II
THE PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY
And now to start in on another angle. There is hardly any necessity forintroducing Dr. Holcomb. All of us, at least, those who read, and, mostof all, those of us who are interested in any manner of speculation,knew him quite well. He was the professor of philosophy at theUniversity of California: a great man and a good one, one of those fineacademic souls who, not only by their wisdom, but by their character,have a way of stamping themselves upon generations; a speaker of theupstanding class, walking on his own feet and utterly fearless when itcame to dashing out on some startling philosophy that had not been borneup by his forebears.
He was original. He believed that the philosophies of the ages are butstepping stones, that the wisdom of the earth looked but to the future,and that the study of the classics, however essential, is but the groundwork for combining and working out the problems of the future. He wasepigrammatic, terse, and gifted with a quaint humour, with which hewas apt, even when in the driest philosophy, to drive in and clinch hisargument.
Best of all, he was able to clothe the most abstract thoughts inlanguage so simple and concrete that he brought the deepest of allsubjects down to the scope of the commonest thinker. It is needlessto say that he was 'copy.' The papers about the bay were ever and anonrunning some startling story of the professor.
Had they stuck to the text it would all have been well; but a reporteris a reporter; in spite of the editors there were numerous littleelaborations to pervert the context. A great man must be careful of hisspeech. Dr. Holcomb was often busy refuting; he could not understand theneed of these little twistings of wisdom. It kept him in controversy;the brothers of his profession often took him to task for these littledistorted scraps of philosophy. He did not like journalism. He had a wayof consigning all writers and editors to the devil.
Which was vastly amusing to the reporters. Once they had him going theypoised their pens in glee and began splashing their venomous ink. It wastragic; the great professor standing at bay to his tormentors. One andall they loved him and one and all they took delight in his torture. Itwas a hard task for a reporter to get in at a lecture; and yet it wasoften the lot of the professor to find himself and his words featured inhis breakfast paper.
On the very day before this the doctor had come out with one of histerse startling statements. He had a way of inserting parentheticallysome of his scraps of wisdom. It was in an Ethics class. We quote hiswords as near as possible:
"Man, let me tell you, is egotistic. All our philosophy is based on ego.We live threescore years and we balance it with all eternity. We are it.Did you ever stop and think of eternity? It is a rather long time.What right have we to say that life, which we assume to be everlasting,immediately becomes restrospect once it passes out of the consciousindividuality which is allotted upon this earth? The trouble isourselves. We are five-sensed. We weigh everything! We so measureeternity. Until we step out into other senses, which undoubtedly exist,we shall never arrive at the conception of infinity. Now I am going tomake a rather startling announcement.
"The past few years have promised a culmination which has been guessedat and yearned for since the beginning of time. It is within, and stillwithout, the scope of metaphysics. Those of you who have attended mylectures have heard me call myself the material idealist. I am amystic sensationalist. I believe that we can derive nothing from purecontemplation. There is mystery and wonder in the veil of theoccult. The earth, our life, is merely a vestibule of the universe.Contemplation alone will hold us all as inapt and as impotent as theold Monks of Athos. We have mountains of literature behind us, allcontemplative, and whatever its wisdom, it has given us not one thingoutside the abstract. From Plato down to the present our philosophyhas given us not one tangible proof, not one concrete fact which we canplace our hands on. We are virtually where we were originally; and wecan talk, talk, talk from now until the clap of doomsday.
"What then?
"My friends, philosophy must take a step sidewise. In this modern ageyoung science, practical science, has grown up and far surpassed us. Wemust go back to the beginning, forget our subjective musings and enterthe concrete. We are five-sensed, and in the nature of things we mustbring the proof down into the concrete where we can understand it. Canwe pierce the nebulous screen that shuts us out of the occult? We havedoubted, laughed at ourselves and been laughed at; but the fact remainsthat always we have persisted in the believing.
"I have said that we shall never, never understand infinity while withinthe limitations of our five senses. I repeat it. But that does not implythat we shall never solve some of the mystery of life. The occult is notonly a supposition, but a fact. We have peopled it with terror, because,like our forebears before Columbus, we have peopled it with imagination.
"And now to my statement.
"I have called myself the Material Idealist. I have adopted an entirelynew trend of philosophy. During the past years, unknown to you andunknown to my friends, I have allied myself with practical science. Idesired something concrete. While my colleagues and others were poundingout tomes of wonderful sophistry I have been pounding away at the screenof the occult. This is a proud moment. I have succeeded. Tomorrow Ishall bring to you the fact and the substance. I have lifted up thecurtain and flooded it with the light of day. You shall have the factfor your senses. Tomorrow I shall explain it all. I shall deliver mygreatest lecture; in which my whole Me has come to a focus. It is notspiritualism nor sophistry. It is concrete fact and common sense. Thesubject of my lecture tomorrow will be: 'The Blind Spot.'"
Here begins the second part of the mystery.
We know now that the great lecture was never delivered. Immediately thenews was scattered out of the class-room. It became common property.It was spread over the country and was featured in all the greatmetropolitan dailies. In the lecture-room next morning seats were at apremium; students, professors, instructors and all the prominent peoplewho could gain admission crowded into the hall; even the irrepressiblereporters had stolen in to take down the greatest scoop of the century.The place was jammed until even standing room was unthought of. Thecrowd, dense and packed and physically uncomfortable, waited.
The minutes dragged by. It was a long, long wait. But at last the bellrang that ticked the hour. Every one was expectant. And then fifteenminutes passed by, twenty--the crowd settled down to waiting. At lengthone of the colleagues stepped into the doctor's office and telephoned tohis home. His daughter answered.
"Father? Why he left over two hours ago."
"About what time?"
"Why, it was about seven-thirty. You know he was to deliver his lecturetoday on the Blind Spot. I wanted to hear it, but he told me I couldhave it at home. He said he was to have a wonderful guest and I mustmake ready to receive him. Isn't father there?"
"Not yet. Who was this guest? Did he say?"
"Oh yes! In a way. A most wonderful man. And he gave him a wonderfulname, Rhamda Avec. I remember because it is so funny. I asked father ifhe was Sanskrit; and he said he was much older than that. Just imagine!"
"Did your father have his lecture with him?"
"Oh, yes. He glanced over it at breakfast. He told me he was going tostartle the world as it had never been since the day of Columbus."
"Indeed."
"Yes. And he was terribly impatient. He said he had to be at the collegebefore eight to receive the great man. He was to deliver his lecture atten. And afterward he would have lunch at noon and he would give me thewhole story. I'm all impatience."
"Thank you."
Then he came back and made the announcement that there was a littledelay; but that Dr. Holcomb would be there shortly. But he was not. Attwelve o'clock there were still some people waiting. At one o'clock thelast man had slipped out of the room--and wondered. In all the countrythere was but one person who knew. That one was an obscure man who hadyielded to a detective's intuition and had fallen inadvertently upon oneof the greatest mysteries of modern times.