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.

BURGE.  Do you think it would be wise to go quite so far at first?  Surely it would be more prudent to begin with the best men.

FRANKLYN.  You need not be anxious about that.  It will begin with the best men.

LUBIN.  I am glad to hear you say so.  You see, we must put this into a practical parliamentary shape.

BURGE.  We shall have to draft a Bill:  that is the long and the short of it.  Until you have your Bill drafted you don’t know what you are really doing:  that is my experience.

LUBIN.  Quite so.  My idea is that whilst we should interest the electorate in this as a sort of religious aspiration and personal hope, using it at the same time to remove their prejudices against those of us who are getting on in years, it would be in the last degree upsetting and even dangerous to enable everyone to live longer than usual.  Take the mere question of the manufacture of the specific, whatever it may be!  There are forty millions of people in the country.  Let me assume for the sake of illustration that each person would have to consume, say, five ounces a day of the elixir.  That would be—­let me see—­five times three hundred and sixty-five is—­um—­twenty-five—­thirty-two—­eighteen—­eighteen hundred and twenty-five ounces a year:  just two ounces over the hundredweight.

BURGE.  Two million tons a year, in round numbers, of stuff that everyone would clamor for:  that men would trample down women and children in the streets to get at.  You couldnt produce it.  There would be blue murder.  It’s out of the question.  We must keep the actual secret to ourselves.

CONRAD [staring at them] The actual secret!  What on earth is the man talking about?

BURGE.  The stuff.  The powder.  The bottle.  The tabloid.  Whatever it is.  You said it wasnt lemons.

CONRAD.  My good sir:  I have no powder, no bottle, no tabloid.  I am not a quack:  I am a biologist.  This is a thing thats going to happen.

LUBIN [completely let down] Going to happen!  Oh!  Is that all? [He looks at his watch].

BURGE.  Going to happen!  What do you mean?  Do you mean that you cant make it happen?

CONRAD.  No more than I could have made you happen.

FRANKLYN.  We can put it into men’s heads that there is nothing to prevent its happening but their own will to die before their work is done, and their own ignorance of the splendid work there is for them to do.

CONRAD.  Spread that knowledge and that conviction; and as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow, the thing will happen.