ACIS. These things are all very well in their way and in their proper places. But they are not love. They are an unnatural adulteration of love. Love is a simple thing and a deep thing: it is an act of life and not an illusion. Art is an illusion.
ARJILLAX. That is false. The statue comes to life always. The statues of today are the men and women of the next incubation. I hold up the marble figure before the mother and say, 'This is the model you must copy.' We produce what we see. Let no man dare to create in art a thing that he would not have exist in life.
MARTELLUS. Yes: I have been through all that. But you yourself are making statues of ancients instead of beautiful nymphs and swains. And Ecrasia is right about the ancients being inartistic. They are damnably inartistic.
ECRASIA [triumphant] Ah! Our greatest artist vindicates me. Thanks, Martellus.
MARTELLUS. The body always ends by being a bore. Nothing remains beautiful and interesting except thought, because the thought is the life. Which is just what this old gentleman and this old lady seem to think too.
THE SHE-ANCIENT. Quite so.
THE HE-ANCIENT. Precisely.
THE NEWLY BORN [to the He-Ancient] But you cant be nothing. What do you want to be?
THE HE-ANCIENT. A vortex.
THE NEWLY BORN. A what?