; or I should be an atheist.
I have never had inside my head so much as a hint of heaven and hell. I
think it most likely we are worms in the mud; but I happen to be sorry
for the other worms under the wheel. And I happen myself to be a sort
of worm that turns when he can. If I care nothing for piety, I care less
for poetry. I'm not like Ashe here, who is crammed with criminology, but
has all sorts of other culture as well. I know nothing about culture,
except bacteria culture. I sometimes fancy Mr. Ashe is as much an art
critic as Mr. Paynter; only he looks for his heroes, or villains, in
real life. But I am a very practical man; and my stepping stones have
been simply scientific facts. In this village I found a fact--a fever.
I could not classify it; it seemed peculiar to this corner of the coast;
it had singular reactions of delirium and mental breakdown. I studied it
exactly as I should a queer case in the hospital, and corresponded and
compared notes with other men of science. But nobody had even a working
hypothesis about it, except of course the ignorant peasantry, who said
the peacock trees were in some wild way poisonous.

"Well, the peacock trees were poisonous. The peacock trees did produce
the fever. I verified the fact in the plain plodding way required,
comparing all the degrees and details of a vast number of cases;
and there were a shocking number to compare. At the end of it I had
discovered the thing as Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood.
Everybody was the worse for being near the things; those who came
off best were exactly the exceptions that proved the rule, abnormally
healthy and energetic people like the Squire and his daughter. In other
words, the peasants were right. But if I put it that way, somebody will
cry: 'But do you believe it was supernatural then?' In fact, that's what
you'll all say; and that's exactly what I complain of. I fancy hundreds
of men have been left dead and diseases left undiscovered, by this
suspicion of superstition, this stupid fear of fear. Unless you see
daylight through the forest of facts from the first, you won't venture
into the wood at all. Unless we can promise you beforehand that there
shall be what you call a natural explanation, to save your precious
dignity from miracles, you won't even hear the beginning of the plain
tale. Suppose there isn't a natural explanation! Suppose there is, and
we never find it! Suppose I haven't a notion whether there is