ed this knowledge. Miss Metford's fugitive attempts at
conversation pending the commencement of the lecture were disagreeable
to me.

There was a little stir on the platform. The chairman, in a few words,
announced Herbert Brande. "This is the first public lecture," he said,
"which has been given since the formation of the Society, and in
consequence of the fact that a number of people not scientifically
educated are present, the lecturer will avoid the more esoteric phases
of his subject, which would otherwise present themselves in his
treatment of it, and confine himself to the commonplaces of scientific
insight. The title of the lecture is identical with that of our
Society--_Cui Bono?_"

Brande came forward unostentatiously and placed a roll of paper on the
reading-desk. I have copied the extracts which follow from this
manuscript. The whole essay, indeed, remains with me intact, but it is
too long--and it would be immaterial--to reproduce it all in this
narrative. I cannot hope either to reproduce the weird impressiveness of
the lecturer's personality, his hold over his audience, or my own
emotions in listening to this man--whom I had proved, not only from his
own confession, but by the strongest collateral evidence, to be a
callous and relentless murderer--to hear him glide with sonorous voice
and graceful gesture from point to point in his logical and terrible
indictment of suffering!--the futility of it, both in itself and that by
which it was administered! No one could know Brande without finding
interest, if not pleasure, in his many chance expressions full of
curious and mysterious thought. I had often listened to his
extemporaneous brain pictures, as the reader knows, but I had never
before heard him deliberately formulate a planned-out system of thought.
And such a system! This is the gospel according to Brande.

"In the verbiage of primitive optimism a misleading limitation is placed
on the significance of the word Nature and its inflections. And the
misconception of the meaning of an important word is as certain to lead
to an inaccurate concept as is the misstatement of a premise to precede
a false conclusion. For instance, in the aphorism, variously rendered,
'what is natural is right,' there is an excellent illustration of the
misapplication of the word 'natural.' If the saying means that what is
natural is just and wise, it might as well run 'what is natural is
wrong,' injustice and unwisdom being a