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modern “secondary education,” were so monstrous that I was sometimes forced to make a verbal distinction between science and knowledge lest I should mislead my readers. But I never forgot that without knowledge even wisdom is more dangerous than mere opportunist ignorance, and that somebody must take the Garden of Eden in hand and weed it properly.

Accordingly, in 1901, I took the legend of Don Juan in its Mozartian form and made it a dramatic parable of Creative Evolution. But being then at the height of my invention and comedic talent, I decorated it too brilliantly and lavishly. I surrounded it with a comedy of which it formed only one act, and that act was so completely episodical (it was a dream which did not affect the action of the piece) that the comedy could be detached and played by itself: indeed it could hardly be played at full length owing to the enormous length of the entire work, though that feat has been performed a few times in Scotland by Mr. Esme Percy, who led one of the forlorn hopes of the advanced drama at that time. Also I supplied the published work with an imposing framework consisting of a preface, an appendix called The Revolutionist’s Handbook, and a final display of aphoristic fireworks. The effect was so vertiginous, apparently, that nobody noticed the new religion in the centre of the intellectual whirlpool. Now I protest I did not cut these cerebral capers in mere inconsiderate exuberance. I did it because the worst convention of the criticism of the theatre current at that time was that intellectual seriousness is out of place on the stage; that the theatre is a place of shallow amusement; that people go there to be soothed after the enormous intellectual strain of a day in the city: in short, that a playwright is a person whose business it is to make unwholesome confectionery out of cheap emotions. My answer to this was to put all my intellectual goods in the shop window under the sign of Man and Superman. That part of my design succeeded. By good luck and acting, the comedy triumphed on the stage; and the book was a good deal discussed. Since then the sweet-shop view of the theatre has been out of countenance; and its critical exponents have been driven to take an intellectual pose which, though often more trying than their old intellectually nihilistic vulgarity, at least concedes the dignity of the theatre, not to mention the usefulness of those who live by criticizing it. And the younger playwrights are not only taking their art seriously, but being taken seriously themselves. The critic who ought to be a newsboy is now comparatively rare.

I now find myself inspired to make a second legend of Creative Evolution without distractions and embellishments. My sands are running out; the exuberance of 1901 has aged into the garrulity of 1930; and the war has been a stern intimation that the matter is not one to be trifled with. I abandon the legend of Don Juan with its erotic associations, and go back to the legend of the Garden of Eden. I exploit the eternal interest of the philosopher’s stone which enables men to live forever. I am not, I hope, under more illusion than is humanly inevitable as to the crudity of this my beginning of a Bible for Creative Evolution. I am doing the best I can at my age. My powers are waning; but so much the better for those who found me unbearably brilliant when I was in my prime. It is my hope that a hundred apter and more elegant parables by younger hands will soon leave mine as far behind as the religious pictures of the fifteenth century left behind the first attempts of the early Christians at iconography. In that hope I withdraw and ring up the curtain.

Dramatis Personae

Part I: In the Beginning

• Adam

• Eve

• The Serpent

• Cain

Part II: The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas

• Conrad Barnabas

• Franklyn Barnabas

• William “Bill” Haslam

• Cynthia “Savvy” Barnabas

• Joyce Burge

• Henry Hopkins Lubin

Part III: The Thing Happens

• Burge-Lubin, the President

• Barnabas, the Accountant General

• Confucius, the Chief Secretary

• The Minister of Health

• The Archbishop

• Mrs. Lutestring, the Domestic Minister

Part IV: Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman

• Joseph Popham Bolge Bluebin Barlow, O.M.

• A Long-lived Woman

• Zozim

• Zoo

• Cain Adamson Charles Napoleon, the Emperor of Turania

• The Oracle

• Molly, the British Prime Minister’s wife

• Ethel, the British Prime Minister’s daughter

• Ambrose, the British Prime Minister

Part V: As Far as Thought Can Reach

• Strephon

• An Ancient Man

• Chloe

• Acis

• An Ancient Woman

• Amaryllis

• Ecrasia

• Arjillax

• Martellus

• Pygmalion

• Ozymandias, a Male Automaton

• Cleopatra, a Female Automaton

• Adam

• Eve

• The Serpent

• Cain

• Several Youths and Maidens

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A Metabiological Pentateuch

Part I

In the Beginning

BC 4004

(In the Garden of Eden)

Act I

The Garden of Eden. Afternoon. An immense serpent is sleeping with her head buried in a thick bed of Johnswort, and her body coiled in apparently endless rings through the branches of a tree, which is already well grown; for the days of creation have been longer than our reckoning. She is not yet visible to anyone unaware of her presence, as her colors of green and brown make a perfect camouflage. Near her head a low rock shows above the Johnswort.

The rock and tree are on the border of a glade in which lies a dead fawn all awry, its neck being broken. Adam, crouching with one hand on the rock, is staring in consternation at the dead body. He has not noticed the serpent on his left hand. He turns his face to his right and calls excitedly.

Adam	Eve! Eve!
Eve’s Voice	What is it, Adam?
Adam	Come here. Quick. Something has happened.
Eve	Running in. What? Where? Adam points to the fawn. Oh! She goes to it; and he is emboldened to go with her. What is the matter with its eyes?
Adam	It is not only its eyes. Look. He