“It is quite as I say. About two hundred thousand vibrations make in
man’s cerebrum what you call lust; about four billion per second,
that is gravitation, make what the philosophers call will, the poets,
cosmic love; this comes just after light, white light, which is the
sum of all the lights. And their multiple again, of love and light,
makes many sextillions, and that is love of God, what the priests name
religion.”... I think I grew faint, for he said, “You must hafe some
refreshments, or you cannot bear it.”
He broke some raw eggs in a glass, in some sherry, and placed it by my
side, and I saw him bend the lever much farther.
“Perhaps,” I spoke out, then, “you can create the emotion, or the
mental existence--whatever you call it--of God himself.” I spoke with
scorn, for my mind was clearer than ever.
“I can--almost,” he muttered. “Just now I have turned the rhythm to the
thought millions, which lie above what you call evil passions, between
them and what you call the good ones. It is all a mere question of
degree. In the eye of science all are the same; morally, one is alike
so good as the other. Only motion--that is life; and slower, slower,
that is nearer death; and life is good, and death is evil.”
“But I can have these thoughts without your machinery,” said I.
“Yes,” said he, “and I can cause them with it; that proves they are
mechanical. Now, the rhythm is on the intellectual-process movement;
hence you argue.”
Millions of thoughts, fancies, inspirations, flashed through my brain
as he left me to busy himself with other levers. How long this time
lasted I again knew not; but it seemed that I passed through all the
experience of human life. Then suddenly my thinking ceased, and I
became conscious only of a bad odor by my side. This was followed in a
moment by an intense scarlet light.
“Just so,” he said, as if he had noted my expression; “it is the eggs
in your glass, they altered when we passed through the chemical rays;
they will now be rotten.” And he took the glass and threw it out the
window. “It was altered as we passed through the spectrum by no other
process than the brain thinks.”
He had darkened the room, but the light changed from red through
orange, yellow, green, blue, violet; then, after a moment’s darkness,
it began again, more glorious than before. White, white it was now,
most glorious; it flooded the old warehouse, and the shadows rolled
from the dark places in my soul. And close on the light followed Hope
again; hope of life, of myself, of the world, of Althea.
“Hope--it is the first of the motions you call virtuous,” came his
sibilant voice, but I heeded him not. For even as he spoke my soul was
lifted unto Faith, and I knew that this man lied.
“I can do but one thing more,” said he, “and that is--Love.”
“I thought,” said I, “you could make communion with the Deity.”
“And so I could,” he cried, angrily, “so I could; but I must first give
my glass rod an infinite rotation; the number of vibrations in a second
must be a number which is a multiple of _all_ other numbers,
however great; for that even my great fly-wheel must have an infinite
speed. Ah, your ‘loft with power’ does not give me that.... But it
would be only an idea if I could do that too, nothing but a rhythmic
motion in your brain.”...
Then my faith rose well above this idle chatter. But I kept silence;
for again my soul had passed out of the ken of this German doctor.
Althea I saw; Althea in the dark room before me; Althea, and I had
communion with her soul. Then I knew indeed that I did love her.
The ecstasy of that moment knew no time; it may have been a minute or
an hour, as we mortals measure it; it was but an eternity of bliss to
me.... Then followed again faith and hope, and then I awoke and saw
the room all radiant with the calm of that white light--the light that
Dante saw so near to God.
But it changed again to violet, like the glacier’s cave, blue like the
heavens, yellow like the day; then faded through the scarlet into night.
Again I was in a sea of thoughts and phantasies; the inspiration of a
Shakespeare, the fancy of a Mozart or a Titian, the study of a Newton,
all in turn were mine. And then my evil dreams began. Through lust to
greed of power, then to avarice, hatred, envy, and revenge, my soul was
driven like a leaf before the autumn wind.
Then I rose and flew at his throat once more. “Thou liest!” I cried.
“Heed not the rabble’s cry--God lies NOT in a rotting egg!”