in the larger one
the professor's technical assistant, Carter, puttered over some device,
and in the far corner his secretary, the plain and unattractive Miss
Fitch, transcribed lecture notes, for van Manderpootz abhorred the
thought that his golden utterances might be lost to posterity. On the
table between the professor and myself lay a curious device, something
that looked like a cross between a pair of nose-glasses and a miner's
lamp.

"There it is," said van Manderpootz proudly. "There lies my
attitudinizor, which may well become an epoch-making device."

"How? What does it do?"

"I will explain. The germ of the idea traces back to that remark of
yours about everything depending on the point of view. A very obvious
statement, of course, but genius seizes on the obvious and draws from it
the obscure. Thus the thoughts of even the simplest mind can suggest to
the man of genius his sublime conceptions, as is evident from the fact
that I got this idea from you."

"What idea?"

"Be patient. There is much you must understand first. You must realize
just how true is the statement that everything depends on the point of
view. Einstein proved that motion, space, and time depend on the
particular point of view of the observer, or as he expressed it, on the
scale of reference used. I go farther than that, infinitely farther. I
propound the theory that the observer _is_ the point of view. I go even
beyond that, I maintain that the world itself is merely the point of
view!"

"Huh?"

"Look here," proceeded van Manderpootz. "It is obvious that the world I
see is entirely different from the one in which you live. It is equally
obvious that a strictly religious man occupies a different world than
that of a materialist. The fortunate man lives in a happy world; the
unfortunate man sees a world of misery. One man is happy with little,
another is miserable with much. Each sees the world from his own point
of view, which is the same as saying that each lives in his own world.
Therefore there are as many worlds as there are points of view."

"But," I objected, "that theory is to disregard reality. Out of all the
different points of view, there must be one that is right, and all the
rest are wrong."

"One would think so," agreed the professor. "One would think that
between the point of view of you, for instance, as contrasted with that
of, say van Manderpootz, there would be small doubt as to which was
correct. However, earl