The park, with its fantastic potted trees and eight-foot blossoms, stretched farther from the tower than Barber had imagined; and his mind ran round and round the idea Imponens had thrown out, as though at once seeking some escape and happy at not finding it. In midnight arguments that flowered over the third Scotch-and-soda he was used to describing himself as a rational materialist. Like many intelligent people for whom the gospel of St. Einstein had replaced that according to St. John, he read the newspaper science columns and suspected even Jeans and Millikan of transcendentalism. Evidence that could be perceived by the physical senses—everything depended on that. Extrapolation from such evidence was dangerous. It resulted in theory which demanded experimental proof. It was like reassembling a clock and having it run perfectly with six cogwheels left out to find the evidence on which he had always relied supporting the theory he had always despised. Every physical sense assured him that he was not insane.
