The intelligent reader will have already seen the reasons for the general's fear of dark faces, of wandering men (not knowing how his pursuers might come after him), and of visitors (from the same cause and because his hateful bell was liable to sound at all times).
His broken sleep led him to wander about the house at night, and the lamps which he burnt in every room were no doubt to prevent his imagination from peopling the darkness with terrors.

Lastly, his elaborate precautions were, as he has himself explained, rather the result of a feverish desire to do something than in the expectation that he could really ward off his fate.
Science will tell you that there are no such powers as those claimed by the Eastern mystics.

I, John Fothergill West, can confidently answer that science is wrong.
For what is science?
Science is the consensus of opinion of scientific men, and history has shown that it is slow to accept a truth.

Science sneered at Newton for twenty years.

Science proved mathematically that an iron ship could not swim, and science declared that a steamship could not cross the Atlantic.
Like Goethe's Mephistopheles, our wise professor's forte is "stets verneinen." Thomas Didymus is, to use his own jargon, his prototype.