, here you are. I shall really
+have to put a collar and lead on you if you persist in giving me the
+slip like this.
+
+THE WOMAN. Are you this stranger's nurse?
+
+THE MAN. Yes. I am very tired of him. If I take my eyes off him for a
+moment, he runs away and talks to everybody.
+
+THE WOMAN [_after taking out her tuning-fork and sounding it, intones as
+before_] Burrin Pier. Wash out. [_She puts up the fork, and addresses
+the man_]. I sent a call for someone to take care of him. I have been
+trying to talk to him; but I can understand very little of what he says.
+You must take better care of him: he is badly discouraged already. If
+I can be of any further use, Fusima, Gort, will find me. [_She goes
+away_].
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Any further use! She has been of no use to me.
+She spoke to me without any introduction, like any improper female. And
+she has made off with my shilling.
+
+THE MAN. Please speak slowly. I cannot follow. What is a shilling? What
+is an introduction? Improper female doesnt make sense.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Nothing seems to make sense here. All I can tell
+you is that she was the most impenetrably stupid woman I have ever met
+in the whole course of my life.
+
+THE MAN. That cannot be. She cannot appear stupid to you. She is a
+secondary, and getting on for a tertiary at that.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. What is a tertiary? Everybody here keeps talking
+to me about primaries and secondaries and tertiaries as if people were
+geological strata.
+
+THE MAN. The primaries are in their first century. The secondaries are
+in their second century. I am still classed as a primary [_he points to
+his number_]; but I may almost call myself a secondary, as I shall be
+ninety-five next January. The tertiaries are in their third century. Did
+you not see the number two on her badge? She is an advanced secondary.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. That accounts for it. She is in her second
+childhood.
+
+THE MAN. Her second childhood! She is in her fifth childhood.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_again resorting to the bollard_] Oh! I cannot
+bear these unnatural arrangements.
+
+THE MAN [_impatient and helpless_] You shouldn't have come among us.
+This is no place for you.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_nerved by indignation_] May I ask why? I am a
+Vice-President of the Travellers' Club. I have been everywhere: I hold
+the record in the Club for civilized countries.
+
+THE MAN. What is a civilized country?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. It is--well, it is a civilized country.
+[_Desperately_] I don't know: I--I--I--I shall go mad if you keep on
+asking me to tell you things that everybody knows. Countries where you
+can travel comfortably. Where there are good hotels. Excuse me; but,
+though you say you are ninety-four, you are worse company than a child
+of five with your eternal questions. Why not call me Daddy at once?
+
+THE MAN. I did not know your name was Daddy.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. My name is Joseph Popham Bolge Bluebin Barlow,
+O.M.
+
+THE MAN. That is five men's names. Daddy is shorter. And O.M. will not
+do here. It is our name for certain wild creatures, descendants of
+the aboriginal inhabitants of this coast. They used to be called the
+O'Mulligans. We will stick to Daddy.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. People will think I am your father.
+
+THE MAN [_shocked_] Sh-sh! People here never allude to such
+relationships. It is not quite delicate, is it? What does it matter
+whether you are my father or not?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. My worthy nonagenarian friend: your faculties are
+totally decayed. Could you not find me a guide of my own age?
+
+THE MAN. A young person?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Certainly not. I cannot go about with a young
+person.
+
+THE MAN. Why?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Why! Why!! Why!!! Have you no moral sense?
+
+THE MAN. I shall have to give you up. I cannot understand you.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. But you meant a young woman, didn't you?
+
+THE MAN. I meant simply somebody of your own age. What difference does
+it make whether the person is a man or a woman?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I could not have believed in the existence of
+such scandalous insensibility to the elementary decencies of human
+intercourse.
+
+THE MAN. What are decencies?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_shrieking_] Everyone asks me that.
+
+THE MAN [_taking out a tuning-fork and using it as the woman did_] Zozim
+on Burrin Pier to Zoo Ennistymon I have found the discouraged shortliver
+he has been talking to a secondary and is much worse I am too old he is
+asking for someone of his own age or younger come if you can. [_He puts
+up his fork and turns to the Elderly Gentleman_]. Zoo is a girl of
+fifty, and rather childish at that. So perhaps she may make you happy.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Make me happy! A bluestocking of fifty! Thank
+you.
+
+THE MAN. Bluestocking? The effort to make out your meaning is fatiguing.
+Besides, you are talking too much to me: I am old enough to discourage
+you. Let us be silent until Zoo comes. [_He turns his back on the
+Elderly Gentleman, and sits down on the edge of the pier, with his legs
+dangling over the water_].
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Certainly. I have no wish to force my
+conversation on any man who does not desire it. Perhaps you would like
+to take a nap. If so, pray do not stand on ceremony.
+
+THE MAN. What is a nap?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_exasperated, going to him and speaking with
+great precision and distinctness_] A nap, my friend, is a brief period
+of sleep which overtakes superannuated persons when they endeavor to
+entertain unwelcome visitors or to listen to scientific lectures. Sleep.
+Sleep. [_Bawling into his ear_] Sleep.
+
+THE MAN. I tell you I am nearly a secondary. I never sleep.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_awestruck_] Good Heavens!
+
+_A young woman with the number one on her cap arrives by land. She looks
+no older than Savvy Barnabas, whom she somewhat resembles, looked a
+thousand years before. Younger, if anything._
+
+THE YOUNG WOMAN. Is this the patient?
+
+THE MAN [_scrambling up_] This is Zoo. [_To Zoo_] Call him Daddy.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_vehemently_] No.
+
+THE MAN [_ignoring the interruption_] Bless you for taking him off my
+hands! I have had as much of him as I can bear. [_He goes down the steps
+and disappears_].
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_ironically taking off his hat and making a
+sweeping bow from the edge of the pier in the direction of the
+Atlantic Ocean_] Good afternoon, sir; and thank you very much for your
+extraordinary politeness, your exquisite consideration for my feelings,
+your courtly manners. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. [_Clapping
+his hat on again_] Pig! Ass!
+
+ZOO [_laughs very heartily at him_]!!!
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_turning sharply on her_] Good afternoon, madam.
+I am sorry to have had to put your friend in his place; but I find that
+here as elsewhere it is necessary to assert myself if I am to be treated
+with proper consideration. I had hoped that my position as a guest would
+protect me from insult.
+
+ZOO. Putting my friend in his place. That is some poetic expression, is
+it not? What does it mean?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Pray, is there no one in these islands who
+understands plain English?
+
+ZOO. Well, nobody except the oracles. They have to make a special
+historical study of what we call the dead thought.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Dead thought! I have heard of the dead languages,
+but never of the dead thought.
+
+ZOO. Well, thoughts die sooner than languages. I understand your
+language; but I do not always understand your thought. The oracles will
+understand you perfectly. Have you had your consultation yet?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I did not come to consult the oracle, madam. I am
+here simply as a gentleman travelling for pleasure in the company of my
+daughter, who is the wife of the British Prime Minister, and of General
+Aufsteig, who, I may tell you in confidence, is really the Emperor of
+Turania, the greatest military genius of the age.
+
+ZOO. Why should you travel for pleasure! Can you not enjoy yourself at
+home?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I wish to see the World.
+
+ZOO. It is too big. You can see a bit of it anywhere.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_out of patience_] Damn it, madam, you don't want
+to spend your life looking at the same bit of it! [_Checking himself_] I
+beg your pardon for swearing in your presence.
+
+ZOO. Oh! That is swearing, is it? I have read about that. It sounds
+quite pretty. Dammitmaddam, dammitmaddam, dammitmaddam, dammitmaddam.
+Say it as often as you please: I like it.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_expanding with intense relief_] Bless you for
+those profane but familiar words! Thank you, thank you. For the first
+time since I landed in this terrible country I begin to feel at home.
+The strain which was driving me mad relaxes: I feel almost as if I were
+at the club. Excuse my taking the only available seat: I am not so young
+as I was. [_He sits on the bollard_]. Promise me that you will not hand
+me over to one of these dreadful tertiaries or secondaries or whatever
+you call them.
+
+ZOO. Never fear. They had no business to give you in charge to Zozim.
+You see he is just on the verge of becoming a secondary; and these
+adolescents will give themselves the airs of tertiaries. You naturally
+feel more at home with a flapper like me. [_She makes herself
+comfortable on the sacks_].
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Flapper? What does that mean?
+
+ZOO. It is an archaic word which we still use to describe a female who
+is no longer a girl and is not yet quite adult.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. A very agreeable age to associate with, I find. I
+am recovering rapidly. I have a sense of blossoming like a flower. May I
+ask your name?
+
+ZOO. Zoo.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Miss Zoo.
+
+ZOO. Not Miss Zoo. Zoo.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Precisely. Er--Zoo what?
+
+ZOO. No. Not Zoo What. Zoo. Nothing but Zoo.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_puzzled_] Mrs Zoo, perhaps.
+
+ZOO. No. Zoo. Cant you catch it? Zoo.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Of course. Believe me, I did not really think you
+were married: you are obviously too young; but here it is so hard to
+feel sure--er--
+
+ZOO [_hopelessly puzzled_] What?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Marriage makes a difference, you know. One can
+say things to a married lady that would perhaps be in questionable taste
+to anyone without that experience.
+
+ZOO. You are getting out of my depth: I dont understand a word you are
+saying. Married and questionable taste convey nothing to me. Stop,
+though. Is married an old form of the word mothered?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Very likely. Let us drop the subject. Pardon me
+for embarrassing you. I should not have mentioned it.
+
+ZOO. What does embarrassing mean?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Well, really! I should have thought that so
+natural and common a condition would be understood as long as human
+nature lasted. To embarrass is to bring a blush to the cheek.
+
+ZOO. What is a blush?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_amazed_] Dont you blush???
+
+ZOO. Never heard of it. We have a word flush, meaning a rush of blood to
+the skin. I have noticed it in my babies, but not after the age of two.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Your babies!!! I fear I am treading on very
+delicate ground; but your appearance is extremely youthful; and if I may
+ask how many--?
+
+ZOO. Only four as yet. It is a long business with us. I specialize in
+babies. My first was such a success that they made me go on. I--
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_reeling on the bollard_] Oh! dear!
+
+ZOO. Whats the matter? Anything wrong?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. In Heaven's name, madam, how old are you?
+
+ZOO. Fifty-six.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. My knees are trembling. I fear I am really ill.
+Not so young as I was.
+
+ZOO. I noticed that you are not strong on your legs yet. You have many
+of the ways and weaknesses of a baby. No doubt that is why I feel called
+on to mother you. You certainly are a very silly little Daddy.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_stimulated by indignation_] My name, I repeat,
+is Joseph Popham Bolge Bluebin Barlow, O.M.
+
+ZOO. What a ridiculously long name! I cant call you all that. What did
+your mother call you?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. You recall the bitterest struggles of my
+childhood. I was sensitive on the point. Children suffer greatly from
+absurd nicknames. My mother thoughtlessly called me Iddy Toodles. I
+was called Iddy until I went to school, when I made my first stand for
+children's rights by insisting on being called at least Joe. At fifteen
+I refused to answer to anything shorter than Joseph. At eighteen I
+discovered that the name Joseph was supposed to indicate an unmanly
+prudery because of some old story about a Joseph who rejected the
+advances of his employer's wife: very properly in my opinion. I then
+became Popham to my family and intimate friends, and Mister Barlow
+to the rest of the world. My mother slipped back into Iddy when her
+faculties began to fail her, poor woman; but I could not resent that, at
+her age.
+
+ZOO. Do you mean to say that your mother bothered about you after you
+were ten?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Naturally, madam. She was my mother. What would
+you have had her do?
+
+ZOO. Go on to the next, of course. After eight or nine children become
+quite uninteresting, except to themselves. I shouldnt know my two eldest
+if I met them.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_again drooping_] I am dying. Let me die. I wish
+to die.
+
+ZOO [_going to him quickly and supporting him_] Hold up. Sit up
+straight. Whats the matter?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_faintly_] My spine, I think. Shock. Concussion.
+
+ZOO [_maternally_] Pow wow wow! What is there to shock you? [_Shaking
+him playfully_] There! Sit up; and be good.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_still feebly_] Thank you. I am better now.
+
+ZOO [_resuming her seat on the sacks_] But what was all the rest of that
+long name for? There was a lot more of it. Blops Booby or something.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_impressively_] Bolge Bluebin, madam: a
+historical name. Let me inform you that I can trace my family back for
+more than a thousand years, from the Eastern Empire to its ancient seat
+in these islands, to a time when two of my ancestors, Joyce Bolge
+and Hengist Horsa Bluebin, wrestled with one another for the prime
+ministership of the British Empire, and occupied that position
+successively with a glory of which we can in these degenerate days form
+but a faint conception. When I think of these mighty men, lions in war,
+sages in peace, not babblers and charlatans like the pigmies who now
+occupy their places in Baghdad, but strong silent men, ruling an empire
+on which the sun never set, my eyes fill with tears: my heart bursts
+with emotion: I feel that to have lived but to the dawn of manhood in
+their day, and then died for them, would have been a nobler and happier
+lot than the ignominious ease of my present longevity.
+
+ZOO. Longevity! [_she laughs_].
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Yes, madam, relative longevity. As it is, I have
+to be content and proud to know that I am descended from both those
+heroes.
+
+ZOO. You must be descended from every Briton who was alive in their
+time. Dont you know that?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Do not quibble, madam. I bear their names, Bolge
+and Bluebin; and I hope I have inherited something of their majestic
+spirit. Well, they were born in these islands. I repeat, these islands
+were then, incredible as it now seems, the centre of the British Empire.
+When that centre shifted to Baghdad, and the Englishman at last returned
+to the true cradle of his race in Mesopotamia, the western islands were
+cast off, as they had been before by the Roman Empire. But it was to the
+British race, and in these islands, that the greatest miracle in history
+occurred.
+
+ZOO. Miracle?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Yes: the first man to live three hundred years
+was an Englishman. The first, that is, since the contemporaries of
+Methuselah.
+
+ZOO. Oh, that!
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Yes, that, as you call it so flippantly. Are you
+aware, madam, that at that immortal moment the English race had lost
+intellectual credit to such an extent that they habitually spoke of
+one another as fatheads? Yet England is now a sacred grove to which
+statesmen from all over the earth come to consult English sages who
+speak with the experience of two and a half centuries of life. The land
+that once exported cotton shirts and hardware now exports nothing but
+wisdom. You see before you, madam, a man utterly weary of the week-end
+riverside hotels of the Euphrates, the minstrels and pierrots on the
+sands of the Persian Gulf, the toboggans and funiculars of the Hindoo
+Koosh. Can you wonder that I turn, with a hungry heart, to the mystery
+and beauty of these haunted islands, thronged with spectres from a magic
+past, made holy by the footsteps of the wise men of the West. Consider
+this island on which we stand, the last foothold of man on this side
+of the Atlantic: this Ireland, described by the earliest bards as an
+emerald gem set in a silver sea! Can I, a scion of the illustrious
+British race, ever forget that when the Empire transferred its seat to
+the East, and said to the turbulent Irish race which it had oppressed
+but never conquered, 'At last we leave you to yourselves; and much good
+may it do you,' the Irish as one man uttered the historic shout 'No:
+we'll be damned if you do,' and emigrated to the countries where there
+was still a Nationalist question, to India, Persia, and Corea, to
+Morocco, Tunis, and Tripoli. In these countries they were ever
+foremost in the struggle for national independence; and the world rang
+continually with the story of their sufferings and wrongs. And what poem
+can do justice to the end, when it came at last? Hardly two hundred
+years had elapsed when the claims of nationality were so universally
+conceded that there was no longer a single country on the face of the
+earth with a national grievance or a national movement. Think of the
+position of the Irish, who had lost all their political faculties by
+disuse except that of nationalist agitation, and who owed their position
+as the most interesting race on earth solely to their sufferings! The
+very countries they had helped to set free boycotted them as intolerable
+bores. The communities which had once idolized them as the incarnation
+of all that is adorable in the warm heart and witty brain, fled from
+them as from a pestilence. To regain their lost prestige, the Irish
+claimed the city of Jerusalem, on the ground that they were the lost
+tribes of Israel; but on their approach the Jews abandoned the city
+and redistributed themselves throughout Europe. It was then that these
+devoted Irishmen, not one of whom had ever seen Ireland, were counselled
+by an English Archbishop, the father of the oracles, to go back to their
+own country. This had never once occurred to them, because there was
+nothing to prevent them and nobody to forbid them. They jumped at the
+suggestion. They landed here: here in Galway Bay, on this very ground.
+When they reached the shore the older men and women flung themselves
+down and passionately kissed the soil of Ireland, calling on the young
+to embrace the earth that had borne their ancestors. But the young
+looked gloomily on, and said 'There is no earth, only stone.' You will
+see by looking round you why they said that: the fields here are of
+stone: the hills are capped with granite. They all left for England next
+day; and no Irishman ever again confessed to being Irish, even to his
+own children; so that when that generation passed away the Irish race
+vanished from human knowledge. And the dispersed Jews did the same lest
+they should be sent back to Palestine. Since then the world, bereft of
+its Jews and its Irish, has been a tame dull place. Is there no pathos
+for you in this story? Can you not understand now why I am come to visit
+the scene of this tragic effacement of a race of heroes and poets?
+
+ZOO. We still tell our little children stories like that, to help them
+to understand. But such things do not happen really. That scene of the
+Irish landing here and kissing the ground might have happened to a
+hundred people. It couldn't have happened to a hundred thousand: you
+know that as well as I do. And what a ridiculous thing to call people
+Irish because they live in Ireland! you might as well call them Airish
+because they live in air. They must be just the same as other people.
+Why do you shortlivers persist in making up silly stories about the
+world and trying to act as if they were true? Contact with truth hurts
+and frightens you: you escape from it into an imaginary vacuum in which
+you can indulge your desires and hopes and loves and hates without any
+obstruction from the solid facts of life. You love to throw dust in your
+own eyes.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. It is my turn now, madam, to inform you that I do
+not understand a single word you are saying. I should have thought that
+the use of a vacuum for removing dust was a mark of civilization rather
+than of savagery.
+
+ZOO [_giving him up as hopeless_] Oh, Daddy, Daddy: I can hardly believe
+that you are human, you are so stupid. It was well said of your people
+in the olden days, 'Dust thou art; and to dust thou shalt return.'
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_nobly_] My body is dust, madam: not my soul.
+What does it matter what my body is made of? the dust of the ground,
+the particles of the air, or even the slime of the ditch? The important
+thing is that when my Creator took it, whatever it was, He breathed into
+its nostrils the breath of life; and Man became a living soul. Yes,
+madam, a living soul. I am not the dust of the ground: I am a living
+soul. That is an exalting, a magnificent thought. It is also a great
+scientific fact. I am not interested in the chemicals and the microbes:
+I leave them to the chumps and noodles, to the blockheads and the
+muckrakers who are incapable of their own glorious destiny, and
+unconscious of their own divinity. They tell me there are leucocytes
+in my blood, and sodium and carbon in my flesh. I thank them for the
+information, and tell them that there are blackbeetles in my kitchen,
+washing soda in my laundry, and coal in my cellar. I do not deny their
+existence; but I keep them in their proper place, which is not, if I may
+be allowed to use an antiquated form of expression, the temple of the
+Holy Ghost. No doubt you think me behind the times; but I rejoice in my
+enlightenment; and I recoil from your ignorance, your blindness, your
+imbecility. Humanly I pity you. Intellectually I despise you.
+
+ZOO. Bravo, Daddy! You have the root of the matter in you. You will not
+die of discouragement after all.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I have not the smallest intention of doing so,
+madam. I am no longer young; and I have moments of weakness; but when
+I approach this subject the divine spark in me kindles and glows, the
+corruptible becomes incorruptible, and the mortal Bolge Bluebin Barlow
+puts on immortality. On this ground I am your equal, even if you survive
+me by ten thousand years.
+
+ZOO. Yes; but what do we know about this breath of life that puffs you
+up so exaltedly? Just nothing. So let us shake hands as cultivated
+Agnostics, and change the subject.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Cultivated fiddlesticks, madam! You cannot change
+this subject until the heavens and the earth pass away. I am not an
+Agnostic: I am a gentleman. When I believe a thing I say I believe it:
+when I don't believe it I say I don't believe it. I do not shirk my
+responsibilities by pretending that I know nothing and therefore can
+believe nothing. We cannot disclaim knowledge and shirk responsibility.
+We must proceed on assumptions of some sort or we cannot form a human
+society.
+
+ZOO. The assumptions must be scientific, Daddy. We must live by science
+in the long run.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I have the utmost respect, madam, for the
+magnificent discoveries which we owe to science. But any fool can make
+a discovery. Every baby has to discover more in the first years of its
+life than Roger Bacon ever discovered in his laboratory. When I was
+seven years old I discovered the sting of the wasp. But I do not ask
+you to worship me on that account. I assure you, madam, the merest
+mediocrities can discover the most surprising facts about the physical
+universe as soon as they are civilized enough to have time to study
+these things, and to invent instruments and apparatus for research. But
+what is the consequence? Their discoveries discredit the simple stories
+of our religion. At first we had no idea of astronomical space. We
+believed the sky to be only the ceiling of a room as large as the earth,
+with another room on top of it. Death was to us a going upstairs into
+that room, or, if we did not obey the priests, going downstairs into
+the coal cellar. We founded our religion, our morality, our laws, our
+lessons, our poems, our prayers, on that simple belief. Well, the moment
+men became astronomers and made telescopes, their belief perished. When
+they could no longer believe in the sky, they found that they could no
+longer believe in their Deity, because they had always thought of him
+as living in the sky. When the priests themselves ceased to believe in
+their Deity and began to believe in astronomy, they changed their name
+and their dress, and called themselves doctors and men of science. They
+set up a new religion in which there was no Deity, but only wonders
+and miracles, with scientific instruments and apparatus as the wonder
+workers. Instead of worshipping the greatness and wisdom of the Deity,
+men gaped foolishly at the million billion miles of space and worshipped
+the astronomer as infallible and omniscient. They built temples for his
+telescopes. Then they looked into their own bodies with microscopes, and
+found there, not the soul they had formerly believed in, but millions of
+micro-organisms; so they gaped at these as foolishly as at the millions
+of miles, and built microscope temples in which horrible sacrifices
+were offered. They even gave their own bodies to be sacrificed by the
+microscope man, who was worshipped, like the astronomer, as infallible
+and omniscient. Thus our discoveries instead of increasing our wisdom,
+only destroyed the little childish wisdom we had. All I can grant you is
+that they increased our knowledge.
+
+ZOO. Nonsense! Consciousness of a fact is not knowledge of it: if it
+were, the fish would know more of the sea than the geographers and the
+naturalists.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. That is an extremely acute remark, madam. The
+dullest fish could not possibly know less of the majesty of the ocean
+than many geographers and naturalists of my acquaintance.
+
+ZOO. Just so. And the greatest fool on earth, by merely looking at a
+mariners' compass, may become conscious of the fact that the needle
+turns always to the pole. Is he any the less a fool with that
+consciousness than he was without it?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Only a more conceited one, madam, no doubt.
+Still, I do not quite see how you can be aware of the existence of a
+thing without knowing it.
+
+ZOO. Well, you can see a man without knowing him, can you not?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_illuminated_] Oh how true! Of course, of course.
+There is a member of the Travellers' Club who has questioned the
+veracity of an experience of mine at the South Pole. I see that man
+almost every day when I am at home. But I refuse to know him.
+
+ZOO. If you could see him much more distinctly through a magnifying
+glass, or examine a drop of his blood through a microscope, or dissect
+out all his organs and analyze them chemically, would you know him then?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Certainly not. Any such investigation could
+only increase the disgust with which he inspires me, and make me more
+determined than ever not to know him on any terms.
+
+ZOO. Yet you would be much more conscious of him, would you not?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I should not allow that to commit me to any
+familiarity with the fellow. I have been twice at the Summer Sports at
+the South Pole; and this man pretended he had been to the North Pole,
+which can hardly be said to exist, as it is in the middle of the sea. He
+declared he had hung his hat on it.
+
+ZOO [_laughing_] He knew that travellers are amusing only when they are
+telling lies. Perhaps if you looked at that man through a microscope you
+would find some good in him.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I do not want to find any good in him. Besides,
+madam, what you have just said encourages me to utter an opinion of
+mine which is so advanced! so intellectually daring! that I have never
+ventured to confess to it before, lest I should be imprisoned for
+blasphemy, or even burnt alive.
+
+ZOO. Indeed! What opinion is that?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_after looking cautiously round_] I do not
+approve of microscopes. I never have.
+
+ZOO. You call that advanced! Oh, Daddy, that is pure obscurantism.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Call it so if you will, madam; but I maintain
+that it is dangerous to shew too much to people who do not know what
+they are looking at. I think that a man who is sane as long as he looks
+at the world through his own eyes is very likely to become a dangerous
+madman if he takes to looking at the world through telescopes and
+microscopes. Even when he is telling fairy stories about giants and
+dwarfs, the giants had better not be too big nor the dwarfs too small
+and too malicious. Before the microscope came, our fairy stories only
+made the children's flesh creep pleasantly, and did not frighten
+grown-up persons at all. But the microscope men terrified themselves and
+everyone else out of their wits with the invisible monsters they saw:
+poor harmless little things that die at the touch of a ray of sunshine,
+and are themselves the victims of all the diseases they are supposed to
+produce! Whatever the scientific people may say, imagination without
+microscopes was kindly and often courageous, because it worked on things
+of which it had some real knowledge. But imagination with microscopes,
+working on a terrifying spectacle of millions of grotesque creatures
+of whose nature it had no knowledge, became a cruel, terror-stricken,
+persecuting delirium. Are you aware, madam, that a general massacre
+of men of science took place in the twenty-first century of the
+pseudo-Christian era, when all their laboratories were demolished, and
+all their apparatus destroyed?
+
+ZOO. Yes: the shortlived are as savage in their advances as in their
+relapses. But when Science crept back, it had been taught its place. The
+mere collectors of anatomical or chemical facts were not supposed to
+know more about Science than the collector of used postage stamps about
+international trade or literature. The scientific terrorist who was
+afraid to use a spoon or a tumbler until he had dipt it in some
+poisonous acid to kill the microbes, was no longer given titles,
+pensions, and monstrous powers over the bodies of other people: he was
+sent to an asylum, and treated there until his recovery. But all that is
+an old story: the extension of life to three hundred years has provided
+the human race with capable leaders, and made short work of such
+childish stuff.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_pettishly_] You seem to credit every advance in
+civilization to your inordinately long lives. Do you not know that this
+question was familiar to men who died before they had reached my own
+age?
+
+ZOO. Oh yes: one or two of them hinted at it in a feeble way. An
+ancient writer whose name has come down to us in several forms, such
+as Shakespear, Shelley, Sheridan, and Shoddy, has a remarkable passage
+about your dispositions being horridly shaken by thoughts beyond the
+reaches of your souls. That does not come to much, does it?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. At all events, madam, I may remind you, if you
+come to capping ages, that whatever your secondaries and tertiaries may
+be, you are younger than I am.
+
+ZOO. Yes, Daddy; but it is not the number of years we have behind us,
+but the number we have before us, that makes us careful and responsible
+and determined to find out the truth about everything. What does it
+matter to you whether anything is true or not? your flesh is as grass:
+you come up like a flower, and wither in your second childhood. A lie
+will last your time: it will not last mine. If I knew I had to die in
+twenty years it would not be worth my while to educate myself: I should
+not bother about anything but having a little pleasure while I lasted.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Young woman: you are mistaken. Shortlived as we
+are, we--the best of us, I mean--regard civilization and learning, art
+and science, as an ever-burning torch, which passes from the hand of one
+generation to the hand of the next, each generation kindling it to a
+brighter, prouder flame. Thus each lifetime, however short, contributes
+a brick to a vast and growing edifice, a page to a sacred volume, a
+chapter to a Bible, a Bible to a literature. We may be insects; but like
+the coral insect we build islands which become continents: like the bee
+we store sustenance for future communities. The individual perishes;
+but the race is immortal. The acorn of today is the oak of the next
+millennium. I throw my stone on the cairn and die; but later comers add
+another stone and yet another; and lo! a mountain. I--
+
+ZOO [_interrupts him by laughing heartily at him_]!!!!!!
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_with offended dignity_] May I ask what I have
+said that calls for this merriment?
+
+ZOO. Oh, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, you are a funny little man, with your
+torches, and your flames, and your bricks and edifices and pages and
+volumes and chapters and coral insects and bees and acorns and stones
+and mountains.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Metaphors, madam. Metaphors merely.
+
+ZOO. Images, images, images. I was talking about men, not about images.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I was illustrating--not, I hope, quite
+infelicitously--the great march of Progress. I was shewing you how,
+shortlived as we orientals are, mankind gains in stature from generation
+to generation, from epoch to epoch, from barbarism to civilization, from
+civilization to perfection.
+
+ZOO. I see. The father grows to be six feet high, and hands on his six
+feet to his son, who adds another six feet and becomes twelve feet high,
+and hands his twelve feet on to his son, who is full-grown at eighteen
+feet, and so on. In a thousand years you would all be three or four
+miles high. At that rate your ancestors Bilge and Bluebeard, whom you
+call giants, must have been about quarter of an inch high.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I am not here to bandy quibbles and paradoxes
+with a girl who blunders over the greatest names in history. I am in
+earnest. I am treating a solemn theme seriously. I never said that the
+son of a man six feet high would be twelve feet high.
+
+ZOO. You didn't mean that?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Most certainly not.
+
+ZOO. Then you didn't mean anything. Now listen to me, you little
+ephemeral thing. I knew quite well what you meant by your torch handed
+on from generation to generation. But every time that torch is handed
+on, it dies down to the tiniest spark; and the man who gets it can
+rekindle it only by his own light. You are no taller than Bilge or
+Bluebeard; and you are no wiser. Their wisdom, such as it was, perished
+with them: so did their strength, if their strength ever existed outside
+your imagination. I do not know how old you are: you look about five
+hundred--
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Five hundred! Really, madam--
+
+ZOO [_continuing_]; but I know, of course, that you are an ordinary
+shortliver. Well, your wisdom is only such wisdom as a man can have
+before he has had experience enough to distinguish his wisdom from his
+folly, his destiny from his delusions, his--
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. In short, such wisdom as your own.
+
+ZOO. No, no, no, no. How often must I tell you that we are made wise not
+by the recollections of our past, but by the responsibilities of our
+future. I shall be more reckless when I am a tertiary than I am today.
+If you cannot understand that, at least you must admit that I have
+learnt from tertiaries. I have seen their work and lived under their
+institutions. Like all young things I rebelled against them; and in
+their hunger for new lights and new ideas they listened to me and
+encouraged me to rebel. But my ways did not work; and theirs did; and
+they were able to tell me why. They have no power over me except that
+power: they refuse all other power; and the consequence is that there
+are no limits to their power except the limits they set themselves. You
+are a child governed by children, who make so many mistakes and are so
+naughty that you are in continual rebellion against them; and as they
+can never convince you that they are right: they can govern you only by
+beating you, imprisoning you, torturing you, killing you if you disobey
+them without being strong enough to kill or torture them.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. That may be an unfortunate fact. I condemn it and
+deplore it. But our minds are greater than the facts. We know better.
+The greatest ancient teachers, followed by the galaxy of Christs who
+arose in the twentieth century, not to mention such comparatively modern
+spiritual leaders as Blitherinjam, Tosh, and Spiffkins, all taught that
+punishment and revenge, coercion and militarism, are mistakes, and that
+the golden rule--
+
+ZOO. [_interrupting_] Yes, yes, yes, Daddy: we longlived people know
+that quite well. But did any of their disciples ever succeed in
+governing you for a single day on their Christ-like principles? It
+is not enough to know what is good: you must be able to do it. They
+couldn't do it because they did not live long enough to find out how
+to do it, or to outlive the childish passions that prevented them from
+really wanting to do it. You know very well that they could only keep
+order--such as it was--by the very coercion and militarism they were
+denouncing and deploring. They had actually to kill one another for
+preaching their own gospel, or be killed themselves.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. The blood of the martyrs, madam, is the seed of
+the Church.
+
+ZOO. More images, Daddy! The blood of the shortlived falls on stony
+ground.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_rising, very testy_] You are simply mad on the
+subject of longevity. I wish you would change it. It is rather personal
+and in bad taste. Human nature is human nature, longlived or shortlived,
+and always will be.
+
+ZOO. Then you give up the idea of progress? You cry off the torch, and
+the brick, and the acorn, and all the rest of it?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I do nothing of the sort. I stand for progress
+and for freedom broadening down from precedent to precedent.
+
+ZOO. You are certainly a true Briton.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I am proud of it. But in your mouth I feel that
+the compliment hides some insult; so I do not thank you for it.
+
+ZOO. All I meant was that though Britons sometimes say quite clever
+things and deep things as well as silly and shallow things, they always
+forget them ten minutes after they have uttered them.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Leave it at that, madam: leave it at that.
+[_He sits down again_]. Even a Pope is not expected to be continually
+pontificating. Our flashes of inspiration shew that our hearts are in
+the right place.
+
+ZOO. Of course. You cannot keep your heart in any place but the right
+place.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Tcha!
+
+ZOO. But you can keep your hands in the wrong place. In your neighbor's
+pockets, for example. So, you see, it is your hands that really matter.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_exhausted_] Well, a woman must have the last
+word. I will not dispute it with you.
+
+ZOO. Good. Now let us go back to the really interesting subject of our
+discussion. You remember? The slavery of the shortlived to images and
+metaphors.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_aghast_] Do you mean to say, madam, that after
+having talked my head off, and reduced me to despair and silence by your
+intolerable loquacity, you actually propose to begin all over again? I
+shall leave you at once.
+
+ZOO. You must not. I am your nurse; and you must stay with me.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I absolutely decline to do anything of the sort
+[_he rises and walks away with marked dignity_].
+
+ZOO [_using her tuning-fork_] Zoo on Burrin Pier to Oracle Police at
+Ennistymon have you got me?... What?... I am picking you up now but you
+are flat to my pitch.... Just a shade sharper.... That's better: still a
+little more.... Got you: right. Isolate Burrin Pier quick.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_is heard to yell_] Oh!
+
+ZOO [_still intoning_] Thanks.... Oh nothing serious I am nursing a
+shortliver and the silly creature has run away he has discouraged
+himself very badly by gadding about and talking to secondaries and I
+must keep him strictly to heel.
+
+_The Elderly Gentleman returns, indignant._
+
+ZOO. Here he is you can release the Pier thanks. Goodbye. [_She puts up
+her tuning-fork_].
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. This is outrageous. When I tried to step off the
+pier on to the road, I received a shock, followed by an attack of pins
+and needles which ceased only when I stepped back on to the stones.
+
+ZOO. Yes: there is an electric hedge there. It is a very old and very
+crude method of keeping animals from straying.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. We are perfectly familiar with it in Baghdad,
+madam; but I little thought I should live to have it ignominiously
+applied to myself. You have actually Kiplingized me.
+
+ZOO. Kiplingized! What is that?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. About a thousand years ago there were two authors
+named Kipling. One was an eastern and a writer of merit: the other,
+being a western, was of course only an amusing barbarian. He is said to
+have invented the electric hedge. I consider that in using it on me you
+have taken a very great liberty.
+
+ZOO. What is a liberty?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_exasperated_] I shall not explain, madam. I
+believe you know as well as I do. [_He sits down on the bollard in
+dudgeon_].
+
+ZOO. No: even you can tell me things I do not know. Havnt you noticed
+that all the time you have been here we have been asking you questions?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Noticed it! It has almost driven me mad. Do you
+see my white hair? It was hardly grey when I landed: there were patches
+of its original auburn still distinctly discernible.
+
+ZOO. That is one of the symptoms of discouragement. But have you noticed
+something much more important to yourself: that is, that you have never
+asked us any questions, although we know so much more than you do?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I am not a child, madam. I believe I have had
+occasion to say that before. And I am an experienced traveller. I know
+that what the traveller observes must really exist, or he could not
+observe it. But what the natives tell him is invariably pure fiction.
+
+ZOO. Not here, Daddy. With us life is too long for telling lies. They
+all get found out. Youd better ask me questions while you have the
+chance.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. If I have occasion to consult the oracle I shall
+address myself to a proper one: to a tertiary: not to a primary flapper
+playing at being an oracle. If you are a nurserymaid, attend to your
+duties; and do not presume to ape your elders.
+
+ZOO. [_rising ominously and reddening_] You silly--
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_thundering_] Silence! Do you hear! Hold your
+tongue.
+
+ZOO. Something very disagreeable is happening to me. I feel hot all
+over. I have a horrible impulse to injure you. What have you done to me?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_triumphant_] Aha! I have made you blush. Now you
+know what blushing means. Blushing with shame!
+
+ZOO. Whatever you are doing, it is something so utterly evil that if you
+do not stop I will kill you.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_apprehending his danger_] Doubtless you think it
+safe to threaten an old man--
+
+ZOO [_fiercely_] Old! You are a child: an evil child. We kill evil
+children here. We do it even against our own wills by instinct. Take
+care.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_rising with crestfallen courtesy_] I did not
+mean to hurt your feelings. I--[_swallowing the apology with an effort_]
+I beg your pardon. [_He takes off his hat, and bows_].
+
+ZOO. What does that mean?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I withdraw what I said.
+
+ZOO. How can you withdraw what you said?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I can say no more than that I am sorry.
+
+ZOO. You have reason to be. That hideous sensation you gave me is
+subsiding; but you have had a very narrow escape. Do not attempt to kill
+me again; for at the first sign in your voice or face I shall strike you
+dead.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. _I_ attempt to kill you! What a monstrous
+accusation!
+
+ZOO [_frowns_]!
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_prudently correcting himself_] I mean
+misunderstanding. I never dreamt of such a thing. Surely you cannot
+believe that I am a murderer.
+
+ZOO. I know you are a murderer. It is not merely that you threw words at
+me as if they were stones, meaning to hurt me. It was the instinct to
+kill that you roused in me. I did not know it was in my nature: never
+before has it wakened and sprung out at me, warning me to kill or be
+killed. I must now reconsider my whole political position. I am no
+longer a Conservative.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_dropping his hat_] Gracious Heavens! you have
+lost your senses. I am at the mercy of a madwoman: I might have known it
+from the beginning. I can bear no more of this. [_Offering his chest for
+the sacrifice_] Kill me at once; and much good may my death do you!
+
+ZOO. It would be useless unless all the other shortlivers were killed
+at the same time. Besides, it is a measure which should be taken
+politically and constitutionally, not privately. However, I am prepared
+to discuss it with you.
+
+ZOO. What good have our counsels ever done you? You come to us for
+advice when you know you are in difficulties. But you never know you are
+in difficulties until twenty years after you have made the mistakes that
+led to them; and then it is too late. You cannot understand our advice:
+you often do more mischief by trying to act on it than if you had been
+left to your own childish devices. If you were not childish you would
+not come to us at all: you would learn from experience that your
+consultations of the oracle are never of any real help to you. You draw
+wonderful imaginary pictures of us, and write fictitious tales and poems
+about our beneficent operations in the past, our wisdom, our justice,
+our mercy: stories in which we often appear as sentimental dupes of your
+prayers and sacrifices; but you do it only to conceal from yourselves
+the truth that you are incapable of being helped by us. Your Prime
+Minister pretends that he has come to be guided by the oracle; but we
+are not deceived: we know quite well that he has come here so that
+when he goes back he may have the authority and dignity of one who has
+visited the holy islands and spoken face to face with the ineffable
+ones. He will pretend that all the measures he wishes to take for his
+own purposes have been enjoined on him by the oracle.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. But you forget that the answers of the oracle
+cannot be kept secret or misrepresented. They are written and
+promulgated. The Leader of the Opposition can obtain copies. All the
+nations know them. Secret diplomacy has been totally abolished.
+
+ZOO. Yes: you publish documents; but they are garbled or forged. And
+even if you published our real answers it would make no difference,
+because the shortlived cannot interpret the plainest writings. Your
+scriptures command you in the plainest terms to do exactly the contrary
+of everything your own laws and chosen rulers command and execute. You
+cannot defy Nature. It is a law of Nature that there is a fixed relation
+between conduct and length of life.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No, no, no. I had much rather discuss your
+intention of withdrawing from the Conservative party. How the
+Conservatives have tolerated your opinions so far is more than I can
+imagine: I can only conjecture that you have contributed very liberally
+to the party funds. [_He picks up his hat, and sits down again_].
+
+ZOO. Do not babble so senselessly: our chief political controversy is
+the most momentous in the world for you and your like.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_interested_] Indeed? Pray, may I ask what it is?
+I am a keen politician, and may perhaps be of some use. [_He puts on his
+hat, cocking it slightly_].
+
+ZOO. We have two great parties: the Conservative party and the
+Colonization party. The Colonizers are of opinion that we should
+increase our numbers and colonize. The Conservatives hold that we should
+stay as we are, confined to these islands, a race apart, wrapped up in
+the majesty of our wisdom on a soil held as holy ground for us by an
+adoring world, with our sacred frontier traced beyond dispute by the
+sea. They contend that it is our destiny to rule the world, and that
+even when we were shortlived we did so. They say that our power and our
+peace depend on our remoteness, our exclusiveness, our separation, and
+the restriction of our numbers. Five minutes ago that was my political
+faith. Now I do not think there should be any shortlived people at all.
+[_She throws herself again carelessly on the sacks_].
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Am I to infer that you deny my right to live
+because I allowed myself--perhaps injudiciously--to give you a slight
+scolding?
+
+ZOO. Is it worth living for so short a time? Are you any good to
+yourself?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_stupent_] Well, upon my soul!
+
+ZOO. It is such a very little soul. You only encourage the sin of pride
+in us, and keep us looking down at you instead of up to something higher
+than ourselves.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Is not that a selfish view, madam? Think of the
+good you do us by your oracular counsels!
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I have never heard of any such law, madam.
+
+ZOO. Well, you are hearing of it now.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Let me tell you that we shortlivers, as you call
+us, have lengthened our lives very considerably.
+
+ZOO. How?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. By saving time. By enabling men to cross the
+ocean in an afternoon, and to see and speak to one another when they are
+thousands of miles apart. We hope shortly to organize their labor, and
+press natural forces into their service, so scientifically that the
+burden of labor will cease to be perceptible, leaving common men more
+leisure than they will know what to do with.
+
+ZOO. Daddy: the man whose life is lengthened in this way may be busier
+than a savage; but the difference between such men living seventy years
+and those living three hundred would be all the greater; for to a
+shortliver increase of years is only increase of sorrow; but to a
+long-liver every extra year is a prospect which forces him to stretch
+his faculties to the utmost to face it. Therefore I say that we who
+live three hundred years can be of no use to you who live less than a
+hundred, and that our true destiny is not to advise and govern you, but
+to supplant and supersede you. In that faith I now declare myself a
+Colonizer and an Exterminator.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Oh, steady! steady! Pray! pray! Reflect, I
+implore you. It is possible to colonize without exterminating the
+natives. Would you treat us less mercifully than our barbarous
+forefathers treated the Redskin and the Negro? Are we not, as Britons,
+entitled at least to some reservations?
+
+ZOO. What is the use of prolonging the agony? You would perish slowly
+in our presence, no matter what we did to preserve you. You were almost
+dead when I took charge of you today, merely because you had talked for
+a few minutes to a secondary. Besides, we have our own experience to go
+upon. Have you never heard that our children occasionally revert to the
+ancestral type, and are born shortlived?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_eagerly_] Never. I hope you will not be offended
+if I say that it would be a great comfort to me if I could be placed in
+charge of one of those normal individuals.
+
+ZOO. Abnormal, you mean. What you ask is impossible: we weed them all
+out.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. When you say that you weed them out, you send
+a cold shiver down my spine. I hope you don't mean that you--that
+you--that you assist Nature in any way?
+
+ZOO. Why not? Have you not heard the saying of the Chinese sage Dee
+Ning, that a good garden needs weeding? But it is not necessary for us
+to interfere. We are naturally rather particular as to the conditions on
+which we consent to live. One does not mind the accidental loss of an
+arm or a leg or an eye: after all, no one with two legs is unhappy
+because he has not three; so why should a man with one be unhappy
+because he has not two? But infirmities of mind and temper are quite
+another matter. If one of us has no self-control, or is too weak to bear
+the strain of our truthful life without wincing, or is tormented by
+depraved appetites and superstitions, or is unable to keep free from
+pain and depression, he naturally becomes discouraged, and refuses to
+live.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Good Lord! Cuts his throat, do you mean?
+
+ZOO. No: why should he cut his throat? He simply dies. He wants to. He
+is out of countenance, as we call it.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Well!!! But suppose he is depraved enough not to
+want to die, and to settle the difficulty by killing all the rest of
+you?
+
+ZOO. Oh, he is one of the thoroughly degenerate shortlivers whom we
+occasionally produce. He emigrates.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. And what becomes of him then?
+
+ZOO. You shortlived people always think very highly of him. You accept
+him as what you call a great man.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. You astonish me; and yet I must admit that what
+you tell me accounts for a great deal of the little I know of the
+private life of our great men. We must be very convenient to you as a
+dumping place for your failures.
+
+ZOO. I admit that.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Good. Then if you carry out your plan of
+colonization, and leave no shortlived countries in the world, what will
+you do with your undesirables?
+
+ZOO. Kill them. Our tertiaries are not at all squeamish about killing.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Gracious Powers!
+
+ZOO [_glancing up at the sun_] Come. It is just sixteen o'clock; and you
+have to join your party at half-past in the temple in Galway.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_rising_] Galway! Shall I at last be able to
+boast of having seen that magnificent city?
+
+ZOO. You will be disappointed: we have no cities. There is a temple of
+the oracle: that is all.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Alas! and I came here to fulfil two
+long-cherished dreams. One was to see Galway. It has been said, 'See
+Galway and die.' The other was to contemplate the ruins of London.
+
+ZOO. Ruins! We do not tolerate ruins. Was London a place of any
+importance?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_amazed_] What! London! It was the mightiest city
+of antiquity. [_Rhetorically_] Situate just where the Dover Road crosses
+the Thames, it--
+
+ZOO [_curtly interrupting_] There is nothing there now. Why should
+anybody pitch on such a spot to live? The nearest houses are at a place
+called Strand-on-the-Green: it is very old. Come. We shall go across the
+water. [_She goes down the steps_].
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Sic transit gloria mundi!
+
+ZOO [_from below_] What did you say?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_despairingly_] Nothing. You would not
+understand. [_He goes down the steps_].
+
+
+
+
+ACT II
+
+
+_A courtyard before the columned portico of a temple. The temple door
+is in the middle of the portico. A veiled and robed woman of majestic
+carriage passes along behind the columns towards the entrance. From the
+opposite direction a man of compact figure, clean-shaven, saturnine, and
+self-centred: in short, very like Napoleon I, and wearing a military
+uniform of Napoleonic cut, marches with measured steps; places his hand
+in his lapel in the traditional manner; and fixes the woman with his
+eye. She stops, her attitude expressing haughty amazement at his
+audacity. He is on her right: she on his left._
+
+NAPOLEON [_impressively_] I am the Man of Destiny.
+
+THE VEILED WOMAN [_unimpressed_] How did you get in here?
+
+NAPOLEON. I walked in. I go on until I am stopped. I never am stopped. I
+tell you I am the Man of Destiny.
+
+THE VEILED WOMAN. You will be a man of very short destiny if you wander
+about here without one of our children to guide you. I suppose you
+belong to the Baghdad envoy.
+
+NAPOLEON. I came with him; but I do not belong to him. I belong to
+myself. Direct me to the oracle if you can. If not, do not waste my
+time.
+
+THE VEILED WOMAN. Your time, poor creature, is short. I will not waste
+it. Your envoy and his party will be here presently. The consultation of
+the oracle is arranged for them, and will take place according to the
+prescribed ritual. You can wait here until they come [_she turns to go
+into the temple_].
+
+NAPOLEON. I never wait. [_She stops_]. The prescribed ritual is,
+I believe, the classical one of the pythoness on her tripod, the
+intoxicating fumes arising from the abyss, the convulsions of the
+priestess as she delivers the message of the God, and so on. That sort
+of thing does not impose on me: I use it myself to impose on simpletons.
+I believe that what is, is. I know that what is not, is not. The antics
+of a woman sitting on a tripod and pretending to be drunk do not
+interest me. Her words are put into her mouth, not by a god, but by a
+man three hundred years old, who has had the capacity to profit by his
+experience. I wish to speak to that man face to face, without mummery or
+imposture.
+
+THE VEILED WOMAN. You seem to be an unusually sensible person. But there
+is no old man. I am the oracle on duty today. I am on my way to take my
+place on the tripod, and go through the usual mummery, as you rightly
+call it, to impress your friend the envoy. As you are superior to that
+kind of thing, you may consult me now. [_She leads the way into the
+middle of the courtyard_]. What do you want to know?
+
+NAPOLEON [_following her_] Madam: I have not come all this way to
+discuss matters of State with a woman. I must ask you to direct me to
+one of your oldest and ablest men.
+
+THE ORACLE. None of our oldest and ablest men or women would dream of
+wasting their time on you. You would die of discouragement in their
+presence in less than three hours.
+
+NAPOLEON. You can keep this idle fable of discouragement for people
+credulous enough to be intimidated by it, madam. I do not believe in
+metaphysical forces.
+
+THE ORACLE. No one asks you to. A field is something physical, is it
+not. Well, I have a field.
+
+NAPOLEON. I have several million fields. I am Emperor of Turania.
+
+THE ORACLE. You do not understand. I am not speaking of an agricultural
+field. Do you not know that every mass of matter in motion carries with
+it an invisible gravitational field, every magnet an invisible magnetic
+field, and every living organism a mesmeric field? Even you have a
+perceptible mesmeric field. Feeble as it is, it is the strongest I have
+yet observed in a shortliver.
+
+NAPOLEON. By no means feeble, madam. I understand you now; and I may
+tell you that the strongest characters blench in my presence, and submit
+to my domination. But I do not call that a physical force.
+
+THE ORACLE. What else do you call it, pray? Our physicists deal with it.
+Our mathematicians express its measurements in algebraic equations.
+
+NAPOLEON. Do you mean that they could measure mine?
+
+THE ORACLE. Yes: by a figure infinitely near to zero. Even in us the
+force is negligible during our first century of life. In our second it
+develops quickly, and becomes dangerous to shortlivers who venture into
+its field. If I were not veiled and robed in insulating material you
+could not endure my presence; and I am still a young woman: one hundred
+and seventy if you wish to know exactly.
+
+NAPOLEON [_folding his arms_] I am not intimidated: no woman alive, old
+or young, can put me out of countenance. Unveil, madam. Disrobe. You
+will move this temple as easily as shake me.
+
+THE ORACLE. Very well [_she throws back her veil_].
+
+NAPOLEON [_shrieking, staggering, and covering his eyes_] No. Stop. Hide
+your face again. [_Shutting his eyes and distractedly clutching at his
+throat and heart_] Let me go. Help! I am dying.
+
+THE ORACLE. Do you still wish to consult an older person?
+
+NAPOLEON. No, no. The veil, the veil, I beg you.
+
+THE ORACLE [_replacing the veil_] So.
+
+NAPOLEON. Ouf! One cannot always be at one's best. Twice before in my
+life I have lost my nerve and behaved like a poltroon. But I warn you
+not to judge my quality by these involuntary moments.
+
+THE ORACLE. I have no occasion to judge of your quality. You want my
+advice. Speak quickly; or I shall go about my business.
+
+NAPOLEON [_After a moment's hesitation, sinks respectfully on one knee_]
+I--
+
+THE ORACLE. Oh, rise, rise. Are you so foolish as to offer me this
+mummery which even you despise?
+
+NAPOLEON [_rising_] I knelt in spite of myself. I compliment you on your
+impressiveness, madam.
+
+THE ORACLE [_impatiently_] Time! time! time! time!
+
+NAPOLEON. You will not grudge me the necessary time, madam, when you
+know my case. I am a man gifted with a certain specific talent in a
+degree altogether extraordinary. I am not otherwise a very extraordinary
+person: my family is not influential; and without this talent I should
+cut no particular figure in the world.
+
+THE ORACLE. Why cut a figure in the world?
+
+NAPOLEON. Superiority will make itself felt, madam. But when I say I
+possess this talent I do not express myself accurately. The truth is
+that my talent possesses me. It is genius. It drives me to exercise it.
+I must exercise it. I am great when I exercise it. At other moments I am
+nobody.
+
+THE ORACLE. Well, exercise it. Do you need an oracle to tell you that?
+
+NAPOLEON. Wait. This talent involves the shedding of human blood.
+
+THE ORACLE. Are you a surgeon, or a dentist?
+
+NAPOLEON. Psha! You do not appreciate me, madam. I mean the shedding of
+oceans of blood, the death of millions of men.
+
+THE ORACLE. They object, I suppose.
+
+NAPOLEON. Not at all. They adore me.
+
+THE ORACLE. Indeed!
+
+NAPOLEON. I have never shed blood with my own hand. They kill each
+other: they die with shouts of triumph on their lips. Those who die
+cursing do not curse me. My talent is to organize this slaughter; to
+give mankind this terrible joy which they call glory; to let loose the
+devil in them that peace has bound in chains.
+
+THE ORACLE. And you? Do you share their joy?
+
+NAPOLEON. Not at all. What satisfaction is it to me to see one fool
+pierce the entrails of another with a bayonet? I am a man of princely
+character, but of simple personal tastes and habits. I have the virtues
+of a laborer: industry and indifference to personal comfort. But I must
+rule, because I am so superior to other men that it is intolerable to
+me to be misruled by them. Yet only as a slayer can I become a ruler. I
+cannot be great as a writer: I have tried and failed. I have no talent
+as a sculptor or painter; and as lawyer, preacher, doctor, or actor,
+scores of second-rate men can do as well as I, or better. I am not even
+a diplomatist: I can only play my trump card of force. What I can do
+is to organize war. Look at me! I seem a man like other men, because
+nine-tenths of me is common humanity. But the other tenth is a faculty
+for seeing things as they are that no other man possesses.
+
+THE ORACLE. You mean that you have no imagination?
+
+NAPOLEON [_forcibly_] I mean that I have the only imagination worth
+having: the power of imagining things as they are, even when I cannot
+see them. You feel yourself my superior, I know: nay, you are my
+superior: have I not bowed my knee to you by instinct? Yet I challenge
+you to a test of our respective powers. Can you calculate what the
+methematicians call vectors, without putting a single algebraic symbol
+on paper? Can you launch ten thousand men across a frontier and a chain
+of mountains and know to a mile exactly where they will be at the end
+of seven weeks? The rest is nothing: I got it all from the books at my
+military school. Now this great game of war, this playing with armies
+as other men play with bowls and skittles, is one which I must go on
+playing, partly because a man must do what he can and not what he would
+like to do, and partly because, if I stop, I immediately lose my power
+and become a beggar in the land where I now make men drunk with glory.
+
+THE ORACLE. No doubt then you wish to know how to extricate yourself
+from this unfortunate position?
+
+NAPOLEON. It is not generally considered unfortunate, madam. Supremely
+fortunate rather.
+
+THE ORACLE. If you think so, go on making them drunk with glory. Why
+trouble me with their folly and your vectors?
+
+NAPOLEON. Unluckily, madam, men are not only heroes: they are also
+cowards. They desire glory; but they dread death.
+
+THE ORACLE. Why should they? Their lives are too short to be worth
+living. That is why they think your game of war worth playing.
+
+NAPOLEON. They do not look at it quite in that way. The most worthless
+soldier wants to live for ever. To make him risk being killed by the
+enemy I have to convince him that if he hesitates he will inevitably be
+shot at dawn by his own comrades for cowardice.
+
+THE ORACLE. And if his comrades refuse to shoot him?
+
+NAPOLEON. They will be shot too, of course.
+
+THE ORACLE. By whom?
+
+NAPOLEON. By their comrades.
+
+THE ORACLE. And if they refuse?
+
+NAPOLEON. Up to a certain point they do not refuse.
+
+THE ORACLE. But when that point is reached, you have to do the shooting
+yourself, eh?
+
+NAPOLEON. Unfortunately, madam, when that point is reached, they shoot
+me.
+
+THE ORACLE. Mf! It seems to me they might as well shoot you first as
+last. Why don't they?
+
+NAPOLEON. Because their love of fighting, their desire for glory, their
+shame of being branded as dastards, their instinct to test themselves in
+terrible trials, their fear of being killed or enslaved by the enemy,
+their belief that they are defending their hearths and homes, overcome
+their natural cowardice, and make them willing not only to risk their
+own lives but to kill everyone who refuses to take that risk. But if war
+continues too long, there comes a time when the soldiers, and also the
+taxpayers who are supporting and munitioning them, reach a condition
+which they describe as being fed up. The troops have proved their
+courage, and want to go home and enjoy in peace the glory it has earned
+them. Besides, the risk of death for each soldier becomes a certainty if
+the fighting goes on for ever: he hopes to escape for six months, but
+knows he cannot escape for six years. The risk of bankruptcy for the
+citizen becomes a certainty in the same way. Now what does this mean for
+me?
+
+THE ORACLE. Does that matter in the midst of such calamity?
+
+NAPOLEON. Psha! madam: it is the only thing that matters: the value
+of human life is the value of the greatest living man. Cut off that
+infinitesimal layer of grey matter which distinguishes my brain from
+that of the common man, and you cut down the stature of humanity from
+that of a giant to that of a nobody. I matter supremely: my soldiers do
+not matter at all: there are plenty more where they came from. If you
+kill me, or put a stop to my activity (it is the same thing), the
+nobler part of human life perishes. You must save the world from
+that catastrophe, madam. War has made me popular, powerful, famous,
+historically immortal. But I foresee that if I go on to the end it will
+leave me execrated, dethroned, imprisoned, perhaps executed. Yet if I
+stop fighting I commit suicide as a great man and become a common one.
+How am I to escape the horns of this tragic dilemma? Victory I
+can guarantee: I am invincible. But the cost of victory is the
+demoralization, the depopulation, the ruin of the victors no less than
+of the vanquished. How am I to satisfy my genius by fighting until I
+die? that is my question to you.
+
+THE ORACLE. Were you not rash to venture into these sacred islands with
+such a question on your lips? Warriors are not popular here, my friend.
+
+NAPOLEON. If a soldier were restrained by such a consideration, madam,
+he would no longer be a soldier. Besides [_he produces a pistol_], I
+have not come unarmed.
+
+THE ORACLE. What is that thing?
+
+NAPOLEON. It is an instrument of my profession, madam. I raise this
+hammer; I point the barrel at you; I pull this trigger that is against
+my forefinger; and you fall dead.
+
+THE ORACLE. Shew it to me [_she puts out her hand to take it from him_].
+
+NAPOLEON [_retreating a step_] Pardon me, madam. I never trust my life
+in the hands of a person over whom I have no control.
+
+THE ORACLE [_sternly_] Give it to me [_she raises her hand to her
+veil_].
+
+NAPOLEON [_dropping the pistol and covering his eyes_] Quarter! Kamerad!
+Take it, madam [_he kicks it towards her_]: I surrender.
+
+THE ORACLE. Give me that thing. Do you expect me to stoop for it?
+
+NAPOLEON [_taking his hands from his eyes with an effort_] A poor
+victory, madam [_he picks up the pistol and hands it to her_]: there was
+no vector strategy needed to win it. [Making a pose of his humiliation]
+But enjoy your triumph: you have made me--ME! Cain Adamson Charles
+Napoleon! Emperor of Turania! cry for quarter.
+
+THE ORACLE. The way out of your difficulty, Cain Adamson, is very
+simple.
+
+NAPOLEON [_eagerly_] Good. What is it?
+
+THE ORACLE. To die before the tide of glory turns. Allow me [_she shoots
+him_].
+
+_He falls with a shriek. She throws the pistol away and goes haughtily
+into the temple._
+
+NAPOLEON [_scrambling to his feet_] Murderess! Monster! She-devil!
+Unnatural, inhuman wretch! You deserve to be hanged, guillotined, broken
+on the wheel, burnt alive. No sense of the sacredness of human life! No
+thought for my wife and children! Bitch! Sow! Wanton! [_He picks up the
+pistol_]. And missed me at five yards! Thats a woman all over.
+
+_He is going away whence he came when Zoo arrives and confronts him
+at the head of a party consisting of the British Envoy, the Elderly
+Gentleman, the Envoy's wife, and her daughter, aged about eighteen. The
+envoy, a typical politician, looks like an imperfectly reformed criminal
+disguised by a good tailor. The dress of the ladies is coeval with that
+of the Elderly Gentleman, and suitable for public official ceremonies in
+western capitals at the XVIII-XIX fin de siecle._
+
+_They file in under the portico. Zoo immediately comes out imperiously
+to Napoleon's right, whilst the Envoy's wife hurries effusively to his
+left. The Envoy meanwhile passes along behind the columns to the door,
+followed by his daughter. The Elderly Gentleman stops just where he
+entered, to see why Zoo has swooped so abruptly on the Emperor of
+Turania._
+
+ZOO [_to Napoleon, severely_] What are you doing here by yourself? You
+have no business to go about here alone. What was that noise just now?
+What is that in your hand?
+
+_Napoleon glares at her in speechless fury; pockets the pistol; and
+produces a whistle._
+
+THE ENVOY'S WIFE. Arnt you coming with us to the oracle, sire?
+
+NAPOLEON. To hell with the oracle, and with you too [_he turns to go_]!
+
+
+    THE ENVOY'S WIFE} [_together_] {Oh, sire!!
+    ZOO} {Where are you going?}
+
+
+NAPOLEON. To fetch the police. [_He goes out past Zoo, almost jostling
+her, and blowing piercing blasts on his whistle_].
+
+ZOO [_whipping out her tuning-fork and intoning_] Hallo Galway Central.
+[_The whistling continues_]. Stand by to isolate. [_To the Elderly
+Gentleman, who is staring after the whistling Emperor_] How far has he
+gone?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. To that curious statue of a fat old man.
+
+ZOO [_quickly, intoning_] Isolate the Falstaff monument isolate hard.
+Paralyze--[_the whistling stops_]. Thank you. [_She puts up her
+tuning-fork_]. He shall not move a muscle until I come to fetch him.
+
+THE ENVOY'S WIFE. Oh! he will be frightfully angry! Did you hear what he
+said to me?
+
+ZOO. Much we care for his anger!
+
+THE DAUGHTER [_coming forward between her mother and Zoo_]. Please,
+madam, whose statue is it? and where can I buy a picture postcard of it?
+It is so funny. I will take a snapshot when we are coming back; but they
+come out so badly sometimes.
+
+ZOO. They will give you pictures and toys in the temple to take away
+with you. The story of the statue is too long. It would bore you [_she
+goes past them across the courtyard to get rid of them_].
+
+THE WIFE [_gushing_] Oh no, I assure you.
+
+THE DAUGHTER [_copying her mother_] We should be so interested.
+
+ZOO. Nonsense! All I can tell you about it is that a thousand years ago,
+when the whole world was given over to you shortlived people, there was
+a war called the War to end War. In the war which followed it about ten
+years later, hardly any soldiers were killed; but seven of the capital
+cities of Europe were wiped out of existence. It seems to have been a
+great joke: for the statesmen who thought they had sent ten million
+common men to their deaths were themselves blown into fragments with
+their houses and families, while the ten million men lay snugly in the
+caves they had dug for themselves. Later on even the houses escaped; but
+their inhabitants were poisoned by gas that spared no living soul.
+Of course the soldiers starved and ran wild; and that was the end of
+pseudo-Christian civilization. The last civilized thing that happened
+was that the statesmen discovered that cowardice was a great patriotic
+virtue; and a public monument was erected to its first preacher, an
+ancient and very fat sage called Sir John Falstaff. Well [_pointing_],
+thats Falstaff.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_coming from the portico to his granddaughter's
+right_] Great Heavens! And at the base of this monstrous poltroon's
+statue the War God of Turania is now gibbering impotently.
+
+ZOO. Serve him right! War God indeed!
+
+THE ENVOY [_coming between his wife and Zoo_] I don't know any history:
+a modern Prime Minister has something better to do than sit reading
+books; but--
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_interrupting him encouragingly_] You make
+history, Ambrose.
+
+THE ENVOY. Well, perhaps I do; and perhaps history makes me. I hardly
+recognize myself in the newspapers sometimes, though I suppose leading
+articles are the materials of history, as you might say. But what I want
+to know is, how did war come back again? and how did they make those
+poisonous gases you speak of? We should be glad to know; for they might
+come in very handy if we have to fight Turania. Of course I am all for
+peace, and don't hold with the race of armaments in principle; still, we
+must keep ahead or be wiped out.
+
+ZOO. You can make the gases for yourselves when your chemists find out
+how. Then you will do as you did before: poison each other until there
+are no chemists left, and no civilization. You will then begin all over
+again as half-starved ignorant savages, and fight with boomerangs
+and poisoned arrows until you work up to the poison gases and high
+explosives once more, with the same result. That is, unless we have
+sense enough to make an end of this ridiculous game by destroying you.
+
+THE ENVOY [_aghast_] Destroying us!
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I told you, Ambrose. I warned you.
+
+THE ENVOY. But--
+
+ZOO [_impatiently_] I wonder what Zozim is doing. He ought to be here to
+receive you.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Do you mean that rather insufferable young man
+whom you found boring me on the pier?
+
+ZOO. Yes. He has to dress-up in a Druid's robe, and put on a wig and a
+long false beard, to impress you silly people. I have to put on a purple
+mantle. I have no patience with such mummery; but you expect it from us;
+so I suppose it must be kept up. Will you wait here until Zozim comes,
+please [_she turns to enter the temple_].
+
+THE ENVOY. My good lady, is it worth while dressing-up and putting on
+false beards for us if you tell us beforehand that it is all humbug?
+
+ZOO. One would not think so; but if you wont believe in anyone who is
+not dressed-up, why, we must dress-up for you. It was you who invented
+all this nonsense, not we.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. But do you expect us to be impressed after this?
+
+ZOO. I don't expect anything. I know, as a matter of experience, that
+you will be impressed. The oracle will frighten you out of your wits.
+[_She goes into the temple_].
+
+THE WIFE. These people treat us as if we were dirt beneath their feet. I
+wonder at you putting up with it, Amby. It would serve them right if we
+went home at once: wouldnt it, Eth?
+
+THE DAUGHTER. Yes, mamma. But perhaps they wouldnt mind.
+
+THE ENVOY. No use talking like that, Molly. Ive got to see this oracle.
+The folks at home wont know how we have been treated: all theyll know
+is that Ive stood face to face with the oracle and had the straight tip
+from her. I hope this Zozim chap is not going to keep us waiting much
+longer; for I feel far from comfortable about the approaching interview;
+and thats the honest truth.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I never thought I should want to see that man
+again; but now I wish he would take charge of us instead of Zoo. She was
+charming at first: quite charming; but she turned into a fiend because I
+had a few words with her. You would not believe: she very nearly killed
+me. You heard what she said just now. She belongs to a party here which
+wants to have us all killed.
+
+THE WIFE [_terrified_] Us! But we have done nothing: we have been as
+nice to them as nice could be. Oh, Amby, come away, come away: there is
+something dreadful about this place and these people.
+
+THE ENVOY. There is, and no mistake. But youre safe with me: you ought
+to have sense enough to know that.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I am sorry to say, Molly, that it is not merely
+us four poor weak creatures they want to kill, but the entire race of
+Man, except themselves.
+
+THE ENVOY. Not so poor neither, Poppa. Nor so weak, if you are going to
+take in all the Powers. If it comes to killing, two can play at that
+game, longlived or shortlived.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No, Ambrose: we should have no chance. We are
+worms beside these fearful people: mere worms.
+
+_Zozim comes from the temple, robed majestically, and wearing a wreath
+of mistletoe in his flowing white wig. His false beard reaches almost to
+his waist. He carries a staff with a curiously carved top._
+
+ZOZIM [_in the doorway, impressively_] Hail, strangers!
+
+ALL [_reverently_] Hail!
+
+ZOZIM. Are ye prepared?
+
+THE ENVOY. We are.
+
+ZOZIM [_unexpectedly becoming conversational, and strolling down
+carelessly to the middle of the group between the two ladies_] Well, I'm
+sorry to say the oracle is not. She was delayed by some member of your
+party who got loose; and as the show takes a bit of arranging, you will
+have to wait a few minutes. The ladies can go inside and look round the
+entrance hall and get pictures and things if they want them.
+
+
+                              {Thank you.}
+    THE WIFE}    [_together_] {I should like to,} [_They go into_]
+    THE DAUGHTER}             {very much.}        [_the temple_]
+
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_in dignified rebuke of Zozim's levity_] Taken in
+this spirit, sir, the show, as you call it, becomes almost an insult to
+our common sense.
+
+ZOZIM. Quite, I should say. You need not keep it up with me.
+
+THE ENVOY [_suddenly making himself very agreeable_] Just so: just so.
+We can wait as long as you please. And now, if I may be allowed to seize
+the opportunity of a few minutes' friendly chat--?
+
+ZOZIM. By all means, if only you will talk about things I can
+understand.
+
+THE ENVOY. Well, about this colonizing plan of yours. My father-in-law
+here has been telling me something about it; and he has just now let out
+that you want not only to colonize us, but to--to--to--well, shall we
+say to supersede us? Now why supersede us? Why not live and let live?
+Theres not a scrap of ill-feeling on our side. We should welcome a
+colony of immortals--we may almost call you that--in the British Middle
+East. No doubt the Turanian Empire, with its Mahometan traditions,
+overshadows us now. We have had to bring the Emperor with us on this
+expedition, though of course you know as well as I do that he has
+imposed himself on my party just to spy on me. I dont deny that he has
+the whip hand of us to some extent, because if it came to a war none of
+our generals could stand up against him. I give him best at that game:
+he is the finest soldier in the world. Besides, he is an emperor and
+an autocrat; and I am only an elected representative of the British
+democracy. Not that our British democrats wont fight: they will fight
+the heads off all the Turanians that ever walked; but then it takes so
+long to work them up to it, while he has only to say the word and march.
+But you people would never get on with him. Believe me, you would not be
+as comfortable in Turania as you would be with us. We understand you. We
+like you. We are easy-going people; and we are rich people. That will
+appeal to you. Turania is a poor place when all is said. Five-eighths of
+it is desert. They dont irrigate as we do. Besides--now I am sure this
+will appeal to you and to all right-minded men--we are Christians.
+
+ZOZIM. The old uns prefer Mahometans.
+
+THE ENVOY [_shocked_] What!
+
+ZOZIM [_distinctly_] They prefer Mahometans. Whats wrong with that?
+
+THE ENVOY. Well, of all the disgraceful--
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_diplomatically interrupting his scandalized
+son-in-law_] There can be no doubt, I am afraid, that by clinging too
+long to the obsolete features of the old pseudo-Christian Churches we
+allowed the Mahometans to get ahead of us at a very critical period of
+the development of the Eastern world. When the Mahometan Reformation
+took place, it left its followers with the enormous advantage of having
+the only established religion in the world in whose articles of faith
+any intelligent and educated person could believe.
+
+THE ENVOY. But what about our Reformation? Dont give the show away,
+Poppa. We followed suit, didnt we?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Unfortunately, Ambrose, we could not follow suit
+very rapidly. We had not only a religion to deal with, but a Church.
+
+ZOZIM. What is a Church?
+
+THE ENVOY. Not know what a Church is! Well!
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. You must excuse me; but if I attempted to explain
+you would only ask me what a bishop is; and that is a question that no
+mortal man can answer. All I can tell you is that Mahomet was a truly
+wise man; for he founded a religion without a Church; consequently when
+the time came for a Reformation of the mosques there were no bishops and
+priests to obstruct it. Our bishops and priests prevented us for two
+hundred years from following suit; and we have never recovered the start
+we lost then. I can only plead that we did reform our Church at last. No
+doubt we had to make a few compromises as a matter of good taste;
+but there is now very little in our Articles of Religion that is not
+accepted as at least allegorically true by our Higher Criticism.
+
+THE ENVOY [_encouragingly_] Besides, does it matter? Why, _I_ have never
+read the Articles in my life; and I am Prime Minister! Come! if my
+services in arranging for the reception of a colonizing party would be
+acceptable, they are at your disposal. And when I say a reception I mean
+a reception. Royal honors, mind you! A salute of a hundred and one guns!
+The streets lined with troops! The Guards turned out at the Palace!
+Dinner at the Guildhall!
+
+ZOZIM. Discourage me if I know what youre talking about! I wish Zoo
+would come: she understands these things. All I can tell you is that
+the general opinion among the Colonizers is in favor of beginning in a
+country where the people are of a different color from us; so that we
+can make short work without any risk of mistakes.
+
+THE ENVOY. What do you mean by short work? I hope--
+
+ZOZIM [_with obviously feigned geniality_] Oh, nothing, nothing,
+nothing. We are thinking of trying North America: thats all. You see,
+the Red Men of that country used to be white. They passed through a
+period of sallow complexions, followed by a period of no complexions
+at all, into the red characteristic of their climate. Besides, several
+cases of long life have occurred in North America. They joined us here;
+and their stock soon reverted to the original white of these islands.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. But have you considered the possibility of your
+colony turning red?
+
+ZOZIM. That wont matter. We are not particular about our pigmentation.
+The old books mention red-faced Englishmen: they appear to have been
+common objects at one time.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_very persuasively_] But do you think you would
+be popular in North America? It seems to me, if I may say so, that on
+your own shewing you need a country in which society is organized in a
+series of highly exclusive circles, in which the privacy of private life
+is very jealously guarded, and in which no one presumes to speak to
+anyone else without an introduction following a strict examination of
+social credentials. It is only in such a country that persons of special
+tastes and attainments can form a little world of their own, and protect
+themselves absolutely from intrusion by common persons. I think I may
+claim that our British society has developed this exclusiveness to
+perfection. If you would pay us a visit and see the working of our caste
+system, our club system, our guild system, you would admit that nowhere
+else in the world, least of all, perhaps in North America, which has a
+regrettable tradition of social promiscuity, could you keep yourselves
+so entirely to yourselves.
+
+ZOZIM [_good-naturedly embarrassed_] Look here. There is no good
+discussing this. I had rather not explain; but it wont make any
+difference to our Colonizers what sort of short-livers they come across.
+We shall arrange all that. Never mind how. Let us join the ladies.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_throwing off his diplomatic attitude and
+abandoning himself to despair_] We understand you only too well, sir.
+Well, kill us. End the lives you have made miserably unhappy by opening
+up to us the possibility that any of us may live three hundred years. I
+solemnly curse that possibility. To you it may be a blessing, because
+you do live three hundred years. To us, who live less than a hundred,
+whose flesh is as grass, it is the most unbearable burden our poor
+tortured humanity has ever groaned under.
+
+THE ENVOY. Hullo, Poppa! Steady! How do you make that out?
+
+ZOZIM. What is three hundred years? Short enough, if you ask me. Why, in
+the old days you people lived on the assumption that you were going to
+last out for ever and ever and ever. Immortal, you thought yourselves.
+Were you any happier then?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. As President of the Baghdad Historical Society
+I am in a position to inform you that the communities which took this
+monstrous pretension seriously were the most wretched of which we have
+any record. My Society has printed an editio princeps of the works of
+the father of history, Thucyderodotus Macolly-buckle. Have you read his
+account of what was blasphemously called the Perfect City of God, and
+the attempt made to reproduce it in the northern part of these islands
+by Jonhobsnoxius, called the Leviathan? Those misguided people
+sacrificed the fragment of life that was granted to them to an imaginary
+immortality. They crucified the prophet who told them to take no thought
+for the morrow, and that here and now was their Australia: Australia
+being a term signifying paradise, or an eternity of bliss. They tried
+to produce a condition of death in life: to mortify the flesh, as they
+called it.
+
+ZOZIM. Well, you are not suffering from that, are you? You have not a
+mortified air.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Naturally we are not absolutely insane and
+suicidal. Nevertheless we impose on ourselves abstinences and
+disciplines and studies that are meant to prepare us for living three
+centuries. And we seldom live one. My childhood was made unnecessarily
+painful, my boyhood unnecessarily laborious, by ridiculous preparations
+for a length of days which the chances were fifty thousand to one
+against my ever attaining. I have been cheated out of the natural joys
+and freedoms of my life by this dream to which the existence of these
+islands and their oracles gives a delusive possibility of realization.
+I curse the day when long life was invented, just as the victims of
+Jonhobsnoxius cursed the day when eternal life was invented.
+
+ZOZIM. Pooh! You could live three centuries if you chose.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. That is what the fortunate always say to the
+unfortunate. Well, I do not choose. I accept my three score and ten
+years. If they are filled with usefulness, with justice, with mercy,
+with good-will: if they are the lifetime of a soul that never loses its
+honor and a brain that never loses its eagerness, they are enough for
+me, because these things are infinite and eternal, and can make ten of
+my years as long as thirty of yours. I shall not conclude by saying live
+as long as you like and be damned to you, because I have risen for the
+moment far above any ill-will to you or to any fellow-creature; but I
+am your equal before that eternity in which the difference between your
+lifetime and mine is as the difference between one drop of water
+and three in the eyes of the Almighty Power from which we have both
+proceeded.
+
+ZOZIM [_impressed_] You spoke that piece very well, Daddy. I couldnt
+talk like that if I tried. It sounded fine. Ah! here comes the ladies.
+
+_To his relief, they have just appeared on the threshold of the temple._
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_passing from exaltation to distress_] It means
+nothing to him: in this land of discouragement the sublime has become
+the ridiculous. [_Turning on the hopelessly puzzled Zozim_] 'Behold,
+thou hast made my days as it were a span long; and mine age is even as
+nothing in respect of thee.'
+
+
+                              {Poppa, Poppa: dont look like
+    THE WIFE.}    [_running_] {that.
+    THE DAUGHTER.}[_to him_] {Oh, granpa, whats the matter?
+
+
+ZOZIM [_with a shrug_] Discouragement!
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_throwing off the women with a superb gesture_]
+Liar! [_Recollecting himself, he adds, with noble courtesy, raising his
+hat and bowing_] I beg your pardon, sir; but I am NOT discouraged.
+
+_A burst of orchestral music, through which a powerful gong sounds, is
+heard from the temple. Zoo, in a purple robe, appears in the doorway._
+
+ZOO. Come. The oracle is ready.
+
+_Zozim motions them to the threshold with a wave of his staff. The Envoy
+and the Elderly Gentleman take off their hats and go into the temple on
+tiptoe, Zoo leading the way. The Wife and Daughter, frightened as they
+are, raise their heads uppishly and follow flatfooted, sustained by a
+sense of their Sunday clothes and social consequence. Zozim remains in
+the portico, alone._
+
+ZOZIM [_taking off his wig, beard, and robe, and bundling them under his
+arm_] Ouf! [He goes home].
+
+
+
+
+ACT III
+
+
+_Inside the temple. A gallery overhanging an abyss. Dead silence. The
+gallery is brightly lighted; but beyond is a vast gloom, continually
+changing in intensity. A shaft of violet light shoots upward; and a very
+harmonious and silvery carillon chimes. When it ceases the violet ray
+vanishes._
+
+_Zoo comes along the gallery, followed by the Envoy's daughter, his
+wife, the Envoy himself, and the Elderly Gentleman. The two men are
+holding their hats with the brims near their noses, as if prepared to
+pray into them at a moment's notice. Zoo halts: they all follow her
+example. They contemplate the void with awe. Organ music of the kind
+called sacred in the nineteenth century begins. Their awe deepens. The
+violet ray, now a diffused mist, rises again from the abyss._
+
+THE WIFE [_to Zoo, in a reverent whisper_] Shall we kneel?
+
+ZOO [_loudly_] Yes, if you want to. You can stand on your head if you
+like. [_She sits down carelessly on the gallery railing, with her back
+to the abyss_].
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_jarred by her callousness_] We desire to behave
+in a becoming manner.
+
+ZOO. Very well. Behave just as you feel. It doesn't matter how you
+behave. But keep your wits about you when the pythoness ascends, or you
+will forget the questions you have come to ask her.
+
+
+     THE ENVOY}               {[[_very nervous, takes out a paper to_]
+              } [[_simul-_]   {[_refresh his memory_]] Ahem!
+  THE DAUGHTER} [_taneously_]]{[[_alarmed_]] The pythoness? Is she
+              }               {a snake?
+
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Tch-ch! The priestess of the oracle. A sybil. A
+prophetess. Not a snake.
+
+THE WIFE. How awful!
+
+ZOO. I'm glad you think so.
+
+THE WIFE. Oh dear! Dont you think so?
+
+ZOO. No. This sort of thing is got up to impress you, not to impress me.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I wish you would let it impress us, then, madam.
+I am deeply impressed; but you are spoiling the effect.
+
+ZOO. You just wait. All this business with colored lights and chords on
+that old organ is only tomfoolery. Wait til you see the pythoness.
+
+_The Envoy's wife falls on her knees, and takes refuge in prayer._
+
+THE DAUGHTER [_trembling_] Are we really going to see a woman who has
+lived three hundred years?
+
+ZOO. Stuff! Youd drop dead if a tertiary as much as looked at you. The
+oracle is only a hundred and seventy; and you'll find it hard enough to
+stand her.
+
+THE DAUGHTER [_piteously_] Oh! [_she falls on her knees_].
+
+THE ENVOY. Whew! Stand by me, Poppa. This is a little more than I
+bargained for. Are you going to kneel; or how?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Perhaps it would be in better taste.
+
+_The two men kneel._
+
+_The vapor of the abyss thickens; and a distant roll of thunder seems to
+come from its depths. The pythoness, seated on her tripod, rises slowly
+from it. She has discarded the insulating robe and veil in which she
+conversed with Napoleon, and is now draped and hooded in voluminous
+folds of a single piece of grey-white stuff. Something supernatural
+about her terrifies the beholders, who throw themselves on their faces.
+Her outline flows and waves: she is almost distinct at moments, and
+again vague and shadowy: above all, she is larger than life-size, not
+enough to be measured by the flustered congregation, but enough to
+affect them with a dreadful sense of her supernaturalness._
+
+ZOO. Get up, get up. Do pull yourselves together, you people.
+
+_The Envoy and his family, by shuddering negatively, intimate that it
+is impossible. The Elderly Gentleman manages to get on his hands and
+knees._
+
+ZOO. Come on, Daddy: you are not afraid. Speak to her. She wont wait
+here all day for you, you know.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_rising very deferentially to his feet_] Madam:
+you will excuse my very natural nervousness in addressing, for the first
+time in my life, a--a--a--a goddess. My friend and relative the Envoy is
+unhinged. I throw myself upon your indulgence--
+
+ZOO [_interrupting him intolerantly_] Dont throw yourself on anything
+belonging to her or you will go right through her and break your neck.
+She isnt solid, like you.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I was speaking figuratively--
+
+ZOO. You have been told not to do it. Ask her what you want to know; and
+be quick about it.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_stooping and taking the prostrate Envoy by the
+shoulders_] Ambrose: you must make an effort. You cannot go back to
+Baghdad without the answers to your questions.
+
+THE ENVOY [_rising to his knees_] I shall be only too glad to get back
+alive on any terms. If my legs would support me I'd just do a bunk
+straight for the ship.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No, no. Remember: your dignity--
+
+THE ENVOY. Dignity be damned! I'm terrified. Take me away, for God's
+sake.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_producing a brandy flask and taking the cap
+off_] Try some of this. It is still nearly full, thank goodness!
+
+THE ENVOY [_clutching it and drinking eagerly_] Ah! Thats better. [_He
+tries to drink again. Finding that he has emptied it, he hands it back
+to his father-in-law upside down_].
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_taking it_] Great heavens! He has swallowed
+half-a-pint of neat brandy. [_Much perturbed, he screws the cap on
+again, and pockets the flask_].
+
+THE ENVOY [_staggering to his feet; pulling a paper from his pocket; and
+speaking with boisterous confidence_] Get up, Molly. Up with you, Eth.
+
+_The two women rise to their knees._
+
+THE ENVOY. What I want to ask is this. [_He refers to the paper_]. Ahem!
+Civilization has reached a crisis. We are at the parting of the ways. We
+stand on the brink of the Rubicon. Shall we take the plunge? Already a
+leaf has been torn out of the book of the Sybil. Shall we wait until the
+whole volume is consumed? On our right is the crater of the volcano: on
+our left the precipice. One false step, and we go down to annihilation
+dragging the whole human race with us. [_He pauses for breath_].
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_recovering his spirits under the familiar
+stimulus of political oratory_] Hear, hear!
+
+ZOO. What are you raving about? Ask your question while you have the
+chance. What is it you want to know?
+
+THE ENVOY [_patronizing her in the manner of a Premier debating with a
+very young member of the Opposition_] A young woman asks me a question.
+I am always glad to see the young taking an interest in politics. It is
+an impatient question; but it is a practical question, an intelligent
+question. She asks why we seek to lift a corner of the veil that shrouds
+the future from our feeble vision.
+
+ZOO. I don't. I ask you to tell the oracle what you want, and not keep
+her sitting there all day.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_warmly_] Order, order!
+
+ZOO. What does 'Order, order!' mean?
+
+THE ENVOY. I ask the august oracle to listen to my voice--
+
+ZOO. You people seem never to tire of listening to your voices; but it
+doesn't amuse us. What do you want?
+
+THE ENVOY. I want, young woman, to be allowed to proceed without
+unseemly interruptions.
+
+_A low roll of thunder comes from the abyss._
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. There! Even the oracle is indignant. [_To the
+Envoy_] Do not allow yourself to be put down by this lady's rude clamor,
+Ambrose. Take no notice. Proceed.
+
+THE ENVOY'S WIFE. I cant bear this much longer, Amby. Remember: I havn't
+had any brandy.
+
+HIS DAUGHTER [_trembling_] There are serpents curling in the vapor. I am
+afraid of the lightning. Finish it, Papa; or I shall die.
+
+THE ENVOY [_sternly_] Silence. The destiny of British civilization is at
+stake. Trust me. I am not afraid. As I was saying--where was I?
+
+ZOO. I don't know. Does anybody?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_tactfully_] You were just coming to the
+election, I think.
+
+THE ENVOY [_reassured_] Just so. The election. Now what we want to
+know is this: ought we to dissolve in August, or put it off until next
+spring?
+
+ZOO. Dissolve? In what? [_Thunder_]. Oh! My fault this time. That means
+that the oracle understands you, and desires me to hold my tongue.
+
+THE ENVOY [_fervently_] I thank the oracle.
+
+THE WIFE [_to Zoo_] Serve you right!
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Before the oracle replies, I should like to be
+allowed to state a few of the reasons why, in my opinion, the Government
+should hold on until the spring. In the first--
+
+_Terrific lightning and thunder. The Elderly Gentleman is knocked flat;
+but as he immediately sits up again dazedly it is clear that he is none
+the worse for the shock. The ladies cower in terror. The Envoy's hat is
+blown off; but he seizes it just as it quits his temples, and holds it
+on with both hands. He is recklessly drunk, but quite articulate, as he
+seldom speaks in public without taking stimulants beforehand._
+
+THE ENVOY [_taking one hand from his hat to make a gesture of stilling
+the tempest_] Thats enough. We know how to take a hint. I'll put the
+case in three words. I am the leader of the Potterbill party. My party
+is in power. I am Prime Minister. The Opposition--the Rotterjacks--have
+won every bye-election for the last six months. They--
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_scrambling heatedly to his feet_] Not by fair
+means. By bribery, by misrepresentation, by pandering to the vilest
+prejudices [_muttered thunder_]--I beg your pardon [_he is silent_].
+
+THE ENVOY. Never mind the bribery and lies. The oracle knows all about
+that. The point is that though our five years will not expire until the
+year after next, our majority will be eaten away at the bye-elections
+by about Easter. We can't wait: we must start some question that will
+excite the public, and go to the country on it. But some of us say do it
+now. Others say wait til the spring. We cant make up our minds one way
+or the other. Which would you advise?
+
+ZOO. But what is the question that is to excite your public?
+
+THE ENVOY. That doesnt matter. I dont know yet. We will find a question
+all right enough. The oracle can foresee the future: we cannot.
+[_Thunder_]. What does that mean? What have I done now?
+
+ZOO. [_severely_] How often must you be told that we cannot foresee the
+future? There is no such thing as the future until it is the present.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Allow me to point out, madam, that when the
+Potterbill party sent to consult the oracle fifteen years ago, the
+oracle prophesied that the Potterbills would be victorious at the
+General Election; and they were. So it is evident that the oracle can
+foresee the future, and is sometimes willing to reveal it.
+
+THE ENVOY. Quite true. Thank you, Poppa. I appeal now, over your head,
+young woman, direct to the August Oracle, to repeat the signal favor
+conferred on my illustrious predecessor, Sir Fuller Eastwind, and to
+answer me exactly as he was answered.
+
+_The oracle raises her hands to command silence._
+
+ALL. Sh-sh-sh!
+
+_Invisible trombones utter three solemn blasts in the manner of Die
+Zauberfloete._
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. May I--
+
+ZOO [_quickly_] Hush. The oracle is going to speak.
+
+THE ORACLE. Go home, poor fool.
+
+_She vanishes; and the atmosphere changes to prosaic daylight. Zoo comes
+off the railing; throws off her robe; makes a bundle of it; and tucks it
+under her arm. The magic and mystery are gone. The women rise to their
+feet. The Envoy's party stare at one another helplessly._
+
+ZOO. The same reply, word for word, that your illustrious predecessor,
+as you call him, got fifteen years ago. You asked for it; and you got
+it. And just think of all the important questions you might have asked.
+She would have answered them, you know. It is always like that. I
+will go and arrange to have you sent home: you can wait for me in the
+entrance hall [_she goes out_].
+
+THE ENVOY. What possessed me to ask for the same answer old Eastwind
+got?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. But it was not the same answer. The answer to
+Eastwind was an inspiration to our party for years. It won us the
+election.
+
+THE ENVOY'S DAUGHTER. I learnt it at school, granpa. It wasn't the same
+at all. I can repeat it. [_She quotes_] 'When Britain was cradled in the
+west, the east wind hardened her and made her great. Whilst the east
+wind prevails Britain shall prosper. The east wind shall wither
+Britain's enemies in the day of contest. Let the Rotterjacks look to
+it.'
+
+THE ENVOY. The old man invented that. I see it all. He was a doddering
+old ass when he came to consult the oracle. The oracle naturally said
+'Go home, poor fool.' There was no sense in saying that to me; but as
+that girl said, I asked for it. What else could the poor old chap do but
+fake up an answer fit for publication? There were whispers about it; but
+nobody believed them. I believe them now.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Oh, I cannot admit that Sir Fuller Eastwind was
+capable of such a fraud.
+
+THE ENVOY. He was capable of anything: I knew his private secretary.
+And now what are we going to say? You don't suppose I am going back to
+Baghdad to tell the British Empire that the oracle called me a fool, do
+you?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Surely we must tell the truth, however painful it
+may be to our feelings.
+
+THE ENVOY. I am not thinking of my feelings: I am not so selfish as
+that, thank God. I am thinking of the country: of our party. The truth,
+as you call it, would put the Rotterjacks in for the next twenty years.
+It would be the end of me politically. Not that I care for that: I am
+only too willing to retire if you can find a better man. Dont hesitate
+on my account.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No, Ambrose: you are indispensable. There is no
+one else.
+
+THE ENVOY. Very well, then. What are you going to do?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. My dear Ambrose, you are the leader of the party,
+not I. What are you going to do?
+
+THE ENVOY. I am going to tell the exact truth; thats what I'm going to
+do. Do you take me for a liar?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_puzzled_] Oh. I beg your pardon. I understood
+you to say--
+
+THE ENVOY [_cutting him short_] You understood me to say that I am going
+back to Baghdad to tell the British electorate that the oracle repeated
+to me, word for word, what it said to Sir Fuller Eastwind fifteen years
+ago. Molly and Ethel can bear me out. So must you, if you are an honest
+man. Come on.
+
+_He goes out, followed by his wife and daughter._
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [_left alone and shrinking into an old and
+desolate figure_] What am I to do? I am a most perplexed and wretched
+man. [_He falls on his knees, and stretches his hands in entreaty over
+the abyss_]. I invoke the oracle. I cannot go back and connive at a
+blasphemous lie. I implore guidance.
+
+_The Pythoness walks in on the gallery behind him, and touches him on
+the shoulder. Her size is now natural. Her face is hidden by her hood.
+He flinches as if from an electric shock; turns to her; and cowers,
+covering his eyes in terror._
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No: not close to me. I'm afraid I can't bear it.
+
+THE ORACLE [_with grave pity_] Come: look at me. I am my natural size
+now: what you saw there was only a foolish picture of me thrown on a
+cloud by a lantern. How can I help you?
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. They have gone back to lie about your answer. I
+cannot go with them. I cannot live among people to whom nothing is real.
+I have become incapable of it through my stay here. I implore to be
+allowed to stay.
+
+THE ORACLE. My friend: if you stay with us you will die of
+discouragement.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. If I go back I shall die of disgust and despair.
+I take the nobler risk. I beg you, do not cast me out.
+
+_He catches her robe and holds her._
+
+THE ORACLE. Take care. I have been here one hundred and seventy years.
+Your death does not mean to me what it means to you.
+
+THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. It is the meaning of life, not of death, that
+makes banishment so terrible to me.
+
+THE ORACLE. Be it so, then. You may stay.
+
+_She offers him her hands. He grasps them and raises himself a little by
+clinging to her. She looks steadily into his face. He stiffens; a little
+convulsion shakes him; his grasp relaxes; and he falls dead._
+
+THE ORACLE [_looking down at the body_] Poor shortlived thing! What else
+could I do for you?
+
+
+
+
+PART V.
+
+As Far as Thought can Reach
+
+
+_Summer afternoon in the year 31,920 A.D. A sunlit glade at the southern
+foot of a thickly wooded hill. On the west side of it, the steps and
+columned porch of a dainty little classic temple. Between it and the
+hill, a rising path to the wooded heights begins with rough steps of
+stones in the moss. On the opposite side, a grove. In the middle of the
+glade, an altar in the form of a low marble table as long as a man, set
+parallel to the temple steps and pointing to the hill. Curved marble
+benches radiate from it into the foreground; but they are not joined to
+it: there is plenty of space to pass between the altar and the benches.
+
+A dance of youths and maidens is in progress. The music is provided by a
+few fluteplayers seated carelessly on the steps of the temple. There are
+no children; and none of the dancers seems younger than eighteen. Some
+of the youths have beards. Their dress, like the architecture of the
+theatre and the design of the altar and curved seats, resembles Grecian
+of the fourth century B.C., freely handled. They move with perfect
+balance and remarkable grace, racing through a figure like a farandole.
+They neither romp nor hug in our manner.
+
+At the first full close they clap their hands to stop the musicians, who
+recommence with a saraband, during which a strange figure appears on the
+path beyond the temple. He is deep in thought, with his eyes closed
+and his feet feeling automatically for the rough irregular steps as he
+slowly descends them. Except for a sort of linen kilt consisting mainly
+of a girdle carrying a sporran and a few minor pockets, he is naked. In
+physical hardihood and uprightness he seems to be in the prime of life;
+and his eyes and mouth shew no signs of age; but his face, though fully
+and firmly fleshed, bears a network of lines, varying from furrows to
+hairbreadth reticulations, as if Time had worked over every inch of it
+incessantly through whole geologic periods. His head is finely domed
+and utterly bald. Except for his eyelashes he is quite hairless. He is
+unconscious of his surroundings, and walks right into one of the dancing
+couples, separating them. He wakes up and stares about him. The couple
+stop indignantly. The rest stop. The music stops. The youth whom he has
+jostled accosts him without malice, but without anything that we should
+call manners._
+
+THE YOUTH. Now, then, ancient sleepwalker, why don't you keep your eyes
+open and mind where you are going?
+
+THE ANCIENT [_mild, bland, and indulgent_] I did not know there was a
+nursery here, or I should not have turned my face in this direction.
+Such accidents cannot always be avoided. Go on with your play: I will
+turn back.
+
+THE YOUTH. Why not stay with us and enjoy life for once in a way? We
+will teach you to dance.
+
+THE ANCIENT. No, thank you. I danced when I was a child like you.
+Dancing is a very crude attempt to get into the rhythm of life. It would
+be painful to me to go back from that rhythm to your babyish gambols: in
+fact I could not do it if I tried. But at your age it is pleasant: and I
+am sorry I disturbed you.
+
+THE YOUTH. Come! own up: arnt you very unhappy? It's dreadful to see
+you ancients going about by yourselves, never noticing anything, never
+dancing, never laughing, never singing, never getting anything out of
+life. None of us are going to be like that when we grow up. It's a dog's
+life.
+
+THE ANCIENT. Not at all. You repeat that old phrase without knowing
+that there was once a creature on earth called a dog. Those who are
+interested in extinct forms of life will tell you that it loved the
+sound of its own voice and bounded about when it was happy, just as you
+are doing here. It is you, my children, who are living the dog's life.
+
+THE YOUTH. The dog must have been a good sensible creature: it set you
+a very wise example. You should let yourself go occasionally and have a
+good time.
+
+THE ANCIENT. My children: be content to let us ancients go our ways and
+enjoy ourselves in our own fashion.
+
+_He turns to go._
+
+THE MAIDEN. But wait a moment. Why will you not tell us how you enjoy
+yourself? You must have secret pleasures that you hide from us, and that
+you never get tired of. I get tired of all our dances and all our tunes.
+I get tired of all my partners.
+
+THE YOUTH [_suspiciously_] Do you? I shall bear that in mind.
+
+_They all look at one another as if there were some sinister
+significance in what she has said._
+
+THE MAIDEN. We all do: what is the use of pretending we don't? It is
+natural.
+
+SEVERAL YOUNG PEOPLE. No, no. We don't. It is not natural.
+
+THE ANCIENT. You are older than he is, I see. You are growing up.
+
+THE MAIDEN. How do you know? I do not look so much older, do I?
+
+THE ANCIENT. Oh, I was not looking at you. Your looks do not interest
+me.
+
+THE MAIDEN. Thank you.
+
+_They all laugh._
+
+THE YOUTH. You old fish! I believe you don't know the difference between
+a man and a woman.
+
+THE ANCIENT. It has long ceased to interest me in the way it interests
+you. And when anything no longer interests us we no longer know it.
+
+THE MAIDEN. You havnt told me how I shew my age. That is what I want to
+know. As a matter of fact I am older than this boy here: older than he
+thinks. How did you find that out?
+
+THE ANCIENT. Easily enough. You are ceasing to pretend that these
+childish games--this dancing and singing and mating--do not become
+tiresome and unsatisfying after a while. And you no longer care to
+pretend that you are younger than you are. These are the signs of
+adolescence. And then, see these fantastic rags with which you have
+draped yourself. [_He takes up a piece of her draperies in his hand_].
+It is rather badly worn here. Why do you not get a new one?
+
+THE MAIDEN. Oh, I did not notice it. Besides, it is too much trouble.
+Clothes are a nuisance. I think I shall do without them some day, as you
+ancients do.
+
+THE ANCIENT. Signs of maturity. Soon you will give up all these toys and
+games and sweets.
+
+THE YOUTH. What! And be as miserable as you?
+
+THE ANCIENT. Infant: one moment of the ecstasy of life as we live it
+would strike you dead. [_He stalks gravely out through the grove_].
+
+_They stare after him, much damped._
+
+THE YOUTH [_to the musicians_] Let us have another dance.
+
+_The musicians shake their heads; get up from their seats on the steps;
+and troop away into the temple. The others follow them, except the
+Maiden, who sits down on the altar._
+
+A MAIDEN [_as she goes_] There! The ancient has put them out of
+countenance. It is your fault, Strephon, for provoking him. [_She
+leaves, much disappointed_].
+
+A YOUTH. Why need you have cheeked him like that? [_He goes grumbling_].
+
+STREPHON [_calling after him_] I thought it was understood that we are
+always to cheek the ancients on principle.
+
+ANOTHER YOUTH. Quite right too! There would be no holding them if we
+didn't. [_He goes_].
+
+THE MAIDEN. Why don't you really stand up to them? _I_ did.
+
+ANOTHER YOUTH. Sheer, abject, pusillanimous, dastardly cowardice. Thats
+why. Face the filthy truth. [_He goes_].
+
+ANOTHER YOUTH [_turning on the steps as he goes out_] And don't you
+forget, infant, that one moment of the ecstasy of life as I live it
+would strike you dead. Haha!
+
+STREPHON [_now the only one left, except the Maiden_] Arnt you coming,
+Chloe?
+
+THE MAIDEN [_shakes her head_]!
+
+THE YOUTH [_hurrying back to her_] What is the matter?
+
+THE MAIDEN [_tragically pensive_] I dont know.
+
+THE YOUTH. Then there is something the matter. Is that what you mean?
+
+THE MAIDEN. Yes. Something is happening to me. I dont know what.
+
+THE YOUTH. You no longer love me. I have seen it for a month past.
+
+THE MAIDEN. Dont you think all that is rather silly? We cannot go on as
+if this kind of thing, this dancing and sweethearting, were everything.
+
+THE YOUTH. What is there better? What else is there worth living for?
+
+THE MAIDEN. Oh, stuff! Dont be frivolous.
+
+THE YOUTH. Something horrible is happening to you. You are losing all
+heart, all feeling. [_He sits on the altar beside her and buries his
+face in his hands_]. I am bitterly unhappy.
+
+THE MAIDEN. Unhappy! Really, you must have a very empty head if there is
+nothing in it but a dance with one girl who is no better than any of the
+other girls.
+
+THE YOUTH. You did not always think so. You used to be vexed if I as
+much as looked at another girl.
+
+THE MAIDEN. What does it matter what I did when I was a baby? Nothing
+existed for me then except what I tasted and touched and saw; and I
+wanted all that for myself, just as I wanted the moon to play with. Now
+the world is opening out for me. More than the world: the universe. Even
+little things are turning out to be great things, and becoming intensely
+interesting. Have you ever thought about the properties of numbers?
+
+THE YOUTH [_sitting up, markedly disenchanted_] Numbers!!! I cannot
+imagine anything drier or more repulsive.
+
+THE MAIDEN. They are fascinating, just fascinating. I want to get away
+from our eternal dancing and music, and just sit down by myself and
+think about numbers.
+
+THE YOUTH [_rising indignantly_] Oh, this is too much. I have suspected
+you for some time past. We have all suspected you. All the girls
+say that you have deceived us as to your age: that you are getting
+flat-chested: that you are bored with us; that you talk to the ancients
+when you get the chance. Tell me the truth: how old are you?
+
+THE MAIDEN. Just twice your age, my poor boy.
+
+THE YOUTH. Twice my age! Do you mean to say you are four?
+
+THE MAIDEN. Very nearly four.
+
+THE YOUTH [_collapsing on the altar with a groan_] Oh!
+
+THE MAIDEN. My poor Strephon: I pretended I was only two for your sake.
+I was two when you were born. I saw you break from your shell; and
+you were such a charming child! You ran round and talked to us all so
+prettily, and were so handsome and well grown, that I lost my heart to
+you at once. But now I seem to have lost it altogether: bigger things
+are taking possession of me. Still, we were very happy in our childish
+way for the first year, werent we?
+
+STREPHON. I was happy until you began cooling towards me.
+
+THE MAIDEN. Not towards you, but towards all the trivialities of our
+life here. Just think. I have hundreds of years to live: perhaps
+thousands. Do you suppose I can spend centuries dancing; listening to
+flutes ringing changes on a few tunes and a few notes; raving about the
+beauty of a few pillars and arches; making jingles with words; lying
+about with your arms round me, which is really neither comfortable nor
+convenient; everlastingly choosing colors for dresses, and putting them
+on, and washing; making a business of sitting together at fixed hours
+to absorb our nourishment; taking little poisons with it to make us
+delirious enough to imagine we are enjoying ourselves; and then having
+to pass the nights in shelters lying in cots and losing half our lives
+in a state of unconsciousness. Sleep is a shameful thing: I have not
+slept at all for weeks past. I have stolen out at night when you were
+all lying insensible--quite disgusting, I call it--and wandered about
+the woods, thinking, thinking, thinking; grasping the world; taking it
+to pieces; building it up again; devising methods; planning experiments
+to test the methods; and having a glorious time. Every morning I have
+come back here with greater and greater reluctance; and I know that the
+time will soon come--perhaps it has come already--when I shall not come
+back at all.
+
+STREPHON. How horribly cold and uncomfortable!
+
+THE MAIDEN. Oh, don't talk to me of comfort! Life is not worth living if
+you have to bother about comfort. Comfort makes winter a torture,
+spring an illness, summer an oppression, and autumn only a respite. The
+ancients could make life one long frowsty comfort if they chose. But
+they never lift a finger to make themselves comfortable. They will not
+sleep under a roof. They will not clothe themselves: a girdle with a few
+pockets hanging to it to carry things about in is all they wear: they
+will sit down on the wet moss or in a gorse bush when there is dry
+heather within two yards of them. Two years ago, when you were born, I
+did not understand this. Now I feel that I would not put myself to the
+trouble of walking two paces for all the comfort in the world.
+
+STREPHON. But you don't know what this means to me. It means that you
+are dying to me: yes, just dying. Listen to me [_he puts his arm around
+her_].
+
+THE MAIDEN [_extricating herself_] Dont. We can talk quite as well
+without touching one another.
+
+STREPHON [_horrified_] Chloe! Oh, this is the worst symptom of all! The
+ancients never touch one another.
+
+THE MAIDEN. Why should they?
+
+STREPHON. Oh, I don't know. But don't you want to touch me? You used to.
+
+THE MAIDEN. Yes: that is true: I used to. We used to think it would be
+nice to sleep in one another's arms; but we never could go to sleep
+because our weight stopped our circulations just above the elbows. Then
+somehow my feeling began to change bit by bit. I kept a sort of interest
+in your head and arms long after I lost interest in your whole body. And
+now that has gone.
+
+STREPHON. You no longer care for me at all, then?
+
+THE MAIDEN. Nonsense! I care for you much more seriously than before;
+though perhaps not so much for you in particular. I mean I care more for
+everybody. But I don't want to touch you unnecessarily; and I certainly
+don't want you to touch me.
+
+STREPHON [_rising decisively_] That finishes it. You dislike me.
+
+THE MAIDEN [_impatiently_] I tell you again, I do not dislike you; but
+you bore me when you cannot understand; and I think I shall be happier
+by myself in future. You had better get a new companion. What about the
+girl who is to be born today?
+
+STREPHON. I do not want the girl who is to be born today. How do I know
+what she will be like? I want you.
+
+THE MAIDEN. You cannot have me. You must recognize facts and face them.
+It is no use running after a woman twice your age. I cannot make my
+childhood last to please you. The age of love is sweet; but it is short;
+and I must pay nature's debt. You no longer attract me; and I no longer
+care to attract you. Growth is too rapid at my age: I am maturing from
+week to week.
+
+STREPHON. You are maturing, as you call it--I call it ageing--from
+minute to minute. You are going much further than you did when we began
+this conversation.
+
+THE MAIDEN. It is not the ageing that is so rapid. It is the realization
+of it when it has actually happened. Now that I have made up my mind to
+the fact that I have left childhood behind me, it comes home to me in
+leaps and bounds with every word you say.
+
+STREPHON. But your vow. Have you forgotten that? We all swore together
+in that temple: the temple of love. You were more earnest than any of
+us.
+
+THE MAIDEN [_with a grim smile_] Never to let our hearts grow cold!
+Never to become as the ancients! Never to let the sacred lamp be
+extinguished! Never to change or forget! To be remembered for ever as
+the first company of true lovers faithful to this vow so often made and
+broken by past generations! Ha! ha! Oh, dear!
+
+STREPHON. Well, you need not laugh. It is a beautiful and holy compact;
+and I will keep it whilst I live. Are you going to break it?
+
+THE MAIDEN. Dear child: it has broken itself. The change has come in
+spite of my childish vow. [_She rises_]. Do you mind if I go into the
+woods for a walk by myself? This chat of ours seems to me an unbearable
+waste of time. I have so much to think of.
+
+STREPHON [_again collapsing on the altar and covering his eyes with his
+hands_] My heart is broken. [_He weeps_].
+
+THE MAIDEN [_with a shrug_] I have luckily got through my childhood
+without that experience. It shews how wise I was to choose a lover half
+my age. [_She goes towards the grove, and is disappearing among the
+trees, when another youth, older and manlier than Strephon, with crisp
+hair and firm arms, comes from the temple, and calls to her from the
+threshold_].
+
+THE TEMPLE YOUTH. I say, Chloe. Is there any sign of the Ancient yet?
+The hour of birth is overdue. The baby is kicking like mad. She will
+break her shell prematurely.
+
+THE MAIDEN [_looks across to the hill path; then points up it, and
+says_] She is coming, Acis.
+
+_The Maiden turns away through the grove and is lost to sight among the
+trees._
+
+Acis [_coming to Strephon_] Whats the matter? Has Chloe been unkind?
+
+STREPHON. She has grown up in spite of all her promises. She deceived us
+about her age. She is four.
+
+ACIS. Four! I am sorry, Strephon. I am getting on for three myself;
+and I know what old age is. I hate to say 'I told you so'; but she was
+getting a little hard set and flat-chested and thin on the top, wasn't
+she?
+
+STREPHON [_breaking down_] Dont.
+
+ACIS. You must pull yourself together. This is going to be a busy day.
+First the birth. Then the Festival of the Artists.
+
+STREPHON [_rising_] What is the use of being born if we have to decay
+into unnatural, heartless, loveless, joyless monsters in four short
+years? What use are the artists if they cannot bring their beautiful
+creations to life? I have a great mind to die and have done with it
+all. [_He moves away to the corner of the curved seat farthest from the
+theatre, and throws himself moodily into it_].
+
+_An Ancient Woman has descended the hill path during Strephon's lament,
+and has heard most of it. She is like the He-Ancient, equally bald,
+and equally without sexual charm, but intensely interesting and rather
+terrifying. Her sex is discoverable only by her voice, as her breasts
+are manly, and her figure otherwise not very different. She wears no
+clothes, but has draped herself rather perfunctorily with a ceremonial
+robe, and carries two implements like long slender saws. She comes to
+the altar between the two young men._
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT [_to Strephon_] Infant: you are only at the beginning of
+it all. [_To Acis_] Is the child ready to be born?
+
+ACIS. More than ready, Ancient. Shouting and kicking and cursing. We
+have called to her to be quiet and wait until you come; but of course
+she only half understands, and is very impatient.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. Very well. Bring her out into the sun.
+
+ACIS [_going quickly into the temple_] All ready. Come along.
+
+_Joyous processional music strikes up in the temple._
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT [_going close to Strephon_]. Look at me.
+
+STREPHON [_sulkily keeping his face _averted] Thank you; but I don't
+want to be cured. I had rather be miserable in my own way than callous
+in yours.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. You like being miserable? You will soon grow out of
+that. [_She returns to the altar_].
+
+_The procession, headed by Acis, emerges from the temple. Six youths
+carry on their shoulders a burden covered with a gorgeous but light
+pall. Before them certain official maidens carry a new tunic, ewers of
+water, silver dishes pierced with holes, cloths, and immense sponges.
+The rest carry wands with ribbons, and strew flowers. The burden is
+deposited on the altar, and the pall removed. It is a huge egg._
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT [_freeing her arms from her robe, and placing her saws
+on the altar ready to her hand in a businesslike manner_] A girl, I
+think you said?
+
+ACIS. Yes.
+
+THE TUNIC BEARER. It is a shame. Why cant we have more boys?
+
+SEVERAL YOUTHS [_protesting_] Not at all. More girls. We want new girls.
+
+A GIRL'S VOICE FROM THE EGG. Let me out. Let me out. I want to be born.
+I want to be born. [_The egg rocks_].
+
+ACIS [_snatching a wand from one of the others and whacking the egg with
+it_] Be quiet, I tell you. Wait. You will be born presently.
+
+THE EGG. No, no: at once, at once. I want to be born: I want to be born.
+[_Violent kicking within the egg, which rocks so hard that it has to be
+held on the altar by the bearers_].
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. Silence. [_The music stops; and the egg behaves
+itself_].
+
+_The She-Ancient takes her two saws, and with a couple of strokes rips
+the egg open. The Newly Born, a pretty girl who would have been guessed
+as seventeen in our day, sits up in the broken shell, exquisitely fresh
+and rosy, but with filaments of spare albumen clinging to her here and
+there._
+
+THE NEWLY BORN [_as the world bursts on her vision_] Oh! Oh!!
+Oh!!! Oh!!!! [_She continues this ad libitum during the following
+remonstrances_].
+
+ACIS. Hold your noise, will you?
+
+_The washing begins. The Newly Born shrieks and struggles._
+
+A YOUTH. Lie quiet, you clammy little devil.
+
+A MAIDEN. You must be washed, dear. Now quiet, quiet, quiet: be good.
+
+ACIS. Shut your mouth, or I'll shove the sponge in it.
+
+THE MAIDEN. Shut your eyes. Itll hurt if you don't.
+
+ANOTHER MAIDEN. Dont be silly. One would think nobody had ever been born
+before.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN [_yells_]!!!!!!
+
+ACIS. Serve you right! You were told to shut your eyes.
+
+THE YOUTH. Dry her off quick. I can hardly hold her. Shut it, will you;
+or I'll smack you into a pickled cabbage.
+
+_The dressing begins. The Newly Born chuckles with delight._
+
+THE MAIDEN. Your arms go here, dear. Isnt it pretty? Youll look lovely.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN [_rapturously_] Oh! Oh!! Oh!!! Oh!!!!
+
+ANOTHER YOUTH. No: the other arm: youre putting it on back to front. You
+are a silly little beast.
+
+ACIS. Here! Thats it. Now youre clean and decent. Up with you! Oopsh!
+[_He hauls her to her feet. She cannot walk at first, but masters it
+after a few steps_]. Now then: march. Here she is, Ancient: put her
+through the catechism.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. What name have you chosen for her?
+
+ACIS. Amaryllis.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT [_to the Newly Born_] Your name is Amaryllis.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. What does it mean?
+
+A YOUTH. Love.
+
+A MAIDEN. Mother.
+
+ANOTHER YOUTH. Lilies.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN [_to Acis_] What is your name?
+
+ACIS. Acis.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. I love you, Acis. I must have you all to myself. Take me
+in your arms.
+
+ACIS. Steady, young one. I am three years old.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. What has that to do with it? I love you; and I must have
+you or I will go back into my shell again.
+
+ACIS. You cant. It's broken. Look here [_pointing to Strephon, who has
+remained in his seal without looking round at the birth, wrapped up in
+his sorrow_]! Look at this poor fellow!
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. What is the matter with him?
+
+ACIS. When he was born he chose a girl two years old for his sweetheart.
+He is two years old now himself; and already his heart is broken because
+she is four. That means that she has grown up like this Ancient here,
+and has left him. If you choose me, we shall have only a year's
+happiness before I break your heart by growing up. Better choose the
+youngest you can find.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. I will not choose anyone but you. You must not grow up.
+We will love one another for ever. [_They all laugh_]. What are you
+laughing at?
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. Listen, child--
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Do not come near me, you dreadful old creature. You
+frighten me.
+
+ACIS. Just give her another moment. She is not quite reasonable yet.
+What can you expect from a child less than five minutes old?
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. I think I feel a little more reasonable now. Of course I
+was rather young when I said that; but the inside of my head is changing
+very rapidly. I should like to have things explained to me.
+
+ACIS [_to the She-Ancient_] Is she all right, do you think?
+
+_The She-Ancient looks at the Newly Born critically; feels her bumps
+like a phrenologist; grips her muscles and shakes her limbs; examines
+her teeth; looks into her eyes for a moment; and finally relinquishes
+her with an air of having finished her job._
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. She will do. She may live.
+
+_They all wave their hands and shout for joy._
+
+THE NEWLY BORN [_indignant_] I may live! Suppose there had been anything
+wrong with me?
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. Children with anything wrong do not live here, my
+child. Life is not cheap with us. But you would not have felt anything.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. You mean that you would have murdered me!
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. That is one of the funny words the newly born bring
+with them out of the past. You will forget it tomorrow. Now listen. You
+have four years of childhood before you. You will not be very happy; but
+you will be interested and amused by the novelty of the world; and your
+companions here will teach you how to keep up an imitation of happiness
+during your four years by what they call arts and sports and pleasures.
+The worst of your troubles is already over.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. What! In five minutes?
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. No: you have been growing for two years in the egg. You
+began by being several sorts of creatures that no longer exist, though
+we have fossils of them. Then you became human; and you passed in
+fifteen months through a development that once cost human beings twenty
+years of awkward stumbling immaturity after they were born. They had to
+spend fifty years more in the sort of childhood you will complete in
+four years. And then they died of decay. But you need not die until your
+accident comes.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. What is my accident?
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. Sooner or later you will fall and break your neck; or a
+tree will fall on you; or you will be struck by lightning. Something or
+other must make an end of you some day.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. But why should any of these things happen to me?
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. There is no why. They do. Everything happens to
+everybody sooner or later if there is time enough. And with us there is
+eternity.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Nothing need happen. I never heard such nonsense in all
+my life. I shall know how to take care of myself.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. So you think.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. I don't think: I know. I shall enjoy life for ever and
+ever.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. If you should turn out to be a person of infinite
+capacity, you will no doubt find life infinitely interesting. However,
+all you have to do now is to play with your companions. They have many
+pretty toys, as you see: a playhouse, pictures, images, flowers, bright
+fabrics, music: above all, themselves; for the most amusing child's toy
+is another child. At the end of four years, your mind will change: you
+will become wise; and then you will be entrusted with power.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. But I want power now.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. No doubt you do; so that you could play with the world
+by tearing it to pieces.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Only to see how it is made. I should put it all together
+again much better than before.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. There was a time when children were given the world to
+play with because they promised to improve it. They did not improve it;
+and they would have wrecked it had their power been as great as that
+which you will wield when you are no longer a child. Until then your
+young companions will instruct you in whatever is necessary. You are not
+forbidden to speak to the ancients; but you had better not do so, as
+most of them have long ago exhausted all the interest there is in
+observing children and conversing with them. [_She turns to go_].
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Wait. Tell me some things that I ought to do and ought
+not to do. I feel the need of education. They all laugh at her, except
+the She-Ancient.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. You will have grown out of that by tomorrow. Do what
+you please. [_She goes away up the hill path_].
+
+_The officials take their paraphernalia and the fragments of the egg
+back into the temple._
+
+ACIS. Just fancy: that old girl has been going for seven hundred years
+and hasnt had her fatal accident yet; and she is not a bit tired of it
+all.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. How could anyone ever get tired of life?
+
+ACIS. They do. That is, of the same life. They manage to change
+themselves in a wonderful way. You meet them sometimes with a lot of
+extra heads and arms and legs: they make you split laughing at them.
+Most of them have forgotten how to speak: the ones that attend to us
+have to brush up their knowledge of the language once a year or so.
+Nothing makes any difference to them that I can see. They never enjoy
+themselves. I don't know how they can stand it. They don't even come to
+our festivals of the arts. That old one who saw you out of your shell
+has gone off to moodle about doing nothing; though she knows that this
+is Festival Day?
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. What is Festival Day?
+
+ACIS. Two of our greatest sculptors are bringing us their latest
+masterpieces; and we are going to crown them with flowers and sing
+dithyrambs to them and dance round them.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. How jolly! What is a sculptor?
+
+ACIS. Listen here, young one. You must find out things for yourself, and
+not ask questions. For the first day or two you must keep your eyes and
+ears open and your mouth shut. Children should be seen and not heard.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Who are you calling a child? I am fully a quarter of
+an hour old [_She sits down on the curved bench near Strephon with her
+maturest air_].
+
+VOICES IN THE TEMPLE [_all expressing protest, disappointment, disgust_]
+Oh! Oh! Scandalous. Shameful. Disgraceful. What filth! Is this a joke?
+Why, theyre ancients! Ss-s-s-sss! Are you mad, Arjillax? This is an
+outrage. An insult. Yah! etc. etc. etc. [_The malcontents appear on the
+steps, grumbling_].
+
+ACIS. Hullo: whats the matter? [_He goes to the steps of the temple_].
+
+_The two sculptors issue from the temple. One has a beard two feet long:
+the other is beardless. Between them comes a handsome nymph with marked
+features, dark hair richly waved, and authoritative bearing._
+
+THE AUTHORITATIVE NYMPH [_swooping down to the centre of the glade with
+the sculptors, between Acis and the Newly Born_] Do not try to browbeat
+me, Arjillax, merely because you are clever with your hands. Can you
+play the flute?
+
+ARJILLAX [_the bearded sculptor on her right_] No, Ecrasia: I cannot.
+What has that to do with it? [_He is half derisive, half impatient,
+wholly resolved not to take her seriously in spite of her beauty and
+imposing tone_].
+
+ECRASIA. Well, have you ever hesitated to criticize our best flute
+players, and to declare whether their music is good or bad? Pray have I
+not the same right to criticize your busts, though I cannot make images
+anymore than you can play?
+
+ARJILLAX. Any fool can play the flute, or play anything else, if he
+practises enough; but sculpture is a creative art, not a mere business
+of whistling into a pipe. The sculptor must have something of the god
+in him. From his hand comes a form which reflects a spirit. He does not
+make it to please you, nor even to please himself, but because he must.
+You must take what he gives you, or leave it if you are not worthy of
+it.
+
+ECRASIA [_scornfully_] Not worthy of it! Ho! May I not leave it because
+it is not worthy of me?
+
+ARJILLAX. Of you! Hold your silly tongue, you conceited humbug. What do
+you know about it?
+
+ECRASIA. I know what every person of culture knows: that the business of
+the artist is to create beauty. Until today your works have been full of
+beauty; and I have been the first to point that out.
+
+ARJILLAX. Thank you for nothing. People have eyes, havnt they, to see
+what is as plain as the sun in the heavens without your pointing it out?
+
+ECRASIA. You were very glad to have it pointed out. You did not call me
+a conceited humbug then. You stifled me with caresses. You modelled me
+as the genius of art presiding over the infancy of your master here
+[_indicating the other sculptor_], Martellus.
+
+MARTELLUS [_a silent and meditative listener, shudders and shakes his
+head, but says nothing_].
+
+ARJILLAX [_quarrelsomely_] I was taken in by your talk.
+
+ECRASIA. I discovered your genius before anyone else did. Is that true,
+or is it not?
+
+ARJILLAX. Everybody knew I was an extraordinary person. When I was born
+my beard was three feet long.
+
+ECRASIA. Yes; and it has shrunk from three feet to two. Your genius
+seems to have been in the last foot of your beard; for you have lost
+both.
+
+MARTELLUS [_with a short sardonic cachinnation_] Ha! My beard was three
+and a half feet long when I was born; and a flash of lightning burnt it
+off and killed the ancient who was delivering me. Without a hair on my
+chin I became the greatest sculptor in ten generations.
+
+ECRASIA. And yet you come to us today with empty hands. We shall
+actually have to crown Arjillax here because no other sculptor is
+exhibiting.
+
+ACIS [_returning from the temple steps to behind the curved seat on the
+right of the three_] Whats the row, Ecrasia? Why have you fallen out
+with Arjillax?
+
+ECRASIA. He has insulted us! outraged us! profaned his art! You know
+how much we hoped from the twelve busts he placed in the temple to be
+unveiled today. Well, go in and look at them. That is all I have to
+say. [_She sweeps to the curved seat, and sits down just where Acis is
+leaning over it_].
+
+ACIS. I am no great judge of sculpture. Art is not my line. What is
+wrong with the busts?
+
+ECRASIA. Wrong with them! Instead of being ideally beautiful nymphs and
+youths, they are horribly realistic studies of--but I really cannot
+bring my lips to utter it.
+
+_The Newly Born, full of curiosity, runs to the temple, and peeps in._
+
+ACIS. Oh, stow it, Ecrasia. Your lips are not so squeamish as all that.
+Studies of what?
+
+THE NEWLY BORN [_from the temple steps_] Ancients.
+
+ACIS [_surprised but not scandalized_] Ancients!
+
+ECRASIA. Yes, ancients. The one subject that is by the universal consent
+of all connoisseurs absolutely excluded from the fine arts. [_To
+Arjillax_] How can you defend such a proceeding?
+
+ARJILLAX. If you come to that, what interest can you find in the statues
+of smirking nymphs and posturing youths you stick up all over the place?
+
+ECRASIA. You did not ask that when your hand was still skilful enough to
+model them.
+
+ARJILLAX. Skilful! You high-nosed idiot, I could turn such things out by
+the score with my eyes bandaged and one hand tied behind me. But what
+use would they be? They would bore me; and they would bore you if you
+had any sense. Go in and look at my busts. Look at them again and yet
+again until you receive the full impression of the intensity of
+mind that is stamped on them; and then go back to the pretty-pretty
+confectionery you call sculpture, and see whether you can endure its
+vapid emptiness. [_He mounts the altar impetuously_] Listen to me, all
+of you; and do you, Ecrasia, be silent if you are capable of silence.
+
+ECRASIA. Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn. Scorn! That is
+what I feel for your revolting busts.
+
+ARJILLAX. Fool: the busts are only the beginning of a mighty design.
+Listen.
+
+ACIS. Go ahead, old sport. We are listening.
+
+_Martellus stretches himself on the sward beside the altar. The Newly
+Born sits on the temple steps with her chin on her hands, ready to
+devour the first oration she has ever heard. The rest sit or stand at
+ease._
+
+ARJILLAX. In the records which generations of children have rescued from
+the stupid neglect of the ancients, there has come down to us a fable
+which, like many fables, is not a thing that was done in the past, but a
+thing that is to be done in the future. It is a legend of a supernatural
+being called the Archangel Michael.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Is this a story? I want to hear a story. [_She runs down
+the steps and sits on the altar at Arjillax's feet_].
+
+ARJILLAX. The Archangel Michael was a mighty sculptor and painter. He
+found in the centre of the world a temple erected to the goddess of the
+centre, called Mediterranea. This temple was full of silly pictures of
+pretty children, such as Ecrasia approves.
+
+ACIS. Fair play, Arjillax! If she is to keep silent, let her alone.
+
+ECRASIA. I shall not interrupt, Acis. Why should I not prefer youth and
+beauty to age and ugliness?
+
+ARJILLAX. Just so. Well, the Archangel Michael was of my opinion, not
+yours. He began by painting on the ceiling the newly born in all their
+childish beauty. But when he had done this he was not satisfied; for the
+temple was no more impressive than it had been before, except that there
+was a strength and promise of greater things about his newly born ones
+than any other artist had attained to. So he painted all round these
+newly born a company of ancients, who were in those days called prophets
+and sybils, whose majesty was that of the mind alone at its intensest.
+And this painting was acknowledged through ages and ages to be the
+summit and masterpiece of art. Of course we cannot believe such a tale
+literally. It is only a legend. We do not believe in archangels; and the
+notion that thirty thousand years ago sculpture and painting existed,
+and had even reached the glorious perfection they have reached with us,
+is absurd. But what men cannot realize they can at least aspire to. They
+please themselves by pretending that it was realized in a golden age of
+the past. This splendid legend endured because it lived as a desire in
+the hearts of the greatest artists. The temple of Mediterranea never was
+built in the past, nor did Michael the Archangel exist. But today the
+temple is here [_he points to the porch_]; and the man is here [_he
+slaps himself on the chest_]. I, Arjillax, am the man. I will place
+in your theatre such images of the newly born as must satisfy even
+Ecrasia's appetite for beauty; and I will surround them with ancients
+more august than any who walk through our woods.
+
+MARTELLUS [_as before_] Ha!
+
+ARJILLAX [_stung_] Why do you laugh, you who have come empty-handed,
+and, it seems, empty-headed?
+
+ECRASIA [_rising indignantly_] Oh, shame! You dare disparage Martellus,
+twenty times your master.
+
+ACIS. Be quiet, will you [_he seizes her shoulders and thrusts her back
+into her seat_].
+
+MARTELLUS. Let him disparage his fill, Ecrasia. [_Sitting up_] My poor
+Arjillax, I too had this dream. I too found one day that my images of
+loveliness had become vapid, uninteresting, tedious, a waste of time
+and material. I too lost my desire to model limbs, and retained only my
+interest in heads and faces. I, too, made busts of ancients; but I had
+not your courage: I made them in secret, and hid them from you all.
+
+ARJILLAX [_jumping down from the altar behind Martellus in his surprise
+and excitement_] You made busts of ancients! Where are they, man? Will
+you be talked out of your inspiration by Ecrasia and the fools who
+imagine she speaks with authority? Let us have them all set up beside
+mine in the theatre. I have opened the way for you; and you see I am
+none the worse.
+
+MARTELLUS. Impossible. They are all smashed. [_He rises, laughing_].
+
+ALL. Smashed!
+
+ARJILLAX. Who smashed them?
+
+MARTELLUS. I did. That is why I laughed at you just now. You will smash
+yours before you have completed a dozen of them. [_He goes to the end of
+the altar and sits down beside the Newly Born_].
+
+ARJILLAX. But why?
+
+MARTELLUS. Because you cannot give them life. A live ancient is better
+than a dead statue. [_He takes the Newly Born on his knee: she is
+flattered and voluptuously responsive_]. Anything alive is better than
+anything that is only pretending to be alive. [_To Arjillax_] Your
+disillusion with your works of beauty is only the beginning of your
+disillusion with images of all sorts. As your hand became more skilful
+and your chisel cut deeper, you strove to get nearer and nearer to truth
+and reality, discarding the fleeting fleshly lure, and making images of
+the mind that fascinates to the end. But how can so noble an inspiration
+be satisfied with any image, even an image of the truth? In the end the
+intellectual conscience that tore you away from the fleeting in art to
+the eternal must tear you away from art altogether, because art is false
+and life alone is true.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN [_flings her arms round his neck and kisses him
+enthusiastically_].
+
+MARTELLUS [_rises; carries her to the curved bench on his left; deposits
+her beside Strephon as if she were his overcoat; and continues without
+the least change of tone_] Shape it as you will, marble remains marble,
+and the graven image an idol. As I have broken my idols, and cast away
+my chisel and modelling tools, so will you too break these busts of
+yours.
+
+ARJILLAX. Never.
+
+MARTELLUS. Wait, my friend. I do not come empty-handed today, as you
+imagined. On the contrary, I bring with me such a work of art as you
+have never seen, and an artist who has surpassed both you and me further
+than we have surpassed all our competitors.
+
+ECRASIA. Impossible. The greatest things in art can never be surpassed.
+
+ARJILLAX. Who is this paragon whom you declare greater than I?
+
+MARTELLUS. I declare him greater than myself, Arjillax.
+
+ARJILLAX [_frowning_] I understand. Sooner than not drown me, you are
+willing to clasp me round the waist and jump overboard with me.
+
+ACIS. Oh, stop squabbling. That is the worst of you artists. You are
+always in little squabbling cliques; and the worst cliques are those
+which consist of one man. Who is this new fellow you are throwing in one
+another's teeth?
+
+ARJILLAX. Ask Martellus: do not ask me. I know nothing of him. [_He
+leaves Martellus, and sits down beside Ecrasia, on her left_].
+
+MARTELLUS. You know him quite well. Pygmalion.
+
+ECRASIA [_indignantly_] Pygmalion! That soulless creature! A scientist!
+A laboratory person!
+
+ARJILLAX. Pygmalion produce a work of art! You have lost your artistic
+senses. The man is utterly incapable of modelling a thumb nail, let
+alone a human figure.
+
+MARTELLUS. That does not matter: I have done the modelling for him.
+
+ARJILLAX. What on earth do you mean?
+
+MARTELLUS [_calling_] Pygmalion: come forth.
+
+_Pygmalion, a square-fingered youth with his face laid out in horizontal
+blocks, and a perpetual smile of eager benevolent interest in
+everything, and expectation of equal interest from everybody else, comes
+from the temple to the centre of the group, who regard him for the most
+part with dismay, as dreading that he will bore them. Ecrasia is openly
+contemptuous._
+
+MARTELLUS. Friends: it is unfortunate that Pygmalion is constitutionally
+incapable of exhibiting anything without first giving a lecture about
+it to explain it; but I promise you that if you will be patient he will
+shew you the two most wonderful works of art in the world, and that they
+will contain some of my own very best workmanship. Let me add that they
+will inspire a loathing that will cure you of the lunacy of art for
+ever. [_He sits down next the Newly Born, who pouts and turns a very
+cold right shoulder to him, a demonstration utterly lost on him_].
+
+_Pygmalion, with the smile of a simpleton, and the eager confidence of a
+fanatical scientist, climbs awkwardly on to the altar. They prepare for
+the worst._
+
+PYGMALION. My friends: I will omit the algebra--
+
+ACIS. Thank God!
+
+PYGMALION [_continuing_]--because Martellus has made me promise to do
+so. To come to the point, I have succeeded in making artificial human
+beings. Real live ones, I mean.
+
+INCREDULOUS VOICES. Oh, come! Tell us another. Really, Pyg! Get out. You
+havnt. What a lie!
+
+PYGMALION. I tell you I have. I will shew them to you. It has been done
+before. One of the very oldest documents we possess mentions a tradition
+of a biologist who extracted certain unspecified minerals from the earth
+and, as it quaintly expresses it, 'breathed into their nostrils the
+breath of life.' This is the only tradition from the primitive ages
+which we can regard as really scientific. There are later documents
+which specify the minerals with great precision, even to their atomic
+weights; but they are utterly unscientific, because they overlook the
+element of life which makes all the difference between a mere mixture of
+salts and gases and a living organism. These mixtures were made over
+and over again in the crude laboratories of the Silly-Clever Ages; but
+nothing came of them until the ingredient which the old chronicler
+called the breath of life was added by this very remarkable early
+experimenter. In my view he was the founder of biological science.
+
+ARJILLAX. Is that all we know about him? It doesnt amount to very much,
+does it?
+
+PYGMALION. There are some fragments of pictures and documents which
+represent him as walking in a garden and advising people to cultivate
+their gardens. His name has come down to us in several forms. One of
+them is Jove. Another is Voltaire.
+
+ECRASIA. You are boring us to distraction with your Voltaire. What about
+your human beings?
+
+ARJILLAX. Aye: come to them.
+
+PYGMALION. I assure you that these details are intensely interesting.
+[_Cries of_ No! They are not! Come to the human beings! Conspuez
+Voltaire! Cut it short, Pyg! _interrupt him from all sides_]. You will
+see their bearing presently. I promise you I will not detain you long.
+We know, we children of science, that the universe is full of forces and
+powers and energies of one kind and another. The sap rising in a tree,
+the stone holding together in a definite crystalline structure, the
+thought of a philosopher holding his brain in form and operation with an
+inconceivably powerful grip, the urge of evolution: all these forces can
+be used by us. For instance, I use the force of gravitation when I put a
+stone on my tunic to prevent it being blown away when I am bathing. By
+substituting appropriate machines for the stone we have made not only
+gravitation our slave, but also electricity and magnetism, atomic
+attraction, repulsion, polarization, and so forth. But hitherto the
+vital force has eluded us; so it has had to create machinery for itself.
+It has created and developed bony structures of the requisite strength,
+and clothed them with cellular tissue of such amazing sensitiveness that
+the organs it forms will adapt their action to all the normal variations
+in the air they breathe, the food they digest, and the circumstances
+about which they have to think. Yet, as these live bodies, as we call
+them, are only machines after all, it must be possible to construct them
+mechanically.
+
+ARJILLAX. Everything is possible. Have you done it? that is the
+question.
+
+PYGMALION. Yes. But that is a mere fact. What is interesting is the
+explanation of the fact. Forgive my saying so; but it is such a pity
+that you artists have no intellect.
+
+ECRASIA [_sententiously_] I do not admit that. The artist divines by
+inspiration all the truths that the so-called scientist grubs up in his
+laboratory slowly and stupidly long afterwards.
+
+ARJILLAX [_to Ecrasia, quarrelsomely_] What do you know about it? You
+are not an artist.
+
+ACIS. Shut your heads, both of you. Let us have the artificial men. Trot
+them out, Pygmalion.
+
+PYGMALION. It is a man and a woman. But I really must explain first.
+
+ALL [_groaning_]!!!
+
+PYGMALION. Yes: I--
+
+ACIS. We want results, not explanations.
+
+PYGMALION [_hurt_] I see I am boring you. Not one of you takes the least
+interest in science. Goodbye. [_He descends from the altar and makes for
+the temple_].
+
+SEVERAL YOUTHS AND MAIDENS [_rising and rushing to him_] No, no. Dont
+go. Dont be offended. We want to see the artificial pair. We will
+listen. We are tremendously interested. Tell us all about it.
+
+PYGMALION [_relenting_] I shall not detain you two minutes.
+
+ALL. Half an hour if you like. Please go on, Pygmalion. [_They rush him
+back to the altar, and hoist him on to it_]. Up you go.
+
+_They return to their former places._
+
+PYGMALION. As I told you, lots of attempts were made to produce
+protoplasm in the laboratory. Why were these synthetic plasms, as they
+called them, no use?
+
+ECRASIA. We are waiting for you to tell us.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN [_modelling herself on Ecrasia, and trying to outdo her
+intellectually_] Clearly because they were dead.
+
+PYGMALION. Not bad for a baby, my pet. But dead and alive are very loose
+terms. You are not half as much alive as you will be in another month or
+so. What was wrong with the synthetic protoplasm was that it could
+not fix and conduct the Life Force. It was like a wooden magnet or a
+lightning conductor made of silk: it would not take the current.
+
+ACIS. Nobody but a fool would make a wooden magnet, and expect it to
+attract anything.
+
+PYGMALION. He might if he were so ignorant as not to be able to
+distinguish between wood and soft iron. In those days they were very
+ignorant of the differences between things, because their methods of
+analysis were crude. They mixed up messes that were so like protoplasm
+that they could not tell the difference. But the difference was there,
+though their analysis was too superficial and incomplete to detect it.
+You must remember that these poor devils were very little better than
+our idiots: we should never dream of letting one of them survive the day
+of its birth. Why, the Newly Born there already knows by instinct many
+things that their greatest physicists could hardly arrive at by forty
+years of strenuous study. Her simple direct sense of space-time and
+quantity unconsciously solves problems which cost their most famous
+mathematicians years of prolonged and laborious calculations requiring
+such intense mental application that they frequently forgot to breathe
+when engaged in them, and almost suffocated themselves in consequence.
+
+ECRASIA. Leave these obscure prehistoric abortions; and come back to
+your synthetic man and woman.
+
+PYGMALION. When I undertook the task of making synthetic men, I did
+not waste my time on protoplasm. It was evident to me that if it were
+possible to make protoplasm in the laboratory, it must be equally
+possible to begin higher up and make fully evolved muscular and nervous
+tissues, bone, and so forth. Why make the seed when the making of the
+flower would be no greater miracle? I tried thousands of combinations
+before I succeeded in producing anything that would fix high-potential
+Life Force.
+
+ARJILLAX. High what?
+
+PYGMALION. High-po-tential. The Life Force is not so simple as you
+think. A high-potential current of it will turn a bit of dead tissue
+into a philosopher's brain. A low-potential current will reduce the same
+bit of tissue to a mass of corruption. Will you believe me when I tell
+you that, even in man himself, the Life Force used to slip suddenly down
+from its human level to that of a fungus, so that men found their flesh
+no longer growing as flesh, but proliferating horribly in a lower form
+which was called cancer, until the lower form of life killed the higher,
+and both perished together miserably?
+
+MARTELLUS. Keep off the primitive tribes, Pygmalion. They interest you;
+but they bore these young things.
+
+PYGMALION. I am only trying to make you understand. There was the Life
+Force raging all round me: there was I, trying to make organs that would
+capture it as a battery captures electricity, and tissues that would
+conduct it and operate it. It was easy enough to make eyes more perfect
+than our own, and ears with a larger range of sound; but they could
+neither see nor hear, because they were not susceptible to the Life
+Force. But it was far worse when I discovered how to make them
+susceptible; for the first thing that happened was that they ceased to
+be eyes and ears and turned into heaps of maggots.
+
+ECRASIA. Disgusting! Please stop.
+
+ACIS. If you don't want to hear, go away. You go ahead, Pyg.
+
+PYGMALION. I went ahead. You see, the lower potentials of the Life Force
+could make maggots, but not human eyes or ears. I improved the tissue
+until it was susceptible to a higher potential.
+
+ARJILLAX [_intensely interested_] Yes; and then?
+
+PYGMALION. Then the eyes and ears turned into cancers.
+
+ECRASIA. Oh, hideous!
+
+PYGMALION. Not at all. That was a great advance. It encouraged me so
+much that I put aside the eyes and ears, and made a brain. It wouldn't
+take the Life Force at all until I had altered its constitution a dozen
+times; but when it did, it took a much higher potential, and did not
+dissolve; and neither did the eyes and ears when I connected them up
+with the brain. I was able to make a sort of monster: a thing without
+arms or legs; and it really and truly lived for half-an-hour.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Half-an-hour! What good was that? Why did it die?
+
+PYGMALION. Its blood went wrong. But I got that right; and then I went
+ahead with a complete human body: arms and legs and all. He was my first
+man.
+
+ARJILLAX. Who modelled him?
+
+PYGMALION. I did.
+
+MARTELLUS. Do you mean to say you tried your own hand before you sent
+for me?
+
+PYGMALION. Bless you, yes, several times. My first man was the
+ghastliest creature: a more dreadful mixture of horror and absurdity
+than you who have not seen him can conceive.
+
+ARJILLAX. If you modelled him, he must indeed have been a spectacle.
+
+PYGMALION. Oh, it was not his shape. You see I did not invent that. I
+took actual measurements and moulds from my own body. Sculptors do that
+sometimes, you know; though they pretend they don't.
+
+MARTELLUS. Hm!
+
+ARJILLAX. Hah!
+
+PYGMALION. He was all right to look at, at first, or nearly so. But he
+behaved in the most appalling manner; and the subsequent developments
+were so disgusting that I really cannot describe them to you. He seized
+all sorts of things and swallowed them. He drank every fluid in the
+laboratory. I tried to explain to him that he must take nothing that he
+could not digest and assimilate completely; but of course he could not
+understand me. He assimilated a little of what he swallowed; but the
+process left horrible residues which he had no means of getting rid of.
+His blood turned to poison; and he perished in torments, howling. I then
+perceived that I had produced a prehistoric man; for there are certain
+traces in our own bodies of arrangements which enabled the earlier forms
+of mankind to renew their bodies by swallowing flesh and grains and
+vegetables and all sorts of unnatural and hideous foods, and getting rid
+of what they could not digest.
+
+ECRASIA. But what a pity he died! What a glimpse of the past we have
+lost! He could have told us stories of the Golden Age.
+
+PYGMALION. Not he. He was a most dangerous beast. He was afraid of me,
+and actually tried to kill me by snatching up things and striking at me
+with them. I had to give him two or three pretty severe shocks before I
+convinced him that he was at my mercy.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Why did you not make a woman instead of a man? She would
+have known how to behave herself.
+
+MARTELLUS. Why did you not make a man and a woman? Their children would
+have been interesting.
+
+PYGMALION. I intended to make a woman; but after my experience with the
+man it was out of the question.
+
+ECRASIA. Pray why?
+
+PYGMALION. Well, it is difficult to explain if you have not studied
+prehistoric methods of reproduction. You see the only sort of men and
+women I could make were men and women just like us as far as their
+bodies were concerned. That was how I killed the poor beast of a man. I
+hadnt provided for his horrible prehistoric methods of feeding himself.
+Suppose the woman had reproduced in some prehistoric way instead of
+being oviparous as we are? She couldn't have done it with a modern
+female body. Besides, the experiment might have been painful.
+
+ECRASIA. Then you have nothing to shew us at all?
+
+PYGMALION. Oh yes I have. I am not so easily beaten as that. I set to
+work again for months to find out how to make a digestive system that
+would deal with waste products and a reproductive system capable of
+internal nourishment and incubation.
+
+ECRASIA. Why did you not find out how to make them like us?
+
+STREPHON [_crying out in his grief for the first time_] Why did you not
+make a woman whom you could love? That was the secret you needed.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Oh yes. How true! How great of you, darling Strephon!
+[_She kisses him impulsively_].
+
+STREPHON [_passionately_] Let me alone.
+
+MARTELLUS. Control your reflexes, child.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. My what!
+
+MARTELLUS. Your reflexes. The things you do without thinking. Pygmalion
+is going to shew you a pair of human creatures who are all reflexes and
+nothing else. Take warning by them.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. But wont they be alive, like us?
+
+PYGMALION. That is a very difficult question to answer, my dear. I
+confess I thought at first I had created living creatures; but Martellus
+declares they are only automata. But then Martellus is a mystic: _I_
+am a man of science. He draws a line between an automaton and a living
+organism. I cannot draw that line to my own satisfaction.
+
+MARTELLUS. Your artificial men have no self-control. They only respond
+to stimuli from without.
+
+PYGMALION. But they are conscious. I have taught them to talk and read;
+and now they tell lies. That is so very lifelike.
+
+MARTELLUS. Not at all. If they were alive they would tell the truth. You
+can provoke them to tell any silly lie; and you can foresee exactly the
+sort of lie they will tell. Give them a clip below the knee, and they
+will jerk their foot forward. Give them a clip in their appetites or
+vanities or any of their lusts and greeds, and they will boast and lie,
+and affirm and deny, and hate and love without the slightest regard to
+the facts that are staring them in the face, or to their own obvious
+limitations. That proves that they are automata.
+
+PYGMALION [_unconvinced_] I know, dear old chap; but there really is
+some evidence that we are descended from creatures quite as limited
+and absurd as these. After all, the baby there is three-quarters an
+automaton. Look at the way she has been going on!
+
+THE NEWLY BORN [_indignantly_] What do you mean? How have I been going
+on?
+
+ECRASIA. If they have no regard for truth, they can have no real
+vitality.
+
+PYGMALION. Truth is sometimes so artificial: so relative, as we say in
+the scientific world, that it is very hard to feel quite sure that what
+is false and even ridiculous to us may not be true to them.
+
+ECRASIA. I ask you again, why did you not make them like us? Would any
+true artist be content with less than the best?
+
+PYGMALION. I couldnt. I tried. I failed. I am convinced that what I
+am about to shew you is the very highest living organism that can be
+produced in the laboratory. The best tissues we can manufacture will not
+take as high potentials as the natural product: that is where Nature
+beats us. You dont seem to understand, any of you, what an enormous
+triumph it was to produce consciousness at all.
+
+ACIS. Cut the cackle; and come to the synthetic couple.
+
+SEVERAL YOUTHS AND MAIDENS. Yes, yes. No more talking. Let us have them.
+Dry up, Pyg; and fetch them along. Come on: out with them! The synthetic
+couple.
+
+PYGMALION [_waving his hands to appease them_] Very well, very well.
+Will you please whistle for them? They respond to the stimulus of a
+whistle.
+
+_All who can, whistle like streetboys._
+
+ECRASIA [_makes a wry face and puts her fingers in her ears_]!
+
+PYGMALION. Sh-sh-sh! Thats enough: thats enough: thats enough.
+[_Silence_]. Now let us have some music. A dance tune. Not too fast.
+
+_The flutists play a quiet dance._
+
+MARTELLUS. Prepare yourselves for something ghastly.
+
+_Two figures, a man and woman of noble appearance, beautifully modelled
+and splendidly attired, emerge hand in hand from the temple. Seeing
+that all eyes are fixed on them, they halt on the steps, smiling with
+gratified vanity. The woman is on the man's left._
+
+PYGMALION [_rubbing his hands with the purring satisfaction of a
+creator_] This way, please.
+
+_The Figures advance condescendingly and pose themselves centrally
+between the curved seats._
+
+PYGMALION. Now if you will be so good as to oblige us with a little
+something. You dance so beautifully, you know. [_He sits down next
+Martellus, and whispers to him_] It is extraordinary how sensitive they
+are to the stimulus of flattery.
+
+_The Figures, with a gracious air, dance pompously, but very passably.
+At the close they bow to one another._
+
+ON ALL HANDS [_clapping_] Bravo! Thank you. Wonderful! Splendid.
+Perfect.
+
+_The Figures acknowledge the applause in an obvious condition of swelled
+head._
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Can they make love?
+
+PYGMALION. Yes: they can respond to every stimulus. They have all the
+reflexes. Put your arm round the man's neck, and he will put his arm
+round your body. He cannot help it.
+
+THE FEMALE FIGURE [_frowning_] Round mine, you mean.
+
+PYGMALION. Yours, too, of course, if the stimulus comes from you.
+
+ECRASIA. Cannot he do anything original?
+
+PYGMALION. No. But then, you know, I do not admit that any of us can do
+anything really original, though Martellus thinks we can.
+
+ACIS. Can he answer a question?
+
+PYGMALION. Oh yes. A question is a stimulus, you know. Ask him one.
+
+ACIS [_to the Male Figure_] What do you think of what you see around
+you? Of us, for instance, and our ways and doings?
+
+THE MALE FIGURE. I have not seen the newspaper today.
+
+THE FEMALE FIGURE. How can you expect my husband to know what to think
+of you if you give him his breakfast without his paper?
+
+MARTELLUS. You see. He is a mere automaton.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. I don't think I should like him to put his arm round
+my neck. I don't like them. [_The Male Figure looks offended, and the
+Female jealous_]. Oh, I thought they couldn't understand. Have they
+feelings?
+
+PYGMALION. Of course they have. I tell you they have all the reflexes.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. But feelings are not reflexes.
+
+PYGMALION. They are sensations. When the rays of light enter their eyes
+and make a picture on their retinas, their brains become conscious of
+the picture and they act accordingly. When the waves of sound started by
+your speaking enter their ears and record a disparaging remark on their
+keyboards, their brains become conscious of the disparagement and resent
+it accordingly. If you did not disparage them they would not resent it.
+They are merely responding to a stimulus.
+
+THE MALE FIGURE. We are part of a cosmic system. Free will is an
+illusion. We are the children of Cause and Effect. We are the
+Unalterable, the Irresistible, the Irresponsible, the Inevitable.
+
+
+    My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
+    Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.
+
+
+_There is a general stir of curiosity at this._
+
+ACIS. What the dickens does he mean?
+
+THE MALE FIGURE. Silence, base accident of Nature. This [_taking the
+hand of the Female Figure and introducing her_] is Cleopatra-Semiramis,
+consort of the king of kings, and therefore queen of queens. Ye are
+things hatched from eggs by the brainless sun and the blind fire; but
+the king of kings and queen of queens are not accidents of the egg: they
+are thought-out and hand-made to receive the sacred Life Force. There is
+one person of the king and one of the queen; but the Life Force of the
+king and queen is all one: the glory equal, the majesty co-eternal. Such
+as the king is so is the queen, the king thought-out and hand-made, the
+queen thought-out and hand-made. The actions of the king are caused, and
+therefore determined, from the beginning of the world to the end;
+and the actions of the queen are likewise. The king logical and
+predetermined and inevitable, and the queen logical and predetermined
+and inevitable. And yet they are not two logical and predetermined and
+inevitable, but one logical and predetermined and inevitable. Therefore
+confound not the persons, nor divide the substance: but worship us twain
+as one throne, two in one and one in two, lest by error ye fall into
+irretrievable damnation.
+
+THE FEMALE FIGURE. And if any say unto you 'Which one?' remember that
+though there is one person of the king and one of the queen, yet these
+two persons are not alike, but are woman and man, and that as woman was
+created after man, the skill and practice gained in making him were
+added to her, wherefore she is to be exalted above him in all personal
+respects, and--
+
+THE MALE FIGURE. Peace, woman; for this is a damnable heresy. Both Man
+and Woman are what they are and must do what they must according to the
+eternal laws of Cause and Effect. Look to your words; for if they enter
+my ear and jar too repugnantly on my sensorium, who knows that the
+inevitable response to that stimulus may not be a message to my muscles
+to snatch up some heavy object and break you in pieces.
+
+_The Female Figure picks up a stone and is about to throw it at her
+consort._
+
+ARJILLAX [_springing up and shouting to Pygmalion, who is fondly
+watching the Male Figure_] Look out, Pygmalion! Look at the woman!
+
+_Pygmalion, seeing what is happening, hurls himself on the Female Figure
+and wrenches the stone out of her hand. All spring up in consternation._
+
+ARJILLAX. She meant to kill him.
+
+STREPHON. This is horrible.
+
+THE FEMALE FIGURE [_wrestling with Pygmalion_] Let me go. Let me go,
+will you [_she bites his hand_].
+
+PYGMALION [_releasing her and staggering_] Oh!
+
+_A general shriek of horror echoes his exclamation. He turns deadly
+pale, and supports himself against the end of the curved seat._
+
+THE FEMALE FIGURE [_to her consort_] You would stand there and let me be
+treated like this, you unmanly coward.
+
+_Pygmalion falls dead._
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Oh! Whats the matter? Why did he fall! What has happened
+to him?
+
+_They look on anxiously as Martellus kneels down and examines the body
+of Pygmalion._
+
+MARTELLUS. She has bitten a piece out of his hand nearly as large as a
+finger nail: enough to kill ten men. There is no pulse, no breath.
+
+ECRASIA. But his thumb is clinched.
+
+MARTELLUS. No: it has just straightened out. See! He has gone. Poor
+Pygmalion!
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Oh! [_She weeps_].
+
+STREPHON. Hush, dear: thats childish.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN [_subsiding with a sniff_]!!
+
+MARTELLUS [_rising_] Dead in his third year. What a loss to Science!
+
+ARJILLAX. Who cares about Science? Serve him right for making that pair
+of horrors!
+
+THE MALE FIGURE [_glaring_] Ha!
+
+THE FEMALE FIGURE. Keep a civil tongue in your head, you.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Oh, do not be so unkind, Arjillax. You will make water
+come out of my eyes again.
+
+MARTELLUS [_contemplating the Figures_] Just look at these two devils.
+I modelled them out of the stuff Pygmalion made for them. They are
+masterpieces of art. And see what they have done! Does that convince you
+of the value of art, Arjillax!
+
+STREPHON. They look dangerous. Keep away from them.
+
+ECRASIA. No need to tell us that, Strephon. Pf! They poison the air.
+
+THE MALE FIGURE. Beware, woman. The wrath of Ozymandias strikes like the
+lightning.
+
+THE FEMALE FIGURE. You just say that again if you dare, you filthy
+creature.
+
+ACIS. What are you going to do with them, Martellus? You are responsible
+for them, now that Pygmalion has gone.
+
+MARTELLUS. If they were marble it would be simple enough: I could smash
+them. As it is, how am I to kill them without making a horrible mess?
+
+THE MALE FIGURE [_posing heroically_] Ha! [_He declaims_]
+
+
+    Come one: come all: this rock shall fly
+    From its firm base as soon as I.
+
+
+THE FEMALE FIGURE [_fondly_] My man! My hero husband! I am proud of you.
+I love you.
+
+MARTELLUS. We must send out a message for an ancient.
+
+ACIS. Need we bother an ancient about such a trifle? It will take less
+than half a second to reduce our poor Pygmalion to a pinch of dust. Why
+not calcine the two along with him?
+
+MARTELLUS. No: the two automata are trifles; but the use of our powers
+of destruction is never a trifle. I had rather have the case judged.
+
+_The He-Ancient emerges from the grove. The Figures are panic-stricken._
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT [_mildly_] Am I wanted? I feel called. [_Seeing the body
+of Pygmalion, and immediately taking a sterner tone_] What! A child
+lost! A life wasted! How has this happened?
+
+THE FEMALE FIGURE [_frantically_] I didn't do it. It was not me. May
+I be struck dead if I touched him! It was he [_pointing to the Male
+Figure_].
+
+ALL [amazed at the lie] Oh!
+
+THE MALE FIGURE. Liar. You bit him. Everyone here saw you do it.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. Silence. [_Going between the Figures_] Who made these
+two loathsome dolls?
+
+THE MALE FIGURE [_trying to assert himself with his knees knocking_] My
+name is Ozymandias, king of--
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT [_with a contemptuous gesture_] Pooh!
+
+THE MALE FIGURE [_falling on his knees_] Oh dont, sir. Dont. She did it,
+sir: indeed she did.
+
+THE FEMALE FIGURE [_howling lamentably_] Boohoo! oo! ooh!
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. Silence, I say.
+
+_He knocks the Male Automaton upright by a very light flip under
+the chin. The Female Automaton hardly dares to sob. The immortals
+contemplate them with shame and loathing. The She-Ancient comes from the
+trees opposite the temple._
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. Somebody wants me. What is the matter? [_She comes to
+the left hand of the Female Figure, not seeing the body of Pygmalion_].
+Pf! [_Severely_] You have been making dolls. You must not: they are not
+only disgusting: they are dangerous.
+
+THE FEMALE FIGURE [_snivelling piteously_] I'm not a doll, mam. I'm only
+poor Cleopatra-Semiramis, queen of queens. [_Covering her face with her
+hands_] Oh, don't look at me like that, mam. I meant no harm. He hurt
+me: indeed he did.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. The creature has killed that poor youth.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT [_seeing the body of Pygmalion_] What! This clever
+child, who promised so well!
+
+THE FEMALE FIGURE. He made me. I had as much right to kill him as he had
+to make me. And how was I to know that a little thing like that would
+kill him? I shouldn't die if he cut off my arm or leg.
+
+ECRASIA. What nonsense!
+
+MARTELLUS. It may not be nonsense. I daresay if you cut off her leg she
+would grow another, like the lobsters and the little lizards.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. Did this dead boy make these two things?
+
+MARTELLUS. He made them in his laboratory. I moulded their limbs. I am
+sorry. I was thoughtless: I did not foresee that they would kill and
+pretend to be persons they were not, and declare things that were false,
+and wish evil. I thought they would be merely mechanical fools.
+
+THE MALE FIGURE. Do you blame us for our human nature?
+
+THE FEMALE FIGURE. We are flesh and blood and not angels.
+
+THE MALE FIGURE. Have you no hearts?
+
+ARJILLAX. They are mad as well as mischievous. May we not destroy them?
+
+STREPHON. We abhor them.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. We loathe them.
+
+ECRASIA. They are noisome.
+
+ACIS. I don't want to be hard on the poor devils; but they are making me
+feel uneasy in my inside. I never had such a sensation before.
+
+MARTELLUS. I took a lot of trouble with them. But as far as I am
+concerned, destroy them by all means. I loathed them from the beginning.
+
+ALL. Yes, yes: we all loathe them. Let us calcine them.
+
+THE FEMALE FIGURE. Oh, don't be so cruel. I'm not fit to die. I will
+never bite anyone again. I will tell the truth. I will do good. Is it my
+fault if I was not made properly? Kill him; but spare me.
+
+THE MALE FIGURE. No! I have done no harm: she has. Kill her if you like:
+you have no right to kill me.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Do you hear that? They want to have one another killed.
+
+ARJILLAX. Monstrous! Kill them both.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. Silence. These things are mere automata: they cannot
+help shrinking from death at any cost. You see that they have no
+self-control, and are merely shuddering through a series of reflexes.
+Let us see whether we cannot put a little more life into them. [_He
+takes the Male Figure by the hand, and places his disengaged hand on
+its head_]. Now listen. One of you two is to be destroyed. Which of you
+shall it be?
+
+THE MALE FIGURE [_after a slight convulsion during which his eyes are
+fixed on the He-Ancient_] Spare her; and kill me.
+
+STREPHON. Thats better.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Much better.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT [_handling the Female Automaton in the same manner_]
+Which of you shall we kill?
+
+THE FEMALE FIGURE. Kill us both. How could either of us live without the
+other?
+
+ECRASIA. The woman is more sensible than the man.
+
+_The Ancients release the Automata._
+
+THE MALE FIGURE [_sinking to the ground_] I am discouraged. Life is too
+heavy a burden.
+
+THE FEMALE FIGURE [_collapsing_] I am dying. I am glad. I am afraid to
+live.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. I think it would be nice to give the poor things a
+little music.
+
+ARJILLAX. Why?
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. I don't know. But it would.
+
+_The Musicians play._
+
+THE FEMALE FIGURE. Ozymandias: do you hear that? [_She rises on her
+knees and looks raptly into space_] Queen of queens! [_She dies_].
+
+THE MALE FIGURE [_crawling feebly towards her until he reaches her
+hand_] I knew I was really a king of kings. [_To the others_] Illusions,
+farewell: we are going to our thrones. [_He dies_].
+
+_The music stops. There is dead silence for a moment._
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. That was funny.
+
+STREPHON. It was. Even the Ancients are smiling.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Just a little.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT [_quickly recovering her grave and peremptory manner_]
+Take these two abominations away to Pygmalion's laboratory, and destroy
+them with the rest of the laboratory refuse. [_Some of them move to
+_obey]. Take care: do not touch their flesh: it is noxious: lift them by
+their robes. Carry Pygmalion into the temple; and dispose of his remains
+in the usual way.
+
+_The three bodies are carried out as directed, Pygmalion into the temple
+by his bare arms and legs, and the two Figures through the grove by
+their clothes. Martellus superintends the removal of the Figures, Acis
+that of Pygmalion. Ecrasia, Arjillax, Strephon, and the Newly Born sit
+down as before, but on contrary benches; so that Strephon and the Newly
+Born now face the grove, and Ecrasia and Arjillax the temple. The
+Ancients remain standing at the altar._
+
+ECRASIA [_as she sits down_] Oh for a breeze from the hills!
+
+STREPHON. Or the wind from the sea at the turn of the tide!
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. I want some clean air.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. The air will be clean in a moment. This doll flesh that
+children make decomposes quickly at best; but when it is shaken by such
+passions as the creatures are capable of, it breaks up at once and
+becomes horribly tainted.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. Let it be a lesson to you all to be content with
+lifeless toys, and not attempt to make living ones. What would you think
+of us ancients if we made toys of you children?
+
+THE NEWLY BORN [_coaxingly_] Why do you not make toys of us? Then you
+would play with us; and that would be very nice.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. It would not amuse us. When you play with one another
+you play with your bodies, and that makes you supple and strong; but if
+we played with you we should play with your minds, and perhaps deform
+them.
+
+STREPHON. You are a ghastly lot, you ancients. I shall kill myself when
+I am four years old. What do you live for?
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. You will find out when you grow up. You will not kill
+yourself.
+
+STREPHON. If you make me believe that, I shall kill myself now.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Oh no. I want you. I love you.
+
+STREPHON. I love someone else. And she has gone old, old. Lost to me for
+ever.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. How old?
+
+STREPHON. You saw her when you barged into us as we were dancing. She is
+four.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. How I should have hated her twenty minutes ago! But I
+have grown out of that now.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. Good. That hatred is called jealousy, the worst of our
+childish complaints.
+
+_Martellus, dusting his hands and puffing, returns from the grove._
+
+MARTELLUS. Ouf! [_He sits down next the Newly Born_] That job's
+finished.
+
+ARJILLAX. Ancients: I should like to make a few studies of you. Not
+portraits, of course: I shall idealize you a little. I have come to the
+conclusion that you ancients are the most interesting subjects after
+all.
+
+MARTELLUS. What! Have those two horrors, whose ashes I have just
+deposited with peculiar pleasure in poor Pygmalion's dustbin, not cured
+you of this silly image-making!
+
+ARJILLAX. Why did you model them as young things, you fool? If Pygmalion
+had come to me, I should have made ancients of them for him. Not that I
+should have modelled them any better. I have always said that no one
+can beat you at your best as far as handwork is concerned. But this job
+required brains. That is where I should have come in.
+
+MARTELLUS. Well, my brainy boy, you are welcome to try your hand. There
+are two of Pygmalion's pupils at the laboratory who helped him to
+manufacture the bones and tissues and all the rest of it. They can turn
+out a couple of new automatons; and you can model them as ancients if
+this venerable pair will sit for you.
+
+ECRASIA [_decisively_] No. No more automata. They are too disgusting.
+
+ACIS [_returning from the temple_] Well, thats done. Poor old Pyg!
+
+ECRASIA. Only fancy, Acis! Arjillax wants to make more of those
+abominable things, and to destroy even their artistic character by
+making ancients of them.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. You wont sit for them, will you? Please dont.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. Children, listen.
+
+ACIS [_striding down the steps to the bench and seating himself next
+Ecrasia_] What! Even the Ancient wants to make a speech! Give it mouth,
+O Sage.
+
+STREPHON. For heaven's sake don't tell us that the earth was once
+inhabited by Ozymandiases and Cleopatras. Life is hard enough for us as
+it is.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take
+courage: it can be delightful. What I wanted to tell you is that ever
+since men existed, children have played with dolls.
+
+ECRASIA. You keep using that word. What are dolls, pray?
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. What you call works of art. Images. We call them dolls.
+
+ARJILLAX. Just so. You have no sense of art; and you instinctively
+insult it.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. Children have been known to make dolls out of rags, and
+to caress them with the deepest fondness.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. Eight centuries ago, when I was a child, I made a rag
+doll. The rag doll is the dearest of all.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN [_eagerly interested_] Oh! Have you got it still?
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. I kept it a full week.
+
+ECRASIA. Even in your childhood, then, you did not understand high art,
+and adored your own amateur crudities.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. How old are you?
+
+ECRASIA. Eight months.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. When you have lived as long as I have--
+
+ECRASIA [_interrupting rudely_] I shall worship rag dolls, perhaps.
+Thank heaven I am still in my prime.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. You are still capable of thanking, though you do not
+know what you thank. You are a thanking little animal, a blaming little
+animal, a--
+
+ACIS. A gushing little animal.
+
+ARJILLAX. And, as she thinks, an artistic little animal.
+
+ECRASIA [_nettled_] I am an animated being with a reasonable soul and
+human flesh subsisting. If your Automata had been properly animated,
+Martellus, they would have been more successful.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. That is where you are wrong, my child. If those two
+loathsome things had been rag dolls, they would have been amusing and
+lovable. The Newly Born here would have played with them; and you would
+all have laughed and played with them too until you had torn them to
+pieces; and then you would have laughed more than ever.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Of course we should. Isnt that funny?
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. When a thing is funny, search it for a hidden truth.
+
+STREPHON. Yes; and take all the fun out of it.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. Do not be so embittered because your sweetheart has
+outgrown her love for you. The Newly Born will make amends.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Oh yes: I will be more than she could ever have been.
+
+STREPHON. Psha! Jealous!
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Oh no. I have grown out of that. I love her now because
+she loved you, and because you love her.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. That is the next stage. You are getting on very nicely,
+my child.
+
+MARTELLUS. Come! what is the truth that was hidden in the rag doll?
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. Well, consider why you are not content with the rag
+doll, and must have something more closely resembling a real living
+creature. As you grow up you make images and paint pictures. Those of
+you who cannot do that make stories about imaginary dolls. Or you dress
+yourselves up as dolls and act plays about them.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. And, to deceive yourself the more completely, you take
+them so very very seriously that Ecrasia here declares that the making
+of dolls is the holiest work of creation, and the words you put into
+the mouths of dolls the sacredest of scriptures and the noblest of
+utterances.
+
+ECRASIA. Tush!
+
+ARJILLAX. Tosh!
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. Yet the more beautiful they become the further they
+retreat from you. You cannot caress them as you caress the rag doll. You
+cannot cry for them when they are broken or lost, or when you pretend
+they have been unkind to you, as you could when you played with rag
+dolls.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. At last, like Pygmalion, you demand from your dolls the
+final perfection of resemblance to life. They must move and speak.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. They must love and hate.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. They must think that they think.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. They must have soft flesh and warm, blood.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. And then, when you have achieved this as Pygmalion did;
+when the marble masterpiece is dethroned by the automaton and the homo
+by the homunculus; when the body and the brain, the reasonable soul and
+human flesh subsisting, as Ecrasia says, stand before you unmasked as
+mere machinery, and your impulses are shewn to be nothing but reflexes,
+you are filled with horror and loathing, and would give worlds to be
+young enough to play with your rag doll again, since every step away
+from it has been a step away from love and happiness. Is it not true?
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. Speak, Martellus: you who have travelled the whole
+path.
+
+MARTELLUS. It is true. With fierce joy I turned a temperature of a
+million degrees on those two things I had modelled, and saw them vanish
+in an instant into inoffensive dust.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. Speak, Arjillax: you who have advanced from imitating
+the lightly living child to the intensely living ancient. Is it true, so
+far?
+
+ARJILLAX. It is partly true: I cannot pretend to be satisfied now with
+modelling pretty children.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. And you, Ecrasia: you cling to your highly artistic
+dolls as the noblest projections of the Life Force, do you not?
+
+ECRASIA. Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world
+unbearable.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN [_anticipating the She-Ancient, who is evidently going
+to challenge her_] Now you are coming to me, because I am the latest
+arrival. But I don't understand your art and your dolls at all. I want
+to caress my darling Strephon, not to play with dolls.
+
+ACIS. I am in my fourth year; and I have got on very well without your
+dolls. I had rather walk up a mountain and down again than look at all
+the statues Martellus and Arjillax ever made. You prefer a statue to an
+automaton, and a rag doll to a statue. So do I; but I prefer a man to a
+rag doll. Give me friends, not dolls.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. Yet I have seen you walking over the mountains alone.
+Have you not found your best friend in yourself?
+
+ACIS. What are you driving at, old one? What does all this lead to?
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. It leads, young man, to the truth that you can create
+nothing but yourself.
+
+ACIS [_musing_] I can create nothing but myself. Ecrasia: you are
+clever. Do you understand it? I don't.
+
+ECRASIA. It is as easy to understand as any other ignorant error. What
+artist is as great as his own works? He can create masterpieces; but he
+cannot improve the shape of his own nose.
+
+ACIS. There! What have you to say to that, old one?
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. He can alter the shape of his own soul. He could alter
+the shape of his nose if the difference between a turned-up nose and a
+turned-down one were worth the effort. One does not face the throes of
+creation for trifles.
+
+ACIS. What have you to say to that, Ecrasia?
+
+ECRASIA. I say that if the ancients had thoroughly grasped the theory of
+fine art they would understand that the difference between a beautiful
+nose and an ugly one is of supreme importance: that it is indeed the
+only thing that matters.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. That is, they would understand something they could not
+believe, and that you do not believe.
+
+ACIS. Just so, mam. Art is not honest: that is why I never could stand
+much of it. It is all make-believe. Ecrasia never really says things:
+she only rattles her teeth in her mouth.
+
+ECRASIA. Acis: you are rude.
+
+ACIS. You mean that I wont play the game of make-believe. Well, I don't
+ask you to play it with me; so why should you expect me to play it with
+you?
+
+ECRASIA. You have no right to say that I am not sincere. I have found a
+happiness in art that real life has never given me. I am intensely in
+earnest about art. There is a magic and mystery in art that you know
+nothing of.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. Yes, child: art is the magic mirror you make to reflect
+your invisible dreams in visible pictures. You use a glass mirror to see
+your face: you use works of art to see your soul. But we who are older
+use neither glass mirrors nor works of art. We have a direct sense of
+life. When you gain that you will put aside your mirrors and statues,
+your toys and your dolls.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. Yet we too have our toys and our dolls. That is the
+trouble of the ancients.
+
+ARJILLAX. What! The ancients have their troubles! It is the first time I
+ever heard one of them confess it.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. Look at us. Look at me. This is my body, my blood,
+my brain; but it is not me. I am the eternal life, the perpetual
+resurrection; but [_striking his body_] this structure, this organism,
+this makeshift, can be made by a boy in a laboratory, and is held back
+from dissolution only by my use of it. Worse still, it can be broken by
+a slip of the foot, drowned by a cramp in the stomach, destroyed by a
+flash from the clouds. Sooner or later, its destruction is certain.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. Yes: this body is the last doll to be discarded. When I
+was a child, Ecrasia, I, too, was an artist, like your sculptor friends
+there, striving to create perfection in things outside myself. I made
+statues: I painted pictures: I tried to worship them.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. I had no such skill; but I, like Acis, sought perfection
+in friends, in lovers, in nature, in things outside myself. Alas! I
+could not create if. I could only imagine it.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. I, like Arjillax, found out that my statues of bodily
+beauty were no longer even beautiful to me; and I pressed on and made
+statues and pictures of men and women of genius, like those in the old
+fable of Michael Angelo. Like Martellus, I smashed them when I saw that
+there was no life in them: that they were so dead that they would not
+even dissolve as a dead body does.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. And I, like Acis, ceased to walk over the mountains with
+my friends, and walked alone; for I found that I had creative power
+over myself but none over my friends. And then I ceased to walk on the
+mountains; for I saw that the mountains were dead.
+
+ACIS [_protesting vehemently_] No. I grant you about the friends
+perhaps; but the mountains are still the mountains, each with its name,
+its individuality, its upstanding strength and majesty, its beauty--
+
+ECRASIA. What! Acis among the rhapsodists!
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. Mere metaphor, my poor boy: the mountains are corpses.
+
+ALL THE YOUNG [_repelled_] Oh!
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. Yes. In the hardpressed heart of the earth, where the
+inconceivable heat of the sun still glows, the stone lives in fierce
+atomic convulsion, as we live in our slower way. When it is cast out to
+the surface it dies like deep-sea fish: what you see is only its cold
+dead body. We have tapped that central heat as prehistoric man tapped
+water springs; but nothing has come up alive from those flaming depths:
+your landscapes, your mountains, are only the world's cast skins and
+decaying teeth on which we live like microbes.
+
+ECRASIA. Ancient: you blaspheme against Nature and against Man.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. Child, child, how much enthusiasm will you have for man
+when you have endured eight centuries of him, as I have, and seen him
+perish by an empty mischance that is yet a certainty? When I discarded
+my dolls as he discarded his friends and his mountains, it was to myself
+I turned as to the final reality. Here, and here alone, I could shape
+and create. When my arm was weak and I willed it to be strong, I could
+create a roll of muscle on it; and when I understood that, I understood
+that I could without any greater miracle give myself ten arms and three
+heads.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. I also came to understand such miracles. For fifty years
+I sat contemplating this power in myself and concentrating my will.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. So did I; and for five more years I made myself into
+all sorts of fantastic monsters. I walked upon a dozen legs: I worked
+with twenty hands and a hundred fingers: I looked to the four quarters
+of the compass with eight eyes out of four heads. Children fled in
+amazement from me until I had to hide myself from them; and the
+ancients, who had forgotten how to laugh, smiled grimly when they
+passed.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. We have all committed these follies. You will all commit
+them.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Oh, do grow a lot of arms and legs and heads for us. It
+would be so funny.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. My child: I am just as well as I am. I would not lift my
+finger now to have a thousand heads.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. But what would I not give to have no head at all?
+
+ALL THE YOUNG. Whats that? No head at all? Why? How?
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. Can you not understand?
+
+ALL THE YOUNG [_shaking their heads_] No.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. One day, when I was tired of learning to walk forward
+with some of my feet and backwards with others and sideways with the
+rest all at once, I sat on a rock with my four chins resting on four
+of my palms, and four or my elbows resting on four of my knees. And
+suddenly it came into my mind that this monstrous machinery of heads and
+limbs was no more me than my statues had been me, and that it was only
+an automaton that I had enslaved.
+
+MARTELLUS. Enslaved? What does that mean?
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. A thing that must do what you command it is a slave;
+and its commander is its master. These are words you will learn when
+your turn comes.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. You will also learn that when the master has come to do
+everything through the slave, the slave becomes his master, since he
+cannot live without him.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. And so I perceived that I had made myself the slave of
+a slave.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. When we discovered that, we shed our superfluous heads
+and legs and arms until we had our old shapes again, and no longer
+startled the children.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. But still I am the slave of this slave, my body. How am
+I to be delivered from it?
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. That, children, is the trouble of the ancients. For
+whilst we are tied to this tyrannous body we are subject to its death,
+and our destiny is not achieved.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. What is your destiny?
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. To be immortal.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. The day will come when there will be no people, only
+thought.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. And that will be life eternal.
+
+ECRASIA. I trust I shall meet my fatal accident before that day dawns.
+
+ARJILLAX. For once, Ecrasia, I agree with you. A world in which there
+were nothing plastic would be an utterly miserable one.
+
+ECRASIA. No limbs, no contours, no exquisite lines and elegant shapes,
+no worship of beautiful bodies, no poetic embraces in which cultivated
+lovers pretend that their caressing hands are wandering over celestial
+hills and enchanted valleys, no--
+
+ACIS [_interrupting her disgustedly_] What an inhuman mind you have,
+Ecrasia!
+
+ECRASIA. Inhuman!
+
+ACIS. Yes: inhuman. Why don't you fall in love with someone?
+
+ECRASIA. I! I have been in love all my life. I burned with it even in
+the egg.
+
+ACIS. Not a bit of it. You and Arjillax are just as hard as two stones.
+
+ECRASIA. You did not always think so, Acis.
+
+ACIS. Oh, I know. I offered you my love once, and asked for yours.
+
+ECRASIA. And did I deny it to you, Acis?
+
+ACIS. You didn't even know what love was.
+
+ECRASIA. Oh! I adored you, you stupid oaf, until I found that you were a
+mere animal.
+
+ACIS. And I made no end of a fool of myself about you until I discovered
+that you were a mere artist. You appreciated my contours! I was plastic,
+as Arjillax says. I wasn't a man to you: I was a masterpiece appealing
+to your tastes and your senses. Your tastes and senses had overlaid the
+direct impulse of life in you. And because I cared only for our life,
+and went straight to it, and was bored by your calling my limbs fancy
+names and mapping me into mountains and valleys and all the rest of it,
+you called me an animal. Well, I am an animal, if you call a live man an
+animal.
+
+ECRASIA. You need not explain. You refused to be refined. I did my
+best to lift your prehistoric impulses on to the plane of beauty, of
+imagination, of romance, of poetry, of art, of--
+
+ACIS. These things are all very well in their way and in their proper
+places. But they are not love. They are an unnatural adulteration of
+love. Love is a simple thing and a deep thing: it is an act of life and
+not an illusion. Art is an illusion.
+
+ARJILLAX. That is false. The statue comes to life always. The statues of
+today are the men and women of the next incubation. I hold up the marble
+figure before the mother and say, 'This is the model you must copy.' We
+produce what we see. Let no man dare to create in art a thing that he
+would not have exist in life.
+
+MARTELLUS. Yes: I have been through all that. But you yourself are
+making statues of ancients instead of beautiful nymphs and swains. And
+Ecrasia is right about the ancients being inartistic. They are damnably
+inartistic.
+
+ECRASIA [_triumphant_] Ah! Our greatest artist vindicates me. Thanks,
+Martellus.
+
+MARTELLUS. The body always ends by being a bore. Nothing remains
+beautiful and interesting except thought, because the thought is the
+life. Which is just what this old gentleman and this old lady seem to
+think too.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. Quite so.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. Precisely.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN [_to the He-Ancient_] But you cant be nothing. What do
+you want to be?
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. A vortex.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. A what?
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. A vortex. I began as a vortex: why should I not end as
+one?
+
+ECRASIA. Oh! That is what you old people are, Vorticists.
+
+ACIS. But if life is thought, can you live without a head?
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. Not now perhaps. But prehistoric men thought they could
+not live without tails. I can live without a tail. Why should I not live
+without a head?
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. What is a tail?
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT A habit of which your ancestors managed to pure
+themselves.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. None of us now believe that all this machinery of flesh
+and blood is necessary. It dies.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. It imprisons us on this petty planet and forbids us to
+range through the stars.
+
+ACIS. But even a vortex is a vortex in something. You cant have a
+whirlpool without water; and you cant have a vortex without gas, or
+molecules or atoms or ions or electrons or something, not nothing.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. No: the vortex is not the water nor the gas nor the
+atoms: it is a power over these things.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. The body was the slave of the vortex; but the slave has
+become the master; and we must free ourselves from that tyranny. It is
+this stuff [_indicating her body_], this flesh and blood and bone and
+all the rest of it, that is intolerable. Even prehistoric man dreamed of
+what he called an astral body, and asked who would deliver him from the
+body of this death.
+
+ACIS [_evidently out of his depth_] I shouldn't think too much about it
+if I were you. You have to keep sane, you know.
+
+_The two Ancients look at one another; shrug their shoulders; and
+address themselves to their departure._
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. We are staying too long with you, children. We must go.
+
+_All the young people rise rather eagerly._
+
+ARJILLAX. Dont mention it.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. It is tiresome for us, too. You see, children, we have
+to put things very crudely to you to make ourselves intelligible.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. And I am afraid we do not quite succeed.
+
+STREPHON. Very kind of you to come at all and talk to us, I'm sure.
+
+ECRASIA. Why do the other ancients never come and give us a turn?
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. It is difficult for them. They have forgotten how
+to speak; how to read; even how to think in your fashion. We do not
+communicate with one another in that way or apprehend the world as you
+do.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. I find it more and more difficult to keep up your
+language. Another century or two and it will be impossible. I shall have
+to be relieved by a younger shepherd.
+
+ACIS. Of course we are always delighted to see you; but still, if it
+tries you very severely, we could manage pretty well by ourselves, you
+know.
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. Tell me, Acis: do you ever think of yourself as having
+to live perhaps for thousands of years?
+
+ACIS. Oh, don't talk about it. Why, I know very well that I have only
+four years of what any reasonable person would call living; and three
+and a half of them are already gone.
+
+ECRASIA. You must not mind our saying so; but really you cannot call
+being an ancient living.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN [_almost in tears_] Oh, this dreadful shortness of our
+lives! I cannot bear it.
+
+STREPHON. I made up my mind on that subject long ago. When I am three
+years and fifty weeks old, I shall have my fatal accident. And it will
+not be an accident.
+
+THE HE-ANCIENT. We are very tired of this subject. I must leave you.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. What is being tired?
+
+THE SHE-ANCIENT. The penalty of attending to children. Farewell.
+
+_The two Ancients go away severally, she into the grove, he up to the
+hills behind the temple._
+
+ALL. Ouf! [_A great sigh of relief_].
+
+ECRASIA. Dreadful people!
+
+STREPHON. Bores!
+
+MARTELLUS. Yet one would like to follow them; to enter into their life;
+to grasp their thought; to comprehend the universe as they must.
+
+ARJILLAX. Getting old, Martellus?
+
+MARTELLUS. Well, I have finished with the dolls; and I am no longer
+jealous of you. That looks like the end. Two hours sleep is enough for
+me. I am afraid I am beginning to find you all rather silly.
+
+STREPHON. I know. My girl went off this morning. She hadnt slept for
+weeks. And she found mathematics more interesting than me.
+
+MARTELLUS. There is a prehistoric saying that has come down to us from a
+famous woman teacher. She said: 'Leave women; and study mathematics.'
+It is the only remaining fragment of a lost scripture called The
+Confessions of St Augustin, the English Opium Eater. That primitive
+savage must have been a great woman, to say a thing that still lives
+after three hundred centuries. I too will leave women and study
+mathematics, which I have neglected too long. Farewell, children, my old
+playmates. I almost wish I could feel sentimental about parting from
+you; but the cold truth is that you bore me. Do not be angry with me:
+your turn will come. [_He passes away gravely into the grove_].
+
+ARJILLAX. There goes a great spirit. What a sculptor he was! And now,
+nothing! It is as if he had cut off his hands.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Oh, will you all leave me as he has left you?
+
+ECRASIA. Never. We have sworn it.
+
+STREPHON. What is the use of swearing? She swore. He swore. You have
+sworn. They have sworn.
+
+ECRASIA. You speak like a grammar.
+
+STREPHON. That is how one ought to speak, isnt it? We shall all be
+forsworn.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Do not talk like that. You are saddening us; and you are
+chasing the light away. It is growing dark.
+
+ACIS. Night is falling. The light will come back tomorrow.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. What is tomorrow?
+
+ACIS. The day that never comes. [_He turns towards the temple_].
+
+_All begin trooping into the temple._
+
+THE NEWLY BORN [_holding Acis back_] That is no answer. What--
+
+ARJILLAX. Silence. Little children should be seen and not heard.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN [_putting out her tongue at him_]!
+
+ECRASIA. Ungraceful. You must not do that.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. I will do what I like. But there is something the matter
+with me. I want to lie down. I cannot keep my eyes open.
+
+ECRASIA. You are falling asleep. You will wake up again.
+
+THE NEWLY BORN [_drowsily_] What is sleep?
+
+ACIS. Ask no questions; and you will be told no lies. [_He takes her by
+the ear, and leads her firmly towards the temple_].
+
+THE NEWLY BORN. Ai! oi! ai! Dont. I want to be carried. [_She reels into
+the arms of Acts, who carries her into the temple_].
+
+ECRASIA. Come, Arjillax: you at least are still an artist. I adore you.
+
+ARJILLAX. Do you? Unfortunately for you, I am not still a child. I have
+grown out of cuddling. I can only appreciate your figure. Does that
+satisfy you?
+
+ECRASIA. At what distance?
+
+ARJILLAX. Arm's length or more.
+
+ECRASIA. Thank you: not for me. [_She turns away from him_].
+
+ARJILLAX. Ha! ha! [_He strides off into the temple_].
+
+ECRASIA [_calling to Strephon, who is on the threshold of the temple,
+going in_] Strephon.
+
+STREPHON. No. My heart is broken. [_He goes into the temple_].
+
+ECRASIA. Must I pass the night alone? [_She looks round, seeking another
+partner; but they have all gone_]. After all, I can imagine a lover
+nobler than any of you. [_She goes into the temple_].
+
+_It is now quite dark. A vague radiance appears near the temple and
+shapes itself into the ghost of Adam._
+
+A WOMAN'S VOICE [_in the grove_] Who is that?
+
+ADAM. The ghost of Adam, the first father of mankind. Who are you?
+
+THE VOICE. The ghost of Eve, the first mother of mankind.
+
+ADAM. Come forth, wife; and shew yourself to me.
+
+EVE [_appearing near the grove_] Here I am, husband. You are very old.
+
+A VOICE [_in the hills_] Ha! ha! ha!
+
+ADAM. Who laughs? Who dares laugh at Adam?
+
+EVE. Who has the heart to laugh at Eve?
+
+THE VOICE. The ghost of Cain, the first child, and the first murderer.
+[_He appears between them; and as he does so there is a prolonged
+hiss_]. Who dares hiss at Cain, the lord of death?
+
+A VOICE. The ghost of the serpent, that lived before Adam and before
+Eve, and taught them how to bring forth Cain. [_She becomes visible,
+coiled in the trees_].
+
+A VOICE. There is one that came before the serpent.
+
+THE SERPENT. That is the voice of Lilith, in whom the father and mother
+were one. Hail, Lilith!
+
+_Lilith becomes visible between Cain and Adam._
+
+LILITH. I suffered unspeakably; I tore myself asunder; I lost my life,
+to make of my one flesh these twain, man and woman. And this is what has
+come of it. What do you make of it, Adam, my son?
+
+ADAM. I made the earth bring forth by my labor, and the woman bring
+forth by my love. And this is what has come of it. What do you make of
+it, Eve, my wife?
+
+EVE. I nourished the egg in my body and fed it with my blood. And now
+they let it fall as the birds did, and suffer not at all. What do you
+make of it, Cain, my first-born?
+
+CAIN. I invented killing and conquest and mastery and the winnowing out
+of the weak by the strong. And now the strong have slain one another;
+and the weak live for ever; and their deeds do nothing for the doer more
+than for another. What do you make of it, snake?
+
+THE SERPENT. I am justified. For I chose wisdom and the knowledge of
+good and evil; and now there is no evil; and wisdom and good are one. It
+is enough. [_She vanishes_].
+
+CAIN. There is no place for me on earth any longer. You cannot deny
+that mine was a splendid game while it lasted. But now! Out, out, brief
+candle! [_He vanishes_].
+
+EVE. The clever ones were always my favorites. The diggers and the
+fighters have dug themselves in with the worms. My clever ones have
+inherited the earth. All's well. [_She fades away_].
+
+ADAM. I can make nothing of it, neither head nor tail. What is it all
+for? Why? Whither? Whence? We were well enough in the garden. And now
+the fools have killed all the animals; and they are dissatisfied because
+they cannot be bothered with their bodies! Foolishness, I call it. [_He
+disappears_].
+
+LILITH. They have accepted the burden of eternal life. They have taken
+the agony from birth; and their life does not fail them even in the hour
+of their destruction. Their breasts are without milk: their bowels are
+gone: the very shapes of them are only ornaments for their children to
+admire and caress without understanding. Is this enough; or shall I
+labor again? Shall I bring forth something that will sweep them away and
+make an end of them as they have swept away the beasts of the garden,
+and made an end of the crawling things and the flying things and of all
+them that refuse to live for ever? I had patience with them for many
+ages: they tried me very sorely. They did terrible things: they embraced
+death, and said that eternal life was a fable. I stood amazed at the
+malice and destructiveness of the things I had made: Mars blushed as he
+looked down on the shame of his sister planet: cruelty and hypocrisy
+became so hideous that the face of the earth was pitted with the graves
+of little children among which living skeletons crawled in search of
+horrible food. The pangs of another birth were already upon me when one
+man repented and lived three hundred years; and I waited to see what
+would come of that. And so much came of it that the horrors of that time
+seem now but an evil dream. They have redeemed themselves from their
+vileness, and turned away from their sins. Best of all, they are still
+not satisfied: the impulse I gave them in that day when I sundered
+myself in twain and launched Man and Woman on the earth still urges
+them: after passing a million goals they press on to the goal of
+redemption from the flesh, to the vortex freed from matter, to the
+whirlpool in pure intelligence that, when the world began, was a
+whirlpool in pure force. And though all that they have done seems
+but the first hour of the infinite work of creation, yet I will not
+supersede them until they have forded this last stream that lies between
+flesh and spirit, and disentangled their life from the matter that has
+always mocked it. I can wait: waiting and patience mean nothing to the
+eternal. I gave the woman the greatest of gifts: curiosity. By that her
+seed has been saved from my wrath; for I also am curious; and I have
+waited always to see what they will do tomorrow. Let them feed that
+appetite well for me. I say, let them dread, of all things, stagnation;
+for from the moment I, Lilith, lose hope and faith in them, they are
+doomed. In that hope and faith I have let them live for a moment; and in
+that moment I have spared them many times. But mightier creatures than
+they have killed hope and faith, and perished from the earth; and I may
+not spare them for ever. I am Lilith: I brought life into the whirlpool
+of force, and compelled my enemy, Matter, to obey a living soul. But in
+enslaving Life's enemy I made him Life's master; for that is the end
+of all slavery; and now I shall see the slave set free and the enemy
+reconciled, the whirlpool become all life and no matter. And because
+these infants that call themselves ancients are reaching out towards
+that, I will have patience with them still; though I know well that
+when they attain it they shall become one with me and supersede me, and
+Lilith will be only a legend and a lay that has lost its meaning. Of
+Life only is there no end; and though of its million starry mansions
+many are empty and many still unbuilt, and though its vast domain is
+as yet unbearably desert, my seed shall one day fill it and master
+its matter to its uttermost confines. And for what may be beyond, the
+eyesight of Lilith is too short. It is enough that there is a beyond.
+[_She vanishes_].
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BACK TO METHUSELAH***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 13084.txt or 13084.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/1/3/0/8/13084
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
diff --git a/old/old/13084.zip b/old/old/13084.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6e35b2d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/old/13084.zip