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Chapter XIV Extract from Dr Seward’s diary “Do you mean to tell me, friend John, that you have no suspicion as to what poor Lucy died of; not after all the hints given, not only by events, but my me?” “Of nervous prostration following on great loss or waste of blood?” “And how the blood lost or waste?” I shook my head. He (Van Helsing) stepped over and sat down beside me, and went on:- “You are clever man, friend John; you reason well, and your wit is bold; but you are too prejudiced. You do not let your eyes see nor your ears hear, and that which is outside your daily life is not of account to you. Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are; that some people see things that others cannot? But there are things old and new which must not be contemplate by men’s eyes, because they know -or think they know- some things which other men have told them. Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says that there is nothing to explain. But yet we see around us every day the growth of new beliefs, which think themselves new; and which are yet but the old, which pretend to be young –like the fine ladies at the opera. I suppose now you do not believe in corporeal transference. No? Nor in materialization. No? Nor in astral bodies. No? Nor in the reading of thought? No? Nor in hypnotism-” […] “My thesis is this: I want you to believe.” “To believe what?” “To believe in things that you cannot. Let me illustrate. I heard once of an American who so defined faith: “that which enables us to believe things which we know to be untrue.” For one, I follow that man. He meant that we shall have an open mind, and not let a little bit of truth check the rush of a big truth, like a small rock does a railway truck. We get the small truth first. Good! We keep him, and we value him; but all the same we must not let him think himself all the truth in the universe.” “Then you want me not to let some previous conviction injure the receptivity of my mind with regard to some strange matter. Do I read your lesson aright?” “Ah, you are my favourite pupil still. It is worth to teach you. Now that you are willing to understand, you have taken the first step to understand. You think then that those small holes in the children’s throats were made by the same that made the holes in Miss Lucy?” “I suppose so.” He stood up and said solemnly:- “The you are wrong. Oh, would it were so! But alas! No. It is worse, far, far worse.” “In God’s name, Professor Van Helsing, what do you mean?” He threw himself with a despairing gesture into a chair, and placed his elbows on the table, covering his face with his hands as he spoke:-“They were made by Miss Lucy!”