"Arthur Conan Doyle - The Land of Mist" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doyle Arthur Conan)

Sapiens! Homo idioticus! Who do they pray to -- the ghosts?"

"Well, that's what we want to find out. We should get some copy out of them. I need not say that I share
your view entirely, but I've seen something of Atkinson of St. Mary's Hospital lately. He is a rising
surgeon, you know."

"I've heard of him -- cerebro-spinal."

"That's the man. He is level-headed and is looked on as an authority on psychic research, as they call the
new science which deals with these matters."

"Science, indeed!"

"Well, that is what they call it. He seems to take these people seriously. I consult him when I want a
reference, for he has the literature at his fingers' end. 'Pioneers of the Human Race' -- that was his
description."

"Pioneering them to Bedlam," growled Challenger. "And literature! What literature have they?"

"Well, that was another surprise. Atkinson has five hundred volumes, but complains that his psychic
library is very imperfect. You see, there is French, German, Italian, as well as our own."

"Well, thank God all the folly is not confined to poor old England. Pestilential nonsense!"

Have you read it up at all, Father?" asked Enid.

"Read it up! I, with all my interests and no time for one-half of them! Enid, you are too absurd."

"Sorry, Father. You spoke with such assurance, I thought you knew something about it."



file:///G|/rah/Arthur%20Conan%20Doyle%20-%20The%20Land%20of%20Mist.htm (4 of 180) [2/17/2004 9:54:30 AM]
 The Land of Mist

Challenger's huge head swung round and his lion's glare rested upon his daughter.

"Do you conceive that a logical brain, a brain of the first order, needs to read and to study before it can
detect a manifest absurdity? Am I to study mathematics in order to confute the man who tells me that two
and two are five? Must I study physics once more and take down my Principia because some rogue or
fool insists that a table can rise in the air against the law of gravity? Does it take five hundred volume to
inform us of a thing which is proved in every police-court when an impostor is exposed? Enid, I am
ashamed of you!"

His daughter laughed merrily.

"Well, Dad, you need not roar at me any more. I give in. In fact, I have the same feeling that you have."

"None the less," said Malone, "some good men support them. I don't see that you can laugh at Lodge and
Crookes and the others."