VIL. Exactly! the survival, not of the most effective means of
Life but of the most effective means of Death. You always come back to
my point, in spite of your wrigglings and evasions and sophistries, not
to mention the intolerable length of your speeches.

DON JUAN. Oh come! who began making long speeches? However, if I overtax
your intellect, you can leave us and seek the society of love and beauty
and the rest of your favorite boredoms.

THE DEVIL. [much offended] This is not fair, Don Juan, and not civil. I
am also on the intellectual plane. Nobody can appreciate it more than
I do. I am arguing fairly with you, and, I think, utterly refuting you.
Let us go on for another hour if you like.

DON JUAN. Good: let us.

THE STATUE. Not that I see any prospect of your coming to any point in
particular, Juan. Still, since in this place, instead of merely killing
time we have to kill eternity, go ahead by all means.

DON JUAN. [somewhat impatiently] My point, you marbleheaded old
masterpiece, is only a step ahead of you. Are we agreed that Life is a
force which has made innumerable experiments in organizing itself; that
the mammoth and the man, the mouse and the megatherium, the flies and
the fleas and the Fathers of the Church, are all more or less successful
attempts to build up that raw force into higher and higher individuals,
the ideal individual being omnipotent, omniscient, infallible, and
withal completely, unilludedly self-conscious: in short, a god?

THE DEVIL. I agree, for the sake of argument.

THE STATUE. I agree, for the sake of avoiding argument.

ANA. I most emphatically disagree as regards the Fathers of the Church;
and I must beg you not to drag them into the argument.

DON JUAN. I did so purely for the sake of alliteration, Ana; and I
shall make no further allusion to them. And now, since we are, with that
exception, agreed so far, will you not agree with me further that Life
has not measured the success of its attempts at godhead by the beauty or
bodily perfection of the result, since in both these respects the birds,
as our friend Aristophanes long ago pointed out, are so extraordinarily
superior, with their power of flight and their lovely plumage, and,
may I add, the touching poetry of their loves and nestings, that it is
inconceivable that Life, having once produced them, should, if love
and beauty were her object, start off on another line and labor at the
clumsy elephant and the hideous ap