THE HE-ANCIENT.  We have all committed these follies.  You will all commit them.

THE NEWLY BORN.  Oh, do grow a lot of arms and legs and heads for us.  It would be so funny.

THE HE-ANCIENT.  My child:  I am just as well as I am.  I would not lift my finger now to have a thousand heads.

THE SHE-ANCIENT.  But what would I not give to have no head at all?

ALL THE YOUNG.  Whats that?  No head at all?  Why?  How?

THE HE-ANCIENT.  Can you not understand?

ALL THE YOUNG [shaking their heads] No.

THE SHE-ANCIENT.  One day, when I was tired of learning to walk forward with some of my feet and backwards with others and sideways with the rest all at once, I sat on a rock with my four chins resting on four of my palms, and four or my elbows resting on four of my knees.  And suddenly it came into my mind that this monstrous machinery of heads and limbs was no more me than my statues had been me, and that it was only an automaton that I had enslaved.

MARTELLUS.  Enslaved?  What does that mean?

THE SHE-ANCIENT.  A thing that must do what you command it is a slave; and its commander is its master.  These are words you will learn when your turn comes.

THE HE-ANCIENT.  You will also learn that when the master has come to do everything through the slave, the slave becomes his master, since he cannot live without him.

THE SHE-ANCIENT.  And so I perceived that I had made myself the slave of a slave.

THE HE-ANCIENT.  When we discovered that, we shed our superfluous heads and legs and arms until we had our old shapes again, and no longer startled the children.

THE SHE-ANCIENT.  But still I am the slave of this slave, my body.  How am I to be delivered from it?

THE HE-ANCIENT.  That, children, is the trouble of the ancients.  For whilst we are tied to this tyrannous body we are subject to its death, and our destiny is not achieved.

THE NEWLY BORN.  What is your destiny?

THE HE-ANCIENT.  To be immortal.

THE SHE-ANCIENT.  The day will come when there will be no people, only thought.

THE HE-ANCIENT.  And that will be life eternal.

ECRASIA.  I trust I shall meet my fatal accident before that day dawns.

ARJILLAX.  For once, Ecrasia, I agree with you.  A world in which there were nothing plastic would be an utterly miserable one.

ECRASIA.  No limbs, no contours, no exquisite lines and elegant shapes, no worship of beautiful bodies, no poetic embraces in which cultivated lovers pretend that their caressing hands are wandering over celestial hills and enchanted valleys, no—­

ACIS [interrupting her disgustedly] What an inhuman mind you have, Ecrasia!

ECRASIA.  Inhuman!

ACIS.  Yes:  inhuman.  Why don’t you fall in love with someone?

ECRASIA.  I!  I have been in love all my life.  I burned with it even in the egg.