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ROLAND Don't be too imaginative or Alice will have another terrible night.
P.A. Being ‘too imaginative’ might cause us all to have a terrible awakening.
EDMUND These cosmic disasters – super-novae for example – occur as we know, but cannot imagine. The sun should explode in a few thousand million years.
ROBIN What about a dip in the sea before breakfast?
ROLAND Tomorrow morning? Yes – not in a few million years.
EDMUND That is what P.A. means. The swim in the sea helps us to keep a firm grip on our ignorance. We can clutch it to ourselves like a cloak which we cannot bear to have torn from our shoulders.
ROLAND You are rather hard on us poor ignorami. You wouldn't be worse off if you joined us in a swim.
EDMUND I don't doubt it, but I want to go on with my astronomical hobbies.
P.A. There is nothing to stop you provided you are not so terrified by your imagination or your scientific activity that you cannot think at all.
ROBIN The government might become so terrified that they stopped you. But perhaps they are too ignorant to be terrified; that also would act as a cloak to protect the tender shoots of scientific speculation till they become ‘theories’.