Memoirs of a Space Traveler by Stanislaw Lem Page A

so?”
    “It does happen,” I replied. “What can I do for you?”
    “Among these many individuals,” the stranger went on without giving his name or the reason for his visit, “from time to time there must be, if only one in a thousand, some unappreciated, truly brilliant mind. The infallible laws of statistics require this. I, Mr. Tichy, am that one in a thousand. My name is Decantor. I am a professor of comparative ontogenetics, a full professor. I hold no position at the moment because I do not have time for it. Teaching, anyway, is a futile occupation. No one can teach anyone anything. But enough of that. I came to tell you that I have solved a problem to which I have devoted forty-eight years of my life.”
    “I, too, have little time,” I replied. I did not like this man. His manner was arrogant, not fanatic, and I prefer fanatics if I have to choose. Moreover, it was obvious he would ask for money, and I am tightfisted and not ashamed to admit it. This does not mean I will not back certain projects, but I do so reluctantly and, as it were, in spite of myself, for I do then what I know has to be done.
    So I added: “Would you perhaps state your business? Naturally, I cannot promise you anything. There was one thing you said that struck me. You mentioned you had devoted forty-eight years to your problem. How old are you now, if I may ask?”
    “Fifty-eight,” he replied coldly.
    He stood behind a chair as though waiting for me to ask him to sit down. I would have asked him, of course, because, even if a tightwad, I am still polite, but the obviousness of his waiting annoyed me. Besides, he was, as I have said, an extremely obnoxious character.
    “I took up the problem,” he resumed, “as a boy of ten. Because, Mr. Tichy, not only am I a brilliant man, I was also a brilliant child.”
    Accustomed though I was to such boasting, this brilliance business was a bit much. I grimaced.
    “Go on,” I said. If an icy tone of voice could lower the temperature, stalactites would have been hanging from the ceiling after this exchange.
    “I have invented the soul,” said Decantor, looking at me with his dark eye while the mocking one seemed fixed upon grotesque phantoms near the ceiling, phantoms visible to it alone. He said this the way one would say, “I have come up with a new eraser.”
    “Aha. I see, the soul,” I said almost cordially, for this insolence suddenly began to amuse me. “The soul? You invented it, did you? That’s interesting—I seem to have heard of it before. Perhaps from an acquaintance of yours?”
    I broke off insultingly. He measured me with his terrible squint and said quietly:
    “Mr. Tichy, let’s make a deal. Refrain from scoffing for fifteen minutes. Then you can scoff to your heart’s content. Agreed?”
    “Agreed,” I said, reverting to my former dry tone. “Continue.”
    He was not a braggart, I decided now. His tone was too categorical. Braggarts are not dogmatic. He was probably mad.
    “Have a seat,” I mumbled.
    “The thing is elementary,” said the man who called himself Professor Decantor. “People have believed in the soul for thousands of years. Philosophers, poets, founders of religions, priests, and churches have repeated all possible arguments in favor of its existence. According to some beliefs, the soul is an immaterial substance separate from the body which preserves a person’s identity after his death; according to others it is supposed to be—this is a view prevalent among Eastern thinkers—an entelechy devoid of individual personality. But the belief that man does not pass into nothingness at the time of death, that something in him survives death, has remained unshakable in minds for ages. We now know that there is no soul. There are only networks of nerve tissue in which certain life-related processes occur. What the possessor of such a network feels, what his consciousness perceives—that is the soul. Such was the situation until I appeared. Or,