“It is too serious for laughter, my friend,” said Hitt. “For to such crude beliefs as this we may attribute all the miseries of mankind.”
“How is that?” queried Miss Wall in surprise.
“Simply because these beliefs constitute the general belief in a universe of matter without and about us. As a plain statement of fact, there is no such thing. But, I ask again, Is the mind within the brain, waiting for vibrations that will give it information concerning the external world? Or does the mind, from some focal point without the brain, look first at these vibrations, and then translate them into terms of things without? Do these vibrations in some way suggest form and color and substance to the waiting mind? Does the mind first look at vibrating nerve-points, and then form its own opinions regarding material objects? Does anything material enter the eye?”
“No,” admitted the doctor; “unless we believe that vibrations per se are material.”
“Now I ask, Is the mind reduced to such slavery that it must depend upon vibrations for its knowledge of an outside world?” continued Hitt. “And vibrations of minute pieces of flesh, at that! Flesh that will some day decay and leave the mind helpless!”
“Absurd!” exclaimed Haynerd. “Why doesn’t the mind look directly at the chair, instead of getting its knowledge of the chair through vibrations of bits of meat? Or isn’t there any chair out there to look at?”
“There!” exclaimed Hitt. “Now you’ve put your mental finger upon it. And now we are ready to nail to the cross of ignominy one of the crudest, most insensate beliefs of the human race. The human mind gets nothing whatsoever from vibrations, from the human, fleshly eye, nor from any one of the five so-called physical senses! The physical sense-testimony which mankind believe they receive from the eyes, the ears, and the other sense organs, can, even at best, consist only of a lot of disconnected, unintelligible vibrations; and anything that the mind may infer from such vibrations is inferred without any outside authority whatsoever!”
“Well!” ejaculated Miss Wall and Haynerd in a breath.
“And, further,” continued Hitt, “we are forced to admit 61 that all that the mind knows is the contents of itself, of its own consciousness, and nothing more. Then, instead of seeing, hearing, and feeling real material objects outside of ourselves, we are in reality seeing, hearing, and feeling our own mental concepts of things––in other words, our own thoughts of things!”
A deep silence lay for some moments over the little group at the conclusion of Hitt’s words. Then Doctor Morton nodded his acquiescence in the deduction. “And that,” he said, “effectually disposes of the question of space.”