THE SHE-ANCIENT.  And, to deceive yourself the more completely, you take them so very very seriously that Ecrasia here declares that the making of dolls is the holiest work of creation, and the words you put into the mouths of dolls the sacredest of scriptures and the noblest of utterances.

ECRASIA.  Tush!

ARJILLAX.  Tosh!

THE SHE-ANCIENT.  Yet the more beautiful they become the further they retreat from you.  You cannot caress them as you caress the rag doll.  You cannot cry for them when they are broken or lost, or when you pretend they have been unkind to you, as you could when you played with rag dolls.

THE HE-ANCIENT.  At last, like Pygmalion, you demand from your dolls the final perfection of resemblance to life.  They must move and speak.

THE SHE-ANCIENT.  They must love and hate.

THE HE-ANCIENT.  They must think that they think.

THE SHE-ANCIENT.  They must have soft flesh and warm, blood.

THE HE-ANCIENT.  And then, when you have achieved this as Pygmalion did; when the marble masterpiece is dethroned by the automaton and the homo by the homunculus; when the body and the brain, the reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting, as Ecrasia says, stand before you unmasked as mere machinery, and your impulses are shewn to be nothing but reflexes, you are filled with horror and loathing, and would give worlds to be young enough to play with your rag doll again, since every step away from it has been a step away from love and happiness.  Is it not true?

THE SHE-ANCIENT.  Speak, Martellus:  you who have travelled the whole path.

MARTELLUS.  It is true.  With fierce joy I turned a temperature of a million degrees on those two things I had modelled, and saw them vanish in an instant into inoffensive dust.

THE SHE-ANCIENT.  Speak, Arjillax:  you who have advanced from imitating the lightly living child to the intensely living ancient.  Is it true, so far?

ARJILLAX.  It is partly true:  I cannot pretend to be satisfied now with modelling pretty children.

THE HE-ANCIENT.  And you, Ecrasia:  you cling to your highly artistic dolls as the noblest projections of the Life Force, do you not?

ECRASIA.  Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

THE NEWLY BORN [anticipating the She-Ancient, who is evidently going to challenge her] Now you are coming to me, because I am the latest arrival.  But I don’t understand your art and your dolls at all.  I want to caress my darling Strephon, not to play with dolls.

ACIS.  I am in my fourth year; and I have got on very well without your dolls.  I had rather walk up a mountain and down again than look at all the statues Martellus and Arjillax ever made.  You prefer a statue to an automaton, and a rag doll to a statue.  So do I; but I prefer a man to a rag doll.  Give me friends, not dolls.