CHAPTER 9“Is it not just possible that there is a mode of being as much transcending Intelligence and Will as these transcend mechanical motion?”
—HERBERT SPENCER, First Principles
The two men left the rail and walked arm in arm along the deserted deck, speaking in lowered voices.
“He came first to us, brought by the keeper of an obscure hotel where he was staying, as a case of lapse of memory—loss of memory, I should say, for it was complete. He was unable to say who he was, whence he came, or to whom he belonged. of his land or people we could learn nothing. His antecedents were an utter blank. Speech he had practically none of his own—nothing but the merest smattering of many tongues, a word here, a word there. Utterance, indeed, of any kind was exceedingly difficult to him. For year
