ZOO.  No, no, no, no.  How often must I tell you that we are made wise not by the recollections of our past, but by the responsibilities of our future.  I shall be more reckless when I am a tertiary than I am today.  If you cannot understand that, at least you must admit that I have learnt from tertiaries.  I have seen their work and lived under their institutions.  Like all young things I rebelled against them; and in their hunger for new lights and new ideas they listened to me and encouraged me to rebel.  But my ways did not work; and theirs did; and they were able to tell me why.  They have no power over me except that power:  they refuse all other power; and the consequence is that there are no limits to their power except the limits they set themselves.  You are a child governed by children, who make so many mistakes and are so naughty that you are in continual rebellion against them; and as they can never convince you that they are right:  they can govern you only by beating you, imprisoning you, torturing you, killing you if you disobey them without being strong enough to kill or torture them.

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN.  That may be an unfortunate fact.  I condemn it and deplore it.  But our minds are greater than the facts.  We know better.  The greatest ancient teachers, followed by the galaxy of Christs who arose in the twentieth century, not to mention such comparatively modern spiritual leaders as Blitherinjam, Tosh, and Spiffkins, all taught that punishment and revenge, coercion and militarism, are mistakes, and that the golden rule—­

ZOO. [interrupting] Yes, yes, yes, Daddy:  we longlived people know that quite well.  But did any of their disciples ever succeed in governing you for a single day on their Christ-like principles?  It is not enough to know what is good:  you must be able to do it.  They couldn’t do it because they did not live long enough to find out how to do it, or to outlive the childish passions that prevented them from really wanting to do it.  You know very well that they could only keep order—­such as it was—­by the very coercion and militarism they were denouncing and deploring.  They had actually to kill one another for preaching their own gospel, or be killed themselves.

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN.  The blood of the martyrs, madam, is the seed of the Church.

ZOO.  More images, Daddy!  The blood of the shortlived falls on stony ground.

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [rising, very testy] You are simply mad on the subject of longevity.  I wish you would change it.  It is rather personal and in bad taste.  Human nature is human nature, longlived or shortlived, and always will be.

ZOO.  Then you give up the idea of progress?  You cry off the torch, and the brick, and the acorn, and all the rest of it?

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN.  I do nothing of the sort.  I stand for progress and for freedom broadening down from precedent to precedent.