Lord Fondleton [aside to Mrs Gloring].  Who’s our black friend?

Mrs Gloring.  I am sure I don’t know.  I think Lady Fritterly called him a codger.

Lord Fondleton.  Ah, he looks like it,—and a rum one at that, as our American cousins say.

Mrs Gloring.  Hush!  Mr Germsell is going to begin.

Mr Germsell.  Mrs Allmash asked me last night whether my thoughts had been directed to the topic which is uppermost just now in so many minds in regard to the religion of the future, and I ventured to tell her that it would be found to be contained in the generalised expediency of the past.

Mr Fussle.  Pardon me, but the religion of the future must be the result of an evolutionary process, and I don’t see how generalisations of past expediency are to help the evolution of humanity.

Germsell.  They throw light upon it; and the study of the evolutionary process so far teaches us how we may evolve in the future.  For instance, you have only got to think of evolution as divided into moral, astronomic, geologic, biologic, psychologic, sociologic, æsthetic, and so forth, and you will find that there is always an evolution of the parts into which it divides itself, and that therefore there is but one evolution going on everywhere after the same manner.  The work of science has been not to extend our experience, for that is impossible, but to systematise it; and in that systematisation of it will be found the religion of which we are in search.

Drygull.  May I ask why you deem it impossible that our experience can be extended?

Germsell.  Because it has itself defined its limits.  The combined experience of humanity, so far as its earliest records go, has been limited by laws, the nature of which

have been ascertained: it is impossible that it should be transcended without violation of the conclusions arrived at by positive science.

Drygull.  I can more easily understand that the conclusions arrived at by men of science should be limited, than that the experience of humanity should be confined by those conclusions; but I fail to perceive why those philosophers should deny the existence of certain human faculties, because they don’t happen to possess them themselves.  I think I know a Rishi who can produce experiences which would scatter all their conclusions to the winds, when the whole system which is built upon them would collapse.

Mrs Gloring [aside to Lord Fondleton].  Pray, Lord Fondleton, can you tell me what a Rishi is?

Lord Fondleton.  A man who has got into higher states, you know—what I heard Mr Drygull call a transcendentalist the other day, whatever that may be.  I don’t understand much about these matters myself, but I take it he is a sort of evolved codger.

Mrs Allmash.  Oh, how awfully interesting!  Dear Mr Drygull, do tell us some of the extraordinary things the Rishi can do.

Drygull.  If you will only all of you listen attentively, and if Mr Germsell will have the goodness to modify to some degree the prejudiced attitude of mind common to all men of science, you will hear him as plainly as I can at this moment beating a tom-tom in his cottage in the Himalayas.

[Mr Germsell gets up impatiently, and walks to the other end of the back drawing-room.

Drygull [casting a compassionate glance after him].  Perhaps it is better so.  Now please, Lady Fritterly, I must request a few moments of the most profound silence on the part of all.  You will not hear the sound as though coming from a distance, but it will seem rather like a muffled drumming taking place inside your head, scarcely perceptible at first, when its volume will gradually increase.

Lord Fondleton [aside to Mrs Gloring].  Some bad champagne produced the same phenomenon in my head last night.

Lady Fritterly [severely].  Hush!  Lord Fondleton.

[There is a dead silence for some minutes.

Mrs Gloring [excitedly].  Oh, I hear it! 

It is something like a woodpecker inside of one.

Drygull.  Not a word, my dear madam, if you please.

Lady Fritterly [after a long pause].  I imagine I hear a very faint something; there it goes—boom, boom, boom—at the back of my tympanum.

Lord Fondleton.  That’s not like a woodpecker.

Mrs Gloring.  No; it seems to me more like tic-tic-tic.

Mrs Allmash.  How too tiresome!  I can’t hear anything.  I suppose it is on account of the rumble of the carriages.

Lord Fondleton [whispers to Mrs Gloring].  I hear something inside of me; do you know what?

Mrs Gloring.  No; what?

Lord Fondleton.  The beating of my own heart.  Can’t you guess for whom?

Mrs Gloring.  No.  Perhaps the Rishi makes it beat.

Lord Fondleton.  Dear Mrs Gloring, you are the Rishi for whom—

Mrs Gloring.  Hush!

Lady Fritterly.  There, it is getting louder,

like distant artillery, and yet so near.  Oh, Mr Drygull, what a wonderful man the Rishi must be!

Drygull.  Yes; he knew that at this hour to-day I should need an illustration of his power, and he is kindly furnishing us with one.  This is an experience which I think our friend over there [looking towards Mr Germsell] would find it difficult to classify.

Germsell.  Fussle, have the goodness to step here for a moment—[points to a woman beating a carpet in the back-yard of an adjoining house].  That is the tom-tom in the Himalayas they are listening to.

Fussle.  Well, now, do you know, I don’t feel quite sure of that.  I was certainly conscious of a sort of internal hearing of something when you called me, which was not that; it was as though I had fiddlestrings in my head and somebody was beginning to strum upon them.

Germsell.  Fiddlestrings indeed—say rather fiddlesticks.  I am surprised at a sensible man like yourself listening to such nonsense.

Fussle [testily].  It is much greater nonsense for you to tell me I don’t hear something I do hear, than for me to hear something you can’t

hear.  You may be deaf, while my sense of hearing may be evolving.  Can you hear what Lord Fondleton is saying to Mrs Gloring at this moment?

Germsell.  No, and I don’t want to.

Fussle.  Ah, there it is.  You won’t hear anything you don’t want to.  Now I can, and he ought not to say it;—look how she is blushing.  Oh, I forgot you are short-sighted.  Well, you see, I can hear further than you, and see further than you.  Why should you set a limit on the evolution of the senses, and say that no man in the future can ever hear or see further than men have in the past?  How dare you, sir, with your imperfect faculties and your perfunctory method of research, which can only cover an infinitesimal period in the existence of this planet, venture to limit the potentialities of those laws which have already converted us from ascidians into men, and which may as easily evolve in us the faculty of hearing tom-toms in the Himalayas while we are sitting here, as of that articulate speech or intelligent reasoning which, owing to their operation, we now possess?

Germsell.  Pardon me, you do not possess them, Mr Fussle.