The Christian Scientists, blatantly, claimed to work them now, but their subjects died with disgusting regularity.

So he quickly came to the conclusion that, if he were once to state in plain English that he could accomplish the seemingly impossible; that he, a mere mortal, could make himself independent of the ordinary conditions of time and space and break with impunity all the laws which govern the physical universe, he would simply make himself the centre of a vortex of frenzied disputation which would shake the social, religious, and scientific worlds to their foundations, and that would certainly not be a pleasant position for an eminent and respected scientist, who was already a certain number of years past middle age--to say nothing of the very real harm that might be done.
Of course, he could settle all the disputes instantly, and dazzle the whole world into the bargain by simply delivering a lecture, say, before the Royal Society, on the existence of a world of four dimensions, and then proving by ocular demonstration that it does exist; but what would happen then?
Simply intellectual anarchy.
Every belief that man had held for ages would be negatived.

For instance, if there is one dogma to which humanity has clung with unanimous consistency, it is to the dogma that two and two make four.
What if he were to prove--as, of course, he could do now that this mysterious hand, outstretched through the mists of the far past, had led him across the horizon which divides the two states of Existence--that, under certain circumstances, they would also make three or five?
What if he demonstrated that even the axioms of Euclid could, under different conditions, be both true and false at the same time?
No, the thought of overthrowing such a venerable authority and plunging the scientific world into a hopeless state of intellectual chaos sent a shudder through his nerves.

He could not do it.
And yet it was only the bare, solid truth that he did possess these powers.

The dream of the death-bridal of Nitocris might possibly have been nothing more than just a dream, or possibly the revival of an episode in a past existence; but the other experiences certainly were not.