Concealed electric lights shed their radiance upon fern, flower, and sparkling water, and both men felt that here was a place for confidences and a fit spot in which matters of import might be unfolded.
Both men were smoking, and in the still warm air, the delicate grey spirals from the thick Turkish cigarettes rose with a fantastic grace of curve that only the pencil of a Flaxman could have given its true value.
"I am all attention, Sir William," Megbie said.
"Well, then, I will put the thing to you in a nutshell, and as simply as possible. When you come to the demonstration at my house in a few days' time, you will be able to gather all the details and have them explained to you. I am going to give you a simple broad statement here and now. For years I have been investigating the nature of thought. I have been seeking to discover what thought really is, how it takes place, what is its mechanical as well as its psychical value. Now, I claim that I have discovered the active principle of thought. I have discovered how to measure it, how to harness it, so to speak; how to use it, in fact, just as other investigators in the past have harnessed and utilized electricity!"
Megbie started. "I think I see," he said hurriedly. "I think I see something—but go on, Sir William, go on!"
Gouldesbrough smiled, pleased with the agitation the man who sat by him showed so plainly.
He went on—"Hitherto that which observes—I mean the power of thought, has never been able, strictly speaking, to observe itself. It can never look on at itself from the outside, or view itself as one of the multitude of things that come under its review. It is itself the origin of vision, and the eye cannot see its own power of seeing. I have altered all this. Thought is a fluid just as electricity is, or one may say that it is a peculiar form of motion just as light is. The brain is the machine that creates the motion. I have discovered that the brain gives off definite rays or vibrations which rise from it as steam rises from a boiling pot. That is the reason why one brain can act upon another, can influence another. It explains personal magnetism, hypnotism and so on. What I have done is this: I have perfected a means by which these rays can be collected and controlled. I can place an apparatus upon your head which will collect the thought vibrations as you think and produce them."
"And then, Sir William?"
"Then I can conduct those rays along a wire for any distance in the form of an electric current. Finally, by means of a series of sensitive instruments which I will show you at the forthcoming demonstration, I can transmute these vibrations into actual pictures or words, and throw them upon a screen for all the world to see. That is to say, in actual words, whatever any one is thinking is reproduced exactly as he thinks it, without his having any power to prevent it. Thought, which had hitherto been locked up in the brain of the thinker and only reaches us through his words with whatever modification he likes to make, will now be absolutely naked and bare."
There was a silence of a minute or two as Sir William stopped speaking.