tanford University, a private benefaction of the
times.

"Pish!" Dr. Hammerfield sneered. "You have not taken Bishop Berkeley*
into account. He has never been answered."

* An idealistic monist who long puzzled the philosophers of
that time with his denial of the existence of matter, but
whose clever argument was finally demolished when the new
empiric facts of science were philosophically generalized.

"The noblest metaphysician of them all," Ernest laughed. "But your
example is unfortunate. As Berkeley himself attested, his metaphysics
didn't work."

Dr. Hammerfield was angry, righteously angry. It was as though he had
caught Ernest in a theft or a lie.

"Young man," he trumpeted, "that statement is on a par with all you have
uttered to-night. It is a base and unwarranted assumption."

"I am quite crushed," Ernest murmured meekly. "Only I don't know what
hit me. You'll have to put it in my hand, Doctor."

"I will, I will," Dr. Hammerfield spluttered. "How do you know? You
do not know that Bishop Berkeley attested that his metaphysics did not
work. You have no proof. Young man, they have always worked."

"I take it as proof that Berkeley's metaphysics did not work, because--"
Ernest paused calmly for a moment. "Because Berkeley made an invariable
practice of going through doors instead of walls. Because he trusted his
life to solid bread and butter and roast beef. Because he shaved himself
with a razor that worked when it removed the hair from his face."

"But those are actual things!" Dr. Hammerfield cried. "Metaphysics is of
the mind."

"And they work--in the mind?" Ernest queried softly.

The other nodded.

"And even a multitude of angels can dance on the point of a needle--in
the mind," Ernest went on reflectively. "And a blubber-eating, fur-clad
god can exist and work--in the mind; and there are no proofs to the
contrary--in the mind. I suppose, Doctor, you live in the mind?"

"My mind to me a kingdom is," was the answer.

"That's another way of saying that you live up in the air. But you come
back to earth at meal-time, I am sure, or when an earthquake happens
along. Or, tell me, Doctor, do you have no apprehension in an earthquake
that that incorporeal body of yours will be hit by an immaterial brick?"

Instantly, and quite unconsciously, Dr. Hammerfield's hand shot up to
his head, where a scar disappeared under the hair. It happened that
Ernest had blundered on an appo