"Not yet. I only said, what we all must know, that it is on the cards. No one can tell whether they will turn up, or down. Of course, the fact that the rallying comes so slowly is bound to make us fear that the injury was worse than we thought at first. On the other hand, it is almost out of the question to judge it with any accuracy. Do what we will, we can't get inside Reed's body, and see for ourselves just what reactions, if any, are going on in there. I wonder, Brenton," the doctor faced him steadily; "if ever it has occurred to you that, in the last analysis, pure science is often baffled by the personal equation which comes into it, which defies all analysis, and which upsets the whole of our calculations. If it were not for the fact that Reed's ego is his own property, not ours, we could have settled this point about his future, months on months ago. Beyond a certain limit, though, there is no way for us to tell how far he responds to our experimental treatment. If his muscles do twitch, well and good. If they almost twitch and don't, no mortal mind outside of his can reckon how wide the falling short has been. You can talk about pure, abstract, impersonal science, till the moon turns to an Edam cheese. You can no more grasp the initial fact of what that science really is, than you can follow the example of the athletic cow. There's always the distorting lens of one's own mind to be taken into consideration; quite often there's another fellow's: the eye-piece of the compound microscope, and the objective. Take them away, and what impression do you get?" The doctor pulled himself abruptly out of his harangue. "You can't get any science, without the muddling addition of an ego, Brenton; and, moreover, there's a tentacle or two of every ego that sticks out beyond the edges of the law, and demands a separate code for its own management. It is in framing that separate code that we all fall down." But, to his regret, Brenton was deaf to his harangue. "You think," he was repeating; "that it may end in that?" The doctor ruffled his hair until it stood on end, rampant and tousled as a corn-husk mat.