Griffiths A Mayfair Magician

1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-83-8162-330-8
Verlag: Ktoczyta.pl
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 267 Seiten

George Griffiths is popular with science and science fiction novels. The desire of every person is to have the power to read minds. George Griffiths decided to make it into reality. A Mayfair Magician is a science fiction novel about a device that allows you to read minds.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Griffiths, George

Leseproben

CHAPTER II That evening over their coffee and cigars after dinner Sir Godfrey and Harold were discussing the important events of the day, and when Sir Godfrey had, for the third or fourth time, expressed his opinion of his great good luck in winning such a lovely girl for his wife, and–which he seemed to think quite as important–making such a close alliance with so distinguished a scholar as Dr Jenner Halkine, Harold, who had not spoken for several minutes, rose from his chair and began to walk up and down the room. “Dad,” he said a trifle nervously, “I scarcely know how to put the thing even to you under the circumstances, especially as you and the professor are such great friends, but–well, to be quite frank–there’s something about Dr Halkine that I can’t understand and therefore, because of that, I suppose I don’t like him.” “That, my dear boy,” interrupted Sir Godfrey, “is one of the most natural things in the world. We most of us dislike what we don’t or can’t understand. It is, if I may say so without offence, one of the commonest infirmities in the human mind. A history of that particular phase of human character would also be a history of religious persecution as well as of the almost universal opposition to every new discovery and invention, until its truth and utility have been proved beyond the possibility of doubt,” “Yes, I quite see what you mean,” laughed Harold. And then he went on much more seriously, “I know, of course, that I stand on a very different mental plane to yourself and Dr Halkine. You are both miles above me in intellect and attainments, but this is more of a moral than an intellectual matter.” “My dear Harold, what do you mean?” exclaimed Sir Godfrey, looking up at him in sudden surprise. “It’s rather hard to explain,” he replied, “and perhaps the easiest way to do it is this. The other day I went to have a talk with him, a straight one, as I had right to have, about the ancestry and so on of the girl I had made up my mind to marry if I could. I hadn’t got the first two sentences out before those infernal eyes of his were looking right through the back of my head, and the whole course of my thoughts and intentions changed in a moment, and–well, we talked about something else that I didn’t really care a rap about.” “And yet,” replied Sir Godfrey, with a gentle smile, “if I mistake not, Miss Grace herself has eyes very like her uncle’s, and because you have got her you think yourself the most fortunate fellow alive. Rather a curious position, isn’t it?” “Yes, dad,” he laughed, with a sudden change of manner, “I suppose I am really the luckiest fellow on earth just now. There never was such a girl–” “No, no, of course not,” said Sir Godfrey. “There never is. Every man who is really and honestly in love with the girl he wants to marry thinks that, Harold, and if he didn’t he would not be genuinely in love with her, I suppose. Well, go on. What were you going to say?” “Naturally,” he laughed again, “it must be so, but there is one thing I have been wanting to ask you lots of times since Dr Halkinecame–I mean since we got to know him and Grace pretty intimately. Have you ever noticed anything peculiar about his eyes?” “What on earth do you mean, Harold?” exclaimed Sir Godfrey. “Certainly they are very wonderful eyes; I think the most beautiful pair of eyes I have ever seen in a man’s head: but why should you trouble about that? Evidently his sister had the same and Miss Romanes has inherited them from her, and I presume that in your estimation no girl ever had such eyes as Miss Romanes.” “Of course, dad, of course. Why, when you look into them your whole soul seems to–No, I am not going to deviate into sentiment or what, I suppose, you would call lover’s nonsense. I am asking about the doctor’s eyes. I want to ask you whether, when he has been looking at you, you have ever felt an inclination to do the thing that you don’t want to do; even to do something that you didn’t feel at the moment to be quite right.” “My dear Harold,” replied Sir Godfrey, seriously, “that is really a very grave question to put, because it involves one of the most intricate problems of psychology. I mean, of course, the possible influence of one mind over another convened through the medium of the optic nerve from the brain, the optic nerve being, as you know, the sole communication existing between the eye and the brain with the exception of those governing muscles which move the eyes. In common speech that is called hypnotism which, to those who have studied the subject at all deeply, means either anything or nothing– anything to the vulgar, nothing to the learned. I may say that our own researches, Halkine’s and mine, have gone a good deal deeper than that. “In short,” he went on with a note of something like exultation in his voice, “I think I am in a position to say that we have arrived almost at the threshold of the greatest discovery in psychology that has ever been made. A most marvellous discovery, my dear Harold; one which might possibly result in the creation of a power which, in hands capable of using it wisely and well, might possibly solve all the problems which now perplex humanity– problems social, political, moral, all these might–no, I hardly dare trust myself to say what might not be accomplished through the exercise of such a power once under due control.” “Yes,” said Harold, leaning forward over the back of his chair, “that is just the answer or something like it to the question that I asked you. You say that this power, whatever it is–and I suppose it really means a sort of reading the thoughts of others and turning them into the direction willed by the reader–means in plain English just this–that the person who really could do that could also command the thoughts of those whom he or she could get into sufficiently close communication.” “Really, Harold,” said Sir Godfrey, after a long pull at his cigar, “I must congratulate you upon a very fairly succinct definition of the new power which, according to Halkine’s researches and mine, may at any time be called into being. That is exactly what would happen, provided always a complete knowledge of the lines upon which the average mind of mankind works. We have been working very hard at it, but it is, as you can imagine, a problem full of intricacies, only a few of which have so far been unravelled even by the greatest of mental scientists. “Of course you know that hitherto, among all the thousands of millions of human beings that have been born into this world, everyone, male or female, has been an impenetrable mystery to every other. No matter how intimate their social or friendly relations may have been, still the mystery remains. As Halkine was saying to me only last night after we had been at work for some hours on the subject, every human being resembles a triple-walled fortress. Those other human beings whom he meets casually in the world are those who only knock at the doors of the outer walls, and sometimes they are opened to them. His intimate acquaintances are allowed to pass the first door, but the second remains for ever shut to them. Through that only his friends, one or two, perhaps, in a whole lifetime, are permitted to pass. But in the third wall there is no door. Within that central citadel the man is for ever alone with himself. It is the eternally inviolate abode of the human soul–the naked soul–that which no eyes of friend or wife or child or lover have ever looked upon; the mystery of mysteries, the problem of which every human being is the insoluble incarnation. “That is as it has ever been,” he went on, rising from his chair and beginning to walk up and down the other side of the room. “For this reason men, yes, and women too, have failed in accomplishing their highest ideals of conquest and empire. But for that Alexander would never have sighed for other worlds to conquer. Caesar would never have fallen under his friend’s dagger at the foot of the throne of the world, and Napoleon would have died Emperor of the Earth instead of a prisoner at Saint Helena. You have asked me what I think of Professor Halkine’s eyes? I tell you now, Harold, of course in the strictest confidence, that the day may come, not very far hence perhaps, when those eyes may be able to see through that inner wall which no mortal sight has yet penetrated, and then–” “And then, or rather, before then,” said Harold, straightening up and thrusting his hands into his jacket pockets, “with all due deference to you, dad, and in spite of the fact that he is Grace’s uncle, I think he ought to be shot in the best interests of humanity. I quite see what you mean, but I don’t believe the time has come yet for any man to wield such a tremendous power as that would be. Fancy a man who could see another man’s soul as naked as he could see his body! No, I don’t think that ever ought to be.” “I quite see what you mean,” replied Sir Godfrey, quietly. ldquo;It is only natural for you to think that way since you have not studied the subject, but still, I may remind you, as I said just now, that Miss Grace’s eyes are very like her uncle’s. What if they could see, for instance, into your soul, through that third wall of the inmost...