"Be patient," he replied, "until you have heard the further results to which they will lead. I have not yet told you the half, and it may be that when you have heard the rest you will prefer to have no part in these Mysteries. The realm to which they will lead you has an immense population of ghosts; it is vastly more populous than our planet; and notwithstanding that my exercises have brought me abundant knowledge of them and their doings, I have not been able to classify more than a small portion of the inhabitants. The characters created by imaginative genius are only one among the orders of ghosts to whom you will presently be introduced. You will be haunted by _Ideas_ in every variety, all of them living organisms of high complexity, and all more or less ignorant of whence they come or whose they are. Possibly you will encounter your own ideas among them; and I must warn you against claiming to be the author of any of them, even the most original. There is nothing that offends them more deeply. They have their own notions as to their origin, which they conceive to lie in something infinitely superior to the brain of a being like yourself. By many of them their reputed authors are treated with contempt; some deny the existence of these 'authors' in any capacity whatsoever; others regard them as mere phrases, metaphors, or abstractions. A notable instance is that of your friend Professor Gunn, who wrote the famous treatise to prove the non-existence of God. The potent ideas projected in the course of that work had long enjoyed an independent being of their own in the spiritual world; and it may interest you--and Professor Gunn also, if you will be kind enough to tell him what I am now saying--to learn that these ideas of his have formed themselves into a congregation or society whose principal tenet is that there is no such being as Professor Gunn. They regard him alternatively as a sun-myth or an exploded fiction." "How absurd!" I cried. "In your present darkness," he answered, "the exclamation is to be excused. But I assure you that after passing one night in this house you will find that nothing in heaven or earth is less absurd than the statement you have just heard."