ACT I

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_].