"The sun, we know, is a vast mass of incandescent matter which ceaselessly pours out part of its matter transformed into energy. The energy thus formed, flooding out in all directions from the sun through space, takes various forms. At a certain vibratory frequency, it takes the form of light and illuminates our day. At another frequency, it is radiant heat, warming our world. At still another, it is the cosmic ray so recently discovered. There are many others, known to us, and still more of which we know nothing as yet, a vast welter of vibratory forces flooding endlessly outward from the sun. And it is one of those vibrations, one which we well may call the evolution vibration, which is responsible for the evolutionary change of all life on earth.
"In this there is nothing astounding. The sun's various vibratory forces affect all living things on earth profoundly, each in a different manner. Without the light-vibrations earth's life would fade and die, the absence of the ultra-violet waves being fatal in time. Without its heat-radiations all life would freeze. And without this evolution vibration playing ceaselessly upon earth, all life upon earth would no longer be pressed upward through the paths of evolution, would slip back swiftly down those paths, down the myriad roads up which it has surged for so long. For not only is it this evolution vibration that forces earth's life upward on the way of change, it is this vibration that keeps earth's life from slipping backward!"
Thus for Grant's statement. To Ferson and me it was as astonishing as to the rest of the scientific world, for not until then did we learn what work it was that had occupied Grant for so long. Yet even we two, I think, were surprised at the sensation that that statement caused. Always the work of Dr. Grant had been accepted almost without question, so great was his reputation and so brilliant his achievements. But with the publication of this amazing new theory of his, the general dislike of the man that had always lain latent, burst forth into a storm of criticism.
It was admitted that the new vibratory force which Grant had discovered did apparently exist, since other scientists working on his data had corroborated his work on it. But it was denied, by Grant's numerous critics, that this force was what he claimed it to be—the cause of evolutionary change. It was impossible, they stated, that such a so-called evolution vibration could in reality be responsible for the course of evolution on earth. And it was even more absurd to suggest as Grant had done that were that force withdrawn, were the evolution vibration to cease to play on earth from the sun, the living beings of earth would slip swiftly backward on the road of change.
The controversy over the thing grew, in fact, to a point of bitterness unprecedented in scientific discussion, a bitterness intensified by the comments of the saturnine and black-tempered Grant. In a series of sardonic statements, he compared his critics to those who had derided the work of Darwin and his fellows, and indulged in some rather acrid personalities. These in turn provoked fiercer attacks, and the whole matter grew thus quickly into an unseemly intellectual brawl. To Ferson and myself the whole controversy seemed a useless one, because, in the course of time, experimentation by other scientists would definitely prove or disprove Grant's theory. Yet neither of us ventured to suggest that to our bitter superior, and so the wrangle grew in intensity in the next days until it suddenly came to a head.
It was the elderly President Rogers of Manhattan University who brought the thing to a focus. He and the university's other officials had been growing more and more restive under the criticisms that Grant's controversy was bringing on the school, and so at last he suggested that a meeting be held at which Grant could lay his theories and data before his fellow-scientists in their entirety. This Grant accepted, and so too did most biologists of any note within traveling distance of New York, so widely had the clamor of the dispute spread. And on an afternoon Grant rose before several hundred assembled scientists in one of the university's lecture-halls to explain his discovery.
There is little need for me to tell at length of what took place at that meeting, which both Ferson and I attended. At the first appearance of Dr. Grant his enemies in the audience grew vocal in their criticisms, and before he had spoken a quarter of an hour the hall was in such an uproar as a scientific meeting has seldom heard. Twice Grant made an effort to go on and each time his voice was drowned by a storm of shouted cries. The President, chairman of the meeting, was rapping vainly for order, but Grant only stood still, looking out over the stormy meeting with a cold contempt in his eyes, yet with a strange fire in them. Quietly he rolled up the data-sheets in his hand and thrust them into his pocket, and as quietly stepped forward to the platform's edge. Something in his bearing, in his expression, quickly quieted the noisy throng before him.
His voice came out over the hall cold and clear. "You have not let me give to you the proof for which you asked," he said.
The President stepped to his side, said something rapidly, but Grant shook his head calmly. "No proof that I can give you here would convince you of my theory's truth, I know," he told the silent throng before him, "but I will give you proof of it yet! To you, and to the world, I will give a proof such as the world has never seen before!"
Before any could move, he had walked from the platform and out of the hall. A buzz of excited voices broke out instantly, in comment and criticism. It was some hours later before Ferson and I got from the meeting to Grant's laboratory. But Grant was not there.