* * * * *

I have spoken to him many times, but he never answers.  I sat and watched him all morning.  Frequently he looked at me, and it was patent that he knew me.

* * * * *

By striking the side of my head violently with the heel of my hand, I can shake the vision of him out of my eyes.  Then I can get into the chair; but I have learned that I must move very quickly in order to accomplish this.  Often he fools me and is back again before I can sit down.

* * * * *

It is getting unbearable.  He is a jack-in-the-box the way he pops into the chair.  He does not assume form slowly.  He pops.  That is the only way to describe it.  I cannot stand looking at him much more.  That way lies madness, for it compels me almost to believe in the reality of what I know is not.  Besides, hallucinations do not pop.

* * * * *

Thank God he only manifests himself in the chair.  As long as I occupy the chair I am quit of him.

* * * * *

My device for dislodging him from the chair by striking my head, is failing.  I have to hit much more violently, and I do not succeed perhaps more than once in a dozen trials.  My head is quite sore where I have so repeatedly struck it.  I must use the other hand.

* * * * *

My brother was right.  There is an unseen world.  Do I not see it?  Am I not cursed with the seeing of it all the time?  Call it a thought, an idea, anything you will, still it is there.  It is unescapable.  Thoughts are entities.  We create with every act of thinking.  I have created this phantom that sits in my chair and uses my ink.  Because I have created him is no reason that he is any the less real.  He is an idea; he is an entity:  ergo, ideas are entities, and an entity is a reality.

* * * * *

Query:  If a man, with the whole historical process behind him, can create an entity, a real thing, then is not the hypothesis of a Creator made substantial?  If the stuff of life can create, then it is fair to assume that there can be a He who created the stuff of life.  It is merely a difference of degree.  I have not yet made a mountain nor a solar system, but I have made a something that sits in my chair.  This being so, may I not some day be able to make a mountain or a solar system?

* * * * *

All his days, down to to-day, man has lived in a maze.  He has never seen the light.  I am convinced that I am beginning to see the light—­not as my brother saw it, by stumbling upon it accidentally, but deliberately and rationally.  My brother is dead.  He has ceased.  There is no doubt about it, for I have made another journey down into the cellar to see.  The ground was untouched.  I broke it myself to make sure, and I saw what made me sure.  My brother has ceased, yet have I recreated him.  This is not my old brother, yet it is something as nearly resembling him as I could fashion it.  I am unlike other men.  I am a god.  I have created.