Number 87

by Harrington Hext

  I hastened to lessen the sting of this egregious attack by boldly hinting that Smith must be the worse for his usual ‘nightcap,’ and by assuring Leon that the man would tender him an apology for such insolence at the first opportunity.

  I then turned to Strossmayer, changed the subject, and reminded him of a former promise. He appreciated the championship of Jacobs and radiantly granted my request.

  “When are we to see your prodigy — the radio-chemist?” I asked. “He was to have paid us a visit and given us a glimpse into the new chemistry, upon which the future seems so directly to depend.”

  “He shall come,” replied the other. “I am anxious for him to do so; but I hesitated to bring him under the growing weight of opinion directed against me here. I say nothing, but have been aware for some time that I was not persona grata save in certain quarters. However, I can easily leave you and, indeed, shall do so before long. But I will bring Ian Noble when he returns to England. For the moment he is in Vienna and proceeds to Belgrade to see my Government next week. On his return he shall come.”

  Strossmayer kept his word; but the installation of certain apparatus and the consideration of plans for new laboratories projected in his future home kept Noble out of England for several weeks, and when he did visit Chislehurst, to accept the hospitality of the Club of Friends, there were but few members left to welcome him. Our little coterie was on the wing for the summer, and among those who had already departed were General Hugh Fordyce and his brother, Sir Bruce, who had gone to the latter’s estate in Devonshire. Merrivale Medland was off, as usual, to combine business with pleasure in France and Spain, and he, too, missed the visitor; while Jack Smith departed on a walking tour, but made no attempt to patch his quarrel before doing so.

  CHAPTER VII

  THE NEW CHEMISTRY

  IT was on an evening in July when Ian Noble actually visited us; and despite his youth, one could not fail to be conscious of a personality. For a young man he was remarkably sedate. Alert and alive he indeed seemed to be, but there appeared in him none of the exuberant quality of youthful genius. He did not assert himself, and let us appreciate his quality as much by his silences as through what he said. He was a Scot of dark complexion and lean, wiry build. His age was nine and twenty, but his clean-shorn face, thin jaw and lined forehead made him look ten years older. His life of toil had aged him, yet detracted nothing from a native frankness and urbanity of temper. He made no mistake about his own capabilities, or the vital importance of the work upon which he was engaged at this time; but he was not pretentious and he appeared to belong to that distinguished order of scientific inquirers who labor for the sake of truth, rather than to advance their fame, or improve their worldly position. He was, in fact, modest and far more interested with general questions embracing the future prospects of science, in its relations to humanity, than in his personal achievements and contributions to knowledge. He echoed Strossmayer, that to Science must the world look for its future salvation, and he argued that the spirit of Science was misunderstood.

  “Our stern and unyielding respect for truth is regarded by some minds as almost brutal,” he declared. “I find people who actually seem to think all research is based on infliction of suffering! It is monstrous. They forget that the principal sufferers are the scientists themselves and the amount of suffering that Science has already saved the world.”

  Concerning his own activities he would say very little, and while he made the line of his inquiry clear, he vouchsafed no light on the extent of his success, or where he now stood with reference to the great goal. He was not secretive, but diffident, and Strossmayer had more to say on that point than the chemist. Noble was a water-drinker and did not smoke; but he had a good appetite and enjoyed his dinner. He liked to talk when conscious of sympathetic auditors, and after we had adjourned to the smoking room, Paul Strossmayer soon launched him into his favorite, though by no means his only, theme.

  “The time has long passed,” he said, “since our immortal Boyle declared that we could pursue the secret of matter into the elements and no further. The elements themselves have increased in number since his day, and such modern chemists as Becquerel and the Curies have atomized these elements. The atom is the starting point of modern chemistry, and from it we reach radio-activity and so proceed to the hidden mysteries of transmutation. They are no mysteries really: there is no such thing as a mystery in our domain; but for the present they continue to remain hidden from our intelligence, though time will surely yield the key to the door that still hides them.”

  “The circle seems to complete itself,” said Bishop Blore; “and I read that you latest seekers may yet show us that the inquiries of the old alchemists had something in them, after all. In my youth we were taught that the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life were moonshine.”

  “Far from it,” answered Noble. “Transmutation is proved; but the ancient road would never have led to that discovery. Transmutation, I say again, is proved, and homogeneity, or identity, becomes a delusion of past scientists when we find elemental atoms composed of materials fundamentally different. For, pushed to its conclusion, this fact may reveal that the same element will transmute iron, or lead, or gold.”

  “How push it to its conclusion?” asked Jacobs.

  “That is the present puzzle,” admitted the young chemist. “That we cannot do yet, and to the bedrock, we may, of course, never actually get. But, on the other hand, we may; and, though my opinion is of little worth, I think we shall.”

  “We can control chemical changes easily enough,” explained Strossmayer. “That is one thing; but to control the changes of the atom is quite another.”

  “Quite another,” echoed Ian Noble. “We cannot make the atom expel a particle if it declines to do so, or retain a particle, if it is determined to expel it. Take radium. Radium will not retain its particles for anybody; while lead will not expel them. Wild horses won’t make lead expel a particle. As yet we know not how to do so; but if lead would only oblige in this little matter, we might turn it into gold at will, by way of mercury and thallium.”

  “That, then, is the secret lying between us and the philosopher’s stone?” asked the bishop.

  “Exactly — no more and no less,” answered Noble. “But there is another and far more tremendous consideration. The energy implied by ‘the Bat,’ though as yet unknown to the world at large, is now in human hands; and those who reached it, only did so by discovering the way to the whole secret.”

  “Do you mean?” I inquired, “that those responsible for these extraordinary murders and destructions have the power to turn lead into gold?”

  “In all probability they have,” he assured us. “One cannot be positive, and one heartily hopes that the full, potential limit still lies beyond their reach — for this reason. If we learn how to turn lead into gold, we learn a much more terrific fact: we learn to control and release atomic energy — such energy as might split the solid rind of the earth, like a cocoanut under a steam hammer.”

  “Do you mean that man will ever be in a position to destroy the world?” asked Bishop Blore with amazement on his face.

  “I do,” answered the young man calmly. “That is what we shall most certainly be able to achieve, when we find out how to transmute the elements.”

  “An appalling prospect,” confessed Leon Jacobs; “for put a case. Such a discovery would argue genius of the very highest order — an amazing intellect — and such a brain, rewarded perhaps by this awful discovery after a lifetime of gigantic toil, might well totter on the brink of insanity. Imagine such a power in the hand of a lunatic and our very cosmical existence is not worth a day’s purchase!”

  Noble nodded.

  “That is the truth — an appalling prospect, as you say; and what is more, for certain reasons and from the evidence before us of the unknown’s activities, your gloomy suggestion may be nearer the truth than you suppose.”

  But Bishop Blore raised his voice in protest.


  “You leave the Maker of the round world out of your calculations,” he assured our guest. “Shall the Almighty suffer His planet to be at the mercy of a creature? Shall we permit one of afflicted mind to exterminate the earth, as a lunatic destroys some harmless man, or child?”

  But Jacobs perceived that the good prelate had given himself into a rationalist’s hand.

  “That is dangerous ground, Bishop,” he replied, “for the evils you suggest, which we know have too often happened, only differ in magnitude from what we imagine. If it is denied that a madman may extinguish a world, why is it allowed that he may take an innocent life?”

  Paul Strossmayer brought us back to the subject.

  “Since you suspect such colossal perils, my friend,” he said to Noble, “the quicker you find an antidote and give our ‘Bat’ a dose of his own physic, the better for Jugo-Slavia.”

  But the other only broke off from his lecture to chaff.

  “All very well, Paul; but remember I am not the man to be enslaved for a party, or a State. I had to make that mighty clear when I was in your very attractive country, and among your very attractive countrymen. You are a most astute person — everybody in Jugo-Slavia appears to be astute for that matter — but with a sort of astuteness that made me kick a little. You, yourself, are as honest as the light; but your people are — what? Shall we say ‘self-centered’? You must not keep us chemists on a chain, to bark for Jugo-Slavia alone. You must not exploit us, Paul.”

  “Why use the word?” asked Strossmayer. “You know very well, Noble, that your first duty is to your employer, and though you discover something of world-wide significance, as you will, your first duty is still to your employer. You have accepted our general terms, and if we like to keep a menagerie of scientists in luxury and affluence, on the off chance that the game is worth the candle, that is our affair. But it is your affair to give us your results be they great or small — be they only to make two ears of corn grow where one has grown, or split the world like a nut, as you say.”

  “Granted,” answered his friend. “We will talk of that another time, when there is something to talk about. I shall not be found lacking in enthusiasm for Jugo-Slavia which has treated me so well, is building me the finest laboratory in Europe, and not denying me the most costly materials for research within human reach. All that I fully recognize. The means to wealth and the power which arises out of wealth, if I discover them, are Jugo-Slavia’s; but the application to which those means shall be put — have I no voice in that vital matter?”

  “We will talk of this another time, as you suggested,” replied the other. “This is a personal question and cannot interest our friends.”

  The younger man, showing a trace of discomposure, was silent a few moments; then he dismissed that aspect of his activities and turned to us.

  “If you want research, you must go outside the Universities,” he said. “University professors are paid to teach, not to learn, and many a creative man is smothered in a Chair. State departments are chiefly concerned to prop up the old, not to foster the new; and law, officialdom, the Constitution itself, have always supported the non-creative, selfish interests of mankind. Nevertheless Science is winning a place in the sun at last. This argues no particular good will on the part of our rulers, but only a general, though still foggy, perception that the future prosperity of civilization depends upon Science. The Arts need not be afraid, for as our claim is universal, so are our obligations. Science is acutely aware of its obligations and perceives their immensity, when it shall reach these gigantic powers presently to be discovered.”

  “They must be applied to the boon, not the bane, of humanity,” asserted Bishop Blore, and none differed from his pious hope.

  “That is every good man’s wish,” answered Noble, “but Science is clear-eyed and appreciates the complexity of the problem. The quest itself is difficult enough and success may be long delayed; but consider how far more difficult will be what follows discovery. The problem of applying our mighty energy to the good of all men and the advancement of the whole world’s progress, will be one calling for a vaster intellect than is yet upon this earth. Indeed no solitary brain, or nation, can be expected to administer such an inheritance impartially.”

  “The new energy must be the servant, not the tyrant, of man,” I said.

  “But how easily — how fatally easily — might it become the tyrant,” he replied.

  Paul Strossmayer was growing a little uneasy at this development of the theme.

  “Don’t preach, Ian,” he said abruptly. “Leave that to Bishop Blore. Give us chemical facts, not ethical theories: they are not your line.”

  But a flush came into the chemist’s pale face, though he answered quietly.

  “You may find that they are,” he replied. “Even a man of science must be granted a heart as well as a head, Paul; and I imagine no chemist is the worse for loving his fellow creatures and desiring to increase universal happiness. You must not deny me my enthusiasms or ideals, even though my business is concerned with the search for truth alone. Indeed where shall we find a greater or more precious truth than the right application of knowledge to the advancement of man’s welfare?”

  The bishop applauded this sentiment.

  “Wisely spoken,” he declared. “Learning misapplied is worse than ignorance. When it is within our reach, let our greatest good be shared by all.”

  “Easy to wish, your lordship,” answered the Scot; “but how inconceivably difficult to accomplish. None should know better than a prince of the Church how hard must be the task before us. Consider that we have been seeking to apply the panacea of Christianity to human affairs for nearly two thousand years, since the concept first dawned upon mankind. There you see the problem paralleled; and if moral precepts and a lofty, universal rule of conduct are so hard to establish, so apparently impossible of human application, who can assert that some immense, physical discovery, however full of promise and hope, will not prove equally difficult to set going in right channels?”

  “Until we make the world safe for righteousness, we certainly shall never make it safe for unlimited energy,” admitted Bishop Blore. “I must grant you that mankind has failed, so far, to employ that most glorious of all energies, the gift of the Founder of Christianity, which we call love. That He has placed at our service; He has erected its altars in every human soul; but few there are who worship at those altars with a single heart. The fault, however, lies in human weakness and fallibility, not in the gift itself.”

  Noble bowed respectfully.

  “It is good to find a distinguished churchman honest enough to admit the failure,” he answered.

  Then Leon Jacobs spoke.

  “Great forces which might unite and pull together, still, by some unhappy, inherent weakness in us, are content to oppose their strength,” he said. “If the Church had the sense to support Science and elevate the application of its discoveries into the field of morals, she might yet justify herself to many skeptic minds. But she kicks against the pricks of knowledge, and so gives herself dangerous wounds, which only lower her own vitality. She quarrels with Science, denies and grudges its discoveries, cheapens its conclusions, fights against the inevitable and resistless progress of truth and ignores all the salutary cleansing, saintly work that Science has done and is doing for the amelioration of human suffering.”

  “It must be so,” reluctantly confessed the bishop. “No honest man can pretend a reconciliation, for reconciliation is impossible. One reads the annual sermon before the British Association and realizes the futility and hollowness of such a friendship. We have held the knife to the throat of Science too long, and Science retaliates — with no knife indeed — but by the liberation of an air so icy that Faith cannot breathe it. Let each of us, therefore, look to the order in his own house and leave the reconciliation of Faith and Science to the Everlasting.”

  “Faith must not be denied us, however,” answered Noble. “Dogmatism is deat
h to Science; but none the less we have a very deeply rooted faith, and if I gave it a name I should call it belief in the evolution of human morals and a sure trust that such evolution tends upwards, despite the darkness of the times in which we happen to live. An ephemeral insect, that lives and dies on a gray day, might deny the existence of the sun; but though our span of years may happen to be gray, reason and unconquerable hope still tell the man of science that the sun is shining, presently to emerge for generations as yet unborn.”

  A vivid animation characterized the young man’s utterance and light seemed to shine upon his face as he spoke. Bishop Blore looked at him with a sort of regret. Indeed the elder man voiced his emotion.

  “Would that your brain had developed the little extra twist, to bring you on our side,” he said frankly.

  “There are only two sides,” answered the chemist; “and I make bold to believe I am on yours — in all things that matter.”

  But the old prelate shook his head.

  After this excursion into morals, our guest returned to his own subject.

  “Energy is the point,” he explained. “There are two energies, the sleeping and waking. A loaded gun cartridge is potential energy. We may scatter the powder or dynamite on the ground and the energy is lost; but put the cartridge into your gun and fire it, then the energy becomes kinetic, active, awake. We hold that the energy that is waiting to alter the face of the earth and change her tears to smiles is close to our hands — sleeping. Everything is embraced in matter and its product, energy. All that has ever happened, or can happen, is comprehended in those words. The beings who have done these obscure deeds — men, as of course, I believe — stored energy and then liberated it. In the case of the Albert Memorial, energy was poured out, to the destruction of those earlier energies that created and erected it. Energy is being stored in secret — that is what we have to recollect. Vast energies are being bottled and locked up ready for use by unknown men; and they choose that we should grope in the dark blindly, only seeing a little at a time of their purpose.”