omewhat helpless. You would begin to
employ that large section of modern civilization that deals with the
somewhat helpless."

I began to warm to my theme, and clasped my hands behind my back.

"Yes, you would pass into that class that disproves all theories of a
kindly Deity, and you would become an undergraduate in the vast and
lamentable University of Suffering, through whose limitless corridors we
medical men walk with weary footsteps. Ah, if only an intelligent group
of scientists had had the construction of the human body to plan! Think
what poor stuff it is! Think how easy it would have been to make it
more enduring! The cell--what a useless fragile delicacy! And we are
made of millions of these useless fragile delicacies."

To my surprise he laughed with great amusement. He stood there, young,
pleasant, and smiling. I stared at him with a curious uneasiness. For
the moment I had forgotten what it had been my intention to say. The
dawn of Immortality passed out of my mind, and I found myself gazing, as
it were, on something strangely mysterious.

"Your religion helps you?" I hazarded.

"Religion?" He mused for a moment. "Don't you think there is some
meaning behind our particular inevitable destinies--that we may perhaps
have earned them?"

"Nonsense! It is all the cruel caprice of Nature, and nothing else."

"Oh, come, Dr. Harden, you surely take a larger view. Do you think the
short existence we have here is all the chance of activity we ever have?
That I have a glimpse of engineering, and you have a short phase of
doctoring on this planet, and that then we have finished all
experience?"

"Certainly. It would not be possible to take any other view--horrible."

"But you believe in some theory of evolution--of slow upward progress?"

"Yes, of course. That is proved beyond all doubt."

"And yet you think it applies only to the body--to the instrument--and
not to the immaterial side of us?"

I stared at him in astonishment.

"I do not think there is any immaterial side, Mr. Thornduck."

He smiled.

"A very unsatisfying view, surely?" he remarked.

"Unsatisfying, perhaps, but sound science," I retorted.

"Sound?" He pondered for an instant. "Can a thing be sound and
unsatisfying at the same time? When I see a machine that's ugly--that's
unsatisfying from the artist's point of view--I always know it's wrongly
planned and inefficient. Don't you think it's the same with theories of
life?" He took o