the idea and the moment immediately
present.

It was at such times that he allowed me to make those inquiries we had
planned in the beginning, and which apparently had little place in the
dictations themselves. Sometimes I led him to speak of the genesis of
his various books, how he had come to write them, and I think there was
not a single case where later I did not find his memory of these matters
almost exactly in accord with the letters of the moment, written to
Howells or Twichell, or to some member of his family. Such reminiscence
was usually followed by some vigorous burst of human philosophy, often
too vigorous for print, too human, but as dazzling as a search-light in
its revelation.

It was during this earlier association that he propounded, one day, his
theory of circumstance, already set down, that inevitable sequence of
cause and effect, beginning with the first act of the primal atom. He
had been dictating that morning his story of the clairvoyant dream
which preceded his brother's death, and the talk of foreknowledge had
continued. I said one might logically conclude from such a circumstance
that the future was a fixed quantity.

"As absolutely fixed as the past," he said; and added the remark already
quoted.--[Chap. lxxv] A little later he continued:

"Even the Almighty Himself cannot check or change that sequence of
events once it is started. It is a fixed quantity, and a part of
the scheme is a mental condition during certain moments usually of
sleep--when the mind may reach out and grasp some of the acts which are
still to come."

It was a new angle to me--a line of logic so simple and so utterly
convincing that I have remained unshaken in it to this day. I have never
been able to find any answer to it, nor any one who could even attempt
to show that the first act of the first created atom did not strike the
key-note of eternity.

At another time, speaking of the idea that God works through man, he
burst out:

"Yes, of course, just about as much as a man works through his
microbes!"

He had a startling way of putting things like that, and it left not much
to say.

I was at this period interested a good deal in mental healing, and had
been treated for neurasthenia with gratifying results. Like most of the
world, I had assumed, from his published articles, that he condemned
Christian Science and its related practices out of hand. When I
confessed, rather reluctantly, one day, the benefit I