* * * * *

Query:  He is a product of my consciousness; is it possible, then, that entities may be created by consciousness?

* * * * *

We did not quarrel.  To this day I do not know how it happened.  Let me tell you.  Then you will see.  We sat up late that never-to-be-forgotten last night of his existence.  It was the old, old discussion—­the eternity of forms.  How many hours and how many nights we had consumed over it!

On this night he had been particularly irritating, and all my nerves were screaming.  He had been maintaining that the human soul was itself a form, an eternal form, and that the light within his brain would go on forever and always.  I took up the poker.

“Suppose,” I said, “I should strike you dead with this?”

“I would go on,” he answered.

“As a conscious entity?” I demanded.

“Yes, as a conscious entity,” was his reply.  “I should go on, from plane to plane of higher existence, remembering my earth-life, you, this very argument—­ay, and continuing the argument with you.”

It was only argument[1].  I swear it was only argument.  I never lifted a hand.  How could I?  He was my brother, my elder brother, Jim.

I cannot remember.  I was very exasperated.  He had always been so obstinate in this metaphysical belief of his.  The next I knew, he was lying on the hearth.  Blood was running.  It was terrible.  He did not speak.  He did not move.  He must have fallen in a fit and struck his head.  I noticed there was blood on the poker.  In falling he must have struck upon it with his head.  And yet I fail to see how this can be, for I held it in my hand all the time.  I was still holding it in my hand as I looked at it.

[Footnote 1:  (Forcible—­ha! ha!—­comment of Rudolph Heckler on margin.)]

* * * * *

It is an hallucination.  That is a conclusion of common sense.  I have watched the growth of it.  At first it was only in the dimmest light that I could see him sitting in the chair.  But as the time passed, and the hallucination, by repetition, strengthened, he was able to appear in the chair under the strongest lights.  That is the explanation.  It is quite satisfactory.

* * * * *

I shall never forget the first time I saw it.  I had dined alone downstairs.  I never drink wine, so that what happened was eminently normal.  It was in the summer twilight that I returned to the study.  I glanced at the desk.  There he was, sitting.  So natural was it, that before I knew I cried out “Jim!” Then I remembered all that had happened.  Of course it was an hallucination.  I knew that.  I took the poker and went over to it.  He did not move nor vanish.  The poker cleaved through the non-existent substance of the thing and struck the back of the chair.  Fabric of fancy, that is all it was.  The mark is there on the chair now where the poker struck.  I pause from my writing and turn and look at it—­press the tips of my fingers into the indentation.