Page:Poet Lore, volume 4, 1892.djvu/597

 brains,—their ideas; for it is easier to think with another’s brain, to boast of another man’s ideas, and to benefit thus oneself and others than to hammer out an idea in one’s own brain. I had long been thinking which brain would be the most suitable, and finally I decided to try the brain of a man whom the whole civilized world classes among its most acute thinkers. I knew that the brain of that man was preserved in the British Museum; by stratagem I succeeded in securing this invaluable treasure; and when after the battle of Königgrätz the longed-for opportunity came, and my own skull was cut off by a sabre, I replaced my brain with that of Newton.”

“That is an impossibility!” was shouted at the table of the physicians, anatomists, and physiologists.

“An absurdity!” said the lawyers.

“Nonsense!” concluded the philosophers.

“A godless blasphemy!” sounded indignantly from the theologians’ table.

This many-sided expression of displeasure failed to embarrass my friend. He must have expected it; and he went on quietly,—“I beg your pardon, my esteemed friends. Every one judges after his own fashion; every one perceives, qualifies, and names various conceptions and objects in the way he has learned and acquired, and as he likes. Different opinions and different names do not change the things themselves in the least; they remain such as they are in fact.”

This sophistical turn apparently allayed the resentment of most of the guests, but convinced no one. Accordingly it was not surprising to hear new shouts from among the crowd,—“A proof! we want a conclusive proof!”

“A conclusive proof”—my friend resumed his talk—“is something that I am unable to offer at this moment, just as none of us can furnish unanswerable proofs of the most ingenious hypothesis of all ages,—Newton’s law of universal gravitation. I must, therefore,ask my honored guests to accept my views, as those often do who, disregarding proof, rely always on their own conviction, so-called. Please be, at least, as much convinced of the truth of my words as