THE FEMALE FIGURE [frowning] Round mine, you mean.

PYGMALION.  Yours, too, of course, if the stimulus comes from you.

ECRASIA.  Cannot he do anything original?

PYGMALION.  No.  But then, you know, I do not admit that any of us can do anything really original, though Martellus thinks we can.

ACIS.  Can he answer a question?

PYGMALION.  Oh yes.  A question is a stimulus, you know.  Ask him one.

ACIS [to the Male Figure] What do you think of what you see around you?  Of us, for instance, and our ways and doings?

THE MALE FIGURE.  I have not seen the newspaper today.

THE FEMALE FIGURE.  How can you expect my husband to know what to think of you if you give him his breakfast without his paper?

MARTELLUS.  You see.  He is a mere automaton.

THE NEWLY BORN.  I don’t think I should like him to put his arm round my neck.  I don’t like them. [The Male Figure looks offended, and the Female jealous].  Oh, I thought they couldn’t understand.  Have they feelings?

PYGMALION.  Of course they have.  I tell you they have all the reflexes.

THE NEWLY BORN.  But feelings are not reflexes.

PYGMALION.  They are sensations.  When the rays of light enter their eyes and make a picture on their retinas, their brains become conscious of the picture and they act accordingly.  When the waves of sound started by your speaking enter their ears and record a disparaging remark on their keyboards, their brains become conscious of the disparagement and resent it accordingly.  If you did not disparage them they would not resent it.  They are merely responding to a stimulus.

THE MALE FIGURE.  We are part of a cosmic system.  Free will is an illusion.  We are the children of Cause and Effect.  We are the Unalterable, the Irresistible, the Irresponsible, the Inevitable.

    My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: 
    Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.

There is a general stir of curiosity at this.

ACIS.  What the dickens does he mean?

THE MALE FIGURE.  Silence, base accident of Nature.  This [taking the hand of the Female Figure and introducing her] is Cleopatra-Semiramis, consort of the king of kings, and therefore queen of queens.  Ye are things hatched from eggs by the brainless sun and the blind fire; but the king of kings and queen of queens are not accidents of the egg:  they are thought-out and hand-made to receive the sacred Life Force.  There is one person of the king and one of the queen; but the Life Force of the king and queen is all one:  the glory equal, the majesty co-eternal.  Such as the king is so is the queen, the king thought-out and hand-made, the queen thought-out and hand-made.  The actions of the king are caused, and therefore determined, from the beginning of the world to the end; and the actions of the queen are likewise.  The king logical and predetermined and inevitable, and the queen logical and predetermined and inevitable.  And yet they are not two logical and predetermined and inevitable, but one logical and predetermined and inevitable.  Therefore confound not the persons, nor divide the substance:  but worship us twain as one throne, two in one and one in two, lest by error ye fall into irretrievable damnation.