‘We have again,’ said one, ‘the old subject to-day.’

‘Is it something about the constitution of the place?’ I asked in the bewilderment of my mind.  My neighbors looked at me with alarm, glancing behind them to see what officials might be near.

’The constitution of the place is the result of the sense of the inhabitants that order must be preserved,’ said the one, who had spoken to me first.  ’The lawless can find refuge in other places.  Here we have chosen to have supervision, nuisances removed, and order kept.  That is enough.  The constitution is not under discussion.’

‘But man is,’ said a second speaker.  ’Let us keep to that in which we can mend nothing.  Sir, you may have to contribute your quota to our enlightenment.  We are investigating the rise of thought.  You are a stranger; you may be able to help us.’

‘I am no philosopher,’ I said with a panic which I could not explain to myself.

‘That does not matter.  You are a fresh subject.’  The speaker made a slight movement with his hand, and I turned round to escape in wild, sudden fright, though I had no conception what could be done to me; but the crowd had pressed close round me, hemming one in on every side.  I was so wildly alarmed that I struggled among them, pushing backwards with all my force, and clearing a space round me with my arms; but my efforts were vain.  Two of the officers suddenly appeared out of the crowd, and seizing me by the arms, forced me forwards.  The throng dispersed before them on either side, and I was half dragged, half lifted up upon the platform, where stood the strange apparatus which I had contemplated with a dull wonder when I came into the hall.  My wonder did not last long.  I felt myself fixed in it, standing supported in that position by bands and springs, so that no effort of mine was necessary to hold myself up, and none possible to release myself.  I was caught by every joint, sustained, supported, exposed to the gaze of what seemed a world of upturned faces; among which I saw, with a sneer upon it, keeping a little behind the crowd, the face of the man who had led me here.  Above my head was a strong light, more brilliant than anything I had ever seen, and which blazed upon my brain till the hair seemed to singe and the skin shrink.  I hope I may never feel such a sensation again.  The pitiless light went into me like a knife; but even my cries were stopped by the framework in which I was bound.  I could breathe and suffer, but that was all.

Then some one got up on the platform above me and began to speak.  He said, so far as I could comprehend in the anguish and torture in which I was held, that the origin of thought was the question he was investigating, but that in every previous subject the confusion of ideas had bewildered them, and the rapidity with which one followed another.  ’The present example has been found to exhibit great persistency of idea,’ he said.  ’We hope that by his means some