“Especially when you do it unarmed and without thinking out every possibility.”

“I was so taken up with the sphere. The thing rushed on us, and carried us away.”

“Rushed on me , you mean.”

“Rushed on me just as much. How was I to know when I set to work on molecular physics that the business would bring me here⁠—of all places?”

“It’s this accursed science,” I cried. “It’s the very Devil. The medieval priests and persecutors were right and the Moderns are all wrong. You tamper with it⁠—and it offers you gifts. And directly you take them it knocks you to pieces in some unexpected way. Old passions and new weapons⁠—now it upsets your religion, now it upsets your social ideas, now it whirls you off to desolation and misery!”