living creature. This much is plain, and
of course presents no new thought to you."

"True, but I suppose you are leading to something else?"

"Yes! The introduction is necessary. Given then these two divisions of
human life, and, I submit it to you, is it not curious that the
physical has received a hundred times as much study as has the
psychical? With myself it has been different. I have studied both
together, because I have ever found them together. I argued that I
could never fully comprehend the one, without an equal knowledge of
the other. So I know as much about the psychical side of life as I do
of the physical."

"Then you must know a great deal!"

"I do! In the beginning of my career I grasped one truth, which seems
to have escaped the majority. The secrets of Nature are simple. We do
not discover the mysteries, because we think them more mysterious than
they are. The key to the knowledge of Nature's methods is in her
analogies. All natural laws operate on parallel lines, because the aim
of all is the same; evolution towards perfection. Thus, in studying
the psychical, I had but to master the physical and then discover the
analogy which exists between the two."

"And you claim to have done this?"

"In a great measure. Leon, before he dies, will achieve more than I,
because he will begin where I shall be compelled to abandon my work.
But I have accomplished more than any other mortal man, and that is a
gratifying thought, to an egotist. There is but one phase of this
subject which I wish to submit to you. I have explained the germ
theory of disease. I will now announce to you the germ theory of
crime."

"The germ theory of crime?" asked the Judge, utterly amazed. "Do you
mean that crime is produced by bacteria? As a jurist, I certainly will
be interested in your new doctrine."

"You do not yet grasp my meaning. It is manifestly impossible that
bacteria, which are living parasites, could affect the moral side of a
man. I have said that the secret is in analogy; the two germs, the
physical and the psychical, are not identical. But I will start your
thought in the right direction, when I say that all forms of vice and
crime are diseases, as much as scarlet fever or small-pox. It is a
curious fact that many great secrets which have escaped the individual
have been recognized by the multitude. Many expressions in the
language, which are counted as metaphorical, are truly exponents of
unrecorded facts. On