Dr. Hammerfield was angry, righteously angry. It was as though he had caught Ernest in a theft or a lie.
“Young man,” he trumpeted, “that statement is on a par with all you have uttered to-night. It is a base and unwarranted assumption.”
“I am quite crushed,” Ernest murmured meekly. “Only I don’t know what hit me. You’ll have to put it in my hand, Doctor.”
“I will, I will,” Dr. Hammerfield spluttered. “How do you know? You do not know that Bishop Berkeley attested that his metaphysics did not work. You have no proof. Young man, they have always worked.”
“I take it as proof that Berkeley’s metaphysics did not work, because—” Ernest paused calmly for a moment. “Because Berkeley made an invariable practice of going through doors instead of walls. Because he trusted his life to solid bread and butter and roast beef. Because he shaved himself with a razor that worked when it removed the hair from his face.”
“But those are actual things!” Dr. Hammerfield cried. “Metaphysics is of the mind.”
“And they work—in the mind?” Ernest queried softly.
The other nodded.
“And even a multitude of angels can dance on the point of a needle—in the mind,” Ernest went on reflectively. “And a blubber-eating, fur-clad god can exist and work—in the mind; and there are no proofs to the contrary—in the mind. I suppose, Doctor, you live in the mind?”
“My mind to me a kingdom is,” was the answer.
“That’s another way of saying that you live up in the air. But you come back to earth at meal-time, I am sure, or when an earthquake happens