"Forgive me if I offend still further," said Markus, gently now and kindly, as he laid his hand on the black cloth enveloping the arm of the professor, "but it is exactly your own weakness that you cannot question. Science is the light of the Father. Why should not I respect it? And I know also what you have written and accomplished. But the most you did was to question imperfectly, and then to assume the complete reply. That one should find it so difficult and unsatisfactory to reply amazes you, because you do not realize the imperfection of your questions. But the finest and clearest responses--those that are most satisfying and intelligible to all--await those who have learned better how to question. If I esteem myself wiser than you, it is solely because I realize that we have nothing but metaphors, and that we must patiently and unpretendingly decipher as a communication from the Father the meaning of all these metaphors. While you imagine that, from your words and documents, one may comprehend His living Being." "With your permission," interrupted the professor. "You seem not to have read what I have written concerning the logical necessity of an incomprehensible basis for reality. Did you consider me such a dunce as not to have perceived that?" "To speak of things is not necessarily to understand them," replied Markus. "And so to speak of them is proof of not understanding." "I know very well what the human mind can compass, and what not; and in my last work, 'On the Essence of Matter,' I think I have defined the utmost to which the human mind can attain," said Professor Bommeldoos. "So did the Egyptians place the farthest reaches of the earth at the first falls of the Nile, to which the river was said to have flowed from heaven. And thousands and thousands of years passed away before they ventured to step beyond that boundary. And now the world is beginning to fraternize, and men to co-operate--now the barriers of the world are being removed to infinite distance. Who then shall term that which the human intellect can grasp, the extreme limit?" "There remains a barrier, constituted by our material structure, just as there is a barrier because of our confinement to this terrestrial ball which we cannot leave," declared Professor Bommeldoos, loudly and oracularly, encircling his chin with his hand, as was his habit when in learned discussions. He seemed to have quite forgotten that he had before him a patient for examination.