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must indeed have been a spectacle. Pygmalion Oh, it was not his shape. You see I did not invent that. I took actual measurements and moulds from my own body. Sculptors do that sometimes, you know; though they pretend they don’t. Martellus Hm! Arjillax Hah! Pygmalion He was all right to look at, at first, or nearly so. But he behaved in the most appalling manner; and the subsequent developments were so disgusting that I really cannot describe them to you. He seized all sorts of things and swallowed them. He drank every fluid in the laboratory. I tried to explain to him that he must take nothing that he could not digest and assimilate completely; but of course he could not understand me. He assimilated a little of what he swallowed; but the process left horrible residues which he had no means of getting rid of. His blood turned to poison; and he perished in torments, howling. I then perceived that I had produced a prehistoric man; for there are certain traces in our own bodies of arrangements which enabled the earlier forms of mankind to renew their bodies by swallowing flesh and grains and vegetables and all sorts of unnatural and hideous foods, and getting rid of what they could not digest. Ecrasia But what a pity he died! What a glimpse of the past we have lost! He could have told us stories of the Golden Age. Pygmalion Not he. He was a most dangerous beast. He was afraid of me, and actually tried to kill me by snatching up things and striking at me with them. I had to give him two or three pretty severe shocks before I convinced him that he was at my mercy. The Newly Born Why did you not make a woman instead of a man? She would have known how to behave herself. Martellus Why did you not make a man and a woman? Their children would have been interesting. Pygmalion I intended to make a woman; but after my experience with the man it was out of the question. Ecrasia Pray why? Pygmalion Well, it is difficult to explain if you have not studied prehistoric methods of reproduction. You see the only sort of men and women I could make were men and women just like us as far as their bodies were concerned. That was how I killed the poor beast of a man. I hadn’t provided for his horrible prehistoric methods of feeding himself. Suppose the woman had reproduced in some prehistoric way instead of being oviparous as we are? She couldn’t have done it with a modern female body. Besides, the experiment might have been painful. Ecrasia Then you have nothing to show us at all? Pygmalion Oh yes I have. I am not so easily beaten as that. I set to work again for months to find out how to make a digestive system that would deal with waste products and a reproductive system capable of internal nourishment and incubation. Ecrasia Why did you not find out how to make them like us? Strephon Crying out in his grief for the first time. Why did you not make a woman whom you could love? That was the secret you needed. The Newly Born Oh yes. How true! How great of you, darling Strephon! She kisses him impulsively. Strephon Passionately. Let me alone. Martellus Control your reflexes, child. The Newly Born My what! Martellus Your reflexes. The things you do without thinking. Pygmalion is going to show you a pair of human creatures who are all reflexes and nothing else. Take warning by them. The Newly Born But won’t they be alive, like us? Pygmalion That is a very difficult question to answer, my dear. I confess I thought at first I had created living creatures; but Martellus declares they are only automata. But then Martellus is a mystic: I am a man of science. He draws a line between an automaton and a living organism. I cannot draw that line to my own satisfaction. Martellus Your artificial men have no self-control. They only respond to stimuli from without. Pygmalion But they are conscious. I have taught them to talk and read; and now they tell lies. That is so very lifelike. Martellus Not at all. If they were alive they would tell the truth. You can provoke them to tell any silly lie; and you can foresee exactly the sort of lie they will tell. Give them a clip below the knee, and they will jerk their foot forward. Give them a clip in their appetites or vanities or any of their lusts and greeds, and they will boast and lie, and affirm and deny, and hate and love without the slightest regard to the facts that are staring them in the face, or to their own obvious limitations. That proves that they are automata. Pygmalion Unconvinced. I know, dear old chap; but there really is some evidence that we are descended from creatures quite as limited and absurd as these. After all, the baby there is three-quarters an automaton. Look at the way she has been going on! The Newly Born Indignantly. What do you mean? How have I been going on? Ecrasia If they have no regard for truth, they can have no real vitality. Pygmalion Truth is sometimes so artificial: so relative, as we say in the scientific world, that it is very hard to feel quite sure that what is false and even ridiculous to us may not be true to them. Ecrasia I ask you again, why did you not make them like us? Would any true artist be content with less than the best? Pygmalion I couldn’t. I tried. I failed. I am convinced that what I am about to show you is the very highest living organism that can be produced in the laboratory. The best tissues we can manufacture will not take as high potentials as the natural product: that is where Nature beats us. You don’t seem to understand, any of you, what an enormous triumph it was to produce consciousness at