"But have you considered the bearing of all these subtleties of science upon"--he hesitated--"a--upon certain--a--occult phenomena?"
Serviss eyed him non-committally. "Well, what, for instance?"
"Well, upon, say, telepathy--and--a--well, upon spiritual healing--and the like."
"I can't say that I have; I don't exactly see the connection. Furthermore, I don't believe in these particular delusions. My work concerns the material facts of life, not the dying superstitions of the race. I have no patience with any morbid theory of life."
This remark plainly produced a sensation. The preacher cast a significant glance at the mother, and the girl looked away at the lamp, a flush upon her face.
"Hello!" exclaimed Serviss, under his breath. "Have I discovered a neat of cranks? I've been enlisted on somebody's side--I wonder whose?"
The clergyman faced him again and calmly asked: "Have you ever _investigated_ these occult phenomena?"
"Certainly not. I have no time to waste on such imaginings. My time is all taken in a study of certain definite processes in the living organism."
A light began to glow in the eyes of the young clergyman. "I suppose you class mental healing among the delusions?"
"Most assuredly I do," answered Serviss, with the remorselessness of youth.
"You would say that the mind of man cannot mend the body of another--"
"If you mean directly--in the manner of 'faith cures' and the like--I would answer certainly not, unless the disorder happens to be in itself due to a delusion. I can imagine the hypochondriac being cured by mental stimulus." He felt that he was drawing near the point at issue, and his eyes shone with glee.
The preacher set his trap. "You believe in the action of a drug--say, prussic acid--you believe it will kill?"
"Yes, and quite irrespective of the opinion of the one who takes it. His thinking it water will not check or change its action in the slightest degree."
"But _how_ does it kill?" persisted Clarke. "What does it _do_?"
"If you mean why, at the last analysis, does one drug attack cells and the other nourish them, I answer, frankly, I don't know--nobody knows."
Clarke pursued his point. "Under the microscope, the germ of, say, tetanus is a minute bar with spore at the end like the head of a tadpole. Of what is this cell composed?"