“Is a Central Universe”—responded Kremlin—“where God abides.”
El-Râmi looked at him with dark, dilating, burning eyes.
“Suppose,” he said suddenly—“suppose—for the sake of argument—that this Central Universe, you imagine exists, were but the outer covering or shell of another Central Universe, and so on through innumerable Central Universes for ever and ever and ever, and no point or pivot reachable!”
Kremlin uttered a cry, and clasped his hands with a gesture of terror.
“Stop—stop!” he gasped—“Such an idea is frightful!—horrible! Would you drive me mad?—mad, I tell you? No human brain could steadily contemplate the thought of such pitiless infinity!”
He sank back on the seat and rocked himself to and fro like a person in physical pain, the while he stared at El-Râmi’s majestic figure and dark meditative face as though he saw some demon in a dream. El-Râmi met his gaze with a compassionate glance in his own eyes.
“You are narrow, my friend,”—he observed—“as narrow of outward and onward conception as most scientists are. I grant you the human brain has limits; but the human Soul has none! There is no ‘pitiless infinity’ to the Soul’s aspirations,—it is never contented,—but eternally ambitious, eternally inquiring, eternally young, it is ready to scale heights and depths without end, unconscious of fatigue or satiety. What of a million million Universes? I—even I—can contemplate them without dismay,—the brain may totter and reel at the multiplicity of them,—but the Soul would absorb them all and yet seek space for more!”
His rich, deep, tranquil voice had the effect of calming Kremlin’s excited nerves. He paused in his uneasy rocking to and fro, and listened as though he heard music.
“You are a bold man, El-Râmi,” he said slowly—“I have always said it,—bold even to rashness. Yet with all your large ideas I find you inconsistent; for example, you talk of the Soul now, as if you believed in it,—but there are times when you declare yourself doubtful of its existence.”
“It is necessary to split hairs of argument with you, I see”—returned El-Râmi with a slight smile,—“Can you not understand that I may believe in the Soul without being sure of it? It is the natural instinct of every man to credit himself with immortality, because this life is so short and unsatisfactory,—the notion may be a fault of heritage perhaps, still it is implanted in us all the same. And I do believe in the Soul,—but I require certainty to make my mere belief an undeniable fact. And the whole business of my life is to establish that fact provably, and beyond any sort of doubt whatever,—what inconsistency do you find there?”