Samuel Halpert, The Flatiron Building, New York, 1919
SCENE: The vicinity of 5th Street and Broadway, New YorkCity, on a warm, lowery May night. Time, 11:15.
Approach along Broadway from 6th Street George Paul Syphers,Professor of Chemistry; Forbes Mitchell, Professor of Phi-losophy; Abner Barrett, Professor of Physics. Syphers ismedium in height, slim, fiery, black-whiskered, barbered to per-fection. He is loquacious and demonstrative. Mitchell is at-tenuated, humped, gray. He is quite old. Barrett is "fifty,blonde, bald, heavy, silent.
SYPHERS
(As they reach the corner.) Well, I turn off here. That wasan interesting discussion we had, eh? The fact is, Mitchell,as I told you the other day, I have passed out of my old mate-rialistic point of view to a certain extent not entirely butnow I see more order in things than I once did a necessaryif mechanistic order. It seems more or less inescapable to me,doesn't it to you?
MITCHELL
(Doubtfully) Well, yes, I might say only ofcourse
BARRETT
(Dogmatically.) I do not see how any one can doubt law.Everything obeys law of one kind and another.
SYPHERS
Quite so! Quite so! Law, of course. Everything obeys alaw or laws of one kind and another. Nevertheless, there areso many confusing contradictions. Laws seem to conflict attimes, don't you think, even in chemical and sidereal space.You don't deny that, do you?
BARRETT
Still, more knowledge might prove them to be anything butcontradictory.
SYPHERS
Well, I admit that, too. Only I was merely suggesting that Isee more definite order than I once did. A few years ago Icould see nothing but disorder, chaos, the inexplicable clashingof forces. Of late I am not so sure. This matter of ortho-genesis now; it appeals to me very much as demonstrating anintellectual if not a spiritual order, some great controllingforce somewhere. I seem to see a definite tendency to orderin things. Life has certainly built itself up through the agesin a very intelligent way indeed, don't you think?
BARRETT
(Loftily.) Ye-es, of course, only there have been many er-rors and conflicts there too sudden stoppage of plans in vari-ous directions.
MITCHELLTrue, as I was about to point out.
SYPHERS
(Almost unconscious of interruption.) I admit that. Iadmit that. What I am getting at is this: all life, as we knowit, is based on the cell cell origination, cell multiplication, cellarrangement. That is an old story. Now here is somethingwhich is my own idea it's a mere theory, of course that thewhole thing may have been originated, somehow, somewhereelse, worked out beforehand, as it were, in the brain of some-thing or somebody and is now being orthogenetically or chemi-cally directed from somewhere, being thrown on a screen, as itwere, like a moving-picture, and we mere dot pictures, mere cell-built-up pictures, like the movies, only we are telegraphed ortelautographed from somewhere else, like those dot pictures
that are now made electrically, built up dot by dot, millions othem coming rapidly by wireless or wire and being thrown on ;screen of some kind ether, the elements you know what !mean. You have seen the telautograph pictures I mean, ocourse?
BARRETT
Yes, of course. Very ingenious. Very ingenious. But hovdo you prove the origination of the cell in the fashion that yoiwant?
MITCHELL
(Aside.) A rather slow movie, I should say, considering th
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