As I said one day to the Professor, science is not treating us quite fairly in this emergency. “As a scientific person,” I said to the Professor, “you will remember the things science once undertook to tell us about the great dualities. ‘Witness,’ said science, with not a glimmer of insincerity, ‘the beautiful interdependence of the two lobes of the cerebrum! How marvellous is their union! Each individual in form and function, yet working in an eternal harmony. One cannot get along without the other. Let one side of the brain be hurt and the other droops in sympathetic inactivity.’ This was lovely. It fortified every advocate of the fitness of marriage. ‘Observe,’ we could say to the skeptic, ‘that this duality proceeds throughout nature. Interdependence is universal,’ and so on. But what happens? Just as we have this impressive object lesson in good working order, along comes science, with a frown and a cough, to remark that it was mistaken in the matter of that absolute interdependence theory, that the brain lobes can, after all, each get along quite well at times without the other; that the injury or decay of one is, indeed, sometimes followed by a steady increase in the powers of the other, one taking up the functions lost or dropped by the other. Nor was this the worst thing that happened. You know well enough what they used to say about the marriage of the two lobes of the cerebrum by the _corpus callosum_. The _corpus callosum_ at least seemed secure. We could have worried along with the _corpus callosum_. We always could say: the lobes are highly independent in action, but they are firmly married by this wonderful ligament--if it is a ligament. Even this comfort is now taken from us. Science has just rudely snatched away the _corpus callosum_. ‘The two lobes can get along without it,’ grunts science. ‘People have lived for years with no impairment of their brain power with a totally shrivelled _corpus callosum_.’ It is hard to keep pace with these cynicisms of science.” “You simply have been punishing yourself for whimsical analogies,” remarked the Professor dryly. “Moreover, you are quoting abnormalities.” “Alas, Professor!” I cried, “it makes little difference about the abnormality. Admit an exception and the law is dead. We could conjure with the law. What can we hope to do now? The American girl dotes on exceptions--especially on illustrating them.” [Illustration]