The Invisible Man by H.G.Wells Chapter 19 Certain First Principles

 

The Invisible Man

by H.G.Wells

Chapter 19

Certain First Principles

"What's the matter?" asked Kemp, when the Invisible Man admitted him.

"Nothing," was the answer.

"But, confound it! The smash?"

"Fit of temper," said the Invisible Man. "Forgot this arm; and it's

sore."

"You're rather liable to that sort of thing."

"I am."

Kemp walked across the room and picked up the fragments of broken

glass. "All the facts are out about you," said Kemp, standing up

with the glass in his hand; "all that happened in Iping, and down

the hill. The world has become aware of its invisible citizen. But

no one knows you are here."

The Invisible Man swore.

"The secret's out. I gather it was a secret. I don't know what your

plans are, but of course I'm anxious to help you."

The Invisible Man sat down on the bed.

"There's breakfast upstairs," said Kemp, speaking as easily as

possible, and he was delighted to find his strange guest rose

willingly. Kemp led the way up the narrow staircase to the

belvedere.

"Before we can do anything else," said Kemp, "I must understand a

little more about this invisibility of yours." He had sat down,

after one nervous glance out of the window, with the air of a man

who has talking to do. His doubts of the sanity of the entire

business flashed and vanished again as he looked across to

where Griffin sat at the breakfast-table--a headless, handless

dressing-gown, wiping unseen lips on a miraculously held serviette.

"It's simple enough--and credible enough," said Griffin, putting

the serviette aside and leaning the invisible head on an invisible

hand.

"No doubt, to you, but--" Kemp laughed.

"Well, yes; to me it seemed wonderful at first, no doubt. But now,

great God! ... But we will do great things yet! I came on the stuff

first at Chesilstowe."

"Chesilstowe?"

"I went there after I left London. You know I dropped medicine and

took up physics? No; well, I did. _Light_ fascinated me."

"Ah!"

"Optical density! The whole subject is a network of riddles--a

network with solutions glimmering elusively through. And being but

two-and-twenty and full of enthusiasm, I said, 'I will devote my

life to this. This is worth while.' You know what fools we are at

two-and-twenty?"

"Fools then or fools now," said Kemp.

"As though knowing could be any satisfaction to a man!

"But I went to work--like a slave. And I had hardly worked and

thought about the matter six months before light came through one

of the meshes suddenly--blindingly! I found a general principle

of pigments and refraction--a formula, a geometrical expression

involving four dimensions. Fools, common men, even common

mathematicians, do not know anything of what some general expression

may mean to the student of molecular physics. In the books--the

books that tramp has hidden--there are marvels, miracles! But this

was not a method, it was an idea, that might lead to a method by

which it would be possible, without changing any other property of

matter--except, in some instances colours--to lower the refractive

index of a substance, solid or liquid, to that of air--so far as all

practical purposes are concerned."

"Phew!" said Kemp. "That's odd! But still I don't see quite ... I

can understand that thereby you could spoil a valuable stone, but

personal invisibility is a far cry."

"Precisely," said Griffin. "But consider, visibility depends on the

action of the visible bodies on light. Either a body absorbs light,

or it reflects or refracts it, or does all these things. If it

neither reflects nor refracts nor absorbs light, it cannot of

itself be visible. You see an opaque red box, for instance, because

the colour absorbs some of the light and reflects the rest, all the

red part of the light, to you. If it did not absorb any particular

part of the light, but reflected it all, then it would be a shining

white box. Silver! A diamond box would neither absorb much of the

light nor reflect much from the general surface, but just here

and there where the surfaces were favourable the light would

be reflected and refracted, so that you would get a brilliant

appearance of flashing reflections and translucencies--a sort of

skeleton of light. A glass box would not be so brilliant, nor so

clearly visible, as a diamond box, because there would be less

refraction and reflection. See that? From certain points of view

you would see quite clearly through it. Some kinds of glass would

be more visible than others, a box of flint glass would be brighter

than a box of ordinary window glass. A box of very thin common

glass would be hard to see in a bad light, because it would absorb

hardly any light and refract and reflect very little. And if you

put a sheet of common white glass in water, still more if you

put it in some denser liquid than water, it would vanish almost

altogether, because light passing from water to glass is only

slightly refracted or reflected or indeed affected in any way.

It is almost as invisible as a jet of coal gas or hydrogen is in

air. And for precisely the same reason!"

"Yes," said Kemp, "that is pretty plain sailing."

"And here is another fact you will know to be true. If a sheet of

glass is smashed, Kemp, and beaten into a powder, it becomes much

more visible while it is in the air; it becomes at last an opaque

white powder. This is because the powdering multiplies the surfaces

of the glass at which refraction and reflection occur. In the sheet

of glass there are only two surfaces; in the powder the light is

reflected or refracted by each grain it passes through, and very

little gets right through the powder. But if the white powdered

glass is put into water, it forthwith vanishes. The powdered glass

and water have much the same refractive index; that is, the light

undergoes very little refraction or reflection in passing from one

to the other.

"You make the glass invisible by putting it into a liquid of nearly

the same refractive index; a transparent thing becomes invisible if

it is put in any medium of almost the same refractive index. And if

you will consider only a second, you will see also that the powder

of glass might be made to vanish in air, if its refractive index

could be made the same as that of air; for then there would be no

refraction or reflection as the light passed from glass to air."

"Yes, yes," said Kemp. "But a man's not powdered glass!"

"No," said Griffin. "He's more transparent!"

"Nonsense!"

"That from a doctor! How one forgets! Have you already forgotten

your physics, in ten years? Just think of all the things that are

transparent and seem not to be so. Paper, for instance, is made up

of transparent fibres, and it is white and opaque only for the same

reason that a powder of glass is white and opaque. Oil white paper,

fill up the interstices between the particles with oil so that there

is no longer refraction or reflection except at the surfaces, and

it becomes as transparent as glass. And not only paper, but cotton

fibre, linen fibre, wool fibre, woody fibre, and _bone_, Kemp,

_flesh_, Kemp, _hair_, Kemp, _nails_ and _nerves_, Kemp, in fact

the whole fabric of a man except the red of his blood and the black

pigment of hair, are all made up of transparent, colourless tissue.

So little suffices to make us visible one to the other. For the

most part the fibres of a living creature are no more opaque than

water."

"Great Heavens!" cried Kemp. "Of course, of course! I was thinking

only last night of the sea larvae and all jelly-fish!"

"_Now_ you have me! And all that I knew and had in mind a year after

I left London--six years ago. But I kept it to myself. I had to do

my work under frightful disadvantages. Oliver, my professor, was a

scientific bounder, a journalist by instinct, a thief of ideas--he

was always prying! And you know the knavish system of the scientific

world. I simply would not publish, and let him share my credit. I

went on working; I got nearer and nearer making my formula into an

experiment, a reality. I told no living soul, because I meant to

flash my work upon the world with crushing effect and become famous

at a blow. I took up the question of pigments to fill up certain

gaps. And suddenly, not by design but by accident, I made a

discovery in physiology."

"Yes?"

"You know the red colouring matter of blood; it can be made

white--colourless--and remain with all the functions it has now!"

Kemp gave a cry of incredulous amazement.

The Invisible Man rose and began pacing the little study. "You may

well exclaim. I remember that night. It was late at night--in the

daytime one was bothered with the gaping, silly students--and I

worked then sometimes till dawn. It came suddenly, splendid and

complete in my mind. I was alone; the laboratory was still, with the

tall lights burning brightly and silently. In all my great moments

I have been alone. 'One could make an animal--a tissue--transparent!

One could make it invisible! All except the pigments--I could be

invisible!' I said, suddenly realising what it meant to be an albino

with such knowledge. It was overwhelming. I left the filtering I was

doing, and went and stared out of the great window at the stars.

'I could be invisible!' I repeated.

"To do such a thing would be to transcend magic. And I beheld,

unclouded by doubt, a magnificent vision of all that invisibility

might mean to a man--the mystery, the power, the freedom. Drawbacks

I saw none. You have only to think! And I, a shabby, poverty-struck,

hemmed-in demonstrator, teaching fools in a provincial college,

might suddenly become--this. I ask you, Kemp if _you_ ... Anyone, I

tell you, would have flung himself upon that research. And I worked

three years, and every mountain of difficulty I toiled over showed

another from its summit. The infinite details! And the exasperation!

A professor, a provincial professor, always prying. 'When are you

going to publish this work of yours?' was his everlasting question.

And the students, the cramped means! Three years I had of it--

"And after three years of secrecy and exasperation, I found that to

complete it was impossible--impossible."

"How?" asked Kemp.

"Money," said the Invisible Man, and went again to stare out of the

window.

He turned around abruptly. "I robbed the old man--robbed my

father.

"The money was not his, and he shot himself."