“With great respect.”
“Yes? That is cold praise, but, I dare say, they don’t deserve much more. Yet, there was a time when I worshiped dynamite as I do frankness...this scar on my brow is the result of my youthful enthusiasm. Since then I have made great strides in chemistry—and other things—and this has cooled my zeal. The drawback of every explosive, beginning with powder, is that the explosion is confined to a limited space and strikes only the things near at hand: it might do for war, of course, but it is quite inadequate where bigger things are concerned. Besides, being a thing of material limitations, dynamite or powder demands a constantly guiding hand: in itself, it is dumb, blind and deaf, like a mole. To be sure, in Whitehead’s mine we find an attempt to create consciousness, giving the shell the power to correct, so to speak, certain mistakes and to maintain a certain aim, but that is only a pitiful parody on eyesight....”
“And you want your ‘dynamite’ to have consciousness, will and eyes?”
“You are right. That is what I want. And my new dynamite does have these attributes: will, consciousness, eyes.”
“And what is your aim? But this sounds...terrible.”
Magnus smiled faintly.
“Terrible? I fear your terror will turn to laughter when I give you the name of my dynamite. It is man. Have you never looked at man from this point of view, Wondergood?”
“I confess,—no. Does dynamite, too, belong to the domain of psychology? This is all very ridiculous.”
“Chemistry, psychology!” cried Magnus, angrily: “that is all because knowledge has been subdivided into so many different subjects, just as a hand with ten fingers is now a rarity. You and your Toppi—all of us are explosive shells, some loaded and ready, others still to be loaded. And the crux of the matter lies, you understand, in how to load the shell and, what is still more important: how to explode it. You know, of course, that the method of exploding various preparations depends upon their respective compositions?”
I am not going to repeat here the lecture on explosives given me by Magnus with great zeal and enthusiasm: it was the first time I had seen him in such a state of excitement. Despite the absorbing interest of the subject, as my friends the journalists would say, I heard only half the things he was saying and concentrated most of my attention on his skull, the skull which contained such wide and dangerous knowledge. Whether it was due to the conviction carried in Magnus’ words, or to pure weariness—I know not which—this round skull, blazing with the flames of his eyes, gradually assumed the character of a real, explosive shell, of a bomb, with the fuse lit for action.... I trembled when Magnus carelessly threw upon the table a heavy object resembling a cake of grayish-yellow soap, and exclaimed involuntarily: