In the second part, which opens in our day, two brothers, one a liberalized clerical and the other a biologist, agree that life is too short to be taken seriously and that neither of them is within a hundred and fifty years of the experience and wisdom they have been sincerely pretending to. To be a good clergyman or biologist requires several centuries. Man now dies before he knows what life or what science is. Indeed, life is now so short that it is hardly worth while to do anything well. Then a past and present prime minister, obviously caricatures of the two most famous men who have lately filled that position in England, enter and try--each according to his method and hobbies--to interest the brothers in one popular cause after another, but in vain; and are finally plainly told that they have not lived long enough to outgrow personal and local prejudices or to see things in their true perspective. The statesmen, failing to find campaign material serviceable for the next election in this new Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas, then ask for a prescription that will prolong their lives and, failing to obtain either, cease to be interested. It does not seem practical to found a Longevity Party and it might be dangerous to let everyone live as long as he wanted to. The statesmen are finally told that as they are incompetent to do God’s work He will produce some better beings who can. In Part III, A.D. 2170, The thing Happens. An archbishop, now 283 years old, is convinced that “mankind can live any length of time it knows to be absolutely necessary to save civilization from extinction.” Such lengthening may now happen to anyone and when he is convinced that he is one of these elect everything changes. A well preserved lady who appeared in a former part as a parlormaid but who is now 224 years old enters and discourses sapiently on the traits of the short-livers and complains that there are so few grown-ups. “What is wrong with us is that we are a non-adult race.” Her own serious life began at 120.