“I don’t doubt that. But how to break the habits of several thousand years.” “I suppose there _are_ ways. Look what Cave is doing. Of course making death popular is not so difficult since, finally, people _want_ it to be nice: they do the real work or, rather, their terror does. In place of superstition, which they’ve nearly outgrown, he offers them madness.” “Now really, Clarissa....” “I don’t disapprove. I’m all for him, as you know. To make death preferable to life is of course utter folly though a perfectly logical reaction for these poor bewildered savages who, having lost their old superstitions, are absolutely terrified at the prospect of nothing. They want to perpetuate their little personalities forever into space and time and now they’ve begun to realize the folly of that (who, after all, are they? are _we_? in creation?) they will follow desperately the first man who pulls the sting of death and Cave is that man, as I knew he would be.” “And after Cave?” “I will not say what I see. I’m on the side of change, however, which makes me in perfect harmony with life.” Clarissa chuckled. A fish leaped gayly in the still river; out in the channel a barge glided by, the muffled noise of its engines like slow heartbeats. “But you think it good for people to follow Cave? you think what he says is right?” “Nothing is good. Nothing is right. But though Cave is wrong, it is a _new_ wrong and so it is better than the old; in any case, he will keep the people amused and boredom, finally, is the one monster the race will never conquer ... the monster which will devour us in time. But now we’re off the track. Mother love exists because we believe it exists. Believe it does not exist and it won’t. That, I fear, is the general condition of 'the unchanging human heart.’ Make these young girls feel that having babies is a patriotic duty as well as healthful therapy and they’ll go through it blithely enough, without ever giving a second thought to the child they leave behind in the government nursery.” “But to get them to that state of acceptance....” “Is the problem. I’m sure it will be solved in a few generations.” “You think I’m right to propose it?” “Of course. It will happen anyway.” “Yet I’m disturbed at the thought of all that power in the hands of the state: they can make the children believe anything; they can impose the most terrible tyranny; they can blind at birth so that none might ever see anything again but what a few rulers, as ignorant as they, finally, will want them to see. There’ll be a time when all people are nearly alike.” “Which is precisely the ideal society. No mysteries, no romantics, no discussions, no persecutions because there’s no one to persecute. When all have received the same conditioning, it will be like....” “Insects.” “Who have existed longer than ourselves and will outlast our race by many comfortable millennia.” “Is existence everything?” “There is nothing else.”