find it developed in all of you to the same point which it has
reached in me, for I suppose that the strength of our different
mental processes bears some proportion to each other.
But no doubt it is appreciable even in our young friend here.
After the little outburst of high spirits which so alarmed my
domestic I sat down and reasoned with myself.  I put it to myself
that I had never before felt impelled to bite any of my
household.  The impulse had then been an abnormal one.  In an
instant I perceived the truth.  My pulse upon examination was ten
beats above the usual, and my reflexes were increased.  I called
upon my higher and saner self, the real G. E. C., seated serene
and impregnable behind all mere molecular disturbance.  I
summoned him, I say, to watch the foolish mental tricks
which the poison would play.  I found that I was indeed the
master.  I could recognize and control a disordered mind.  It was
a remarkable exhibition of the victory of mind over matter, for
it was a victory over that particular form of matter which is
most intimately connected with mind.  I might almost say that
mind was at fault and that personality controlled it.  Thus, when
my wife came downstairs and I was impelled to slip behind the
door and alarm her by some wild cry as she entered, I was able
to stifle the impulse and to greet her with dignity and
restraint.  An overpowering desire to quack like a duck was met
and mastered in the same fashion.

Later, when I descended to order the car and found Austin
bending over it absorbed in repairs, I controlled my open hand
even after I had lifted it and refrained from giving him an
experience which would possibly have caused him to follow in the
steps of the housekeeper.  On the contrary, I touched him on the
shoulder and ordered the car to be at the door in time to meet
your train.  At the present instant I am most forcibly tempted to
take Professor Summerlee by that silly old beard of his and to
shake his head violently backwards and forwards.  And yet, as you
see, I am perfectly restrained.  Let me commend my example to you."

"I'll look out for that buffalo," said Lord John.

"And I for the football match."
"It may be that you are right, Challenger," said Summerlee in a
chastened voice.  "I am willing to admit that my turn of mind is
critical rather than constructive and that I am not a ready
convert to any new theory, especially when it happens to be so
unusual and fantastic as this one.  However, as I cast my mind
back over the events of the morning, and as I reconsider the
fatuous conduct of my companions, I find it easy to believe that
some poison of an exciting kind was responsible for their symptoms."

Challenger slapped his colleague good-humouredly upon the
shoulder.  "We progress," said he.  "Decidedly we progress."

"And pray, sir," asked Summerlee humbly, "what is your opinion
as to the present outlook?"

"With your permission I will say a few words upon that subject."
He seated himself upon his desk, his short, stumpy legs swinging
in front of him.  "We are assisting at a tremendous and awful
function.  It is, in my opinion, the end of the world."

The end of the world!  Our eyes turned to the great bow-window
and we looked out at the summer beauty of the country-side, the
long slopes of heather, the great country-houses, the cozy
farms, the pleasure-seekers upon the links.

The end of the world!  One had often heard the words, but the
idea that they could ever have an immediate practical
significance, that it should not be at some vague date, but now,
to-day, that was a tremendous, a staggering thought.  We were all
struck solemn and waited in silence for Challenger to continue.
His overpowering presence and appearance lent such force to the
solemnity of his words that for a moment all the crudities and
absurdities of the man vanished, and he loomed before us as
something majestic and beyond the range of ordinary humanity.
Then to me, at least, there came back the cheering recollection
of how twice since we had entered the room he had roared with
laughter.  Surely, I thought, there are limits to mental
detachment.  The crisis cannot be so great or so pressing after all.

`You will conceive a bunch of grapes," said he, "which are
covered by some infinitesimal but noxious bacillus.  The gardener
passes it through a disinfecting medium.  It may be that he
desires his grapes to be cleaner.  It may be that he needs space
to breed some fresh bacillus less noxious than the last.  He dips
it into the poison and they are gone.  Our Gardener is, in my
opinion, about to dip the solar system, and the human bacillus,
the little mortal vibrio which twisted and wriggled upon the
outer rind of the earth, will in an instant be sterilized out of
existence."

Again there was silence.  It was broken by the high trill of the
telephone-bell.

"There is one of our bacilli squeaking for help," said he with
a grim smile.  "They are beginning to realize that their continued
existence is not really one of the necessities of the universe."

He was gone from the room for a minute or two.  I remember that
none of us spoke in his absence.  The situation seemed beyond all
words or comments.