ientists whose minds
are so mechanical, so mathematically made, as it were, that your entire
outlook on science is based on old, established beliefs, or do you
belong to that rare but modern type of trained thinker and dreamer who
refuse to permit yesterday's convictions to influence to-day's
visions?"

Hale smiled quietly. "I recently lost my chair in a famous university
because of my so-called unscientific teachings regarding ether-drift."

Expressing himself in purely scientific terms, he went into an
elaboration of his revolutionary theory. When he had finished, Sir Basil
reached out his clawlike hand to him.

"Good!" he approved. "You have dared to think originally. Now listen to
my theory of mind-electrons which has grown into the established fact
that I have discovered the secret of life and death."

The long, thin hands reached into a pocket for a box of pills. He
swallowed one greedily, and immediately his emaciated face seemed
charged with new virility.

He spoke out suddenly. "Our world, you know, is made up of three powers:
matter, energy and what you call life. I might really say that there are
but two powers, for matter, in its last analysis, is a form of energy.
And what is life? You can't call it a form of energy, for every
inorganic atom has energy without having life. Life, Mr. Oakham, is
mind or consciousness."

He began pacing the floor restlessly. "Everything that lives has this
consciousness, and I say this in defiance of some fixed scientific
views. The amoeba in a stagnant pool, a thallophyte on a bit of old
bread, any of the myriads of trees and plants that you see in the jungle
all have consciousness as well as you. And why?"

* * * * *

He brought his fist down upon the table. "Because they issue from the
same source as you and I, the almighty mind, eternal, indestructible,
which has permitted itself to be enslaved by matter. You are Hale
Oakham. I am Basil Addington, yet we are one and the same. Let me
illustrate."

He seized a glass and poured it full of _masata_. "Look! Two portions of
_masata_. But I pour what is in the glass back into the bottle. The
molecules cohere and the two portions become one again. Some day you and
I--our individual consciousnesses--will flow back to the Whole. That
sounds mystical, but listen.

"We scientists hold that the electron explains nearly all the physical
and chemical phenomena. I go further and say that it expl