"Go on."

"Suppose the ent.i.ty that men call the soul of man were in process of separation from the body. The process you will admit would occupy time, until the point of liberation was reached. Would not dissolution, so far as the separation of matter and spirit is concerned at its critical point be instantaneous?"

I made no reply.

"If the critical point is instantaneous, there would be no beginning, there could be no end. Therein rests an eternity greater than man can otherwise conceive of, for as there is neither beginning nor end, time and s.p.a.ce are annihilated. The line that separates the soul that is in the body from the soul that is out of the body is outside of all things.

It is a between, neither a part of the nether side nor of the upper side; it is outside the here and the hereafter. Let us carry this thought a little further," said he. "Suppose a good man were to undergo this change, could not all that an eternity of happiness might offer be crushed into this boundless conception, the critical point? All that a mother craves in children dead, could reappear again in their once loved forms; all that a good life earns, would rest in the soul's experience in that eternity, but not as an illusion, although no mental pleasure, no physical pain is equal to that of hallucinations. Suppose that a vicious life were ended, could it escape the inevitable critical point?

Would not that life in its previous journey create its own sad eternity?

You have seen the working of an eternity with an end but not a beginning to it, for you can not sense the commencement of your vision. You have been in the cavern of the grotesque,--the realms of the beautiful, and have walked over the boundless sands that bring misery to the soul, and have, as a statue, seen the frozen universe dissolve. You are thankful that it was all an illusion as you deem it now; what would you think had only the heavenly part been spread before you?"

"I would have cursed the man who dispelled the illusion," I answered.

"Then," he said, "you are willing to admit that men who so live as to gain such an eternity, be it mental illusion, hallucination or real, make no mistake in life."

"I do," I replied; "but you confound me when you argue in so cool a manner that eternity may be everlasting to the soul, and yet without the conception of time."

"Did I not teach you in the beginning of this journey," he interjected, "that time is not as men conceive it. Men can not grasp an idea of eternity and retain their sun bred, morning and evening, conception of time. Therein lies their error. As the tip of the whip-lash pa.s.ses with the lash, so through life the soul of man proceeds with the body. As there is a point just when the tip of the whip-lash is on the edge of its return, where all motion of the line that bounds the tip ends, so there is a motionless point when the soul starts onward from the body of man. As the tip of the whip-lash sends its cry through s.p.a.ce, not while it is in motion either way, but from the point where motion ceases, the s.p.a.celess, timeless point that lies between the backward and the forward, so the soul of man leaves a cry (eternity) at the critical point. It is the death echo, and thus each snap of the life-thread throws an eternity, its own eternity, into eternity's seas, and each eternity is made up of the ent.i.ties thus cast from the critical point.

With the end of each soul's earth journey, a new eternity springs into existence, occupying no s.p.a.ce, consuming no time, and not conflicting with any other, each being exactly what the soul-earth record makes it, an eternity of joy (heaven), or an eternity of anguish (h.e.l.l). There can be no neutral ground."

Then he continued:

"The drunkard is destined to suffer in the drunkard's eternity, as you have suffered; the enticement of drink is evanescent, the agony to follow is eternal. You have seen that the sub-regions of earth supply an intoxicant. Taste not again of any intoxicant; let your recent lesson be your last. Any stimulant is an enemy to man, any narcotic is a fiend. It destroys its victim, and corrupts the mind, entices it into pastures grotesque, and even pleasant at first, but destined to eternal misery in the end. Beware of the eternity that follows the snapping of the life-thread of a drunkard. Come," he abruptly said, "we will pursue our journey."

[NOTE.--Morphine, belladonna, hyoscyamus and cannabis indica are narcotics, and yet each differs in its action from the others.

Alcohol and methyl alcohol are intoxicants; ether, chloroform, and chloral are anaesthetics, and yet no two are possessed of the same qualities. Is there any good reason to doubt that combinations of the elements as yet hidden from man can not cause hallucinations that combine and intensify the most virulent of narcotics, intoxicants, and anaesthetics, and pall the effects of hashish or of opium?

If, in the course of experimentation, a chemist should strike upon a compound that in traces only would subject his mind and drive his pen to record such seemingly extravagant ideas as are found in the hallucinations herein pictured, would it not be his duty to bury the discovery from others, to cover from mankind the existence of such a noxious fruit of the chemist's or pharmaceutist's art? Introduce such an intoxicant, and start it to ferment in humanity's blood, and before the world were advised of its possible results, might not the ever increasing potency gain such headway as to destroy, or debase, our civilization, and even to exterminate mankind?--J. U. L.]

INTERLUDE.

CHAPTER XLIII.

THE LAST CONTEST.

I, Lewellyn Drury, had been so absorbed in the fantastic story the old man read so fluently from the execrably written ma.n.u.script, and in the metaphysical argument which followed his account of the vision he had introduced so artfully as to lead me to think it was a part of his narrative, that I scarcely noted the pa.s.sage of time. Upon seeing him suspend his reading, fold the ma.n.u.script, and place it in his pocket, I reverted to material things, and glancing at the clock, perceived that the hands pointed to bed-time.

"To-morrow evening," said he, "I will return at nine o'clock. In the interim, if you still question any part of the story, or wish further information on any subject connected with my journey, I will be prepared to answer your queries. Since, however, that will be your last opportunity, I suggest that you make notes of all subjects that you wish to discuss."

Then, in his usual self-possessed, exquisitely polite manner, he bowed himself out.

I spent the next day reviewing the most questionable features of his history, recalling the several statements that had been made.

Remembering the humiliation I had experienced in my previous attempts to confute him, I determined to select such subjects as would appear the most difficult to explain, and to attack the old man with vehemence.

I confess, that notwithstanding my several failures, and his successful and constant elucidation and minute details in regard to occurrences which he related, and which antic.i.p.ated many points I had once had in mind to question, misgivings still possessed me concerning the truthfulness of the story. If these remarkable episodes were true, could there be such a thing as fiction? If not all true, where did fact end and fancy begin?

Accordingly I devoted the following day to meditating my plan of attack, for I felt that I had been challenged to a final contest. Late the next day, I felt confident of my own ability to dispossess him, and in order further to test his power, when night came I doubly locked the door to my room, first with the key and next with the inside bolt. I had determined to force him again to induce inert material to obey his command, as he had done at our first interview. The reader will remember that Prof. Chickering had deemed that occurrence an illusion, and I confess that time had dimmed the vividness of the scene in my own mind.

Hence I proposed to verify the matter. Therefore, at the approach of nine o'clock, the evening following, I sat with my gaze riveted on the bolt of the door, determined not to answer his knock.

He gave me no chance to neglect a response to his rap. Exactly at the stroke of nine the door swung noiselessly on its hinges, the wizard entered, and the door closed again. The bolt had not moved, the k.n.o.b did not turn. The bar pa.s.sed through the catch and back to its seat,--I sprung from my chair, and excitedly and rudely rushed past my guest. I grasped the k.n.o.b, wrenched it with all my might. Vainly; the door was locked, the bolt was fastened. Then I turned to my visitor. He was quietly seated in his accustomed place, and apparently failed to notice my discomposure, although he must have realized that he had withstood my first test.

This p.r.o.nounced defeat, at the very beginning of our proposed contest, produced a depressing effect; nevertheless I made an effort at self-control, and seating myself opposite, looked my antagonist in the face. Calm, dignified, with the brow of a philosopher, and the countenance of a philanthropist, a perfect type of the exquisite gentleman, and the cultured scholar, my guest, as serene and complacent as though, instead of an intruder, he were an invited partic.i.p.ant of the comforts of my fireside, or even the host himself, laid his hat upon the table, stroked his silvery, translucent beard, and said:

"Well?"

I accepted the challenge, for the word, as he emphasized it, was a challenge, and hurled at him, in hopes to catch him unprepared, the following abrupt sentence:

"I doubt the possibility of the existence of a great cavern such as you have described. The superinc.u.mbent ma.s.s of earth would crush the strongest metal. No material known to man could withstand a pressure so great as would overlie an arch as large as that you depict; material would succ.u.mb even if the roof were made of steel."

"Do not be so positive," he replied. "By what authority do you make this a.s.sertion?"

"By the authority of common sense as opposed to an unreasonable hypothesis. You should know that there is a limit to the strength of all things, and that no substance is capable of making an arch of thousands of miles, which, according to your a.s.sertion, must have been the diameter of the roof of your inland sea."

"Ah," he replied, "and so you again crush my facts with your theory.

Well, let me ask a question."

"Proceed."

"Did you ever observe a bubble resting on a bubble?"

"Yes."

"Did you ever place a pipe-stem in a partly filled bowl of soap water, and by blowing through it fill the bowl with bubbles?"

"Yes."

"Did you ever calculate the tensile strength of the material from which you blew the bubble?"

"No; for soap water has no appreciable strength."

"And yet you know that a bubble made of suds has not only strength, but elasticity. Suppose a bubble of energy floating in s.p.a.ce were to be covered to the depth of the thickness of a sheet of tissue paper with the dust of s.p.a.ce, would that surprise you?"

"No."

"Suppose two such globes of energy, covered with dust, were to be telescoped or attached together, would you marvel at the fact?"

"No."

He drew a picture on a piece of paper, in which one line was inclosed by another, and remarked:

"The pencil mark on this paper is proportionately thicker than the crust of the earth over the earth cavern I have described. Even if it were made of soap suds, it could revolve through s.p.a.ce and maintain its contour."

"But the earth is a globe," I interjected.