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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.

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.

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.

… 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.

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.

”

… 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.

… 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.

The test of a dogma is its universality.

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 BC;

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:

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.

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 forever.

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 forever.

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.

What a beautiful word! And what a wonderful thing!

Life is the loveliest of all the new words.

Yes: it was by meditating on Life that I gained the power to do miracles.

Yes: it was by meditating on Life that I gained the power to do miracles.

A miracle is an impossible thing that is nevertheless possible. Something that never could happen, and yet does happen.

Tell me some miracle that you have done.

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.

How can I create out of nothing?

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.

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.

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.

I have another thought: I must tell it to Adam. Calling. Adam! Adam! Coo-ee!

I do not. Why do you make it again?

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.

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.

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—

That is too short a word for so long a thing.

Turning impatiently to the snake. That heart-biting sound again! Do not do it. Why do you do it?

Turning impatiently to the snake. That heart-biting sound again! Do not do it. Why do you do it?

Love may be too long a word for so short a thing soon. But when it is short it will be very sweet.

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;

Angrily. Be silent, woman.

Hope is wicked. Happiness is wicked. Certainty is blessed.

What is wicked? You have invented a word.

What are you now, with your shield and spear, and your brother’s blood crying from the ground against you?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Mine is the Voice of Life: yours the Voice of Death.

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—

Oh, it is dreary, dreary! And there is yet nearly seven hundred years of it to endure.

Poor mother! You see, life is too long. One tires of everything. There is nothing new under the sun.

To Eve, grumpily. Why do you live on, if you can find nothing better to do than complain?

To Eve, grumpily. Why do you live on, if you can find nothing better to do than complain?

Because there is still hope.

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:

Well, I will leave you to it, though I have shown 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.

Go on with your work, I tell you; or you shall go without bread.

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.

With renewed energy. There again! You see, Con. It will last his time.

Life is too short for men to take it seriously.

That’s a way of looking at it, certainly.

It goes deeper. She hasn’t 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.

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.

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?

But do you think it would ever be thought respectable, sir?

My good girl, all biological necessities have to be made respectable whether we like it or not; so you needn’t worry yourself about that.

Franklyn returns and crosses the room to his chair, but does not sit down. The parlor maid goes out.

Half-angry, half-indulgent. No; but really, Lubin, we are at a crisis—

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.

Half-rising. Perhaps I’d better run away. I am distracting you.

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.

And how soon do you expect this modest end to be reached?

And how soon do you expect this modest end to be reached?

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?

Don’t 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.

Impressed. Fancy my being leader of the party for the next three hundred years!

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.

With zealous reverence. What do we know about Him, Barnabas? What does anyone know about Him?

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.

When we get matured statesmen and citizens—

My good sir: I have no powder, no bottle, no tabloid.

I am not a quack: I am a biologist. This is a thing that’s going to happen.

Completely let down. Going to happen! Oh! Is that all? He looks at his watch.

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.

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.

People don’t seem to be able to govern themselves. I can’t understand it. Why should it be so?

Justice is impartiality. Only strangers are impartial.

It ends in the public services being so good that the Government has nothing to do but think.

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.

Stuff! Do you imply that the administration of which I am president is no Government?

Surely. Nobody likes me: I am held in awe.

Capable persons are never liked. I am not likeable; but I am indispensable.

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: that’s all.

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: that’s all.

You are brave: yes. It is a form of stupidity.

You may not be brave: one doesn’t expect it from a Chink. But you have the devil’s own cheek.

Yes: I know. Can you explain it?

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.

Yes, Mr. Chief Secretary: the truth.

Like all revolutionary truths, it began as a joke.

As I showed 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;

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.

Turning her face gravely towards him.

Look again, Mr. President.

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;

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

It would not be decent for me to explain.

Decency cannot be discussed without indecency.

I cannot understand you at all. I fear you have not been observing the rules laid down for short-lived visitors.

That accounts for it. She is in her second childhood.

Her second childhood! She is in her fifth childhood.

Again resorting to the bollard. Oh! I cannot bear these unnatural arrangements.

you might as well call them Airish because they live in air. They must be just the same as other people. Why do you short-livers 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Interrupting. Yes, yes, yes, Daddy: we long-lived 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.

More images, Daddy!

The blood of the short-lived falls on stony ground.

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, long-lived or short-lived, and always will be.

He picks up the pistol and hands it to her. there was no vector strategy needed to win it. Making a pose of his humiliation. But enjoy your triumph: you have made me—ME! Cain Adamson Charles Napoleon! Emperor of Turania! cry for quarter.

The way out of your difficulty, Cain Adamson, is very simple.

Eagerly. Good. What is it?

Severely. How often must you be told that we cannot foresee the future?

There is no such thing as the future until it is the present.

Allow me to point out, madam, that when the Potterbill party sent to consult the oracle fifteen years ago, the oracle prophesied that the Potterbills would be victorious at the General Election; and they were.

Take care. I have been here one hundred and seventy years. Your death does not mean to me what it means to you.

It is the meaning of life, not of death, that makes banishment so terrible to me.

Be it so, then. You may stay.

Looking down at the body.

Poor short-lived thing! What else could I do for you?

What! And be as miserable as you?

Infant: one moment of the ecstasy of life as we live it would strike you dead.

He stalks gravely out through the grove.

taking little poisons with it to make us delirious enough to imagine we are enjoying ourselves; and then having to pass the nights in shelters lying in cots and losing half our lives in a state of unconsciousness.

Sleep is a shameful thing: I have not slept at all for weeks past.

I have stolen out at night when you were all lying insensible—quite disgusting, I call it—and wandered about the woods, thinking, thinking, thinking; grasping the world; taking it to pieces; building it up again; devising methods; planning experiments to test the methods;

Oh, don’t talk to me of comfort!

Life is not worth living if you have to bother about comfort.

Comfort makes winter a torture, spring an illness, summer an oppression, and autumn only a respite. The ancients could make life one long frowsty comfort if they chose. But they never lift a finger to make themselves comfortable. They will not sleep under a roof.

There is no why. They do.

Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough. And with us there is eternity.

Nothing need happen. I never heard such nonsense in all my life. I shall know how to take care of myself.

Because you cannot give them life. A live ancient is better than a dead statue. He takes the Newly Born on his knee: she is flattered and voluptuously responsive.

Anything alive is better than anything that is only pretending to be alive.

To Arjillax. Your disillusion with your works of beauty is only the beginning of your disillusion with images of all sorts.

For heaven’s sake don’t tell us that the earth was once inhabited by Ozymandiases and Cleopatras. Life is hard enough for us as it is.

Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage: it can be delightful.

What I wanted to tell you is that ever since men existed, children have played with dolls.

Of course we should. Isn’t that funny?

When a thing is funny, search it for a hidden truth.

Yes; and take all the fun out of it.