Page:The Viaduct Murder (1926).pdf/251

att went to the bad, he mightn't screw himself up to the point of shoving poison into somebody's tea. But he couldn't kill a man with his hands."

"I know; it doesn't sound probable. And yet, I suppose a person with a fixed idea isn't much different from a madman, is he? And my argument was that Marryatt had a sort of fixed idea about religion."

"Yes; but, don't you see, he hasn't. Marryatt's a very good chap, and he thinks all the doctrines he preaches are more probable than not, but his religion doesn't sweep him off his feet: the man who denies it doesn't seem to him something less than human. That was another reason against your theory. Psychologically, Marryatt hasn't got the apparatus to do what you thought he did. Morally, he hasn't got the motive to act as you thought he did."

"Well, I seem to have made a pretty good ass of myself all round. I wonder if anybody in the world has ever been so led astray by a theory?"

"Anybody ever? Why, my dear Reeves, you're in exactly the same position there as about three-quarters of the modern world: they are all led astray by theories. Only you were at least led astray by your own theory, not by one you'd borrowed at second-hand."

"What, you mean scientific theories in medicine and so on? Taking the doctors' word for it that it's a good thing to be vaccinated, and that kind of thing?"