he'll begin fooling with gravitation,
and he will discover a new-fashioned lodestone, which can be carried in
one's hat to counter-act the influence of the centre of gravity when one
falls out of a window or off a precipice, the result of which will be
that the person who falls off one of these high places will drop down
slowly, and not with the rapidity which at the present day is responsible
for the dreadful outcome of accidents of that sort. Then, finally--"

"You pretend to be able to penetrate to the finality, do you?" asked the
Clergyman.

"Why not? It is as easy to imagine the finality as it is to go half-way
there," returned the Idiot. "Finally he will tackle some elementary
principle of nature, and he'll blow the world to smithereens."

There was silence at the table. This at least seemed to be a tenable
theory. That man should have the temerity to take liberties with
elementary principles was quite within reason, man being an animal of
rare conceit, and that the result would bring about destruction was not
at all at variance with probability.

"I believe it's happened once or twice already," said the Idiot.

"Do you really?" asked Mr. Pedagog, with a show of interest. "Upon what
do you base this belief?"

"Well, take Africa," said the Idiot. "Take North America. What do we
find? We find in the sands of the Sahara a great statue, which we call
the Sphinx, and about which we know nothing, except that it is there and
that it keeps its mouth shut. We find marvellous creations in engineering
that to-day surpass anything that we can do. The Sphinx, when discovered,
was covered by sand. Now I believe that at one time there were people
much further advanced in science than ourselves, who made these wonderful
things, who knew how to do things that we don't even dream of doing, and
I believe that they, like this creature I have predicted, got fooling
with the centre of gravity, and that the world slipped its moorings for a
period of time, during which time it tumbled topsy-turvey into space, and
that banks and banks of sand and water and ice thrown out of position
simply swept on and over the whole surface of the globe continuously
until the earth got into the grip of the rest of the universe once more
and started along in a new orbit. We know that where we are high and dry
to-day the ocean must once have rolled. We know that where the world is
now all sunshine and flowers great glaciers stood. What caused all this