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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.
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?
ARJILLAX. The Archangel Michael was a mighty sculptor and painter. He found in the centre of the world a temple erected to the goddess of the centre, called Mediterranea. This temple was full of silly pictures of pretty children, such as Ecrasia approves. ACIS. Fair play, Arjillax! If she is to keep silent, let her alone. ECRASIA. I shall not interrupt, Acis.
But you yourself are making statues of ancients instead of beautiful nymphs and swains. And Ecrasia is right about the ancients being inartistic. They are damnably inartistic. Our greatest artist vindicates me. Thanks, Martellus. MARTELLUS. The body always ends by being a bore. Nothing remains beautiful and interesting except thought, because the thought is the life.
I grant you about the friends perhaps; but the mountains are still the mountains, each with its name, its individuality, its upstanding strength and majesty, its beauty ECRASIA. What! Acis among the rhapsodists! THE HE-ANCIENT. Mere metaphor, my poor boy: the mountains are corpses. THE HE-ANCIENT. Yes.
ACIS. If you don't want to hear, go away. You go ahead, Pyg. PYGMALION. I went ahead. You see, the lower potentials of the Life Force could make maggots, but not human eyes or ears. I improved the tissue until it was susceptible to a higher potential. PYGMALION. Then the eyes and ears turned into cancers. ECRASIA. Oh, hideous! PYGMALION. Not at all. That was a great advance.
Why, I know very well that I have only four years of what any reasonable person would call living; and three and a half of them are already gone. ECRASIA. You must not mind our saying so; but really you cannot call being an ancient living. I cannot bear it. STREPHON. I made up my mind on that subject long ago. When I am three years and fifty weeks old, I shall have my fatal accident.
PYGMALION. There are some fragments of pictures and documents which represent him as walking in a garden and advising people to cultivate their gardens. His name has come down to us in several forms. One of them is Jove. Another is Voltaire. ECRASIA. You are boring us to distraction with your Voltaire. What about your human beings? ARJILLAX. Aye: come to them. They are not!
I had as much right to kill him as he had to make me. And how was I to know that a little thing like that would kill him? I shouldn't die if he cut off my arm or leg. ECRASIA. What nonsense! MARTELLUS. It may not be nonsense. I daresay if you cut off her leg she would grow another, like the lobsters and the little lizards. THE HE-ANCIENT. Did this dead boy make these two things?
And it will not be an accident. THE HE-ANCIENT. We are very tired of this subject. I must leave you. THE NEWLY BORN. What is being tired? THE SHE-ANCIENT. The penalty of attending to children. Farewell. The two Ancients go away severally, she into the grove, he up to the hills behind the temple. ECRASIA. Dreadful people! STREPHON. Bores!
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