No More Learning

I sat with my acquaintance in the
middle of the room, and the evoker of spirits on the dais, and his wife
between us and him. He held a wooden mace in his hand, and turning to a
tablet of many-coloured squares, with a number on each of the squares,
that stood near him on a chair, he repeated a form of words. Almost
at once my imagination began to move of itself and to bring before me
vivid images that, though never too vivid to be imagination, as I had
always understood it, had yet a motion of their own, a life I could
not change or shape. I remember seeing a number of white figures, and
wondering whether their mitred heads had been suggested by the mitred
head of the mace, and then, of a sudden, the image of my acquaintance
in the midst of them. I told what I had seen, and the evoker of spirits
cried in a deep voice, 'Let him be blotted out,' and as he said it the
image of my acquaintance vanished, and the evoker of spirits or his
wife saw a man dressed in black with a curious square cap standing
among the white figures. It was my acquaintance, the seeress said, as
he had been in a past life, the life that had moulded his present,
and that life would now unfold before us. I too seemed to see the man
with a strange vividness. The story unfolded itself chiefly before
the mind's eye of the seeress, but sometimes I saw what she described
before I heard her description. She thought the man in black was
perhaps a Fleming of the sixteenth century, and I could see him pass
along narrow streets till he came to a narrow door with some rusty
ironwork above it. He went in, and wishing to find out how far we had
one vision among us, I kept silent when I saw a dead body lying upon
the table within the door. The seeress described him going down a long
hall and up into what she called a pulpit, and beginning to speak. She
said, 'He is a clergyman, I can hear his words. They sound like Low
Dutch. ' Then after a little silence, 'No, I am wrong. I can see the
listeners; he is a doctor lecturing among his pupils.
' I said, 'Do you
see anything near the door? ' and she said, 'Yes, I see a subject for
dissection. ' Then we saw him go out again into the narrow streets, I
following the story of the seeress, sometimes merely following her
words, but sometimes seeing for myself. My acquaintance saw nothing; I
think he was forbidden to see, it being his own life, and I think could
not in any case. His imagination had no will of its own. Presently the
man in black went into a house with two gables facing the road, and up
some stairs into a room where a hump-backed woman gave him a key; and
then along a corridor, and down some stairs into a large cellar full of
retorts and strange vessels of all kinds. Here he seemed to stay a long
while, and one saw him eating bread that he took down from a shelf. The
evoker of spirits and the seeress began to speculate about the man's
character and habits, and decided, from a visionary impression, that
his mind was absorbed in naturalism, but that his imagination had been
excited by stories of the marvels wrought by magic in past times, and
that he was trying to copy them by naturalistic means. Presently one of
them saw him go to a vessel that stood over a slow fire, and take out
of the vessel a thing wrapped up in numberless cloths, which he partly
unwrapped, showing at length what looked like the image of a man made
by somebody who could not model. The evoker of spirits said that the
man in black was trying to make flesh by chemical means, and though he
had not succeeded, his brooding had drawn so many evil spirits about
him, that the image was partly alive. He could see it moving a little
where it lay upon a table. At that moment I heard something like little
squeals, but kept silent, as when I saw the dead body. In a moment more
the seeress said, 'I hear little squeals. ' Then the evoker of spirits
heard them, but said, 'They are not squeals; he is pouring a red liquid
out of a retort through a slit in the cloth; the slit is over the mouth
of the image and the liquid is gurgling in rather a curious way. ' Weeks
seemed to pass by hurriedly, and somebody saw the man still busy in
his cellar. Then more weeks seemed to pass, and now we saw him lying
sick in a room up-stairs, and a man in a conical cap standing beside
him.