The preacher seemed to lighten a little. "Ah! that is a noble study, a study of incalculable service to mankind. I am deeply interested in that line of thought myself—I may say vitally interested, for I suffer from lung trouble. One by one the germs of disease are being discovered and their antitoxins catalogued." It was evident that he was anxious to impress the women with his wonderful understanding of the scientist's work and aims.
His tone was so sententious that Serviss instantly became flippant, as an offset. "Yes, one by one we round 'em up! But don't think me unfriendly to the 'beasts.' They have their uses. I'd no sooner kill a bacterium than a song-bird. I think we care too highly for the cancerous and the consumptive. I'm not at all sure that humanity oughtn't to be hackled like weeds, and so toughen its hold on life. Germs may be blessings in disguise."
Clarke pursued his way. "How little we know about their reactions—their secretions. You've given some attention to the X-ray and its effect on these cells, I presume?"
Serviss inwardly grinned to think what Weissmann would say at sight of his assistant sitting in solemn discussion of the germs and X-rays with a village clergyman and two reverential women. "Why, yes, I've considered it. Naturally, any new thing that bears on my specialty makes me sit up. I've even done a little experimenting with it."
"But have you considered the bearing of all these subtleties of science upon"—he hesitated—"a—upon certain—a—occult phenomena?"
Serviss eyed him non-committally. "Well, what, for instance?"
"Well, upon, say, telepathy—and—a—well, upon spiritual healing—and the like."
"I can't say that I have; I don't exactly see the connection. Furthermore, I don't believe in these particular delusions. My work concerns the material facts of life, not the dying superstitions of the race. I have no patience with any morbid theory of life."
This remark plainly produced a sensation. The preacher cast a significant glance at the mother, and the girl looked away at the lamp, a flush upon her face.
"Hello!" exclaimed Serviss, under his breath. "Have I discovered a neat of cranks? I've been enlisted on somebody's side—I wonder whose?"
The clergyman faced him again and calmly asked: "Have you ever investigated these occult phenomena?"
"Certainly not. I have no time to waste on such imaginings. My time is all taken in a study of certain definite processes in the living organism."
A light began to glow in the eyes of the young clergyman. "I suppose you class mental healing among the delusions?"
"Most assuredly I do," answered Serviss, with the remorselessness of youth.
"You would say that the mind of man cannot mend the body of another—"
"If you mean directly—in the manner of 'faith cures' and the like—I would answer certainly not, unless the disorder happens to be in itself due to a delusion. I can imagine the hypochondriac being cured by mental stimulus." He felt that he was drawing near the point at issue, and his eyes shone with glee.
The preacher set his trap. "You believe in the action of a drug—say, prussic acid—you believe it will kill?"
"Yes, and quite irrespective of the opinion of the one who takes it. His thinking it water will not check or change its action in the slightest degree."
"But how does it kill?" persisted Clarke. "What does it do?"
"If you mean why, at the last analysis, does one drug attack cells and the other nourish them, I answer, frankly, I don't know—nobody knows."
Clarke pursued his point. "Under the microscope, the germ of, say, tetanus is a minute bar with spore at the end like the head of a tadpole. Of what is this cell composed?"
"Probably of a jelly-like substance with excessively minute filaments, but we don't know. We are at the limit of the microscope. We trace certain processes, we even dissect certain cells, but elemental composition of plasm remains a mystery."
The preacher glowed with triumph. "Then you confess yourself baffled? The union of matter and spirit is beyond your microscope. What do you know about a drop of water? You say it is formed of hydrogen and oxygen in such and such proportions. What is hydrogen? Why do they unite?"
"I don't know," calmly replied Serviss. "We admit that any material substance remains inexplicable. The molecule lies far below the line of visibility. We only push the zone of the known a little farther into the realm of the unknown; but how does that serve your argument?"
"By demonstrating that the mind of a man is simply the mastering mystery in a world of mysteries, and that there is no known limit to what it may do. We say that at the point where life enters to differentiate the germ is beyond science—there of necessity faith is born."
"You say 'we'—are you an apostle of 'the new church'?" asked Serviss, abruptly.
The preacher visibly shrank. "I do not care to announce my growing conviction to my congregation, at present; but I find many things about the doctrine which appeal to me. Some form of spiritism is the coming religion—in my judgment. The old order changeth. The traditional theology—the very faith I preach—has become too gross, too materialistic, for this age; some sweeter and more mystic faith is to follow. Even science is prophesying new power for man, new realms for the spirit. You men of science pretend to lead, but you are laggards. You pore upon the culture of germs, but shut your eyes to the most vital of all truths. Is the life beyond the grave of less account than the habits of animalculæ?"
The young scientist listened to this query with outward courtesy, but inwardly his gorge rose. "I see one gain in your new position," he answered, lightly. "Matter is no longer the dead, inorganic, 'godless thing' which the old-time theologians declared it to be. Matter, so far from being some inert lump, is permeated with life—is life itself. So far as we now know, all the visible and tangible universe is resolvable into terms of force—that is to say, chemical process. There may be no line of demarcation between the organic and the inorganic."
"And yet with your knowledge of the inscrutable final mystery of matter you set a mark at the grave! You condemn all manifestation of the spirit, all the phenomena of spiritism, for example?"
"Condemn is not the word—we simply say the phenomena are absurd, the spirit cannot exist without the body—"
"Have you ever investigated a single form of spirit manifestation? Have you studied the claims of those who are in touch with the spirit world?"
"No."
The preacher's sneer broke forth. "I can't see but you scientists are quite as dogmatic, quite as bigoted as the theologians."
Serviss laughed. "It does look a little that way. However, I'm not as uninformed as I seem. It happens that I am in close personal contact with men whose specialty is the study of morbid psychology, and I know the quality of those who act as mediums for the return of the dead." The intensity of the interest on the part of the little group before him was astonishing, not to say appalling. "It is evident that the mother and her pastor are both of the new dispensation or worse," was his thought, but his natural courtesy led him to say, placably: "There are mysteries in the world, I admit—in chemistry as in biology—but they seem to me to be different in very essence from the 'mysteries' of spiritualism and all allied 'psychic phenomena,' which appear to me essentially absurd, ignoble—'ratty,' to use a slang phrase—a faith founded upon things done in the dark, always in the dark."
The preacher flamed out at this. "I knew you would get round to that; that is the reason why I began by drawing you out on the X-ray. How little do we know of motion! The X-ray moves in straight lines, I understand, while light has a wave motion. Hence they are antagonistic. May it not be that the spirits of those gone before manifest by means of an unknown