James flushed uncomfortably; but he had committed himself too far for further hesitation. "Might there not exist," he went on, though still nervously, "something beyond mere space and darkness?"
"Something beyond?" repeated the sage, "certainly not: that is impossible. Space and darkness, as Science and Reason conclusively prove, are the only conditions which can ever possibly exist. What phantasy is this for which you hanker? Give details."
"Well—why could there not be worlds about?" asked James, bold in very desperation.
"Foolish boy!" replied the philosopher. "Do you think I have not often thought this thing out for myself? Were I to adduce the thousand and one scientific reasons which prove the impossibility of the existence of worlds, you could not follow me. Tell me, whence would you fetch your materials with which to manufacture these worlds?"
James was silent. "How many worlds would you like to have, in your foolishness?" asked the sage.
"Well," said James, humbly, "I was thinking of two—one of them all on fire, to give light to the other; and the other for working purposes."
"'Ah, just so.' said William, witheringly."
"Ah, just so," said William, witheringly. "Of course, it has never occurred to you that the two would dash together by mutual attraction and become one? How about that?"
"Well—I would I have a whole lot of them, to keep one another in position—"
"Ah," said William, "and they would all dash together at a common centre, however many you had."
"Hum—that is a bother," said James, disappointedly; "because I was going to put all manner of things on my worlds."
"As what?" asked the philosopher, with a crushing grin.
"Well, I thought of human beings among other things—when I say human beings I mean something alive and able to move about when supported on anything solid, such as a world; and endowed with a certain amount of reason, and able to express his thoughts, and subject to emotions and proclivities—mostly evil, of course, and—"
"Well now, look here," said William magnanimously, "let us suppose that you have got over all the insurmountable obstacles in the way of keeping your human beings alive; let us wildly take it for granted that they have not been crushed between your worlds, nor by the attraction of their own—that they can move upon its surface (which of course any attraction sufficient to keep them from tumbling off would inevitably prevent their doing)—that they are not shrivelled up by the heat generated by the friction of your large mass of material pressing towards its centre, not frozen, nor otherwise instantly destroyed (which they assuredly would be); let us suppose this initial absurdity, and go ahead. What do you intend your human beings to do? By the way, I pass over the sublime humour of anything having to be supported on something solid as a necessary condition of moving about! That is a peculiar sort of motion—but let that pass. Well?"
The sage took up an easy attitude with an air of resignation, and prepared to listen.
"Before you begin," said he parenthetically, "I can tell you in a word what your beings would do first—and last. They would fight and exterminate each other, and there would be an end of them."
"No," said James, "I believe they would increase in numbers and gradually become less savage, and begin to invent things—"
"Oh, they are to invent things as well as you. And I suppose the things they invented would invent other things, and so on?"
"No, they would invent inanimate objects, such as weapons."
"Oh yes," said William hastily, "I have no doubt they would invent weapons; that would help them to exterminate each other."
