Alwyn made no answer.
"Tell me," pursued Heliobas, "how do you define the vital principle? What mysterious agency sets the heart beating and the blood flowing? By the small porter's lantern of to-day's so-called Science, will you fling a light on the dark riddle of an apparently purposeless Universe, and explain to me why we live at all?"
"Evolution," responded Alwyn shortly, "and Necessity."
"Evolution from what?" persisted Heliobas. "From one atom? WHAT atom?
And FROM WHENCE came the atom? And why the NECESSITY of any atom?"
"The human brain reels at such questions!" said Alwyn, vexedly and with impatience. "I cannot answer them—no one can!"
"No one?" Heliobas smiled very tranquilly. "Do not be too sure of that! And why should the human brain 'reel'?—the sagacious, calculating, clear human brain that never gets tired, or puzzled, or perplexed!—that settles everything in the most practical and common-sense manner, and disposes of God altogether as an extraneous sort of bargain not wanted in the general economy of our little solar system! Aye, the human brain is a wonderful thing!—and yet by a sharp, well-directed knock with this"—and he took up from the table a paper-knife with a massive, silver-mounted, weighty horn-handle—"I could deaden it in such wise that the SOUL could no more hold any communication with it, and it would lie an inert mass in the cranium, of no more use to its owner than a paralyzed limb."
"You mean to infer that the brain cannot act without the influence of the soul?"
"Precisely! If the hands on the telegraph dial will not respond to the electric battery, the telegram cannot be deciphered. But it would be foolish to deny the existence of the electric battery because the dial is unsatisfactory! In like manner, when, by physical incapacity, or inherited disease, the brain can no longer receive the impressions or electric messages of the Spirit, it is practically useless. Yet the Spirit is there all the same, dumbly waiting for release and another chance of expansion."
"Is this the way you account for idiocy and mania?" asked Alwyn incredulously.
"Most certainly; idiocy and mania always come from man's interference with the laws of health and of nature—never otherwise. The Soul placed within us by the Creator is meant to be fostered by man's unfettered Will; if man chooses to employ that unfettered Will in wrong directions, he has only himself to blame for the disastrous results that follow. You may perhaps ask why God has thus left our wills unfettered: the answer is simple—that we may serve Him by CHOICE and not by COMPULSION. Among the myriad million worlds that acknowledge His goodness gladly and undoubtingly, why should He seek to force unwilling obedience from us castaways!"