brains to
solve it; small blame to him for that, since philosophers have cursed
each other black in the face over it for the last five thousand years.
But it worried him. The strange and sinister detail of the world, that
had always been a horror to his mind, became more horrible beneath the
stimulus of futile thought. But whisky was the mighty cure. He was the
gentleman who gained notoriety on a memorable occasion by exclaiming,
"Metaphysics be damned; let us drink!" Omar and other bards have
expressed the same conclusion in more dulcet wise. But Gourlay's was
equally sincere. How sincere is another question.

Curiously, an utterance of "Auld Tam," one of his professors, half
confirmed him in his evil ways.

"I am speaking now," said Tam, "of the comfort of a true philosophy,
less of its higher aspect than its comfort to the mind of man.
Physically, each man is highest on the globe; intellectually, the
philosopher alone dominates the world. To him are only two entities that
matter--himself and the Eternal; or, if another, it is his fellow-man,
whom serving he serves the ultimate of being. But he is master of the
outer world. The mind, indeed, in its first blank outlook on life is
terrified by the demoniac force of nature and the swarming misery of
man; by the vast totality of things, the cold remoteness of the starry
heavens, and the threat of the devouring seas. It is puny in their
midst."

Gourlay woke up, and the sweat broke on him. Great Heaven, had Tam been
through it too!

"At that stage," quoth the wise man, "the mind is dispersed in a
thousand perceptions and a thousand fears; there is no central greatness
in the soul. It is assailed by terrors which men sunk in the material
never seem to feel. Phenomena, uninformed by thought, bewilder and
depress."

"Just like me!" thought Gourlay, and listened with a thrilling interest
because it was "just like him."

"But the labyrinth," said Tam, with a ring in his voice as of one who
knew--"the labyrinth cannot appal the man who has found a clue to its
windings. A mind that has attained to thought lives in itself, and the
world becomes its slave. Its formerly distracted powers rally home; it
is central, possessing, not possessed. The world no longer frightens,
being understood. Its sinister features are accidents that will pass
away, and they gradually cease to be observed. For real thinkers know
the value of a wise indifference. And that is why they are often th