PHILOSOPHIC ANTS 193 



geneous and simple effect, altering in response to cir- 

 cumstances, with changes capable of expression in 

 some formula as simple as Boyle's or Avogadro's 

 Law. 



Almost more startling might be the effect of alter- 

 ing the rhythm at which we live, or rather at which 

 we experience events. 



If only I were Mr. H. G. Wells, I could make a 

 mint of money by a story based on this idea of 

 rhythm of living.^ Let us see . . . First there would 

 be Mercaptan the distinguished inventor, who would 

 lead me (lay, uninstructed, Watsonish me, after the 

 fashion of narrators) into his laboratory. There on 

 the table would be the machine — all but complete: 

 handles, coils of wire, quartz terminals, gauges of 

 rock-crystal in which oscillated coloured fluids, plati- 

 num cogwheels . . . dot . . . dot . . . dot . . . dot. . . . 

 He hardly dared to make the fmal connections, all 

 clear and calculable though they were. He had put 

 so much of himself into it: so many hopes . . . 

 fears . . . dots. . . . 



Then there would be the farewell dinner-party — 

 first the inventor's voice on the wireless telephone, 



2 The reading of this paper brought a string of informants 

 eager to let me know that Mr. Wells had already written a 

 story on this theme. 1 was grateful to them for having caused 

 me to read the hiew Accelerator, which by some strange chance 

 I had managed to miss: but Mr. Wells's treatment is so wholly 

 different from that which I have sketched that 1 feel no scruples 

 in letting it stand: and, if amends are needed, at least I make 

 him a present of the germ of a new tale, and so feel that honour 

 should be satisfied. 



