nikos of Rhodes. Let us see if we can understand them any better than they understand themselves.

What they are really thinking of all this time is not a stone on a mountain, which of course has no more energy than the rest of the mountain, but a loose stone, in other words, a stone that is going to fall. The stone on the house-roof would never have become a scientific problem, unless it had slipped off the roof on to the ground. It is what happens when it reaches the ground that has caused all the trouble. The learned men have noticed that if you drop a glass test-tube on your laboratory floor it is more likely to break than if it had been on the floor all along. They have been struck by this interesting fact, which even children have noticed in connection with their toys; and they have wanted to account for it. And finding that they could not accont for it, they have done what science in a difficulty always does, they have lulled their minds to sleep with spells from the Greek lexicon. Hence all this demonology and witchcraft.

Why does the fallen test-tube break? Why does the falling stone descend as though it were being sucked downwards in a whirlpool-as perhaps it is? It cannot be mere weight that does all this, because the falling stone is no heavier than any other stone. The answer of science is that there must be a demon in the stone; and it is that demon who breaks the stone, or makes it bound up again, or, if the stone be flint and fall upon another flint, strikes out a spark-the demon in his fiery shape.

If that be so, how did the demon get into the stone?

Here is the riddle they have got to read. Once upon a time a demon used to enter into the stone while it was falling through the air, and the name of that demon was Momentum, which is to say, being interpreted, Rush. In these days that demon of the air has been exorcised, but only to make room for a far more subtle fiend, the Demon of the House-Roof. This demon does not wait till the stone begins to fall; no, he was there all the time lurking inside it, while it was lying there so quietly and peacefully among the Christian tiles. Then how did this demon get into the stone?

There stands the riddle, and the learned men think that they have read it, as they think they have read other riddles, by muttering something that sounds uncommonly like hic haec hoc.

But they have not told us how the demon got into the stone.

The one sound example of Energy of Position, the one case in which the words are not wholly meaningless, is that of the scale in which you balance a pound of meat by an ounce weight at the end of a lever. And as soon as we utter the word lever, lo! the Energetic demon is conjured back into the Ethereal dustbin. We are talking, not metaphysics, but mechanics, and measuring the ways of strength instead of pretending to account for them. The strength with which a falling stone strikes the ground is its weight, multiplied by the height from which it fell. So much we know, the rest is ta meta ta phusika and hic haec hoc.

All this is not really science, but only scientology. It is language. It is the magic lullaby in which the

shapes of things melt and reshape themselves forever. And so, when we would try to stop that wheel we call the mind, and look between the spokes, at once the All-Thing in its turn begins to spin about us, and all which it contains to slide and glide away:as in that wondrous story of creation handed down from Finnish scorcerers of old, when the wizard Lemminkainen comes into the hall and sings; and while he sings the swords vanish out of the hands of the feasters, and the cups vanish from their lips, and the tables and the walls melt and fade, and lastly the hall itself and all within it melt and fade away, and only the magic song goes on.

Lest I should be misled about Materialism by keeping to one book, and that one written by a man of letters rather than a practical scientist, I went out into the street, and was fortunate enough to find another with the tempting title-Chemical Theory for Beginners.

This time there could be no mistake; the book was a real school-book, and it had belonged to a real school-boy; I found his name, Cameron, and the name of his school, on the fly-leaf. It was the work of two learned specialists on the staff of a famous university. In England the publisher is more important than the author, and this book was published by the most important publisher in England. It was published in the year of Nobel's death.

As we have seen, there is a slight cloud over the Story of Creation. If it is not under lock and key in the Free Libraries, there must be many who

would like it to be so. But no one would dream of locking up the Chemical Theory for Beginners. It is perfectly respectable. It is a book that might have been written by a bishop. Its contents are taught to the sons of bishops in the most conservative schools in England. They are taught alongside of the Catechism of the Church of England. And yet they are not one whit less materialistic than what we have been reading. The passage I have picked out for examination is a chief cornerstone of the Materialistic Faith. The schoolmasters have dealt with young Cameron fairly, according to their lights. They have treated his mind as if it were a badger's pit. You put in the badger, and you put in the dog, and you wait to see which comes out first. They have thrown in the Catechism, and they have thrown in the Chemical Theory, and now they are waiting to see whether Cameron will turn out a Christian or an Atheist.

I got this book to learn what young Cameron had to learn, whether he liked it or not, about Going Crumbs.

I

The Going Crumb has been invented to account for an interesting fact which any one may examine for