The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ideal, by Stanley Grauman Weinbaum

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Title: The Ideal

Author: Stanley Grauman Weinbaum

Release Date: October 5, 2007 [EBook #22897]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from _A Martian Odyssey and Others_
published in 1949. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence
that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor
spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.

THE IDEAL

_"This," said the Franciscan, "is my Automaton, who at the proper time
will speak, answer whatsoever question I may ask, and reveal all secret
knowledge to me." He smiled as he laid his hand affectionately on the
iron skull that topped the pedestal._

_The youth gazed open-mouthed, first at the head and then at the Friar.
"But it's iron!" he whispered. "The head is iron, good father."_

_"Iron without, skill within, my son," said Roger Bacon. "It will speak,
at the proper time and in its own manner, for so have I made it. A
clever man can twist the devil's arts to God's ends, thereby cheating
the fiend--Sst! There sounds vespers!_ Plena gratia, ave Virgo--"

_But it did not speak. Long hours, long weeks, the_ doctor mirabilis
_watched his creation, but iron lips were silent and the iron eyes dull,
and no voice but the great man's own sounded in his monkish cell, nor
was there ever an answer to all the questions that he asked--until one
day when he sat surveying his work, composing a letter to Duns Scotus in
distant Cologne--one day--_

_"Time is!" said the image, and smiled benignly._

_The Friar looked up. "Time is, indeed," he echoed. "Time it is that you
give utterance, and to some assertion less obvious than that time is.
For of course time is, else there were nothing at all. Without time--"_

_"Time was!" rumbled the image, still smiling, but sternly at the statue
of Draco._

_"Indeed time was," said the Monk. "Time was, is, and wil