“You are a fool, you, Pan Kreutz,” he said. “Here are you, the most gifted scholar and alchemist of our time, fretting away your hours in such pursuits with a much greater object to be gained at your very elbow.”
“You mean——”
“You know what I mean. You and I have begun to experiment in things that men know but little of.”
“I know, and I am of two minds about it. There is something in what you persuade me into that I like not. But upon such matters you are indeed the teacher and I the student. This I do know, and that is that when I am in a trance such as you sent me into a short time ago I can see things and hear things and even know things that I am not familiar with in my everyday mind. But such experiments, though they enthrall the soul, are perhaps dangerous to men. They are tried in Nuremberg, I believe, and in other lonely places in the Black Forest. But here in Krakow we have ever been wary of them.”
The alchemist was looking into the fire. Tring, sitting beside him, cast at him at these words such a malicious look and leer that Joseph shuddered. There flashed into Joseph’s mind the word “demon”—a veritable demon from the darkness Tring seemed, striving to exert some influence over his victim.
The look passed. “Pan Kreutz,” began Tring again, “I know from my teachers in the old town of Nuremberg that man has in reality two brains. One of these brains is wise and powerful and dominant, and yet one knows nothing of it except when one is asleep in such a trance as I put you in but a short while ago. The other is the brain of daily life; by it we know when to eat, work, and rest. It is the lesser brain.”
“Something of this you have proven to me,” said the alchemist.
“Then use your higher brain,” commanded Tring.
“To what end?” asked Kreutz.
“To the end that all men would reach. Gold!”