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You are a thanking little animal, a blaming little animal, a ACIS. A gushing little animal. ARJILLAX. And, as she thinks, an artistic little animal. If your Automata had been properly animated, Martellus, they would have been more successful. THE SHE-ANCIENT. That is where you are wrong, my child. If those two loathsome things had been rag dolls, they would have been amusing and lovable.
MARTELLUS. She has bitten a piece out of his hand nearly as large as a finger nail: enough to kill ten men. There is no pulse, no breath. ECRASIA. But his thumb is clinched. MARTELLUS. No: it has just straightened out. See! He has gone. Poor Pygmalion! STREPHON. Hush, dear: thats childish. What a loss to Science! ARJILLAX. Who cares about Science? Serve him right for making that pair of horrors!
My beard was three and a half feet long when I was born; and a flash of lightning burnt it off and killed the ancient who was delivering me. Without a hair on my chin I became the greatest sculptor in ten generations. ECRASIA. And yet you come to us today with empty hands. We shall actually have to crown Arjillax here because no other sculptor is exhibiting. Why have you fallen out with Arjillax?
Why should I not prefer youth and beauty to age and ugliness? ARJILLAX. Just so. Well, the Archangel Michael was of my opinion, not yours. He began by painting on the ceiling the newly born in all their childish beauty.
ARJILLAX. For once, Ecrasia, I agree with you. A world in which there were nothing plastic would be an utterly miserable one. ECRASIA. No limbs, no contours, no exquisite lines and elegant shapes, no worship of beautiful bodies, no poetic embraces in which cultivated lovers pretend that their caressing hands are wandering over celestial hills and enchanted valleys, no ECRASIA. Inhuman!
But we who are older use neither glass mirrors nor works of art. We have a direct sense of life. When you gain that you will put aside your mirrors and statues, your toys and your dolls. THE HE-ANCIENT. Yet we too have our toys and our dolls. That is the trouble of the ancients. ARJILLAX. What! The ancients have their troubles! It is the first time I ever heard one of them confess it.
In the end the intellectual conscience that tore you away from the fleeting in art to the eternal must tear you away from art altogether, because art is false and life alone is true. As I have broken my idols, and cast away my chisel and modelling tools, so will you too break these busts of yours. ARJILLAX. Never. MARTELLUS. Wait, my friend. I do not come empty-handed today, as you imagined.
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.
Life is hard enough for us as it is. THE HE-ANCIENT. Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage: it can be delightful. What I wanted to tell you is that ever since men existed, children have played with dolls. ECRASIA. You keep using that word. What are dolls, pray? THE SHE-ANCIENT. What you call works of art. Images. We call them dolls. ARJILLAX. Just so.
Arjillax wants to make more of those abominable things, and to destroy even their artistic character by making ancients of them. THE NEWLY BORN. You wont sit for them, will you? Please dont. THE HE-ANCIENT. Children, listen. Even the Ancient wants to make a speech! Give it mouth, O Sage. STREPHON. For heaven's sake don't tell us that the earth was once inhabited by Ozymandiases and Cleopatras.
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