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.Iforgot about it too; and I was very fond of Jim.
HASLAM.Ididn'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.
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.Iam 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.Ilike 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 thatIdon'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. [Tothe 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 thatIdon'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.