Do you mean to tell me you really wouldn’t like to head a research department of your own somewhere, to have no more drudgery, to get yourself recognized as an equal by those whose names in the scientific world you know and respect?… Of course you would…. And as for scientists being worth-whilers and world-savers, let me prick that bubble for you too. I’ve known a good many of them, and in my experience, though some may fool themselves about it, they have one simple and over-riding motive above all others…. Curiosity.”

“Brad’s motive isn’t that,” my mother interrupted.

“Then by Christ, if you’ll pardon the expression, it had better be, unless he’s a mere moralist hiding behind a rampart of test tubes!” He turned to Brad with his easy confident smile. “Perhaps you are—perhaps you’d really be more at home in a pulpit than a laboratory.”

“No, no, Julian,” my mother interrupted again. “That’s absurd—he’s not a moralist, and why should he hide anywhere? He’s a real scientist—he even defends vivisection!”

It was part of my mother’s charm that her mind flew off at tangents usually capable of changing a subject. This time, however, both Brad and Julian ignored her and the argument went on. “Of course, my dear boy, I’m neither defending nor attacking—I’m just diagnosing what I’ve always felt to be the real germ of the scientific spirit. You probably know much more about it yourself, but my own opinion is, it’s Pandora’s box that lures, not the Holy Grail. And I haven’t yet met a scientist who wouldn’t take a chance of busting up the whole works rather than not find out something. Maybe civilizations have been destroyed like that before. History covers too small a fragment of life on earth for anyone to say it’s unthinkable. After all, we know the Greeks excelled us in several of the arts and perhaps in one of the sciences, that of human government—why not some earlier civilization in engineering or medicine? Anyhow, it’s a beguiling thought—that all the great discoveries have been made and remade over and over again throughout the ages. What do you say, Jane? You’re the historian.”

I said it all sounded very pessimistic and somewhat Spenglerian.

“Personally I find it more agreeable than what the last century called progress.”

“It’s worse than pessimism,” Brad said. “It’s a sort of nihilism.”

“Coo … listen to ‘im! Sech lengwidge!” Julian mimicked banteringly.

My father, who had taken little part in the argument and had seemed to be listening in a detached way, now intervened almost irritably. “Nihilism … nihilism … just a word. At various times in my life I’ve been called an economic royalist, a communist, a fascist, and a merchant of death … so don’t let nihilist floor you, Julian.”

“I won’t,” Julian retorted, though he looked as if my father’s sudden support had rather startled him.

Brad was hanging on to the argument. “But at least, Mr. Spee, the peak of each civilization could be higher than the one before?”

“Why should it? We don’t know. Perhaps there’ve been vast cycles of civilizations—some upward in trend, others downward—and these cycles, in turn, may have belonged to even vaster movements. All pure speculation, of course. You can argue about it endlessly, just as—” and he turned deferentially to my father—“just as your Dow-Jones theorists do when stocks drop and they try to figure out whether it’s a real bear market or just a dip in a boom. Wait and see’s the only solution, but if the waiting means a few million years, what can you do? Even Spengler won’t go that far.”

Julian laughed, but as if he had become already uneasy about the argument. He was extremely sensitive to timing and atmosphere, and soon afterwards he made rather abrupt excuses and left us. Brad stayed, and my father rallied himself into an appearance of affability. But I was still at odds with his mood; I couldn’t quite understand it, and his totally unnecessary mention of having once been called a merchant of death was especially strange. It was true, he had been called that, but it wasn’t true that he had been unconcerned about it; on the contrary he had been much hurt at the time and would have prosecuted somebody for libel if his lawyers had let him.

I also noticed that he was refilling his glass rather oftener than usual. “Well, Brad,” he said, switching over to his side. “We certainly had him on a soapbox, didn’t we? I hope you weren’t too impressed.”

Brad laughed. “So long as I don’t have to agree, that’s the main thing. I’d like to think over what he said in terms of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Might be interesting.”

“What beats me,” my father said, “is the way that fellow knows other people’s business…. Yours … and mine … the Dow-Jones theory … how does he get that way?”

“Probably most of what he knows is on the surface,” Brad answered, entirely without malice.

It was late and he looked at his watch. I think we were all a little tired.