George Bernard Shaw

“ BURGE. Personal abuse proves nothing. Do you suppose the Tories are all angels because they are all members of the Church of England?
FRANKLYN. No; but they stand together as members of the Church of England, whereas your people, in attacking the Church, are all over the shop. The supporters of the Church are of one mind about religion: its enemies are of a dozen minds. The Churchmen are a phalanx: your people are a mob in which atheists are jostled by Plymouth Brethren, and Positivists by Pillars of Fire. You have with you all the crudest unbelievers and all the crudest fanatics. ”

“ SAVVY. It's no good your smiling at me like a Cheshire cat, Mr Lubin; and I am not going to sit here mumchance like an old-fashioned goody goody wife while you men monopolize the conversation and pay out the very ghastliest exploded drivel as the latest thing in politics. I am not giving you my own ideas, Mr Lubin, but just the regular orthodox science of today. Only the most awful old fossils think that Socialism is bad economics and that Darwin invented Evolution. ”

“ FRANKLYN. How can you talk such rubbish over the graves of your conscientious objectors? All law limits liberty of conscience: if a man's conscience allows him to steal your watch or to shirk military service, how much liberty do you allow it? Liberty of conscience is not my point.
BURGE [testily] I wish you would come to your point. Half the time you are saying that you must have principles; and when I offer you principles you say they wont work.
FRANKLYN. You have not offered me any principles. Your party shibboleths are not principles. ”

“ CONRAD. Well, why not? For all you know, the man you are going to marry may be your great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother's great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson.
THE PARLOR MAID. But do you think it would ever be thought respectable, sir?
CONRAD. My good girl, all biological necessities have to be made respectable whether we like it or not; so you neednt worry yourself about that.
Franklyn returns and crosses the room to his chair, but does not sit down. The parlor maid goes out. CONRAD. Well, what does Joyce Burge want? ”

“ Mind: I must not go ahead of the electorate. You must not call a voter a Socialist until—
FRANKLYN. Until he is a Socialist. Agreed.
LUBIN. Oh, not at all. You need not wait for that. You must not call him a Socialist until he wishes to be called a Socialist: that is all. Surely you would not say that I must not address my constituents as gentlemen until they are gentlemen. I address them as gentlemen because they wish to be so addressed. [He rises from the sofa and goes to Franklyn, placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder] . Do not be afraid of Socialism, Mr Barnabas. ”

“ FRANKLYN. The time has always come to make a move.
BURGE. How true! But what is the move to be? You are a man of enormous influence. We know that. Weve always known it. We have to consult you whether we like it or not. We—
FRANKLYN [interrupting firmly] I never meddle in party politics now.
SAVVY. It's no use saying you have no influence, daddy. Heaps of people swear by you.
BURGE [shining at her] Of course they do. Come! let me prove to you what we think of you. Shall we find you a first-rate constituency to contest at the next election? One that wont cost you a penny. ”

“ I do not intend to resist the transition to Socialism. You may depend on me to guide it, to lead it, to give suitable expression to its aspirations, and to steer it clear of Utopian absurdities. I can honestly ask for your support on the most advanced Socialist grounds no less than on the soundest Liberal ones.
BURGE. In short, Lubin, youre incorrigible. You dont believe anything is going to change. The millions are still to toil—the people—my people—for I am a man of the people—
LUBIN [interrupting him contemptuously] Dont be ridiculous, Burge. ”

“ FRANKLYN. If men lived even a third of that time, the Church would be very different from the thing it is.
CONRAD. If I could count on nine hundred and sixty years I could make myself a real biologist, instead of what I am now: a child trying to walk. Are you sure you might not become a good clergyman if you had a few centuries to do it in?
HASLAM. Oh, theres nothing much the matter with me: it's quite easy to be a decent parson. It's the Church that chokes me off. ”

“ What pursuit, may one ask, Mr Barnabas?
FRANKLYN. The pursuit of omnipotence and omniscience. Greater power and greater knowledge: these are what we are all pursuing even at the risk of our lives and the sacrifice of our pleasures. Evolution is that pursuit and nothing else. It is the path to godhead. A man differs from a microbe only in being further on the path. ”

“ How I wish I could have devoted myself to biology! I have always been interested in rocks and strata and volcanoes and so forth: they throw such a light on the age of the earth. [With conviction] There is nothing like biology. 'The cloud-capped towers, the solemn binnacles, the gorgeous temples, the great globe itself: yea, all that it inherit shall dissolve, and, like this influential pageant faded, leave not a rack behind.' Thats biology, you know: good sound biology. [He sitsdown. So do the others, Franklyn on the stool, and Conrad on his Chippendale.] ”

“ CONRAD. We are not practical politicians. We are out to get something done. Practical politicians are people who have mastered the art of using parliament to prevent anything being done.
FRANKLYN. When we get matured statesmen and citizens—
LUBIN [stopping short] Citizens! Oh! Are the citizens to live three hundred years as well as the statesmen?
CONRAD. Of course.
LUBIN. I confess that had not occurred to me [he sits down abruptly, evidently very unfavorably affected by this new light] .
Savvy and Haslam look at one another with unspeakable feelings. ”

“ LUBIN. Is that altogether desirable?
FRANKLYN. I fear so. However that may be, we may be quite sure of one thing. We shall not be let alone. The force behind evolution, call it what you will, is determined to solve the problem of civilization; and if it cannot do it through us, it will produce some more capable agents. Man is not God's last word: God can still create. If you cannot do His work He will produce some being who can.
BURGE [with zealous reverence] What do we know about Him, Barnabas? ”

“ LUBIN [interrupting him with quiet authority] One moment, Dr Barnabas. The main principles on which modern civilized society is founded are pretty well understood among educated people. That is what our dangerously half-educated masses and their pet demagogues—if Burge will excuse that expression—
BURGE. Dont mind me. Go on. I shall have something to say presently.
LUBIN.—that is what our dangerously half-educated people do not realize. Take all this fuss about the Labor Party, with its imaginary new principles and new politics. ”

“ They all rise in amazement, staring at the door. Lubin enters: a man at the end of his sixties, a Yorkshireman with the last traces of Scandinavian flax still in his white hair, undistinguished in stature, unassuming in his manner, and taking his simple dignity for granted, but wonderfully comfortable and quite self-assured in contrast to the intellectual restlessness of Franklyn and the mesmeric self-assertiveness of Burge. ”

“ FRANKLYN. It does not even interest me. Suppose your friends do commit themselves to all this! What does it prove about them except that they are hopelessly out of date even in party politics? that they have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing since 1885? What is it to me that they hate the Church and hate the landed gentry; that they are jealous of the nobility, and have shipping shares instead of manufacturing businesses in the Midlands? ”

“ And now we are waiting, with monster cannons trained on every city and seaport, and huge aeroplanes ready to spring into the air and drop bombs every one of which will obliterate a whole street, and poison gases that will strike multitudes dead with a breath, until one of you gentlemen rises in his helplessness to tell us, who are as helpless as himself, that we are at war again. ”

“ If you can establish that, Barnabas, I am prepared to hear you out with my very best attention. I am listening. Go on.
FRANKLYN. Well, you remember, don't you, that in the Garden of Eden Adam and Eve were not created mortal, and that natural death, as we call it, was not a part of life, but a later and quite separate invention?
BURGE. Now you mention it, thats true. Death came afterwards.
LUBIN. What about accidental death? That was always possible.
FRANKLYN. Precisely. Adam and Eve were hung up between two frightful possibilities. One was the extinction of mankind by their accidental death. ”

“ Anything I can say against Darwin will please a large body of sincerely pious voters. If it will be easier to carry on the business of the country on the understanding that the present state of things is to be called Socialism, I have no objection in the world to call it Socialism. ”

“ I went into politics because my wife shoved me into them, bless her! But I want to serve my country. What else am I for? I want to save my country from the Tories. They dont represent the people. The man they have made Prime Minister has never represented the people; and you know it. Lord Dunreen is the bitterest old Tory left alive. What has he to offer to the people?
FRANKLYN [cutting in before Burge can proceed—as he evidently intends—to answer his own question] I will tell you. He has ascertainable beliefs and principles to offer. The people know where they are with Lord Dunreen. ”

“ A parlor maid opens the door, ushering in a young clergyman. THE PARLOR MAID. Mr Haslam. [She withdraws] .
The visitor is so very unwelcome that his host forgets to rise; and the two brothers stare at the intruder, quite unable to conceal their dismay. Haslam, who has nothing clerical about him except his collar, and wears a snuff-colored suit, smiles with a frank school-boyishness that makes it impossible to be unkind to him, and explodes into obviously unpremeditated speech. HASLAM. I'm afraid I'm an awful nuisance. I'm the rector; and I suppose one ought to call on people. ”

“ You see, as long as you can shew these troublesome half-educated people who want to turn the world upside down that they are talking nonsense, it really does not matter very much whether you do it in terms of what Miss Barnabas calls obsolete rot or in terms of what her granddaughter will probably call unmitigated tosh. ”

“ And what does Science say to this fairy tale, Doctor Barnabas? Surely Science knows nothing of Genesis, or of Adam and Eve.
CONRAD. Then it isnt Science: thats all. Science has to account for everything; and everything includes the Bible.
FRANKLYN. The Book of Genesis is a part of nature like any other part of nature. The fact that the tale of the Garden of Eden has survived and held the imagination of men spellbound for centuries, whilst hundreds of much more plausible and amusing stories have gone out of fashion and perished like last year's popular song, is a scientific fact ”

“ I defy you to find a farm laborer in England with broken boots. Call a mechanic one of the poor, and he'll punch your head. When you talk to your constituents about the toiling millions, they don't consider that you are referring to them. They are all third cousins of somebody with a title or a park. I am a Yorkshireman, my friend. I know England; and you don't. If you did you would know—
BURGE. What do you know that I don't know?
LUBIN. I know that we are taking up too much of Mr Barnabas's time. ”

“ I can call Genesis Phylogenesis. Let the Creator say, if you like, 'I will establish an antipathetic symbiosis between thee and the female, and between thy blastoderm and her blastoderm.' Nobody will understand you ”

“ FRANKLYN. Wait a bit. We have to find out how the world will take our new gospel. [Conrad sits down again.] Party politicians are still unfortunately an important part of the world. Suppose we try it on Joyce Burge.
CONRAD. How can you? You can tell things only to people who can listen. Joyce Burge has talked so much that he has lost the power of listening. He doesnt listen even in the House of Commons.
Savvy rushes in breathless, followed by Haslam, who remains timidly just inside the door. SAVVY [running to Franklyn] I say! Who do you think has just driven up in a big car? ”

“ They will hide what they are doing from themselves: they will take care not to know what they are doing. They will live three hundred years, not because they would like to, but because the soul deep down in them will know that they must, if the world is to be saved.
LUBIN [turning to Franklyn and patting him almost paternally] Well, my dear Barnabas, for the last thirty years the post has brought me at least once a week a plan from some crank or other for the establishment of the millennium. I think you are the maddest of all the cranks; but you are much the most interesting. ”

“ It was that old dotard, that played-out old humbug Lubin. He was Prime Minister then, not I.
FRANKLYN. Do you mean to say you did not know?
BURGE [sitting down again with a shrug] Oh, I had to be told. But what could I do? If we had refused we might have had to go out of office.
FRANKLYN. Precisely.
BURGE. Well, could we desert the country at such a crisis? The Hun was at the gate. Everyone has to make sacrifices for the sake of the country at such moments. We had to rise above party; and I am proud to say we never gave party a second thought. ”