Drawing of prehistoric man and of artifacts used by primitive religious cults are shown projected on the half-curtain. Behind the half-curtain the set should consist of highly stylized artistic representations of the items indicated. On no account should the stage properties, unless they are actually used or worn, be made to appear realistic. When the half-curtain is raised, a landscape is discovered with palm trees, outside the Garden of Eden. In the background a rough wooden shack is seen. Adam and Eve, now clothed in animal skins, are hard at work: Adam, driving a stake into the ground to make a fence, and Eve, trying to construct a shady retreat vaguely resembling the one in Eden. Meanwhile Lucifer, wearing the same costume as before, is watching them.

ADAM
I stake my claim: no mastery of the world,
but this shall be my home. It’s my possession.
I shall protect it from marauding creatures
and have this pasture yield its crops to me.

EVE
And this retreat I’m making in the garden
will conjure up the memory of Eden.

LUCIFER
You two have spoken better than you know.
Momentous words. Family and possession
will be the two mainsprings of history,
the source of all the weal and woe to come.
These concepts will develop and appear
as industry and nation in the future:
they’ll foster countless splendid, great achievements,
and yet devour their charges in the process.

ADAM
You talk in riddles. It’s knowledge you offered:
for that and in pursuit of self-esteem
I’ve learned to master my instinctive urges.
But where’s my gain?

LUCIFER
      Aren’t you aware of it?

ADAM
All I can say is this: as God renounced me
and turned me out, forsaken, empty-handed,
so I renounced Him too. I’ve now become
my own god, and whatever I achieve,
I claim it as my own. I’m proud of it.

LUCIFER
[to the audience]
Go, blow your trumpet to your heart’s content:
we’ll see your courage tested - in the end!

EVE
And I have reason to be proud of this:
I’ll be the mother of the human race.

LUCIFER
[to the audience]
This great ambition in the female mind:
to propagate her sinful, wretched kind!

ADAM
What do I owe to God? My mere existence?
If it is worth my daily toil and trouble,
then my existence is my just reward.
So is the pleasure from a drink of water
that’s merited by thirst which comes before,
and the rapture of a kiss that is requited
by disillusionment which follows after…
And if at last I’ve cast away the shackles
of gratitude, and if I have the power
to shape my destiny, or to destroy it,
feeling my way, planning my course of action,
perhaps I might have done without your service:
I might have coped, had it been left to me.
You’ve never tried to help me break this bondage
my body has in common with the soil,
for here it is, I don’t know what to call it,
this thread, this gossamer, the shame of it,
spreading its net about my haughty soul.
I would leap up: my body pulls me down;
my eyes, my ears relinquish their obedience
when I would wish to know what lies beyond;
should then imagination set me soaring,
sheer hunger must compel me to surrender
and cast me on the trodden dust again.

LUCIFER
This fibre is too strong for me to break.

ADAM
Ha! You a weakling, Spirit Lucifer?
This spider’s web, this next to nullity,
sensed only by the most perceptive few,
while others, myriads, unaware of it,
will wriggle on in their illusive freedom,
caught in the net - too strong for you to break?

LUCIFER
Precisely, for it is a spirit’s power.
We’re not unlike, except he works in secret.
But don’t you think he lacks the power to wield:
like other potentates who shape the world,
immensely strong, he labours out of sight.
The merest glimpse of him would make you stagger.
It’s only humans blazon their achievements
hopelessly hemmed in by their fleeting life.

ADAM
Then let me have that glimpse, however brief,
inside the works. You know I have the courage.
Let’s see how it affects my own existence,
complete and independent as I am.

LUCIFER
There’s no “I am”! You have been and you shall be:
all life is only emergence and decay.
Now, look and see a spirit’s view of things.
Whatever Adam mentions in the following lines becomes at once visible.

ADAM
I see a tide which wells up all around us:
it surges up as if to drown the skies,
then it divides and in a twofold current
it floods towards the poles.

LUCIFER
      It’s only heat,
supplying energy to frozen regions.

ADAM
And what are these? Like streams of living fire
they roll along as if to overwhelm me,
yet with a strange sustaining influence.
I’m all but mesmerised!

LUCIFER
      Magnetic flux.

ADAM
The very ground dissolves beneath my feet:
what once appeared solid, without a form,
is now a turmoil of convulsive matter
struggling to take shape. Irresistible!
Coming to life: now turning into crystals,
now into buds. Amidst these whirling forces
what’s happened to my independent self?
O, wretched body, what’s become of you?
What folly to mistake you for a fastness
of lofty thoughts and noble aspirations!
Look at you now, you pampered child, the author
of so much pleasure and calamity,
reduced to a handful of dust as you are,
and see your better part, robust, elated
a while before, now vapour, empty air,
dispersing with my self among the clouds.
The words I speak consume my very being,
as if a part dissolved with every thought.
I’m all aflame! O, what a baleful fire!
Perhaps that unknown spirit kindles it
to warm his ghastly mansions with my embers.
Remove this sight! This is insanity!
This fight, harassed by elemental forces,
tormented by the pangs of desolation…
Appalling, hideous predicament!
Too late to call on kindly Providence
which I innately felt but still decried!
O, tardy knowledge! O, futile remorse!

EVE
How right you are! I too have my regrets.
When you’re away to fight some beast of prey,
and while I work at home or tend the garden,
I look around to face an empty world:
no kinsman here on earth or in the sky,
no friend to reassure us or to help…
It wasn’t like this before - in happier days.

LUCIFER
[scornfully]
If you’re so immature you need a nursemaid
to coddle you and keep you from the cold,
and if you languish for subordination,
I can invoke a lenient god for you.
Unlike your Old Disciplinarian,
the Spirit of the Earth is unpretentious:
a handsome stripling from the heavenly choir.
[chanting]
Arise, Spirit, appear!
Negation has no fear
to call upon you thus:
arise, appear to us!
Flames burst from the earth and with a terrible thunder a black cloud appears under the arc of a rainbow. Lucifer recoils, somewhat surprised.

LUCIFER
Who are you, fearsome shape? I called another.
The genius of the Earth is meek and mild.

THE VOICE OF THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH
The spirit you met in the heavenly choir
within his sphere is infinitely strong.
I’ve come, for by the rules I must acknowledge
a spirit’s call, but let me tell you this:
to be harassed is not to be commanded.
You would be awed yourself to see my features,
and these two worms would be annihilated.

LUCIFER
Tell me, if man should take you for a god,
how could he then approach your lordly self?

THE VOICE OF THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH
He’ll find me in the clouds, in fire or water,
in woodlands, everywhere, if he desires
to seek my presence with uplifted heart.
The cloud vanishes. Springs and groves appear peopled with graceful nymphs, who dance, in the nude, to music, while Eve and Lucifer recite their couplets. Movement, sound and verse keep time.

EVE
Look, fairy-people rising from the ground
with smiling faces dancing all around!
We’ll never need be lonely any more,
with happiness abundant as before.
Here comes our comfort with alacrity,
and willing counsel in perplexity.

LUCIFER
For you, no better counsel for the task,
since you make up your minds before you ask.
These graceful shapes can please you every way
and say what you’re expecting them to say:
seek merriment, they’ll make you merry faster,
despair at all, they’ll prophesy disaster.
They may appear, for they can so arrange,
in any form, themselves without a change:
to thinking minds a subject for reflection,
to youthful hearts - a pleasing predilection.

ADAM
But what’s the use of all this gaudy show
if I can’t fathom what it’s all about?
It seems to worsen my perplexity!
Please, don’t beguile me further, Lucifer,
but give me knowledge as you promised me.

LUCIFER
[to the audience]
You’ll pay a bitter fee for this tuition,
and long to have your former ignorance.
[to Adam]
Have patience, man! Even moments of delight
are won with toil and effort, as you know.
For knowledge is achieved through education,
and disappointment is to be your school.

ADAM
How glibly you can lecture me on patience!
You have eternal life! But what of mine?
I haven’t tasted Immortality!
Time passes: I must make the most of it.

LUCIFER
All living things have equal share of life,
the same chance of achieving their potential:
the age-old tree, the fly which lives a day,
feel, love, rejoice and die, their stint completed.
Days, centuries make little difference.
It’s not time passing, but ourselves who change.
Then be assured, you will fulfil your purpose,
but don’t expect your personality
will linger in this human lump of clay.
Look at the ants, or take a swarm of bees.
A thousand workers throng without directive:
some, toiling blindly, fail and come to grief,
but as a whole, a working unity,
they can survive and, as of one accord,
act and assuredly achieve their goal -
until the end when all expire together…
Although your earthly body will decay,
you will survive in countless other forms,
no need to make a fresh start every time:
your sins shall visit you in your descendants,
in them you will have your disease prolonged,
whatever you’ve encountered, felt or learnt,
is yours to keep until the end of days.

ADAM
This is the retrospection of an old man.
I’m young yet and my heart says otherwise:
it’s burning with desire to see the future
my strife and suffering will bring to pass.

EVE
I’d love to see these changes working through:
if I shall always look - the way I do.

LUCIFER
So be it. Through my spell you’ll have the chance
to see your distant future in a trance,
in fleeting visions, even to the end.
But should they prove so daunting for your mettle
that you might run away before the battle
commences - once you’ve come to comprehend
how profitless the goal, how grim the fight,
I’ll set before your eyes this beam of light
whereby you’ll see all things within your scope
as mere illusion. There’s your ray of hope.
Meantime Lucifer ushers Adam and Eve into the hut, where they both fall asleep.