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Page 5
He spoke English with a certain care in the selection of the
words, but with ease and an absence of effort, as though
languages were instinctive to him - as though he could speak any
language. And he impressed one with this same effortless
facility in all the things he did.
It is necessary to try to understand this, because it explains
the conception everybody got of the creature, when they saw him
in charge of Rodman. I am using precisely the descriptive words;
he was exclusively in charge of Rodman, as a jinn in an Arabian
tale might have been in charge of a king's son.
The creature was servile - with almost a groveling servility.
But one felt that this servility resulted from something potent
and secret. One looked to see Rodman take Solomon's ring out of
his waistcoat pocket.
I suppose there is no longer any doubt about the fact that Rodman
was one of those gigantic human intelligences who sometimes
appear in the world, and by their immense conceptions dwarf all
human knowledge - a sort of mental monster that we feel nature
has no right to produce. Lord Bayless Truxley said that Rodman
was some generations in advance of the time; and Lord Bayless
Truxley was, beyond question, the greatest authority on synthetic
chemistry in the world.
Rodman was rich and, everybody supposed, indolent; no one ever
thought very much about him until he published his brochure on
the scientific manufacture of precious stones. Then instantly
everybody with any pretension to a knowledge of synthetic
chemistry turned toward him.
The brochure startled the world.
It proposed to adapt the luster and beauty of jewels to commercial
uses. We were being content with crude imitation colors in our
commercial glass, when we could quite as easily have the actual
structure and the actual luster of the jewel in it. We were
painfully hunting over the earth, and in its bowels, for a few
crystals and prettily colored stones which we hoarded and
treasured, when in a manufacturing laboratory we could easily
produce them, more perfect than nature, and in unlimited
quantity.
Now, if you want to understand what I am printing here about
Rodman, you must think about this thing as a scientific
possibility and not as a fantastic notion. Take, for example,
Rodman's address before the Sorbonne, or his report to the
International Congress of Science in Edinburgh, and you will
begin to see what I mean. The Marchese Giovanni, who was a
delegate to that congress, and Pastreaux, said that the something
in the way of an actual practical realization of what Rodman
outlined was the formulae. If Rodman could work out the
formulae, jewel-stuff could be produced as cheaply as glass, and
in any quantity - by the carload. Imagine it; sheet ruby, sheet
emerald, all the beauty and luster of jewels in the windows of
the corner drugstore!
And there is another thing that I want you to think about. Think
about the immense destruction of value - not to us, so greatly,
for our stocks of precious stones are not large; but the thing
meant, practically, wiping out all the assembled wealth of Asia
except the actual earth and its structures.
The destruction of value was incredible.
Put the thing some other way and consider it. Suppose we should
suddenly discover that pure gold could be produced by treating
common yellow clay with sulphuric acid, or that some genius
should set up a machine on the border of the Sahara that received
sand at one end and turned out sacked wheat at the other! What,
then, would our hoarded gold be worth, or the wheat-lands of
Australia, Canada or our Northwest?
The illustrations are fantastic. But the thing Rodman was after
was a practical fact. He had it on the way. Giovanni and Lord
Bayless Truxley were convinced that the man would work out the
formulae. They tried, over their signatures, to prepare the world
for it.
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