Infinity's Child

by Charles V. De Vet

"He must die—and soon!" Buckmaster exclaimed, surprised at the vehemence of the words. So vital had been the command, that he knew what he had said was true: Koski must die, in the very near future. Though he himself was not certain of the need for such urgency.

"I suppose I understand," Gamoll said, a trifle uneasily. "You have to act in self-defense. If you don't kill him, he will probably be able to kill many more of your men before he dies. But try to see his side. He is the representative of a Cause that is just—to his way of reasoning; so right and so just that he will do anything to advance it. Whatever we may think of him, his conscience is clear. I only ask you this: If you can see your way clear to attain your ends without killing him, will you let him live?"

For another nine days Buckmaster stayed with Gamoll. He had nothing to occupy his time. In idle curiosity he went through the books in Gamoll's library. The young man owned many good books.

Before long Buckmaster's idle browsing turned to an intent search. For the first time he began finding clues to the mystery that rode within him.

His first clue, he thought, was a passage he read in a physics book entitled, "The Limitations of Science," by Sullivan: Research has changed our whole conception of matter. The first step was the experimental demonstration that there exist little electrified bodies, very much smaller than a hydrogen atom, called electrons. Measurement was made with the result that the "whole" mass of the electron was found to be due to its electric charge. This was the first indication that the material universe is not the substantial, objective thing we had always taken it to be. Matter began to thin away into the completely spectral thing it has now become. The notion of "substance" had to be replaced by the notion of "behavior".

He passed readily from physics to the more fertile field of philosophy with the groping statement of Voltaire: I have seen that which is called matter, both as the star Sirius, and as the smallest atom which can be perceived with the microscope; and I do not know what this matter is.

He pursued this quest readily with the philosopher Schopenhauer and passed almost imperceptibly into metaphysics: I will never believe that even the simplest chemical combination will ever admit of mechanical explanation; much less the properties of light, heat, and electricity. These will always require a dynamical explanation.

If we can ferret out the ultimate nature of our own minds we shall perhaps have the key to the external world.

Let us say, then, that repulsion and attraction, combination and decomposition, magnetism and electricity, gravity and crystallization, are Will.

Will, then, is the essence of man. Now what if it is also the essence of life in all its forms, and even of "inanimate" matter? What if Will is the long-sought-for, the long-despaired-of, "the thing-in-itself"—the ultimate inner reality and secret essence of all things?