He broke some raw eggs in a glass, in some sherry, and placed it by my side, and I saw him bend the lever much farther.
“Perhaps,” I spoke out, then, “you can create the emotion, or the mental existence—whatever you call it—of God himself.” I spoke with scorn, for my mind was clearer than ever.
“I can—almost,” he muttered. “Just now I have turned the rhythm to the thought millions, which lie above what you call evil passions, between them and what you call the good ones. It is all a mere question of degree. In the eye of science all are the same; morally, one is alike so good as the other. Only motion—that is life; and slower, slower, that is nearer death; and life is good, and death is evil.”
“But I can have these thoughts without your machinery,” said I.
“Yes,” said he, “and I can cause them with it; that proves they are mechanical. Now, the rhythm is on the intellectual-process movement; hence you argue.”
Millions of thoughts, fancies, inspirations, flashed through my brain as he left me to busy himself with other levers. How long this time lasted I again knew not; but it seemed that I passed through all the experience of human life. Then suddenly my thinking ceased, and I became conscious only of a bad odor by my side. This was followed in a moment by an intense scarlet light.
“Just so,” he said, as if he had noted my expression; “it is the eggs in your glass, they altered when we passed through the chemical rays; they will now be rotten.” And he took the glass and threw it out the window. “It was altered as we passed through the spectrum by no other process than the brain thinks.”
He had darkened the room, but the light changed from red through orange, yellow, green, blue, violet; then, after a moment’s darkness, it began again, more glorious than before. White, white it was now, most glorious; it flooded the old warehouse, and the shadows rolled from the dark places in my soul. And close on the light followed Hope again; hope of life, of myself, of the world, of Althea.
“Hope—it is the first of the motions you call virtuous,” came his sibilant voice, but I heeded him not. For even as he spoke my soul was lifted unto Faith, and I knew that this man lied.
“I can do but one thing more,” said he, “and that is—Love.”