lage
school.

CONRAD. Of course if you think it more scientific to say that what we
are discussing is not Adam and Eve and Eden, but the phylogeny of the
blastoderm--

SAVVY. You neednt swear, Nunk.

CONRAD. Shut up, you: I am not swearing. [_To Lubin_] If you want the
professional humbug of rewriting the Bible in words of four syllables,
and pretending it's something new, I can humbug you to your heart's
content. 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; and Savvy will think you are swearing. The meaning is
the same.

HASLAM. Priceless. But it's quite simple. The one version is poetry: the
other is science.

FRANKLYN. The one is classroom jargon: the other is inspired human
language.

LUBIN [_calmly reminiscent_] One of the few modern authors into whom
I have occasionally glanced is Rousseau, who was a sort of Deist like
Burge--

BURGE [_interrupting him forcibly_] Lubin: has this stupendously
important communication which Professor Barnabas has just made to us: a
communication for which I shall be indebted to him all my life long: has
this, I say, no deeper effect on you than to set you pulling my leg by
trying to make out that I am an infidel?

LUBIN. It's very interesting and amusing, Burge; and I think I see a
case in it. I think I could undertake to argue it in an ecclesiastical
court. But important is hardly a word I should attach to it.

BURGE. Good God! Here is this professor: a man utterly removed from the
turmoil of our political life: devoted to pure learning in its most
abstract phases; and I solemnly declare he is the greatest politician,
the most inspired party leader, in the kingdom. I take off my hat to
him. I, Joyce Burge, give him best. And you sit there purring like an
Angora cat, and can see nothing in it!

CONRAD [_opening his eyes widely_] Hallo! What have I done to deserve
this tribute?

SURGE. Done! You have put the Liberal Party into power for the next
thirty years, Doctor: thats what you've done.

CONRAD. God forbid!

BURGE. It's all up with the Church now. Thanks to you, we go to the
country with one cry and one only. Back to the Bible! Think of the
effect on the Nonconformist vote. You gather that in with one hand; and
you gather in the modern scientific sceptical professional vote with the
other. The