And all the while they danced and shouted and screamed, FitzJohn stood motionless, fingertips just touching the table, waiting for them to finish. You began with an admiration for his composure. Then suddenly you realized what a breathtaking performance was going on. You glued your eyes to the motionless figure and waited for it to move--and it never did. What? You don't think that was so terrific, eh? Well, one of you get up and try it. Stand alongside a table and rest your fingertips lightly on the top--not firmly enough to bear the weight of your arm--but just enough to make contact. Maybe it sounds simple. Just go ahead and try it. I'll bet every credit I ever own no one of you can stand there without moving for sixty seconds. Any takers? I thought not. You begin to get the idea, eh? They began to get the same idea in the amphitheater. At first the excitement died down out of shame. There's not much fun making a holy show of yourself if your audience doesn't react. They started it up again purely out of defiance, but it didn't last long. The chanting died away, the dancers stopped cavorting, and at last that entire audience of thousands stood silent, uneasily watching FitzJohn. He never moved a muscle. After what seemed like hours of trying to outstare him, the kids suddenly gave in. Spatters of applause broke out across the terraces. The clapping was taken up and it rose to a thunder of beating palms. No one is as quick to appreciate a great performance as a youngster. These kids sat down in their seats and applauded like mad. FitzJohn never moved until the applause, too, had died down, then he picked up his card and, without preamble--as though nothing at all had happened--he began his lecture. * * * * * "Ladies and gentlemen, I have been accused of creating my theory of energy-dynamics and my mathematics out of nothing--and my critics cry: 'From nothing comes nothing.' Let me remind you first that man does not create in the sense of inventing what never existed before. Man only discovers. The things we seem to invent, no matter how novel and revolutionary, we merely discover. They have been waiting for us all the time. "Moreover, I was not the sole discoverer of this theory. No scientist is a lone adventurer, striking out into new fields for himself. The way is always led by those who precede us, and we who seem to discover all, actually do no more than add our bit to an accumulated knowledge. "To show you how small my own contribution was and how much I inherited from the past, let me tell you that the basic equation of my theory is not even my own. It was discovered some fifty years prior to this day--some ten years before I was born. "For on the evening of February 9, 2909, in Central Park, on the very site of this amphitheater, my father, suddenly struck with an idea, mentioned an equation to my mother. That equation: i = (b/a) π i e/μ..."