They sat silent for some moments. Then Miss Wall spoke. "Do you mean
to say," she queried, "that, after thousands of years of thought and
investigation, mankind now know nothing more than that about the
process of seeing?"

"I do," returned Hitt. "I confess it in all humility."

"Then all I've got to say," put in Haynerd, "is that the most
remarkable thing about you learned men is your ignorance!"

The doctor smiled. "I find it is only the fool who is cocksure," he
replied.

"Now," said Hitt, resuming the conversation, "let us go a step further
and inquire, first, What is light? since the process of seeing is
absolutely dependent upon it."

"Light," offered the doctor, "is vibrations, or wave-motion, so
physicists tell us."

"Just so," resumed Hitt. "Light, we say, consists of vibrations. Not
vibrations of anything tangible or definitely material, but--well,
just vibrations in the abstract. It is vibratory or wave motion. Now
let us concede that these vibrations in some way get to the brain
center; and then let us ask, Is the mind there, in the brain, awaiting
the arrival of these vibrations to inform it that there is a chair
outside?"

Haynerd indulged in a cynical laugh.

"It is too serious for laughter, my friend," said Hitt. "For to such
crude beliefs as this we may attribute all the miseries of mankind."

"How is that?" queried Miss Wall in surprise.

"Simply because these beliefs constitute the general belief in a
universe of matter without and about us. As a plain statement of fact,
_there is no such thing_. But, I ask again, Is the mind within the
brain, waiting for vibrations that will give it information concerning
the external world? Or does the mind, from some focal point without
the brain, look first at these vibrations, and then translate them
into terms of things without? Do these vibrations in some way suggest
form and color and substance to the waiting mind? Does the mind first
look at vibrating nerve-points, and then form its own opinions
regarding material objects? Does anything material enter the eye?"

"No," admitted the doctor; "unless we believe that vibrations _per se_
are material."

"Now I ask, Is the mind reduced to such slavery that it must depend
upon vibrations for its knowledge of an outside world?" continued
Hitt. "And vibrations of minute pieces of flesh, at that! Flesh that
will some day decay and leave the mind helpless!"

"Absurd!" exclaimed Haynerd. "Why doesn't the