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flight. For instance, before he invented birth he dared not have lost his temper; for if he had killed Eve he would have been lonely and barren to all eternity. But when he invented birth, and anyone who was killed could be replaced, he could afford to let himself go. He undoubtedly invented wife-beating; and that was another step down. One of his sons invented meat-eating. The other was horrified at the innovation. With the ferocity which is still characteristic of bulls and other vegetarians, he slew his beefsteak-eating brother, and thus invented murder. That was a very steep step. It was so exciting that all the others began to kill one another for sport, and thus invented war, the steepest step of all. They even took to killing animals as a means of killing time, and then, of course, ate them to save the long and difficult labor of agriculture. I ask you to contemplate our fathers as they came crashing down all the steps of this Jacob’s ladder that reached from paradise to a hell on earth in which they had multiplied the chances of death from violence, accident, and disease until they could hardly count on three score and ten years of life, much less the thousand that Adam had been ready to face! With that picture before you, will you now ask me where was the Fall? You might as well stand at the foot of Snowdon and ask me where is the mountain. The very children see it so plainly that they compress its history into a two line epic:

Old Daddy Long Legs wouldn’t say his prayers:
Take him by the hind legs and throw him downstairs.

Lubin Still immovably sceptical. And what does Science say to this fairy tale, Doctor Barnabas? Surely Science knows nothing of Genesis, or of Adam and Eve. Conrad Then it isn’t Science: that’s all. Science has to account for everything; and everything includes the Bible. Franklyn The Book of Genesis is a part of nature like any other part of nature. The fact that the tale of the Garden of Eden has survived and held the imagination of men spellbound for centuries, whilst hundreds of much more plausible and amusing stories have gone out of fashion and perished like last year’s popular song, is a scientific fact; and Science is bound to explain it. You tell me that Science knows nothing of it. Then Science is more ignorant than the children at any village school. Conrad Of course if you think it more scientific to say that what we are discussing is not Adam and Eve and Eden, but the phylogeny of the blastoderm⁠— Savvy You needn’t swear, Nunk. Conrad Shut up, you: I am not swearing. To Lubin. If you want the professional humbug of rewriting the Bible in words of four syllables, and pretending it’s something new, I can humbug you to your heart’s content. I can call Genesis Phylogenesis. Let the Creator say, if you like, “I will establish an antipathetic symbiosis between thee and the female, and between thy blastoderm and her blastoderm.” Nobody will understand you; and Savvy will think you are swearing. The meaning is the same. 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? Burge Done! You have put the Liberal Party into power for the next thirty years, Doctor: that’s 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 show the kids the Piltdown skull; and you say, “That’s Adam. That’s 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. Don’t 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 won’t swallow it. Lubin Seriously. I am not so sure of that, Burge. I