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the door. Conrad Rudely. Die as soon as you like. Good evening. Burge Hesitating. Look here. I took sour milk twice a day until Metchnikoff died. He thought it would keep him alive forever; and he died of it. Conrad You might as well have taken sour beer. Burge You believe in lemons? Conrad I wouldn’t eat a lemon for ten pounds. Burge Sitting down again. What do you recommend? Conrad Rising with a gesture of despair. What’s the use of going on, Frank? Because I am a doctor, and because they think I have a bottle to give them that will make them live forever, they are listening to me for the first time with their mouths open and their eyes shut. That’s their notion of science. Savvy Steady, Nunk! Hold the fort. Conrad Growls and sits down. !!! Lubin You volunteered the consultation, Doctor. I may tell you that, far from sharing the credulity as to science which is now the fashion, I am prepared to demonstrate that during the last fifty years, though the Church has often been wrong, and even the Liberal Party has not been infallible, the men of science have always been wrong. Conrad Yes: the fellows you call men of science. The people who make money by it, and their medical hangers-on. But has anybody been right? Lubin The poets and story tellers, especially the classical poets and story tellers, have been, in the main, right. I will ask you not to repeat this as my opinion outside; for the vote of the medical profession and its worshippers is not to be trifled with. Franklyn You are quite right: the poem is our real clue to biological science. The most scientific document we possess at present is, as your grandmother would have told you quite truly, the story of the Garden of Eden. Burge Pricking up his ears. What’s that? If you can establish that, Barnabas, I am prepared to hear you out with my very best attention. I am listening. Go on. Franklyn Well, you remember, don’t you, that in the Garden of Eden Adam and Eve were not created mortal, and that natural death, as we call it, was not a part of life, but a later and quite separate invention? Burge Now you mention it, that’s true. Death came afterwards. Lubin What about accidental death? That was always possible. Franklyn Precisely. Adam and Eve were hung up between two frightful possibilities. One was the extinction of mankind by their accidental death. The other was the prospect of living forever. They could bear neither. They decided that they would just take a short turn of a thousand years, and meanwhile hand on their work to a new pair. Consequently, they had to invent natural birth and natural death, which are, after all, only modes of perpetuating life without putting on any single creature the terrible burden of immortality. Lubin I see. The old must make room for the new. Burge Death is nothing but making room. That’s all there is in it or ever has been in it. Franklyn Yes; but the old must not desert their posts until the new are ripe for them. They desert them now two hundred years too soon. Savvy I believe the old people are the new people reincarnated, Nunk. I suspect I am Eve. I am very fond of apples; and they always disagree with me. Conrad You are Eve, in a sense. The Eternal Life persists; only It wears out Its bodies and minds and gets new ones, like new clothes. You are only a new hat and frock on Eve. Franklyn Yes. Bodies and minds ever better and better fitted to carry out Its eternal pursuit. Lubin With quiet scepticism. What pursuit, may one ask, Mr. Barnabas? Franklyn 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. Lubin And how soon do you expect this modest end to be reached? Franklyn 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? 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. Burge 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. Burge 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 forever, 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