Page:Episodes-before-thirty.djvu/140

Rh is excluded. Without senses, without brain or nerves, without physical reactions of any kind--since there is no body--how shall we be aware of things about us? Another state can only be--different, yet so different that it is useless to talk of it. The Heaven of the spiritualists, the elaborate constructions of a Swedenborg, are nothing but coloured idealizations of the state we already know ..."--he snorted contemptuously--"obviously self-created. A different state of consciousness would show us a universe so totally different from anything we know that it must be--indescribable."

Of my own future, too, he liked to talk. The newspaper reporting he disapproved; it could lead to little; it was "unersprechlich gemein"; the New York press was a cesspool; it might serve a temporary purpose, but no self-respecting man should stay too long in it. He urged me to become a doctor, saying I should be a success, advising me to specialize in nerves and mental cases. Being an Englishman would help very much; in time I should have an enormous practice; he would assist me in all manner of ways, so that my course need not be longer than two years, or three at the most. He would coach me, rush me through in half the normal time. Later I could get a foreign degree, which would be an additional asset.... He never tired of this topic, and his enthusiasm was certainly sincere.

Of stars, too, he loved to talk, of space, of possible other dimensions even. His exposition of a fourth dimension always delighted me. That the universe, indeed, was really four-dimensional, and that all we perceived of it was that sectional aspect, a portion as it were, that is projected into our three-dimensional world, was a theme that positively made him red in the face, as his big eyes focused on me, his concentrated mind working vehemently behind them.... Certainly, my knowledge of German improved considerably.

Then, as Boyde came in, the light would die out of his eyes, his face would harden and grow dark--he had a way of making it seem frozen--and with a stiff bow to Boyde that Rh