“Undoubtedly it would,” added Professor Cracker, “unless they were to wear travelling-goggles for protection. You may however rest assured that, if railways could be made, we would have discovered it long ago, and the same may be said in regard to gnomes, ghosts, spirits, or intelligent forces of any kind. If there were such things we would know it.”
“How is it then possible,” I asked, “that the ancient philosophers believed such things?”
“To a layman like you,” answered the Professor, “such a question may be pardoned. The ancient philosophers were fools; they did not know as much as one of our schoolboys knows to-day. As to Lord Lytton, Goethe, and other more modern writers who spoke of such things, they only did so because they loved to make jokes for the amusement of the wise, and to have some fun at the expense of the gullible. We know that spirit without matter does not exist. Matter is visible; consequently the spirits would have to possess visible forms. We also know that no kind of living beings can exist within solid rocks, where they would be without water and air, and finally, if there were any intelligent forces in nature, they would know the importance of coming forward and proving their existence to men of science.”
I remarked that a belief in gnomes was quite common in this country, and asked whether this could be explained.
“Ridiculously easy!” said the Professor. “The sources of error are—inherited idiosyncrasies; a want of scientific training in making observations; subjective, objective, and epidemic hallucinations; credulity, hysteria, suggestion, dreams, hypnotism, post-hypnotic auto-suggestion, and so forth.”
“Nevertheless,” I objected, “there are those who have been touched by gnomes, have seen and conversed with them, received tangible objects from them.”
“Rot!” replied Cracker. “It is all due to wilful deception, humbug, swindle, trumpery, fraud, plagiarism, coincidence, telepathic impact, thought-transfer, unconscious cerebration, mediumship, sympathetic association of ideas, etc. Only recently I have discovered, after making a long research and consulting many authorities, that the accounts given in Gulliver’s Travels were not based upon historical facts, but are only the products of the imagination of the author, who for thus imposing upon the credulity of the public, must be regarded as being one of the greatest cheats of his age. Fetch me a spirit or gnome, and let me dissect it to see of what it is made. Unless you do so, I say that it is nothing but rot, the product of the disordered fancy of a scientifically untrained brain.”
I did not quite agree with Cracker’s views, and I therefore said: “I believe that there are still people capable of telling a pigtail from a broomstick without dissecting it and having it certified to by a professor of science.”
Cracker and Stiffbone exchanged an ominous look.
“This,” said Stiffbone, “comes from the increased disrespect for the authorities. Nowadays everybody imagines that he has a right to think and say what he pleases. It is time that a law ought to be made punishing heresy in science, as it used to be punished in regard to religion. Not long ago I heard a new heresy preached about what they call ‘conservation of energy.’ Men ought not to be permitted to go about and poison the minds of the public by spreading erroneous scientific doctrines. We absolutely need a Bible of Science, stating exactly what scientific beliefs the people are to accept.”