"Accurately. He has read our best books."
"Has he had any intercourse with Catholics?"
"A good deal. They have not impressed him. Look at Campion now. Would any man become a Catholic with his example before him?"
"Hardly indeed, though we must speak kindly of him now, since you converted him. Had you any chat with him about his difficulties?"
"Yes, several. I walked home with him a few evenings from Campion's. You know that path over the cliff and down to the coast-guard station?"
"Well. And what is his special trouble? Does he think he has an immortal soul?"
"There you struck it. That's his trouble; and how to convince him of that beats me. I asked him again and again whether he was not self-conscious, that is, perfectly cognizant of the fact that there was a something, an Ego, outside and beyond the brain and inferior powers that commanded both? Was there not some intellectual entity that called up memory, and bade it unseal its tablets? And did he not feel and know that he could command and control the action of his brain, and even of every part of it? Now, I said, if the brain is only dumb matter, which you admit, and cannot create thought, where is this volition, or what is it? It is not cerebral, for then matter would create thought; that is, be the creator and the created at the same time."
"Well?"
"He listened attentively and then said quietly: 'Quite true. But if the Ego is different from the brain and is self-conscious, where does the self-consciousness go when the brain becomes anæmic and sleeps, or when the faculties are chloroformed?' 'Oh,' I said, 'the organ is shut down, the stops are closed.' 'Yes,' he said, 'but where goes the performer?' By Jove, I was stranded. I tell you what it is, Father Dan, though you'll call it treason, I'll pitch Æschylus to the mischief, and study what is of human and vital interest to us priests."
"That little objection needn't alarm you," I said, "you'll find the answer in every handbook of Catholic philosophy."