"you are a clever man, friend john. you reason well, and your wit is bold, but you are too prejudiced. you do not let your eyes see nor your ears hear, and that which is outside your daily life is not of account to you. do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are, that some people see things that others cannot? but there are things old and new which must not be contemplated by men's eyes, because they know, or think they know, some things which other men have told them. ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all, and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain. but yet we see around us every day the growth of new beliefs, which think themselves new, and which are yet but the old, which pretend to be young, like the fine ladies at the opera. then, friend john, am i to take it that you simply accept fact, and are satisfied to let from premise to conclusion be a blank? let me tell you, my friend, that there are things done today in electrical science which would have been deemed unholy by the very man who discovered electricity, who would themselves not so long before been burned as wizards. there are always mysteries in life. do you know all the mystery of life and death?"
i find it nothing short of amazing when i come across a paragraph such is this in any novel i read. for the past ten years i've been a complete atheist, and with this 40 or so seconds of reading i find that all turned back around on myself. it would be so wonderful to be good with words; to move people, to influence others with simple combinations of terms that fall out of your mouth (or your pen). the power of words is something so often besotted by me, and something so often underestimated.
