ARJILLAX.  Everything is possible.  Have you done it? that is the question.

PYGMALION.  Yes.  But that is a mere fact.  What is interesting is the explanation of the fact.  Forgive my saying so; but it is such a pity that you artists have no intellect.

ECRASIA [sententiously] I do not admit that.  The artist divines by inspiration all the truths that the so-called scientist grubs up in his laboratory slowly and stupidly long afterwards.

ARJILLAX [to Ecrasia, quarrelsomely] What do you know about it?  You are not an artist.

ACIS.  Shut your heads, both of you.  Let us have the artificial men.  Trot them out, Pygmalion.

PYGMALION.  It is a man and a woman.  But I really must explain first.

ALL [groaning]!!!

PYGMALION.  Yes:  I—­

ACIS.  We want results, not explanations.

PYGMALION [hurt] I see I am boring you.  Not one of you takes the least interest in science.  Goodbye. [He descends from the altar and makes for the temple].

SEVERAL YOUTHS AND MAIDENS [rising and rushing to him] No, no.  Dont go.  Dont be offended.  We want to see the artificial pair.  We will listen.  We are tremendously interested.  Tell us all about it.

PYGMALION [relenting] I shall not detain you two minutes.

ALL.  Half an hour if you like.  Please go on, Pygmalion. [They rush him back to the altar, and hoist him on to it].  Up you go.

They return to their former places.

PYGMALION.  As I told you, lots of attempts were made to produce protoplasm in the laboratory.  Why were these synthetic plasms, as they called them, no use?

ECRASIA.  We are waiting for you to tell us.

THE NEWLY BORN [modelling herself on Ecrasia, and trying to outdo her intellectually] Clearly because they were dead.

PYGMALION.  Not bad for a baby, my pet.  But dead and alive are very loose terms.  You are not half as much alive as you will be in another month or so.  What was wrong with the synthetic protoplasm was that it could not fix and conduct the Life Force.  It was like a wooden magnet or a lightning conductor made of silk:  it would not take the current.

ACIS.  Nobody but a fool would make a wooden magnet, and expect it to attract anything.

PYGMALION.  He might if he were so ignorant as not to be able to distinguish between wood and soft iron.  In those days they were very ignorant of the differences between things, because their methods of analysis were crude.  They mixed up messes that were so like protoplasm that they could not tell the difference.  But the difference was there, though their analysis was too superficial and incomplete to detect it.  You must remember that these poor devils were very little better than our idiots:  we should never dream of letting one of them survive the day of its birth.  Why, the Newly Born there