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