The two young human specimens, prattling in their biologist's jargon (sprinkled with modern slang) displayed their living treasures. Now and then they spoke of the great man who was their chief and their teacher. They spoke with most irreverent ridicule of his leaning toward religion and his faith in liberalism; but behind their words lurked awe and affection.

  Toward each other, these two behaved always with the familiarity and swift understanding that comes to well-tried workmates; but also with a flow of genial banter that was evidently in some way necessary to them to preserve their independence from each other, and to smooth the flow of their common life, their queer symbiosis. For it was evident that in some way each depended on the other, and at the same time was defensive against the other. I soon noticed, too, a subtle difference in their behaviour. While he negligently, almost unwittingly (or was he all the while consciously acting?), performed the ritual of comradeship, she responded with a friendliness that was deliberate and attentive. But I suspected an undercurrent of soreness.

  Toward all their creatures, their foster children, they both behaved as though scientific detachment were awkwardly complicated by a sort of shame-faced parental fondness. I was indeed enthralled by their creatures; yet my attention often strayed to themselves, isolated for so much of their time here in this tank, this test tube; as though some superhuman experimenter had singled them out for study, hoping to gain through observation of their mutual reactions new understanding of the human species.

  They showed me newts, lizards, frogs; and also (even more distant cousins of Queen Victoria and Jesus Christ) innumerable flies imprisoned in bottles. Some of these creatures were normal products of evolution; some were precious monstrosities, evoked by human ingenuity, and kept alive by a more than maternal devotion. Ordinary newts, with their bladelike tails and inadequate legs (as though copied from a small child's drawing), hung suspended in the water, or glided through the subaqueous jungle, or clambered into the air. But a few were patently and shockingly not ordinary. One such creature miserably supported the burden of two heads. Another carried a half-formed twin attached, to his back. Turning from these oddities, I was shown a normal crested newt (called Archibald). He was induced to display his flame like ornament by the infuriating sight of his own reflection in a bit of mirror. An axolotl, a pallid and feebly animated sausage, inadequately quadruped, stared vacuously, unconscious of his significance for science. Little black lizards, mercurial in the girl's warm hand, were slender as snakes. A unique snake displayed vestigial limbs. Toads lumbered over stones and herbage, bestirring themselves for the chopped meat that was dropped for them. Swarms of little crustaceans, mere fidgeting points of life, explored their bit of ocean or pond for food. Snails clung to leaves or stones. It was pointed out to me that the spiral of the shell was generally coiled clockwise, but occasionally in the opposite direction. And this oddity, I was told, was of special interest because its inheritance depended on the mother alone. The bodies of these creatures, it seems, are asymmetrical through and through, and the dextral and sinistral individuals are mirror images of each other. The young biologist delighted to explain that, since the genital organ is on one side of the head alone, dextrals and sinistrals could never mate with each other, but only with their own kind.

  Throughout this scientific exposition, the two humans maintained their banter, snowballing each other with argument, evidence and technical terms. I heard much of allelomorphs, of dominants and recessives, of haploid, of polymorphic varieties, of the exact location of genes on chromosomes.

  Leaving the tanks, the young man selected from a certain shelf a certain bottle. There were scores, hundreds, of such bottles, each housing a population of flies; and each population was the issue of some planned interbreeding. A whiff of ether reduced the selected population to temporary impotence, so that they could be poured out on a microscope slide for observation. As I peered through the instrument, the couple spoke of the minute significant differences that I should see, the ruddier and the yellower eyes, the hairy or bald bodies, the stumpy or long antennae, the serviceable or crippled wings. "We have now," the young man said, "recorded nearly a million mutations." His companion took up the thread. "Mostly they are lethal, or at best indifferent; but with them we have mapped out on the chromosomes practically the whole inheritance mechanism of this species." He displayed a printed volume wherein all this work was recorded. "Someday," he said, "our ancestors will have an equally full account of inheritance in man, covering his physical and his mental characters, down to the least idiosyncrasy. The job will, of course, be far more complicated; but there is little doubt that we shall in time analyse out the whole mechanism of human inheritance, and so the basic structure of human nature." The girl continued the theme. "In the end," she said, "we shall breed men as we breed horses and dogs and cattle, creating different types for different functions within the world society; lovers of the tropics and of the arctic, of mining and of flying, of leadership and of obedience, of creative action and of routine, of interplanetary exploration and of terrestrial homekeeping." The young man smiled at me, and winked. He said, "She is rather uncritically sublimating her maternal instinct. Unconsciously, she would like to mother the whole lot." The girl laughed, and replied spiritedly, "Muddleheaded amateur psychologist!"

  The show was now over, and the couple were preparing to leave the Department. Taking his mackintosh from behind a door, the young geneticist said, "Well, now you have seen a little of our world, perhaps you can understand why we are confident in science." I concluded my little speech of thanks rather tactlessly, by remarking that science had been said to give power without wisdom. He swung round and faced me to say, "Don't you see that wisdom follows from power. The helpless savage has no wisdom. Wisdom arises only in civilization, and civilization is an expression of economic production." Taking a final glance round the room, he opened the door, adding, "Of course there's a time lag. And so long as our affairs are controlled by ignorant politicians there's a real danger that the wisdom inherent in man's new powers will be frustrated, and the species will destroy itself. Atomic power is a dangerous toy."

  I said we must pursue the matter over dinner; and I invited the girl to accompany us. She glanced quickly at her colleague, then refused, excusing herself on the plea that she had work to do at home. And so, after thanks and adieus, I took the young man alone to a restaurant.

  *****

  My new friend sipped his sherry with serious attention, savouring, analysing, registering the complex experience. Perhaps he noticed that I was amused by his earnestness, for presently he said, "It is wonderful how even the minor experiences repay observation." "Yes," I answered, "but if one attends too closely to some particular field of the universe one has no attention for others." Sighing, he replied, "True indeed! I shall never be an expert wine taster." "The great thing," I suggested, "is to be sure that one has acquaintance with all the main kinds of fields. Specialism is inevitable; but without a comprehensive background it leads to disaster. "Once more the wary glance was shot at me. But he said only, "Of course! And the fields of science are now so many and complex that the scientific background becomes too huge to grasp. However, matters are simplified if one can rule out some great fields as bogus. It is fairly safe to ignore phrenology, astrology, primitive I magic, alchemy, religious doctrine, spiritualism and so on; because all that is evidential in them can be satisfactorily incorporated in one or other of the ever-expanding fields of reliable science."

  I sipped the last of my sherry, torn between sympathy and revulsion for this hard young mind. I said, "Surely there are some fields in which science is inadequate, some spheres in which, though it can give a very plausible and up to a point useful analysis, yet one can't help feeling that it misses the essence of the matter." "Such as?'' "Well, art, moral experience, personal love and what I am tempted to call the living core of religious experience."

  "How you cling," he said, "to your illusions! Presumably you don't claim that in the exquisite, almost mystical, bliss of drinking this sherry one must suppose some highfalutin factor that science cannot in principle account for. Then why must you suppose it in art and love and so on?" Laughing, I answered, "Of course in all experience there is something beyond the reach of science, namely the complete mystery of experience itself; but in some experiences the inadequacy of science is more flagrant than in others. You see, science can approximately describe your sherry-drinking experience in terms of sensation; but in art, love and the core of religion there are factors which contemporary science can neither explain nor adequately describe." Holding his sherry to the light and peering into it with terrier eagerness, he said, "I claim that it does describe and explain the one sort of experience as effectively as the other. What it excludes is sheer illusion and superstition. Wine, women and song (meaning all art) and religious excitement can all be explained in terms of innate impulses and Pavlov's great principle of conditioning." Savouring his sherry, he added, "And give me wine, rather than women, because it doesn't make irrational claims on one as they do; and the irrational, sentimental factor in oneself does not stupidly side with it, against one's better judgment." When he had chased the last fragrance of his sherry round his mouth, his lips settled into a pout. Feeling my way, I remarked, "Claims that are irrational to the fundamentally unattached individual may be quite rational where there is genuine love." He expostulated, "Love! Another of those misleading and emotive words! If I love a woman, it is because my personality needs intercourse with hers for its fuller expression. Each is food to the other. Neither is really under any sort of obligation to the other, fundamentally, any more than I am under obligation to this soup, or responsible to see that it shall express itself fully." "But surely," I said, "you don't suppose that love is just that!" He answered flatly, "Fundamentally, it is just that. But of course it gets overlaid by muddleheaded sentimentality. And of course it is a cooperative affair, and it won't work unless each party shows a good deal of consideration for the other. The profit must be mutual. Further, we have social impulses, and up to a point each individual needs to regard the other's interests, and the interests of the little group of two. But fundamentally, each remains an independent and self-interested individual. When a woman claims, as she is apt to do, that each should surrender individuality wholly to the other, that both should drown in the common life, she claims something that it would be quite irrational to give. But the hell of it all is that something in oneself takes sides with her, and in maintaining one's independence one feels inadequate and guilty."

  We took our soup in silence. I thought of the love in my own life, of us, of you and me. How easily and plausibly our whole relationship could be stated in his language! And what rare good fortune that each of us should have turned out in the long run to be such life-giving food to the other! In excess, no doubt, we surfeit each other; and there are elements in each that the other can never digest. But in the main we are mutually nourishing.

  But presently the thought that, after all, rationally I could not care for you at all save only as for my own person's bread of life, not disinterestedly, not for your person's intrinsic beauty, and that you also could care for me only in this self-regarding way, I found desolating. Surely it debased love to triviality, and the universe to futility. There must be more to it than that.

  Presently I said, "When there is real love, very much can be willingly sacrificed for the common life; and with profit to the individual, though profit is not the motive. Very much can be sacrificed, but not all, not one's life work, for instance. But much that was cherished may be gladly discarded. In love, as in religion, the primitive, self-absorbed self must be killed, that anew, more generous self may be born. And in love the new self is in a way a common self." He pounced on me. "Sheer superstition!" he said. "The lovers remain completely distinct individuals. There is no possibility of a common self." I answered cautiously, "They remain distinct as centres of awareness; but if indeed they love (or in so far as they love, for all lovers are also individualists), each cherishes the other without thought of profit to his own individuality. And each cherishes the little community of two. The common 'we' is felt by both to be more worthwhile than either of its members."

  With asperity he said, "Oh, yes, that does happen. But the cause of this seeming altruism is simply the fact that each needs the other for self-completion. The love that is unconscious of its own basic self-regard is silly, sentimental, irrational, neurotic; like a miser caring for money itself instead of the power that money brings. Just so, the silly lover may be conditioned to love the woman herself instead of the limited enrichment that his personality derives from her. We so easily trick ourselves into irrational emotions."

  Laughing, I taunted him, "Irrational emotions, apparently, are just those which seem unreasonable from the point of view of your theory that all human behaviour is at bottom self-regarding. If you would abandon your theory, you might begin to know what love is."

  "Christ!" he said, fiercely cutting at the meat on his plate, "I do know what love is. I was married for love. It was good fun, too. In fact we enjoyed each other immensely. But little by little I found I was too deeply entangled with her. The common 'we' was wrapping me round with a web of subtle spider threads, and sucking the life out of me. I would soon be not myself anymore, but a mere part of that 'we.' It was a pleasant enough process, up to a point; but lethal to me, the real, hard, dynamic individual. So long as I was content to be not myself, I was happy in a drowsy, doped way. But sometimes I felt like murder; when she assumed that because I still needed a life of my own, she had failed me, and I did not love her. It was partly my work that she grudged, as something in me that she could not share. Worse, when I showed any interest in other girls, she went all tragic. But I hadn't really changed toward her. I just wanted a bit of variety and refreshment. Well, it was clear to me I must begin cutting the threads. And to my horror I found that I bled at every cut. The irrational sentimentalist in me sided with her, and shrieked with her pain and my own." He looked up at me, and quickly down again. He growled, "Oh, yes! I know love. It's a parasitic disease. It gets into every cell of the body, till there's nothing in one that is the undefiled 'I' anymore. However, I cured myself. I told her we were killing each other, and then I just cleared out, bleeding with love at every pore; but free."

  While I was wondering what to say, he began speaking again. "Of course, I soon found I still needed a woman. In the end I cautiously linked up with another girl. I told her straight what I wanted and didn't want; just sexual companionship and no clinging. And she agreed, for she was a scientific worker herself. On this basis we had a lot of fun for a while; but now, hell, she's beginning to want too much. And part of me wants to give it, and to be given it. But once bitten, twice shy. I'm keeping a firm hand on us both, for both our sakes."

  Throughout this long confession he had intermittently gobbled his escallop; and I, listening, had forgotten to eat. When his plate was empty, he looked at it with whimsical surprise and exasperation. "Damn!" he said. "It's all gone, and I missed the pleasure of it." We both laughed, and I attacked my food.

  *****

  Presently I asked my guest to give me a clearer view of that "real, hard, dynamic" individuality of his. What did it really want for itself. "I have told you," he said. "Power, mastery, scientific prestige, a sense of leaving my mark on human society by contributing to human knowledge." Provokingly, I said, "But how irrational! Nothing of this sort is implied in your basic physiological structure. You should be seeking merely chemical equilibrium; and for that end, you should crave merely food, air, water and bodily sexual release of tension. The rest is sheer sentimentality." He laughed. "You can't catch me out that way. Evolutionary forces have given me a conscious nature that needs more than that." I interrupted, warming to my theme. "Much more," I said, "very much more! At every stage of growth we wake to some new range of awareness, become sensitive to some new, subtler features of objective reality; and from the new ranges of objectivity, new values emerge. The child begins to wake from the sheer animal values to the values of personality, prizing the 'I' and the 'you,' and the 'we.' Little by little he discovers society, with all its tangle of conflict and community. Later he may discover humanity, the whole species, with all the values emerging from mankind's long adventure in self-realization in art and science and so on. And finally he may, or he may not, be invaded by the supreme values of, well, of the spirit."

  Throughout my monologue, the young scientist had seemingly been interested less in my views than in his fruit flan. But at the word spirit he looked at me with the intentness and awkwardness of a dog facing a cat. He said, "You see! Once abandon the attitude of rigorous scientific analysis, nothing prevents you from sliding right down into the slush of religion. From spirit to the Holy Ghost, the Trinity, the Virgin Birth and so on is a fatally easy descent. And what do you mean by spirit, anyhow? The word should be abolished."

  Challenged, I replied uncertainly, "I mean, not God, not a divine personality, but, well, the ideal way of life that the awakened mind cannot but will, when once this ideal has intruded imperiously into consciousness. I mean the way of intelligence and love and creativity, which, when we are fully awake, we feel to be in some sense what we are for." He snorted with indignant triumph, but I continued boldly. "To betray this most lucid intuition is surely to betray something which presents itself to us as sacred. At present we cannot rationalize the experience; but it is far too illuminating and compelling to be denied for the sake of any of our ephemeral theories."

  He put down his spoon with emphasis. "Apparently," he said, "you are a confused sort of theist. I prefer the more explicit sort. With them, one knows where one is."

  "My point," I said, "is that I know nothing about any kind of Creator or universal personality or God, or about the universe at large, or the status of spirit in the universe. But one thing I do know. What I have called spirit cannot but matter supremely to all conscious beings capable of glimpsing it, wherever in all the wide universe they live. We are animals, yes; but also, in an important sense, we are vessels of the spirit. As for the universe, surely the most appropriate attitude is neither obsequiousness toward a supposed creator nor blind faith that at the heart of it must be love, nor yet the defiant self-pride in humanity, but rather a blend of rapt interest and strict agnosticism. Yet that is not really all. The fully awake human mind must surely feel a kind of dumb piety, an inarticulate worship."