THE NEWLY BORN. Oh yes. How true! How great of you, darling Strephon! [_She kisses him impulsively_]. STREPHON [_passionately_] Let me alone. MARTELLUS. Control your reflexes, child. THE NEWLY BORN. My what! MARTELLUS. Your reflexes. The things you do without thinking. Pygmalion is going to shew you a pair of human creatures who are all reflexes and nothing else. Take warning by them. THE NEWLY BORN. But wont they be alive, like us? PYGMALION. That is a very difficult question to answer, my dear. I confess I thought at first I had created living creatures; but Martellus declares they are only automata. But then Martellus is a mystic: _I_ am a man of science. He draws a line between an automaton and a living organism. I cannot draw that line to my own satisfaction. MARTELLUS. Your artificial men have no self-control. They only respond to stimuli from without. PYGMALION. But they are conscious. I have taught them to talk and read; and now they tell lies. That is so very lifelike. MARTELLUS. Not at all. If they were alive they would tell the truth. You can provoke them to tell any silly lie; and you can foresee exactly the sort of lie they will tell. Give them a clip below the knee, and they will jerk their foot forward. Give them a clip in their appetites or vanities or any of their lusts and greeds, and they will boast and lie, and affirm and deny, and hate and love without the slightest regard to the facts that are staring them in the face, or to their own obvious limitations. That proves that they are automata. PYGMALION [_unconvinced_] I know, dear old chap; but there really is some evidence that we are descended from creatures quite as limited and absurd as these. After all, the baby there is three-quarters an automaton. Look at the way she has been going on! THE NEWLY BORN [_indignantly_] What do you mean? How have I been going on? ECRASIA. If they have no regard for truth, they can have no real vitality. PYGMALION. Truth is sometimes so artificial: so relative, as we say in the scientific world, that it is very hard to feel quite sure that what is false and even ridiculous to us may not be true to them. ECRASIA. I ask you again, why did you not make them like us? Would any true artist be content with less than the best? PYGMALION. I couldnt. I tried. I failed. I am convinced that what I am about to shew you is the very highest living organism that can be produced in the laboratory. The best tissues we can manufacture will not take as high potentials as the natural product: that is where Nature beats us. You dont seem to understand, any of you, what an enormous triumph it was to produce consciousness at all. ACIS. Cut the cackle; and come to the synthetic couple. SEVERAL YOUTHS AND MAIDENS. Yes, yes. No more talking. Let us have them. Dry up, Pyg; and fetch them along. Come on: out with them! The synthetic couple.