`I suppose,' said Lady Bennerley, contemplatively, `if the
love-business went, something else would take its place. Morphia, perhaps. A
little morphine in all the air. It would be wonderfully refreshing for
everybody.'
`The government releasing ether into the air on Saturdays, for a
cheerful weekend!' said Jack. `Sounds all right, but where should we be by
Wednesday?'
`So long as you can forget your body you are happy,' said Lady
Bennerley. `And the moment you begin to be aware of your body, you are
wretched. So, if civilization is any good, it has to help us to forget our
bodies, and then time passes happily without our knowing it.'
`Help us to get rid of our bodies altogether,' said Winterslow. `It's
quite time man began to improve on his own nature, especially the physical
side of it.'
`Imagine if we floated like tobacco smoke,' said Connie.
`It won't happen,' said Dukes. `Our old show will come flop; our
civilization is going to fall. It's going down the bottomless pit, down the
chasm. And believe me, the only bridge across the chasm will be the
phallus!'
`Oh do! do be impossible, General!' cried Olive.
`I believe our civilization is going to collapse,' said Aunt Eva.
`And what will come after it?' asked Clifford.
`I haven't the faintest idea, but something, I suppose,' said the
elderly lady.
`Connie says people like wisps of smoke, and Olive says immunized
women, and babies in bottles, and Dukes says the phallus is the bridge to
what comes next. I wonder what it will really be?' said Clifford.
`Oh, don't bother! let's get on with today,' said Olive. `Only hurry up
with the breeding bottle, and let us poor women off.'
`There might even be real men, in the next phase,' said Tommy. `Real,
intelligent, wholesome men, and wholesome nice women! Wouldn't that be a
change, an enormous change from us? We're not men, and the women aren't
women. We're only cerebrating make-shifts, mechanical and intellectual
experiments. There may even come a civilization of genuine men and women,
instead of our little lot of clever-jacks, all at the intelligence-age of
seven. It would be even more amazing than men of smoke or babies in
bottles.'
`Oh, when people begin to talk about real women, I give up,' said
Olive.
`Certainly nothing but the spirit in us is worth having,' said
Winterslow.
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