The courtyard of a great Phalanstery, built in the shape of a “U”. The entire ground floor is open under both wings, forming spacious porches with supporting pillars. In the porch to the right workmen are seen, busy amidst some whirling machinery. To the left, a scientist is at his work amongst different objects of natural history, tools, chemical and astronomical instruments and other curios. Both he and the workmen wear identical uniforms. Adam and Lucifer surface, from the ground, in the middle of the courtyard. It is daytime.

ADAM
Which country are we in? Which nation lives here?

LUCIFER
Nation, Adam? That notion is defunct.
You found that concept straitened, did you not?
Born out of prejudice and bolstered up
by rivalry and narrow-minded zeal.
The world is now a single state and people
are comrades working for the common good.
Their tranquil life is organised by science,
the only recognised authority.

ADAM
My greatest aspiration is fulfilled then.
See, all is well. I’ve got what I have wanted.
I’m sorry though to find that nationhood
is given up for lost. Despite these changes
the concept might have worked. The human soul
clings to tradition, looks toward survival,
shrinks from the infinite, needs boundaries:
the more it’s spread, the thinner it becomes.
The great, wide world will not inspire emotions
as did the hallowed clods of parents’ graves.
One sheds one’s blood for country, kith and kin,
but for a comrade - one might shed a tear?

LUCIFER
Your disilluison’s vastly evident
before you’ve seen your great experiment.

ADAM
O, no! For having seen man’s fiery spirit
exploited by a hundred abject motives
to fight for some capricious enterprises,
I’m curious enough to find the doctrine,
that universally approved ideal,
which brings and holds the human race together,
co-operating in a noble cause.
Before we go to reap my well deserved
experience in blissful contemplation,
my overdue reward for all my struggles,
tell me, what is this place? Where are we now?

LUCIFER
We’re in a Phalanstery, one of many,
in which the new man lives.

ADAM
      Let’s go and see.

LUCIFER
Now, take your time! The old skin must be cast.
If we come here as Lucifer and Adam,
these scholars won’t know what to make of us:
the chances are they might evaporate us,
or bottle us in their preserving jars.

ADAM
You’re trying to be funny, Lucifer?

LUCIFER
Can’t help it, Adam. That’s the way with spirits.

ADAM
Well, then. Do what you want, but hurry up.
Lucifer transforms both of them to resemble those in the Phalanstery.

LUCIFER
You take this kit. Off with your hair. That’s all.

ADAM
Let’s see this scientist.

LUCIFER
      Good day, Professor!

SCIENTIST
Don’t interrupt! This is a most important
experiment. No time to waste.

LUCIFER
      I’m sorry.
We’re two aspirants for the doctorate
from Phalanstery, Number Thousand, Sir,
attracted by your world-wide reputation.

SCIENTIST
Your interest is - most commendable.
In point of fact, it’s time to have a break.
As long as I maintain this even heat
in my retort, matter obeys my will.

LUCIFER
[to the audience]
I’m not mistaken. Try as best you can,
select, refine or temper man or matter,
that ultimate impurity remains:
man’s vanity.

SCIENTIST
      So, we can please ourselves.
Your field of study in particular?

ADAM
Not specialising in a single subject,
we hope to gain a comprehensive view.

SCIENTIST
No! Life is short and there is much to do:
the overall design is in the detail.

ADAM
O, yes. To build a house one needs the tradesmen
who carve the stone and mix the sand. However,
their skills define them, and their understanding
does not embrace the overall design,
unlike the architect’s who sees the total,
and who, unskilled maybe to carve a stone,
is the creator of that work, its god.
There must be such an architect in science…

LUCIFER
And that is why we’ve come to you, Professor.

SCIENTIST
You’ve made the right choice. I appreciate it.
The great body of scientific knowledge
has manifold attractions: certain parts
incite more interest…

LUCIFER
      How like a woman!

SCIENTIST
Nevertheless, I’d say, chemistry is…

LUCIFER
Right in the middle. At the source of life.

SCIENTIST
Precisely.

LUCIFER
      That’s what I heard when a student
of mathematics talked about his subject.

SCIENTIST
Complacent fellow! Everybody claims
he’s in the middle of his field of vision.

LUCIFER
And so you have no doubt you’ve made the right choice
to study chemistry?

SCIENTIST
      No doubt whatever.
But let me show you round. See this display?
Antiquities unrivalled in the world.
Some animals, extinct but well-preserved,
true specimens of great historic value.
For instance, this one. Roaming in their thousands
in bygone years they shared the world with our
barbarian ancestors who used to keep them.
We’ve got some records, somewhat fanciful.
suggesting that this was their locomotive!

ADAM
A horse, a sorry-looking nag at that:
unlike those Arab thoroughbreds I knew.

SCIENTIST
They say men kept this one for company:
free board and lodging, and no work at all!
Allegedly, it could read human thought
by faithfully observing those who kept it.
Moreover, they say, it assimilated
their failings too: it valued property,
and it would risk its life defending it.
I’m telling you, of course, what I’ve deciphered,
not necessarily believing it.
They had some crazy customs, mad ideas,
of which we have this fragment of a tale.

ADAM
The good, old dog. You’re right in your description.

LUCIFER
Watch it, Adam! You’ll give yourself away.

SCIENTIST
[indicating an ox]
This was the slave of certain labourers.

ADAM
So they in turn could bear the rich man’s yoke.

SCIENTIST
This was supposed to be the king of beasts.

ADAM
A lion. There’s a tiger - and a roe deer!
Is there no wild-life in existence now?

SCIENTIST
You ask me? Surely, it’s the same with you.
We’ve kept those beasts which have their uses and
for which we haven’t found a substitute.
Therefore we still have sheep and pigs today,
not as the crude, uncultured forms, of course,
that inefficient nature had created,
but heaps of wool and fat and meat alive,
which serve our purposes - like those retorts.
But as you are familiar with all that,
let’s see some other things. Our minerals.
Take this one here. This is a lump of coal.
There used to be great mountains of the substance,
when man had energy, as it were, ready-made,
and didn’t have to draw on other sources
as we do now. And this, the metal iron,
was much in use until, supplies exhausted,
man had to search for metals yet unknown.
The item next. This is a piece of gold:
remarkable, considering it’s useless.
When man revered a supernatural power
and blindly swore it could affect his fate,
he held this thing in much the same esteem.
For fragments of this strange, seductive metal
men sacrificed their health, rights, everything:
they broke their faith, their sacred vows for gold,
yet it could be exchanged for anything,
amazing to relate - indeed for bread.

ADAM
Let’s move along. I know about the stuff.

SCIENTIST
You are a scholar, very well informed.
Now, here’s a specimen of ancient flora:
this was the last rose flowering on the earth.
A wasteful plant, it drained the richest loam
where cereals had better grown for fodder.
Sown in their millions, roses were the playthings
of men who never grew up in their time.
It’s strange how people were brought up to playing
with nature, wasting much productive effort.
They cultivated flowers within their minds
as images of faith and poetry,
and so, indulging in delights of fiction,
they dissipated mental energy
and left their purpose unfulfilled in life.
We’ve got two items here as curios.
This one’s a poem, author clearly stated,
since shameless individuality
still claimed obeisance then: his name was Homer.
It postulates a fallacy called Hades
which, by the way, we have disproved, for sure.
And this: a story called Agricola,
some comical, pathetic episodes
of barbarism described by Tacitus.

ADAM
Are there some pages from those golden days,
a testament to Man, surviving still?
Yet do they not incite these decadent
descendants with the flame of revolution
to overthrow this artificial system?

SCIENTIST
Good point. We could indeed foresee the danger.
Potentially, these books are deadly poison.
For that reason, no one’s allowed to read them
unless he is past sixty and devoted
his life from birth to the pursuit of science.

ADAM
Their nursery-rhymes and their fairy stories
are certain to impress the tender minds
of infants…

SCIENTIST
      Yes, they do. And for that reason,
nurses discourse on geometric problems
and more advanced equations with their charges.

ADAM
[to the audience]
You murderers of souls! You have the heart
to rob your children in their innocence?

SCIENTIST
Now, let’s move on and see some implements.
Antiques, some of them most peculiar,
like this gun here. It bears a strange inscription:
THE ULTIMATE DETERRENT. No One knows
how it would work. We know this sword, however,
reserved exclusively for taking lives.
Killing with this was not considered murder.
You see this picture? Made by hand entirely.
I’m sure it took the painter half a lifetime.
Its subject matter? - Far too fanciful.
We make far better pictures in a flash.
And while this shamelessly idealises,
we can produce a faithful rendering.

ADAM
[to the audience]
Minus the art and human genius.

SCIENTIST
      Now,
I’d call these gaudy objects really puerile.
Flowers painted on a cup! An arabesque
displayed upon the backrest of a chair!
Human endeavour wasted everywhere.
Is water more refreshing out of this cup?
Can I sit on that chair in greater comfort?
Machines can mass-produce for us the simplest
and most appropriate designs - precisely.
It’s added guarantee to their perfection
that our machinists who produce, say, screws,
continue doing that throughout their lives.

ADAM
And so - no life, no personality
in anything beyond the craftsman’s skill.
Where can potency and creative genius
assert their heavenly origin today?
A man looking for challenge finds about him
a world of pattern, order and routine:
he has no chance at all to encounter danger.
There isn’t a beast even to threaten life.
This world of science leaves me disillusioned:
no happy land that I anticipated,
more like a kindergarten fit for dunces.

SCIENTIST
Have we not introduced equality?
Do any of us know material want?
You’re entertaining such bizarre ideas,
you ought to be chastised.

ADAM
      Tell us, Professor,
what principle can bring mankind together
as if encouraged by a common goal?

SCIENTIST
The overwhelming principle: survival.
When man appeared on earth, the globe to him
was like a well-stocked larder, plentiful:
he only had to reach out with his hand
to gather his requirements there and then.
So, recklessly consuming that abundance,
as maggots in the cheese, he could indulge
himself in poetry and fanciful
hypotheses on his idyllic state.
But we, the late arrivals at the feast,
have long since realised we must be prudent:
the cheese is all but gone, we face starvation.
We know, in time the sun will lose its heat
and no plant-life will germinate on earth.
The intervening time is ours to learn
how to replace that solar radiation.
There is yet time, I hope, to find the answer.
Water already seems a likely source
both chemically and mechanically.
The secrets of organic life are also
giving us vital clues towards our goal…
O, that reminds me: I forgot my test-tubes.
This is my all-consuming interest.

LUCIFER
Man must be getting on in years: he uses
test-tubes to bolster his organic life.
But even if your effort breeds result,
what will you get? A disembodied thought?
A procreative urge without an agent?
A creature which nature disowns. A phantom,
akin to nothing and opposed to nothing,
uncircumscribed by personality.
Could it have character, identity,
debarred from stimuli, from pain and pleasure,
emerging from a narrow tube of glass?

SCIENTIST
It’s taking shape! Look! Seething, shimmering,
swirling around, secure in its confinement,
engendered in the warmth of my retort.
The interaction of the properties,
affinity competing with repulsion,
will force matter to yield to my demand.

LUCIFER
Congratulations! But could you, Professor,
demand that sympathetic elements
repulse each other, or, by any chance,
cancel repulsion?

SCIENTIST
      Now you’re talking nonsense.
The properties of matter never change.

LUCIFER
I see, but why is that? What is the reason?

SCIENTIST
What is the reason? That’s the law of nature
as demonstrated by experience.

LUCIFER
You’re not the helmsman, therefore, but a stoker
who’s letting nature do her trick herself.

SCIENTIST
But I define its scope within my test-tube.
I am the one who solves the mystery.

LUCIFER
What evidence? There’s not a sign of life yet.

SCIENTIST
It’s bound to happen. I have learned the secrets
of every single organism on Earth.
O, have I not a hundred times dissected…

ADAM
And come to understand a corpse, you mean?
A poor second, science must limp behind
our living, day-to-day experience,
like courtly poets in their master’s pay,
ready to compliment their past achievements,
but far from qualified to see the future.

SCIENTIST
Don’t scoff at me. Come, see it for yourselves!
Given a single spark, it comes to life.

ADAM
But where’s that single spark coming from, tell me?

SCIENTIST
A single step ahead, that’s all we need.

ADAM
But he who hasn’t made that forward stride,
has learned nothing, achieved nothing of value.
He’s waiting with the rest out in the courtyard
to gain admittance to the Holy of Holies.
That forward step, will that be ever taken?
The vapours above the retort thicken. Thunder is heard, blending with the voice of the Spirit of the Earth speaking from the vapours.

THE VOICE OF THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH
Never! This vial’s too large, too small for me.
I’m too confined in here. You know me, Adam,
but this fond worldling doesn’t know me yet.

ADAM
The Spirit of the World has spoken. Look!
Up, over there, you proud and feeble man!
You cannot hope to overmaster him.

SCIENTIST
A sudden brainstorm. O, I’m sorry for you.
[The retort bursts. The spirit disappears.]
Confound it! This retort’s completely shattered.
O, that the goal in sight this petty snag,
this blind coincidence should let me down!
Must start again.

LUCIFER
[to the audience]
      The ancients called it Fate!
They must have thought it far less mortifying
to be its victim than to be the stooge
of blind coincidence.
[A bell rings. Lucifer to the Scientist]
What happens now?

SCIENTIST
We stop work now. It’s time for exercise.
People come back from fields and factories.
Defaulters will parade for punishment.
Women and children will be allocated.
In fact, I’ll be required there. Shall we go?
In a long file men march in, and in another, women. Some of the latter, like Eve, are accompanied by a child. They form a circle in the courtyard and a very old man takes his place in front of them. Adam, Lucifer and the Scientist stop in the foreground beside the exhibits.

OLD MAN
Number Three-O!

LUTHER
[advancing one step]
      Present!

OLD MAN
      You’ve overheated
the furnace of the system once again.
It seems that your outbursts of temper are
a hazard to the whole community.

LUTHER
I can’t resist the urge: I hear the fire
savagely roar and sparkle in the furnace,
I see a thousand fiery tongues around
all threatening to reach me and devour me,
but I stand firm, secure in my conviction
that I am in control, I stoke the flames.
You can’t appreciate that fascination
who only kindle fire to heat your broth.

OLD MAN
His food ration to be withheld today.
He’s raving.

LUTHER
[stepping back]
But I’ll stoke the fire tomorrow!

ADAM
Who’s this? I’m sure I’ve heard his voice before.
This man was Luther!

OLD MAN
      Number Two-O-Nine!

CASSIUS
[advancing one step]
I’m here!

OLD MAN
      You’re being cautioned for the third time:
disorderly, provocative behaviour.

CASSIUS
[stepping back]
Provocative? Because I’m not complaining?
I’m not an infant crying for protection.
I can defend myself. Was my opponent
not strong enough to fight and stand his ground?

OLD MAN
Now, don’t talk back at me! Your skull formation
will not excuse this fretful disposition:
the finest quality, without a flaw,
and yet you’re quarrelsome, impetuous…
A course of treatment I am sure will tame you.

ADAM
O, Cassius, if you recognised me now!
We fought at Philippi. How can this system,
how can learning itself be blind enough
to hold you for a common malefactor,
instead of treating you with deference?

OLD MAN
Number Four-Zero-Zero!

PLATO
[advancing one step]
      I can hear you.

OLD MAN
Day-dreaming once again, you’ve let the herd
stray and damage the crops. You must remember:
duty comes first. We’ll stand you in the corner.

PLATO
[stepping back]
Do as you will: my dreams come first for me.

ADAM
Ah, Plato! Here’s your dream-society!
What irony of fate - to mind the herd!

OLD MAN
Number Seven-Two is the next.

MICHELANGELO
[advancing one step]
      I’m here!

OLD MAN
You left your work without permission.

MICHELANGELO
      Yes,
because I’m sick of carving legs for chairs -
and of the most revolting shapes at that.
I asked permission for a change of outline,
for some design or motif on the legs.
It was refused. I begged in desperation
to be allowed at least to carve the back-rest.
No use. In utmost agony of spirit
I must have gone berserk and ran away.
[He steps back without waiting for the Old Man’s verdict.]

OLD MAN
For this outstanding breach of discipline -
detention in your room till further notice.

ADAM
O, Michelangelo! What hellish torment
this place must be for your creative genius.
I see familiar faces everywhere:
men of spirit, of untold strength of mind,
who fought beside me, one who died a martyr,
even he who felt the globe too small for him,
squashed in the mould of uniformity
by state and doctrine. O, this breaks my heart!
Come, Lucifer! Away! I’ve seen enough.

OLD MAN
We have two children past their period
of requisite maternal supervision.
Bring them forward! They are to be transferred
to public nurseries.
Eve and another woman step forward with their children.

ADAM
      Isn’t she a dream!
A thing of beauty seems to have survived
this dreary world.

LUCIFER
      Well, aren’t we setting sail?

ADAM
I’m more inclined to anchor in this haven.

OLD MAN
Let’s hear your verdict on these skulls, Professor.
Examine them!
[The scientist examines the children’s skulls.]

EVE
      O, what am I to do?

ADAM
That voice!

LUCIFER
      What’s in that undistinguished woman?
You once consorted with Semiramis.

ADAM
Because I hadn’t known of this one.

LUCIFER
      Ah!
I hear the age-old tune, the same old words.
All lovers think that they’d discovered passion,
that nobody could ever love like them,
and play at love’s perennial endeavour
as if the game had not been played for ever.

SCIENTIST
This child is fit to study medicine,
and this - to be a shepherd.

OLD MAN
      Right. You take them.
They attempt to take away the children, but Eve resists.

EVE
Don’t touch him! He is mine, you understand?
How dare you snatch him from his mother’s arms?

OLD MAN
You take that child away! What’s holding you?

EVE
But he is mine. My heart’s blood nourished him.
There’s no authority can take him from me.
My darling child! How could I part with you
and lose you to the nameless multitude?
Once you are gone, I’ll never find your face
however long I search among the ranks
of hundreds of strange faces - all alike.

ADAM
Listen to me! If there is anything
that’s sacred to you, leave the child alone,
and let her keep him.

EVE
      Bless you! Bless you, stranger!

OLD MAN
Now, what’s this reckless game you’re up to, stranger?
If we should tolerate the prejudice
of family, we might as well abandon
our science and its wonderful achievements.

EVE
What do I care for your inhuman science?
May it perish! Let nature have her way.

OLD MAN
Have done with this!

ADAM
      Don’t you dare touch the child!
There is a sword: I’ll show you how to use it
if anyone…

LUCIFER
      Stay, vision, for a moment!
With a touch of his hand he causes Adam to freeze.
And feel the magic power of my hand.

EVE
My child!
[She collapses and the child is taken away.]

OLD MAN
      This woman is without a mate.
Will anyone put in a requisition?

ADAM
I will.

OLD MAN
      What do you say to this, Professor?

SCIENTIST
Neurotic female and romantic male
breed decadence. It’s not advisable.

ADAM
But I insist! I’ll take her if she wants me.

EVE
I do. You gallant man, I’m yours for ever.

ADAM
With all the passion in my heart, I love you.

EVE
O, yes! I love you too, eternally!

SCIENTIST
It’s lunacy. How extraordinary
to come across this ghoulish atavism
in our enlightened age! Where does it come from?

ADAM
It’s a belated ray from distant Eden.

OLD MAN
A piteous case.

ADAM
      You keep your sanity!
Have no regrets! This “lunacy” is ours.
All truly great achievements in the world
have elements beyond the rational,
above the reaches of the conscious mind.
I hear a kindred spirit from on high:
He’s calling through the music of the spheres
to testify that we’re akin to Him.
We’ll leave behind the abject dust of Earth
and seek the road to that sublime existence.
[He holds Eve in his arms.]

OLD MAN
No more of this: take them to the asylum!

LUCIFER
Emergency, Adam! We exit here!
[They sink out of sight.]